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In late 1944 a failed German actor, Max Kaspar, is forced to join an absurdly desperate secret mission in which he must impersonate an enemy American officer. So Max cooks up his own fanatical plan — he’ll use his false identity to escape tyranny and war and flee to the America he’d once abandoned.
Max the performer is hardly a soldier let alone a double-crossing commando, yet in the deadly Battle of the Bulge he has to fool battle-shocked American GIs as well as dodge discovery by his reckless German comrades. Belgium’s Ardennes forest becomes a snowbound hell and the magical America he’d loved is lost to him, replaced by a somber invading juggernaut. In the end, Max’s gambles will lead him to a grim but honest payoff.
Part WWII espionage thriller, part expatriate noir, The Losing Role is based on an actual German false flag operation that’s been made infamous in legend but in reality was a doomed farce. In all the tragic details and with some dark humor, this is the story of an aspiring talent who got in over his head and tried to break free.
Author Website
$1.99 for a limited time
181 pages
(10 votes, average: 6.50 out of 10)
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A serial killer lurks in the Northern California fog, and young women are disappearing. Sarah is 16, pretty and naive. Her beloved mother now dead, Sarah must run away from her hated aunt to search for the father she barely knows. Right into the serpent’s den. What she finds horrifies her. Is the strange boy she meets there the real killer? Is her father involved? Can she escape before it’s too late?
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Hattie Locke has a gift: when she sings, the dead dig themselves from their graves to listen. As a death-siren, her life has always been this way.
Then the dead begin to show up in numbers far beyond expected. With each song she sings, they grow pushy and demanding, rushing the stage to reach her. Trapped in a place where her dreams of music become her nightmares, Hattie is left with nowhere to turn.
But then she meets a boy, who promises freedom from her curse.
Now Hattie wonders: is ridding herself of her voice worth losing the music she’s lived to create?
Quake: Echelon Press LLC, October 2009.
Voted Top Ten Young Adult Book for 2009 Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll!
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Destiny’s Forge Book 1 in the SF/vampire series Children of The Dragon by Theresa M. Moore, published by Antellus. Honor and duty, espionage and revenge, space adventure and vampire romance in the 23rd century. A stranger from another planet finds her fate changed by destiny in her quest to track down a war criminal from her world.
Based on a series of short stories created by the author from 1988 – 1995, the first book is a full novel of adventures of the series heroine against the backdrop of high adventure and space opera inspired by many of the TV series and films of the last century. “I was influenced by such classics as Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, and films like Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Time Machine,” she said. “I wanted to craft an original adventure from elements and themes familiar to readers, of good vs. evil, and came up with something which almost exceeded my expectations.”
The Children of The Dragon series is a chronicle of the Xosan, living vampires from the planet Antellus who were once human but were transformed by a dragon’s blood. They are stories of science fiction, fact and fantasy, myth and history, tragedy and triumph; linked together by the theme of the vampire as hero.
(2 votes, average: 6.50 out of 10)
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Destiny’s Forge Book 1 in the SF/vampire series Children of The Dragon by Theresa M. Moore, published by Antellus. Honor and duty, espionage and revenge, space adventure and vampire romance in the 23rd century. A stranger from another planet finds her fate changed by destiny in her quest to track down a war criminal from her world.
Based on a series of short stories created by the author from 1988 – 1995, the first book is a full novel of adventures of the series heroine against the backdrop of high adventure and space opera inspired by many of the TV series and films of the last century. “I was influenced by such classics as Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, and films like Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Time Machine,” she said. “I wanted to craft an original adventure from elements and themes familiar to readers, of good vs. evil, and came up with something which almost exceeded my expectations.”
The Children of The Dragon series is a chronicle of the Xosan, living vampires from the planet Antellus who were once human but were transformed by a dragon’s blood. They are stories of science fiction, fact and fantasy, myth and history, tragedy and triumph; linked together by the theme of the vampire as hero.
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Have you ever wondered how a trial lawyer can sleep at night after helping a client he/she knows is guilty, beat the legal system? I have. Have you ever wondered how an attorney would feel if that same recently acquitted client kills a second time? Again, I have, and these very questions prompted me to write a dark mystery/thriller about just such an attorney–I call it Defending Evil.
Travis Knight is an extraordinary Criminal Defense Attorney wining high profile cases in Atlanta. One of his recently acquitted clients kills again, which has Travis and his wife Julie, questioning what he does for a living. Travis is shaken to his core, but being a consummate lawyer, he is able to move past his feeling of guilt; Julie isn’t.
In a bizarre twist, a mysterious vigilante begins executing Travis’ clients after he wins them an acquittal. This righteous vigilante decides that the clients Travis is helping to put back into society are guilty, and don’t deserve to live–the vigilante delivers ultimate justice.
The police only half-heartedly search for the vigilante-off the record, they are glad someone is cleaning-up after the hot-shot attorney.
The vigilante’s attention turns to the source, and sends Travis an ultimatum–stop defending guilty clients or he will be the next to be executed. Risking his life, and his marriage, Travis refuses to be intimidated, and continues to defend clients accused of murder.
This story chronicles the labyrinth of high-speed twists and turns of a deadly cat-and-mouse game–a game that can end with only one winner.
Buckle-up and enjoy the ride!
Regards,
Charles
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Former Ten Stars combat pilot Rick Barrett is having a bad day. Not only is he jobless and broke, in a seedy spaceport bar he has just been forced into a winner-takes-all poker game with a homicidal cauliflower.
Salvation is at hand in the shapely form of Irish redhead Julie Halloran, who has an unusual talent of her own. Julie has a proposition for Rick that could end his financial worries at a stroke, though it might also end up getting him killed. But is Julie keeping a few cards hidden herself?
The Festival on Lyris Five is a fast-moving, hilarious, science-fiction novella, where nothing is quite what it seems…
An easy, enjoyable read, full of fun, with a likeable lead role and great alien characters. Superb twist at the end…you’ll love it.
Fiona Taylor
Seemingly drawing from a number of science fiction influences, The Festival On Lyris Five is an immensely enjoyable read. The protagonist Richard Barrett puts me very much in mind of Han Solo with possibly a dash of Lister. The characters have depth and the dialogue is quirky. One could almost imagine dining at the Zodiac Castle then stopping off at the Martian Arms for a Nortons Mindwarp or too. With its intriguing settings and seamless plot, The Festival On Lyris Five is a charming novella worthy of a sequel. Of special note is the surprising (but credible) twist in the tale which, of course, you will have to read for yourself.
Kate Boardman – Coffee With Kate’s Blog
The Festival on Lyris Five is provided to buyers in all popular e-book formats, including Epub and .mobi (for the Amazon Kindle). A printed version is also available from Lulu.com, with extra illustrations by cover artist Louise Tolentino.
You can also follow Nick Daws on Twitter or visit his freelance writing blog.
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Burnout: The mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281, is a techno-thriller about a Space Shuttle disaster that turns out to be no accident. As the true scope of the conspiracy is gradually uncovered by the principal investigators, “Crash” Murphy and Dr. Mike Anders, they find themselves running for their lives, as lovers, friends and coworkers involved in the investigation perish around them. What happened to the Shuttle? Who is responsible for the disaster and why? Why is the government calling it an accident? Why is someone willing to kill to keep it a secret? And how big is the conspiracy? An exciting action techno-thriller, Burnout will leave you on the edge of your seat, not wanting to put it down. Burnout has been in Fictionwise’s SF Top 25. To date, it has been nominated for eight awards in four separate genres (e-book, science fiction, mystery, and thriller). It is an International Thriller Writers’ Best First Thriller finalist.
Excerpt:
Crash did a double take and looked carefully at the blazing spark as it shot through the black velvet sky, then gave an equally quick glance at Hamilton Carter. “Ham, have they got a re-entry DTO on this flight?”
“No, Crash–I see it, too,” Ham replied tightly, forehead creasing with worry. “Listen… can I use–”
“Cell phone right here,” Crash scooped the instrument off the corner of the picnic table and shoved it into Carter’s hands as he looked back up. “Damn, Jet, get it in gear, old buddy!” he exclaimed with increasing concern.
“What’s wrong, Crash? What’s happening?” Jimmy asked his suddenly worried brother, as the flaming speck, growing larger and larger, flew almost directly overhead. Smaller sparks could now be seen peeling off the main object.
“Dammit! Jet, flare out, man! Shit! Break it out! NOW!!” Crash began shouting into the sky. Tracy, the “fourth team” relief FAO, was frozen, staring upward in shock, and Ham stood stiffly, head tilted back, listening silently to the cell phone he held to his ear. They all watched dumbly as the white-hot streak shot by overhead and disappeared behind the house, trailing flaming sparks in its wake.
Crash ran around the house to the front, trying to keep the airborne conflagration in view, and the others followed. “Damn, Jimmy, she’s comin’ in hot,” he belatedly answered his little brother. “Jet’s not bleeding off velocity in the roll reversals like he’s supposed to…” Crash paused, horrified. “Not that it looks like it would do much good, anyway…”
The gathered celebrants watched in stunned disbelief as the fireball plunged toward the southeastern horizon, flickered, and burned out.
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Frank Fisher is nothing. He wants to be something. When a mysterious young woman named Bonnie offers assistance by injecting seeds of inspiration directly into his brain, Frank finds himself involved in a twisting mystery full of addiction, desperation and self-discovery. Broken Bulbs, a novella by Eddie Wright, tells the story of the lengths one young man will go in the pursuit of “somethingness.”
Praise for Broken Bulbs:
“…a brilliant and stunningly original work, by far the best novel I read in 2008.”
- Alternative Reel
“as authentic as they come, experimental without trying to be intentionally obscure, dark without making you doubt humanity, smart and energetic. In short, it’s great writing.”
“…it’s about obsession, self-negation, love, even God (“The Everything”), making Broken Bulbs an entirely unique take on a subject. It’s a science fictional, hard-boiled, poetic vision of drug addiction and hamsters (read it!) A great addition to a genre that has never existed before.”
- Self-publishing Review
“…this slim volume is the bastard child of Memento and William S Burroughs, absolutely not for the faint of heart nor for anyone seeking a nice, simple beach read.”
- Jason Pettus, The Chicago Center for for Literature and Photography
“An existentialist’s dream, the author has dug in deep and laid bare the raw emotion so candidly that we can actually feel the futility, the desperation, and the humour.”
“Philip Dick would be proud.”
- POD People
“…the absolute perfect spot-on portrait of the mind of an addict.”
“The first chapter alone is a nauseating churn of short choppy staccato sentences, random thoughts and actions, that read like beat poetry at a slam.”
“The whole thing is filled with crazy quips and one liners worthy of a high lighter so you can memorize and use them later.”
- The LL Book Review
“…strangely complex and fascinating.”
- Kaye Trout’s Book Reviews
You set the price
108 pages
(1 votes, average: 10.00 out of 10)
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In the runup to the war in Iraq, dozens of intelligence operatives watched their careers evaporate when they spoke candidly about Saddam’s lack of weapons of mass destruction. One such case officer, now unwillingly retired and living in Las Vegas, finds himself a target for assassination.
The Last Days of Las Vegas is the story of Ashor dur-Shamshi, a powerful military exile from Iraq who pulls the strings of an international conspiracy that will return him as Iraq’s new dictator, and of Charles Remly, who struggles to dismantle the centerpiece of the ex-general’s conspiracy. Fueled with billions of dollars from Saddam’s looted fortune, the tentacles of Ashor’s plot reach from his war-torn homeland to the glittery streets of Las Vegas, and much of the world in between. At the heart of the plan is an event that will wake up the American people and confront the power brokers inside the Beltway with two grim alternatives: Reinstitute the military draft, or help install a military government in Baghdad that will end Iraq’s expanding conflict, while searching for the bogus terrorist organization that has created a mini-Chernobyl in Las Vegas.
The ragtag team that defends Vegas against a nuclear meltdown is led by Remly, a middle-aged spook who was forced into early retirement during the runup to the war against Iraq because he insisted on sending proof to his headquarters in Virginia that Saddam had no N-B-C weapons. Cynical and burned out, Remly has a serious heart condition and is a significantly less-than-heroic hero. Spiritually and philosophically Remly is closer to Leamas of le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold—and perhaps Meursault of The Stranger—than he is to the macho characters of modern spy fiction. He’s not entirely disconnected, but he is devious, seemingly unprincipled, and isn’t above shooting an adversary in the back. Best illustrating Remly’s take on the world is the opening of Chapter 10:
“Reality is negotiable, or so Remly was given to understand his first week on the Campus in Virginia. By the time he retired and moved to Las Vegas he concluded that reality was merely optional, and Vegas did nothing to disabuse him of the idea.”
Similarly betrayed, two old men on the team—retired from the upper echelons of the nameless intell agency in Virginia—were denied follow-on consultancy contracts because they refused to drink the Koolaid coming from inside the Beltway. One of them—an amateur magician—has a bit of a drinking problem … Leopold Gourmel cognac, not Koolaid. The other—a cranky old black-ops and regime-change specialist— has spinal disc damage and needs a walker to get around.
Another intelligence operative, described as being “a little light in his loafers,” was fired because of his sexual orientation, despite Remly’s defense of him. Then there’s a voodooman—an electronics genius also retired from the agency—who verges on a paranoid breakdown toward the end, when he’s strung out on sleep deprivation and gets wired on uppers. Rounding out the group are three sociopathic thugs from South Boston—”Neanderthals” the voodooman calls them—recruited for their black-bag skills.
Obviously, this is not a team of super-heroes.
Complicating Remly’s task are the alliances that Ashor forms with K Street lobbyists, pols on the Hill, and a cabal within the agency in Virginia – thus turning Virginia, which should be resisting Ashor, against Remly’s team. And so The Last Days of Las Vegas is as much a political thriller as it is an espionage caper.
Remly’s adversaries are equally complex and dysfunctional. Ashor is a loving husband, father, and grandfather who decides to nuke Las Vegas without a moment’s hesitation. The coördinator of the strike against Vegas is a pious, one-time Dzerzhinsky Square black-arts cadet, rumored to have chosen the Service over the Seminary on the flip of a coin, his piety no obstacle to his job of bringing death and disaster to thousands of people. Then there’s a flashy Crimean remote-control assassin, another Dzerzhinsky Square cadet, who trolls the vodka bars of Moscow in his Student Prince parade-ground uniform looking for casual sex. And an Iraqi pilot with little if any religious conviction, driven to this suicide mission by a military strike against his family at a wedding party.
The important conflict in The Last Days of Las Vegas doesn’t come from people shooting each other. Oh, there are gunfights and bombings and whole buildings destroyed, and all sorts of similar derring-do, but the real conflict comes from people trying to overcome one another through a sort-of mental kung fu— each trying to bring down his adversary with ideas and working deviously to sandbag the other’s emotions —something at which Remly excels. He likes to think of it as “manipulative empathy.” (Some might call it “mind ****ing” – though you and I and Remly never would!)
Roy Hayes is the author of The Hungarian Game, which sold just under 520,000 copies in 6 languages worldwide.
(2 votes, average: 6.50 out of 10)
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SHE DARED TO CHALLENGE A MERCILESS KILLER
EPPIE WINNER~BEST THRILLER
Raised in an atmosphere of violence and unpredictability, Ellen and Gail Morgan have banded together, survivors of a booze-fertilized battleground, forming a fierce united front against an often cold and uncaring world. When their parents are killed in a car crash, Ellen becomes the mother figure for Gail.
When fifteen years later Gail is brutally raped and murdered in her shabby New York basement apartment, practically on the eve of her big breakthrough as a singer, Ellen is inconsolable. Rage at her younger sister’s murder has nearly consumed her. So when her work as a psychologist wins her an appearance on the evening news, Ellen seizes the moment. Staring straight into the camera, she challenges the killer to come out of hiding: “Why don’t you come after me? I’ll be waiting for you.”
Phone calls flood the station, but all leads go nowhere. The police investigation seems doomed to failure. Then it happens: a note, written in red ink, slipped under the windshield wipers of her car, ‘YOU’RE IT.’ Ellen has stirred the monster in his lair and the hunter has become the hunted!
“If you are looking for the suspense thriller of the year-look no further you will find it in Nowhere To Hide…”
– Jewel Dartt Midnight Scribe Reviews
IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT DOWN…! 5 STARS
Extremely well structured, good plot, realistic and credible characters. It is the ordinariness of the actors in the play that make this book excellent. It’s a type of puzzle with each story, seemingly unconnected to each other, falling into place at the end. An example is Myra (a friend of Ellen’s) who, due to her affection for Ellen, is able to re-live extremely painful events that she had removed from her past. The latter will prove vital for the conclusion of the story. The serial killer is presented in the first chapter thirteen years before the events take place, a chapter fundamental as Ellen goes through pain, physical and emotional, to find the strength she needs to challenge her sister’s killer. In conclusion one can say that Nowhere to hide is impossible to put down until the last page is reached.
– Bastulli Mystery Library
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Giles, my sibling, my Mephistophilis. You lie whenever it suits you, but when you lie to me, surely you can take the trouble to make it convincing?
Simon Coltraine is a professional songwriter and musician. His brother Giles – trader, rogue and amiable bully – is a crook. When Giles is killed in a car accident Simon returns to their childhood home to confront his memories and his own complicity in his brother’s schemes.
The Devil has all the best tunes.
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 10)
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Eva thought she could outrun the plagues, but she was wrong. The bio-hackers that ripped the world raw are targeting her hometown of Prague, and this time there may be no escaping it.
Now, hunted by police who think she’s a hacker herself, Eva must brave the rotting city streets to find her mother before it’s too late. But with a ruthless agent known as a “Healer” on the prowl, it may only be a matter of time before Eva becomes another victim of his blood-soaked carnage.
In this snowy, ash-strewn apocalypse, Eva’s greatest fear is this new threat may not be coincidence at all… it may be personal.
“A gripping, scary viruscore tale.”
— io9.com
“MCM is one of the most unique voices working in SciFi today.”
— Martin Gero, Producer, Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate: Universe
(6 votes, average: 6.00 out of 10)
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Nano Wars is a techno-thriller of a world unknowingly gripped in conflict by the emergence of dark uses of nano technology and the amazing nano based devices and weaponry it brought with it, a new era of hybrid soldiers and warfare. Nano Technology had been introduced into society with much fanfare, specifically in the medical field and had generated new levels of investments in medical companies utilizing such technology based procedures. However, as the nano based procedures were made available, their costs proved to be too costly for the masses. This caused a tremendous tremor in nano companies as they scrambled to reinvent themselves or close operations. This tremor caused a severe crack in morality, out of which was born a new form of espionage and warfare. Any force armed with this technology is invisible to their enemy, able to kill hundreds, thousands, in seconds and can penetrate any facility at will. The problem, this technology was introduced by the wrong side and it is DATIS’s job to recreate itself, fast. DATIS is scrambling to meet this challenge by creating a new hybrid army molded out of new soldier classifications and weapons, but time is short and the world is hanging in the balance.
(1 votes, average: 9.00 out of 10)
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Ghost is possibly the best bounty hunter in the universe and he always gets the job done. At least, that’s the reputation that he rides on. When the DAP employ him to track down and capture a rogue Magicker that’s running across the galaxy killing anyone that gets in his way, Ghost realises that this is a job that could cost him his reputation. It’s also a job that could cost him his sanity.
This is the first Ghost Of The Black novella from RealmShift and MageSign author Alan Baxter. Further novellas in the series are forthcoming.
(3 votes, average: 8.67 out of 10)
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Ghost is possibly the best bounty hunter in the universe and he always gets the job done. At least, that’s the reputation that he rides on. When the DAP employ him to track down and capture a rogue Magicker that’s running across the galaxy killing anyone that gets in his way, Ghost realises that this is a job that could cost him his reputation. It’s also a job that could cost him his sanity.
This is the first Ghost Of The Black novella from RealmShift and MageSign author Alan Baxter. Further novellas in the series are forthcoming.
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