Showing results by narrator "Kate Rudd" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. A brutal war of succession has plunged the court of Kingfountain into a power struggle between a charitable king who took the crown unlawfully and his ambitious rival, Devon Argentine. The balance of power between the two men hinges on the fate of a young boy ensnared in this courtly intrigue. A boy befittingly nicknamed Ransom.

On the evening of Sofia Claremont's seventeenth birthday, she is sucked into a nightmare from which she cannot wake. A quiet evening walk along a beach brings her face to face with a dangerous pale creature that craves much more than her blood. She is kidnapped to The Shade, an enchanted island where the sun is eternally forbidden to shine. An island uncharted by any map and ruled by the most powerful vampire coven on the planet. She wakes here as a slave, a captive in chains.

Gui is a professional cleaner at A Fresh Start, scrubbing away the unpleasant layers of memory that build up on the personal objects of his customers. Memory-blind himself, he can’t feel those wounds. Clara can, and she prefers them irretrievable. Until her sister, Beatrice, ultrasensitive to memory, raises one that could change Clara’s mind. For Gui, the past is gone. For Clara and Beatrice, deciding what to remember reaches to the heart of their shared history. 

When two time-traveling historians cross paths during one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, history goes helter-skelter. But which one broke the timeline? In 2136 Madison Grace uncovers a key to the origins of CHRONOS, a time-travel agency with ties to her family’s mysterious past. Just as she is starting to jump through history, she returns to her timeline to find millions of lives erased - and only the people inside her house realize anything has changed.

When rumors of a black dog roaming campus turn into grisly attacks, Raine must put aside her busy class schedule to investigate and make sure no one else gets hurt. 

After Raine discovers that she has magic, she attends a school to help her develop it. But when evil forces threaten her, she must take on the danger to restore balance. 

When an elf is kidnapped by a nefarious gang, Raine must use her magical abilities and team up with some unlikely allies in order to rescue her friend. 

When a new online role-playing game becomes all the rage at the School of Necessary Magic, Raine suspects there's more at play when her classmates become comatose. 

Rescued from a world of poverty, Cettie Pratt has avoided a bleak destiny - until now. Deceived and manipulated, she has been groomed for the ultimate betrayal: to destroy her best friend and stop peace from uniting two war-torn worlds. Her path leads her to a mysterious underworld where appearances can be deceiving. Sera Fitzempress knows the value she has to her enemies. As heir to the empire, she must keep her foes at bay and prevent them from unleashing a being of unspeakable evil upon the world while fighting a brutal war.

Years ago, boundary witch Allison “Lex” Luther made a promise to an alpha werewolf. Now, just when the supernatural community in Colorado is enjoying a period of hard-won peace, the alpha turns up at Lex’s door to call in his marker. Two of his pack members have disappeared in the Colorado sand dunes, and he needs safe passage to hunt for them. With her friend Simon Pellar along for backup, Lex ventures into the dunes to search for the missing couple…but what they find is only the opening move in an ambitious assault against those who hold power in the Colorado Old World.

Archaeologist Zoe Miller has only recently learned she is Fangborn, a secretive race of werewolves, vampires, and oracles dedicated to protecting humanity. But after she discovered and opened Pandora’s Box, the fabled item has lived up to its myth, and for Zoe and her friends, all hell has broken loose. Now she’s on a double mission: to prevent a politician from revealing the existence of the Fangborn and to foil the diabolical plans of the powerful Order of Nicomedia, a group dedicated to eradicating her kind.

Taya, the metal-winged icarus whose investigation helped defeat a plot against Ondinium and its populace, is assisting her exalted husband Cristof Forlore on his first ambassadorial mission. They must learn about Mareaux’s experiments in airship technology and determine whether the ostensibly scientific vehicles might be used for warfare - a taboo for Ondiniums, whose domination of the air is tempered by a deep cultural abhorrence toward airborne weapons after the devastation of the Last War 1,000 years ago.

Mary Anne Reynolds is young, vulnerable, and looking for love in Pacific Park, California. During her brief affairs with a middle-aged record shop owner and then a black blues singer, she seems to only succeed in offending the people living in the small-town of Pacific Park, both by her choice of lifestyle and choice of suitors.

Cedar McLeod would like nothing more than to return to Tír na nÓg, help rebuild the mythical kingdom, and start a new life for herself and her daughter, Eden. But peace isn’t what Cedar finds after being reunited with her little girl. Nuala - who kidnapped and terrorized Eden in her previous bid for power - has returned and is making a persuasive claim for the vacant throne. The devastation such a ruler would bring upon both the kingdom and the human world is unthinkable. With no one else to stake a convincing counter-claim, Cedar steps forward.

Life just keeps getting more complicated for Cedar McLeod. As the recently crowned queen of Tír na nÓg, she’s trying to understand her magical new kingdom, even as she misses her life back on Earth. It doesn’t help that a dear friend has just betrayed her - a betrayal that almost cost Cedar and her family their lives. And things aren’t easy at home, either, as Cedar’s seven-year-old daughter, Eden, lost and lonely in Tír na nÓg despite her special powers, has become painfully distant.

Single mom Cedar McLeod leads an ordinary but lonely life, balancing the demands of her career and her six-year-old daughter, Eden. One day, a fight between the two leads to the stunning discovery that Eden can open portals to anywhere she imagines. But before they can learn more about Eden’s extraordinary gift, the young girl mysteriously disappears. Desperate to find answers and her daughter, Cedar seeks out Eden’s father, who left before Eden was born.

When a killer storm unexpectedly hits Manhattan, seventeen-year-old Lilah Stellow's dad insists that she and her younger sister, Flori, take refuge at their cabin in the mountains. But instead of joining them with the experimental drug that keeps Lilah alive, he disappears just as news reports name him as a prime suspect in an act of ecoterrorism.

Taya soars over Ondinium on metal wings. She is an icarus - a courier privileged to travel freely across the city’s sectors and mingle indiscriminately among its castes. But even she can’t outfly the web of terrorism, loyalty, murder, and intrigue that snares her after a daring mid-air rescue.

It's a question as old as time itself: which is better, the zombie or the unicorn? In this anthology, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (unicorn and zombie, respectively), strong arguments are made for both sides in the form of short stories. Half of the stories portray the strengths - for good and evil - of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies.

Seventeen-year-old Emma was the only one who hadn't given up on her boyfriend, Lucas. Everyone else - his family, his friends, his doctors - was convinced that any moment could be his last. So when Lucas miraculously returns from the brink of death, Emma thinks her prayers have been answered.