Showing results by narrator "Darla Middlebrook" in All Categories

Skillfully narrated by storyteller Darla Middlebrook, this Robert Louis Stevenson tale of Keawe, a poor Hawaiian man, who buys a strange bottle from a sad, elderly gentleman who credits the bottle with his fortune. The elderly gentleman promises that an imp residing in the bottle will also grant Keawe his every desire. Of course, there is a catch - the bottle must be sold at a loss, i.e. for less than its owner originally paid, or else it will simply return to him. The currency used in the transaction must also be in coin (not paper money or a bank check).

In the far reaches of Mystyria lies Hope’s Covenant, a small, coastal town at the foot of the world. Beneath a mansion in the outskirts, a powerful treasure is buried. A secret treasure. One that Dyne, a 300-year-old vampiress will stop at nothing to claim. With her vampiric army in tow, Dyne steps foot on the Birchlock Estate with Hannah, the small child she stole away from a torn family. But in Hope’s Covenant, Tranas Anvaar arrives to bring justice to the vampiress - to make her pay for the lives she’s destroyed.

Magic and madness don't always run hand in hand, but there's a reason they call it the Touch. Delaney Green is one of them that don't burn, not that no one ain't never tried. After her mama tried and failed to murder her for pulling on the future like it was a piece of string, Del has spent her whole life in a mental institution for her own safety. And everyone else's. No one wants to see what might happen if she goes cracked. When a dozen young women turn up burned to a crisp, local folks are quick to point the FBI straight at Del.

Speculative fiction stories that are set in or about Archaeological Ruins. The protagonist in each story is an archaeologist who is a woman of color. Ruins range from those in the American Southwest to Central America, to the Andes Mountains to Egypt to the Middle East, Egypt to Aboriginal Australia, and across other areas. Some incorporate mythology of the ancient cultures who built and inhabited the ruins. Some of the protagonists are descendants of the ancient peoples of the ruins.

It was 1939, and a close-knit South African family found themselves in need of a new home. Peter van der Westhuizen, a husband and father of seven who spent most of his days on the road as a truck driver, did his best to provide for them. Then he found Opsaal. It’s an Afrikaans word that means "saddle up", but it was also a place: a farm, to be exact - a lonesome speck of nothing on the edge of a dirt track nowhere near a main road in the South African wilderness, somewhere in the Adelaide district.

After a virus wipes out all life on the planet, Ryan Steward believes he's all that's left. Now, a race of scavengers descends on Earth, ready to consume the remaining resources. Ryan, tasked with preserving humanity's written word, must travel the country in hopes of saving books from their destruction.

Contacted by her father who is trapped in The Lost, a waiting room between Heaven and Hell, Blank begins a journey to take her from ordinary teenager to the hero who might save Savannah. In her path she will not only see the dark side of the city, but a man named Abraham who calls that darkness his home.

Although it is not entirely to her liking, grief-stricken Satha, a dark-skinned woman from a poor Theseni clan weds young Loic, the wealthy Doreni son of the king's First Captain. Loic, graced with ability to see into the hearts and minds of others, begins to help Satha overcome her sorrows. Despite coming from different tribes, they begin to forge a life together. But when Satha's own compassion is used against her and a treacherous enemy contrives to dishonor her in Loic's absence, Loic's love turns to anger and disgust.

Forty-seven-year-old housewife Marge Christensen finds her husband, Gene, dead in their garage, slumped over the steering wheel of his still running BMW. The police rule the death a suicide. Marge does not believe Gene killed himself and determines to discover what really happened to him. In the process, she discovers all their money is missing. So, what was Gene doing before he died? Why did he die? And what was she going to do now?

Action! Adventure! Time Travel! Each day shapes the days that follow...The Time Saving Agency liked having fresh agents on the job, who had a clear mind and steady hand. After all, time travel wasn’t for the faint of heart. The pay was good enough, but as Johnathan Scrooby decided long ago - even if he didn’t get paid for it, the thrill alone was payment enough! Then again, the TSA realized they couldn’t afford to have disgruntled employees with the power of God at their fingertips, so the pay was very, very good indeed!

Troubled times had come to the small Terran Colony planet of Deanna–and having amusing names for its sun (Ramalama) and two moons (Ding and Dong) hadn't made this quaint little world immune to bad things…. After the shock assassination of a visiting member of the imperial family, and with the three largest cities on Deanna overrun by fascist troops, the local government goes into hiding.

Returning from an evening in Mars City spent visiting relatives he didn’t know he had, Timaset Skooch arrived at the local space port to find his new acquisition stolen. A few minutes later, the crew of his slightly run-down loderunner "Celeste", returned from a nearby pub, blind drunk, puzzled, and now unemployed as well. Ever since he’d decided to quit being a PI and to try his hand at running cargo instead, things had just blown up in Skooch’s face one day at a time (Florpavian Flamebirds tended to do that occasionally).

Kersey is afraid. After years of hiding away from Mydian, a vengeful god, she has been pushed to her limit - to her threshold of anger and resentment. A powerful vampire with the uncanny ability to control the dead, Kersey is a force to be reckoned with. But Mydian is not dissuaded. From the ashes of death, he sends Dyne back to the world of the living - to Mystyria to hunt her down. In the shackles of a human body, she will struggle against all odds - mortal inadequacies, rivalry, jealousy, and deceit.

Flicker is a modern-day ghost story set in a haunted diner. When Charlie Brace buys, refurbishes, and opens a diner that’s been up on blocks for many years, he gets much more than he bargained for.

Ora escaped Conjuragic, barely avoiding the terrible fate the tribunal sentenced her to after the trial. Now back in the human realm, she must race across the world to find allies and train her to use her forgotten powers while avoiding the Hunters. As Ora tries to master the power within, a greater challenge lays ahead. But only if she can convince others to join her cause, heal her broken heart, and cross over the bridge from victim to hero.

Marge Christensen and her husband, Pete Peterson, want to adopt their two foster sons - but Eric's grandfather is threatening to get custody of the 12-year-old boy. To prevent this from happening, Marge and Eric take a road trip to Pasco, Washington, a typically quiet rural area near the Cascade Range, to visit with him. Before they can even say hello, the two find themselves staring down the barrel of a shotgun. In less than 24 hours, that same gun is used to kill a man.

When Marge Christensen arrives at Ocean Shores on Friday afternoon, it feels like the perfect place to get away from it all for a week and do a little painting. But, on Sunday afternoon, a man's body is discovered on the beach. The man has been murdered, and when Marge's son, Robert, is implicated in the murder, Marge must delve into the tangle of relationships, motives, and opportunity to uncover the truth.

Stuart Flane, Captain of the starship Mercury, and lately the butt-end of innumerable jokes doing the rounds at Space Fleet H.Q., is called upon once more—kicking and screaming—to investigate all manner of preternatural fuckery.

Life's never simple for private inspector, Cybil Lewis. Her investigation for her latest client runs into a snag: dead bodies all over The District with his DNA. Is it a malfunction in the system or something far more sinister?

The Bronze Age saw the beginning of empires, as well as their mysterious and catastrophic end. In a world not unlike our own, the nomadic Whisperers of the Gods have been given a grave vision of the gods destroying the world in a great flood, and they send three messengers to the great empires in hopes of appeasing the gods. Finding themselves in strange new lands with even stranger customs, the Whisperers soon discover the hardest thing is not only convincing the kings and queens to listen, but also reaching their destinations without falling prey to the dangers and temptations of these new lands.