Showing results by narrator "Neil Hellegers" in All Categories

When he was young, Jimmy met a boy in a playground. As the years passed, Jimmy grew older...but the boy did not. Set in a haunted playground, The Red Boy explores the boundaries between parents and children, women and men, and the living and the dead.

Black magic gets a bad rap. Trust me. When people see me, they don't see Cisco Suarez, they see a rogue. A shadow charmer. A black magic outlaw. Maybe they're right. Maybe everything I touch withers and dies. But that doesn't give the SWAT team a right to come in with guns blazing.

In his account of the sensational life and murder of Grady Stiles Jr., also known as the legendary carnival freak Lobster Boy, author Fred Rosen explains how Stiles' death was engineered by his wife, Mary Teresa, the carny known as the Electrified Girl. Rosen describes how Mary Teresa arranged for her husband's murder after years of physical and emotional abuse. During Mary Teresa's dramatic trial, Rosen becomes a character in his own book.

I'm Cisco Suarez, and a week ago I was dead. Cursed into serving a clandestine shadow group, I have a lot of blood on my hands. Good thing I also have a juvenile problem with authority. I'm not taking orders anymore, and the first thing on my bucket list is bringing them down. If I'm good at anything, it's looking in dark places. But I've got shadows of my own. Horrific deeds coming back to haunt me, and not the metaphorical kind of haunting, either. I'm talking ghosts, mages, and that thing with the glowing red eyes.

The supposed collapse of Roman civilization is still lamented more than 1,500 years later - and intertwined with this idea is the notion that a fledgling religion, Christianity, went from a persecuted fringe movement to an irresistible force that toppled the empire. The intolerant zeal of Christians, wrote Edward Gibbon, swept Rome's old gods away, and with them the structures that sustained Roman society. Not so, argues Douglas Boin.

Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius, is raised from the dead by the hand of a child. His kingdom stolen by the evil dragon, Gorond, Chaelus's only hope to reclaim his throne rests with the child knight who saved him, the heretical order to which the child belongs, and the truth about Chaelus which they alone protect.

More than 500 years before his friendship with Kitty, noble Ricardo de Avila's life met a fate-changing twist, and his morally complex, blood-soaked existence as an immortal began. Before being turned, Ricardo de Avila would have followed Coronado to the ends of the earth. Instead he found the end of his mortal life - and a new one, as a renegade vampire. For over 500 years as an immortal, Ricardo has followed his own moral code, upsetting the established order in the demon world.

Telling the inspiring human story behind the creation of the Paralympics, this young listener's biography showcases a riveting narrative to honor the life of Ludwig Guttmann, whose work profoundly changed so many lives. Dedicating his life to helping patients labeled incurables, Ludwig Guttmann fought for the rights of paraplegics to live a full life. The young doctor believed - and eventually proved - that physical movement is key to healing, a discovery that led him to create the first Paralympic Games.

Isolated in the aftermath of tragedy, Erin Fullarton has felt barely alive since the loss of her young daughter, Korrie. Her estranged husband, Zac, a brilliant astrophysicist, seems to be coping better. Lost in his work, he's perfecting his model of a stunning cosmological phenomenon, one he predicts will occur today. But when Erin receives a phone call from her daughter's school, the same call she received 500 days earlier when Korrie was still alive, Erin realizes something is happening. Or happening again.

In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul "Big Alex" McKenzie defied even the era's standard for avarice. Charismatic and shameless, he arrived in the new Alaskan territory intent on controlling gold mines and draining them of their ore. Miners who had rushed to the frozen tundra to strike gold were appalled at his unabashed deviousness. A Most Wicked Conspiracy recounts McKenzie's plot to rob the gold fields.

Lizards, Goblins and the Created. Pick one and they were coming from all directions. As Matt expands, he finds himself in ever greater conflicts. Now his opponent’s are striking at him from all sides, with previously safe directions at risk. Good thing he’s got new Heroes, new units and new tricks up his sleeves. The only question plaguing him now is, why him? And what, if any, is the end game?

When Paul Ondragon's mentor, Roderick DeForce, seeks his help on a seemingly routine missing-person case, the consummate troubleshooter finds himself vexed by a puzzle even he can't easily solve. The missing man is a tough-as-nails former Navy Seal working for a company that specializes in high-stakes deliveries to crisis areas. But who wanted him out of the way . . . and why?

Matt Fang has won the battle. He's got a new town, a whole new race of units to control and a lot of catching up to do. He's still stuck in this strange realm, one of the last defenders of humanity against an enemy he doesn't understand. Only contest. Still, he's got a job to do, even if it's not one he trained for. At least ruling a magical kingdom is better than punching in at the office.

Matt's in trouble now. The enemy lord has tricked him into over-extending, forcing Matt's Hero to retreat in disarray. Now, there's nothing stopping the enemy from launching an attack against his fort, nothing but a few last wood elemental units and Irvine himself.

Matt's encountered his first opponent and is getting a hang of being lord of all he surveys. Of course, that's only a few hexes away from his fort, but it's the thought that counts. Now that he has an objective, he's going to need ramp up unit production, balance gold production and the egos of his two Heroes.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with Classes, magic and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.