Showing results by narrator "Rachel Dulude" in All Categories

When a back-alley brawl leaves me marked with a bizarre Celtic crest on my back, I become a beacon for all things whacked and weird. My dad is obviously freaked when he sees the tat, but he won't discuss it. So, I do what any stubborn redheaded lass would - I ignore all advice and fly to the Emerald Isle to get answers. And yeah...you know that saying about hindsight being 20/20? True story.

Growing up with five older brothers taught me how to take a hit. Lucky for me because the hits I take as a druid make me yearn for the good old days of sucker punches, rope burn, and steamroller.

Jules' family moves into an old abandoned house. Her parents love it, but she's frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, she can't stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor - in a room with a locked door. Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules becomes determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and to unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago.

After solving a murder and getting her organic farm ready to overwinter, Shiloh Bellamy still expects the next few months to be busy with repairs, spring planning, and networking with local businesses. She might even be able to broker a new partnership with Fields Brewery and its organic brewer's association. Well, she could've if the owner wasn't found murdered at the county Ice Fishing Derby. Once again, Shiloh gets tangled up in the investigation when the police ignore an entire crop of suspects to blame one of her friends.

When local children begin to vanish, Officer Alex Mercer is positive the cases are tied to recent threats against his family - especially since the first girl to go missing is his best friend's daughter. It all ties back to Alex. He's sure of it. The only solid link to the missing kids is a mysterious woman in a red dress. But that isn't enough to go on, and Alex has orders to focus on another case. As if that will stop him.

When the Lords of the Icelandic Elves summon me to use my talents to find a lost dragon's egg, I find it hard to say no. I've seen what a dragon can do, and a young, just-hatched dragon is a being of pure destruction. But word of the egg gets out, and the race to find it begins. Mages from many realms are on the hunt - including a dragon - and they don't always play well together. Unless I want to join the casualties, I need to find that egg and return it to where it belongs. Luckily, I have help, but I wish that damned golden-winged Nephilim would keep his shirt on.

The moment you let your guard down and think you've got a handle on life—you jinx it. I bust my butt on the daily, smoothing the rough edges after moving in with the boyfriend, making amends to angry empowered ones, and patching things up with hostile in-laws. Things are good on the home front with my job, family, and friends. I've got this, right? Wrong. Cue the centrifuge of life spinning me around while the gods point and laugh. Or, in this case, the goddess. Hecate, Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic, deity of night and ghosts, supreme tormentor of friends.

When Lucy Berberian quits her Philadelphia law firm and heads home to Ocean Crest, she knows what she's getting - the scent of funnel cake, the sight of the wooden roller coaster, and the tastes of her family's Mediterranean restaurant. Lucy could do without Heather Banks, though. The Gucci-toting ex-cheerleader is still as nasty as she was back in high school...and she's just taken over as the local health inspector. Just minutes after eating at the Kebab Kitchen - where she's tallied up a whole list of bogus violations - she falls down dead in the street.

When the Quint Confederacy and the Kos Empire went to war - again - Queen Samara wisely kept her Rogue Coalition out of the conflict. But staying neutral in a galactic war doesn't pay the bills, not when both sides refuse to trade with neutral sectors. With her people on the brink of starvation, Samara hatches a daring plan to snatch the kidnapped Kos Emperor from the Quint mercenaries holding him.

For as long as Magnolia Steele can remember, the past has had its hooks in her. Her time as a Broadway actress in New York City was an escape that ended in public humiliation, but now that she's back home in Franklin, Tennessee, she's feeling the grip of the two incidents that stole her innocence. The first was the disappearance of her father when she was a teen, who left home for a meeting and never came back. The other incident...well, her memories have returned, but it's best left where it belongs - in the past.

When Queen Samara Rani fulfills the promise she made to Emperor Valentin Kos to visit his court and meet with his advisers, she knows they won't welcome her with open arms, especially when she's been tasked with discovering the traitors within their ranks - traitors she tricked out of five million credits. As soon as Samara begins her investigation, it becomes clear that Valentin's advisers want her gone and they aren't picky about how.

In life, you start off and get what you get—that's fate. Then you grab the reins and steer your path—that's free will. Fate versus free will . . . it's mind bendy. But what if you want to change your stars? When a gathering of reapers descends on Toronto, and a mass-death is pending, Clan Cumhaill fights through kidnappings, betrayal, and death to discover what will cause the disaster. Is it a vampire war, the theft of a powerful artifact, or an empowered icon gone rogue? There's no way to know until the danger unfolds.

In the past two years, I leveled up as a kick-ass urban druid and became the leader of the Fianna Warriors my ancestor Fionn mac Cumhaill needed me to be. The thing is—four months ago everything changed. The veil between realms came down. With dormant genes waking, the dominant races jockeying for their place in the hierarchy, and the world around us pulsing out of control with power, my position as the Fae Liaison of Toronto has gotten off to a chaotic start.

A wedding on an enchanted island of magic. A guest list of gods, immortals, shifters, dragons, and druids. And a sentient city waking after centuries . . . What could go wrong? When Fiona's magnet for mayhem weighs in on her special day, there's no escaping the fallout . . . or the island. With Dark invaders, realm refugees, a feral vampire, and the mystery of the Light Weavers' disappearance to solve, Fi and her friends are fighting on multiple fronts. Thank the goddess there's cake.

As a professional thief, Esme Bellerose's daylong job interview was going well: She'd come through most of it with only a black eye, bloody lip, broken wrist, a few cracked ribs, and talon marks from a ruby-throated dragon - but at least she wasn't missing any pieces. And if she could only survive until the five o'clock hour, she'd land the job that was every mystic thief's dream: employment at SPL Inc. But the head of SPL, Elric Ostergaard, has other plans, and he's put one additional task on Esme's job application, which must be completed before he'll hire her.

Life is a balance—at least that's what I'm told by people smarter than me. Try as I might to spend quality time with Sloan, family, friends, and companion animals, my magnet of mayhem often has other ideas. Adulting is hard. So when I move an adolescent dragon into my backyard, why don't I anticipate the craziness that will ensue? Maybe Sloan's right and I am ridiculous. I like to think I'm an optimist. Either way, it takes a group effort to figure out the mess we find ourselves in and what to do about it.

Known as Monsanto's Roundup by consumers, and as glyphosate by scientists, the world's most popular weed killer is used everywhere from backyard gardens to golf courses to millions of acres of farmland. For decades it's been touted as safe enough to drink, but a growing body of evidence indicates just the opposite, with research tying the chemical to cancers and a host of other health threats. In Whitewash, veteran journalist Carey Gillam uncovers one of the most controversial stories in the history of food and agriculture, exposing new evidence of corporate influence.

When Laila Lawrence becomes an orphan at 23, the sudden loss unexpectedly introduces her to three glamorous cousins from New York who show up unannounced at her mother's funeral. The three siblings are scions of the wealthy family from which Laila's father had been estranged long before his own untimely demise 10 years before. Two years later, Laila has left behind her quiet life in Grosse Point, Michigan to move to New York City, landing her smack in the middle of her cousins' decadent world.

When the fae beckon, few resist. Even fewer return. As a veil witch, I'm used to taking out the supernatural trash. Everything from poltergeists to vampires, you name it and I've dealt with it. So opening a paranormal cleanup business just seemed to make sense. If I'm already dealing with the pests, why not get paid? But when I accidentally breach the faerie realm to encounter a girl recently reported missing, start seeing the ghost of a witch whose disappearance has never been solved, and discover a Book of Shadows that opens only for me, I can't just go back to business as usual.

Investigative Services Branch (ISB) ranger Ainsley Beaumont arrives in her hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, to investigate the murder of a three-month-pregnant teenager. While she wishes the visit was under better circumstances, she never imagined that she would become the killer's next target - nor that she'd have to work alongside an old flame.