Showing results by narrator "Cody Roberts" in All Categories

Ever since the silver market crashed, the mining town of Dead Broke has been awfully quiet. The local marshal—legendary gunman Duncan "Mick" MacMicking—doesn't have much to do besides outshoot the occasional greenhorn looking to challenge him. But all this peace and quiet is about to end. Mayor Nugget has unearthed a mineral to rival his famous "Hope Diamond of Silver." He calls it the "Zinc of Zion," a 1,776-pound boulder of pure zinc carbonate. And when he announces his discovery, the quiet boomtown of Dead Broke goes boom—again—with a vengeance.

After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI Agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable, as the United States faces its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own citizens. The federal government hastily retrofits an abandoned government installation in the Nevada desert. Despite the government's best intentions, as the military pulls out of "Rescue City", the residents are increasingly left to their own devices, and tribal gang warfare fuses with democracy.

This is the first story collection ever from best-selling fantasy and science-fiction writer L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Modesitt began publishing short fiction in the SF magazines in the 1970s, and this collection includes a selection of stories from the whole of his career. Some of the early stories are kernels for his early SF novels, others display the wide range of his talents and interests, from satire to military adventure.

Reports of a strange gray ghost causing accidents on Highway 98 brings the team to the small town of Wilmer, Alabama. But not everyone in the area is happy to see Midas and the crew. Small-town secrets make it difficult to get a sense of what's really happening on Bloody 98, but the team has a new secret weapon. As they take the investigation to the supposedly haunted forest near the highway, Sierra witnesses an old crime, and Midas tries to keep everyone safe.

After Cordelia Channing endures the lethal winter alone in the Rocky Mountains, she is discovered by Thomas Nash, a solitary mountain man who wants only to hunt and be left alone to grieve the woman he could not save. Delia aches to go east, but over the days and miles, she finds her battered spirit yearning for this self-reliant trapper, who stirs her longing and wakes her heart.

When he learns of his parents' death in a train crash, Sam Dana makes his way home to the Bar D ranch—not to claim it, but to settle the estate and move on. He has no need for the hard life of a cattleman after finally striking it big as a prospector. But what Sam finds is far from the home he remembers. The ranch has become an armed camp led by his cantankerous half-brother, Walt, who's been hiring men more skilled with a six-gun than a lasso. In Sam's absence, things have gone downhill in all ways possible.

Smoke Jensen is mighty proud of his son Louis for finishing law school. But he can’t help being a little disappointed that Louis isn’t returning to the Sugarloaf Ranch. Instead, he’s setting up his own law practice in nearby Big Rock—a career choice that turns out to be every bit as dangerous as fending off cattle rustlers. The boy’s first case lands him smack in the middle of a heated dispute between two riled-up ranchers over water rights. If Louis can’t settle them down, the whole thing could blow up into a bloody range war.

When his perfect older brother passes, black sheep Nate Justice is willing to honor his dying request and enter a marriage of convenience with his brother's bride. But when he meets her, all notions of a marriage in name-only burn away in the heat of desire. Trouble is, he knows his faults and that he'll always be second to his respectable, older brother in her eyes. Clara Justice has a secret: She’s not the pillar of morality that Nate believes. She’s made mistakes and paid the price, but she isn't willing to ease her conscience at the risk of her daughter's future.

We all have guilty pleasures. Mine was the boy my father took in. The guy everyone said I was too good for. The one I knew would ruin me. The way Noah Greyson's voice sounded when he sang whiskey lullabies to me in the dark; how perfect his arms felt wrapped around my stomach with his nose nuzzled in my hair - that's what made me fall. That intimacy was what made me weak. But now millions of women drift off to sleep while Noah sings the love story we wrote, and it was never meant for the world. The worst mistake I made wasn't loving him, it was thinking he loved me, too.

Getting a taste of freedom and independence was the best - and worst - thing that could have happened to Theodore Carrington. Following in his father’s footsteps as a prestigious banker, or in any other way, was not how he saw his future. Escaping to the wilderness for several years has helped him to understand where his heart truly lies. The shackles of his past are not easily broken, but the bond of family and tradition are quickly left behind, when he discovers he has been deceived.

Tallan Moran is a born leader and protector. Unafraid, proud, and honorable, he embraces the life of a mountain man. Yet, guilt follows him throughout the vast Teton wilderness. Lettie DeLacy has never known the freedom to follow her dreams. Traded from one form of enslavement to the next, she loses all hope of a happy future. Just when it seems as though no one cares about her, a familiar face appears in her time of need.

Fleeing apprehension for a crime she didn’t commit, Eliza Flannery runs into the town sheriff who thinks she’s the housekeeper he’s expecting. Out of the frying pan and into the kitchen fires, Eliza is out of her element. As a lady’s companion, she has no experience tending a home. But she keeps silent because of her belief that her innocence will make no difference to authorities. Now she needs to create a home and a Christmas celebration for his daughter or risk exposure as a fraud.

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Sandalwood has served the Duke and Duchess all her life. Over the years, she's learned to make do with what she has and endure her surrogate father's awful punishments. She dreams of escape, but never expected it to come in the form of a message from the Queen of Westeria.

The wilderness west of the Missouri is a place of unknowns. For those willing to risk everything on a daily basis - including their lives - there is promise of adventure, fortune, escape, and freedom that can only be experienced in the vast frontier. When a group of young men is brought together under a common lure of trapping for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, they quickly form a bond with each other as they learn the law of the land.

Antonio Sanchez is looking for his family. His wife and daughter were headed to Montana Territory from Santa Fe, Mexico to join him in Paradise Valley. But he hasn't heard from them in a long time, and every day that passes his anxiety for their safety grows. As soon as the snow melts, he decides to travel back to Texas, their last known location, to see if he can discover their whereabouts. But bands of outlaws, disgruntled townsfolk hankering for blood, and drunken cowpokes turn his journey into an epic and dangerous adventure.

The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses is about a young girl whose special joy is tending to the horses of her village. In Crazy Horse's Vision, Joseph Bruchac focuses on key events from Crazy Horse's childhood in a dramatic tale of the legendary Lakota warrior told by Robert Tree Cody, Curtis Zunigha, and Joseph Bruchac.

On the run for a crime she didn't commit, Eliza Flannery escapes apprehension by posing as the new housekeeper of a stranger, only to discover afterwards, that he is the town's sheriff! Now she needs to create a Christmas celebration for his young daughter, but when the real housekeeper appears, will Eliza find the forgiveness of the season, or spend Christmas in jail?

In all the horrific corners of the Civil War, there was no hell worse than Andersonville, the Yankee prison camp run by evil, sadistic General Thomas Wainwright. In the war's aftermath, a survivor of Andersonville summons Joe Buckhorn to New Orleans and asks the gunslinger to kill the general - not simply for revenge, but to stop another atrocity. Wainwright has seized control of Wagontongue, a township on the edge of the Arizona desert, and he rules it as brutally as he once did Andersonville. With an iron grip on the town's only source of water, he keeps the locals cowering.

Annadel, West Virginia, was a small town rich in coal, farms, and close-knit families, all destroyed when the coal company came in. It stole everything it hadn't bothered to buy - land deeds, private homes, and ultimately, the souls of its men and women. Four people tell this powerful, deeply moving tale: Activist Mayor C. J. Marcum. Fierce, loveless union man Rondal Lloyd. Gutsy nurse Carrie Bishop, who loved Rondal. And lonely Sicilian immigrant Rosa Angelelli, who lost four sons to the deadly mines.  

In 1935, Nancy Allison, a young telephone operator is relentlessly stalked by a stranger. Despite pleas for help, Nancy is found viciously murdered in the rose gardens at Champion Gardens. Nearly a hundred years later, the case remains unsolved until a horrible accident reveals a surprising truth about Nancy's secret life. When her bloody apparition appears to a terrified gardener and a few guests, the Gulf Coast Paranormal team is summoned to quietly check things out.