Showing results by author "J. J. Pike" in All Categories

The adventuring industry drives the economy of Arth, a world much like our own but with more magic and fewer vowels. Monsters' hoards are claimed, bought by corporate interests, and sold off to plunder funds long before the Heroes' Guild actually kills the beasts. Of course, that's a terrible arrangement for the Shadowkin; orcs, goblins, kobolds, and their ilk must apply for to become Noncombatant Paper Carriers (or NPCs) to avoid being killed and looted by heroes.

Gorm Ingerson knows the king is a fink. With the land’s insidious ruler hell-bent on his destruction, the axe-wielding Dwarf berserker is desperate to beat him to the punch. But when he discovers the rotten regent’s claim of a town razed by the world’s richest dragon is false, the gruff adventurer fears there’s more than a personal grudge at stake.

Still bruised and heartbroken from their last calamitous quest, Gorm Ingerson and his band of washed-up heroes try to make amends for the orcs they accidentally betrayed. But justice is put on hold when an old foe marches to the city gates. Gorm is horrified to discover a liche pitching the frightened city-dwellers on the merits of the undead lifestyle...at the head of a corpse army. To save the city from high-pressure sales tactics and an inevitable siege, the dwarf warrior and his misfit band hatch a harebrained scheme that lands them at the top of the king’s kill list.

Elizabeth is a survivor. Sure, everyone who made it through the first few weeks of the Zombie RiZing is a survivor, but she’s a special case. She’s holed up in her high school with her wheelchair-bound bestie and four of the most inept zombie fighters fate could inflict on her. Seriously, if the apocalypse was a martial art, these guys wouldn't even get to wear a white belt. Even worse, their food supply is dwindling, and danger is closing in.

If Beath and the gang thought life in the school had been hard in the weeks since the riZing, well, let's just say they ain't seen nothing yet. If only they had the resources to stay safe and secure in (Dec) East High, but they don't and now the big, wide zombie-ridden, scary-monster-lurking world awaits. Sounds crazy, but they need food - lots of food - and to find that they need to get to the shopping mall, and to do that they need transport, which will most likely be found at the car park near the train station. It all makes sense, right?

After surviving another heart-racing day in Zombie RiZing, Beath and the gang are now stuck a long way from home. Worse still, it's the middle of the night, and things have escalated. Now it's not just Zombies (grunts) they'll have to look out for; it's giants, other smarter zombies, and some seriously nasty looking flying things! The gang is going to need to seriously level -up their zombie fighting skills and magic powers if they've got any hope of surviving long enough to find food.

The galaxy is on the brink of war, and only four dysfunctional, hormone-driven teenagers from Earth stand in its way. God help us all. It didn’t take Cooper long to come to the conclusion that space sucks. It seems everyone there despises humans, everything’s too far away, and the travel makes you heave. Worse still, Cooper’s stuck there with his best mate, The Ginge, who can’t tell where games end and reality begins, and two other former classmates who want to beat the crap out of him.

The Gedri System is at war with Silstrand. As the Alliance reels, Scipio readies its forces, smelling blood in the water. Meanwhile, Kylie awakens aboard a warship captained by her brother. Her family, the peaceful, low-tech Rhoads, have changed. Establishing a line of pure humans is all they care about. Her father, the preacher, is set to rain armageddon down on any system that opposes him. His first stop? Silstrand. Kylie is on a collision course with destiny; to either save her family or avert a war that would cost Silstrand billions of lives.

Kylie Rhoads risked life and limb to rescue a girl, thrusting the Dauntless and its crew in the middle of an interstellar tug of war. Now, running from Silstrand Alliance, the Gedri Freedom Federation, and The Black Crow, Kylie fights against the very thing she set out to save.

Kylie Rhoads is a junker. She makes her living traveling the stars, salvaging abandoned ships left over from pirate attacks on the edge of the Gedri system. Some of the hulls are legal for the taking, most aren't. When a salvage job goes bad, Kylie finds herself on the wrong end of a gun. The hand holding that gun? The SA Space Force, just the people Kylie wants to avoid. To avoid prison, Kylie makes a deal to go deep into the Gedri System and rescue a simple girl. But out on the fringe, nothing is as it seems.

To the outside world, Sarah Hart has it all, starting with the captain's insignia on her International Space Corps uniform. But from there, it's strictly downhill. Far from her dreams of military service, Hart's life at the helm of the Milky Pleasure is just as icky as its name suggests, her cruise ship full of fleshy fantasy seekers and the crew equipped with more baggage than the passengers. Throw in an alien species determined to erase humanity, and a dead-end job looks like it's coming to a, well, dead end.