Narrator

R. C. Bray

R. C. Bray
  • The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

    Humanity has finally found a new home, but the price is blood …

    After a long, perilous journey, Hell Divers Xavier Rodriguez and Magnolia Katib discover the Metal Islands, a sunny habitable zone where thousands of people live by fishing and farming. But this “paradise” is really a violent warrior society ruled by the cannibal king el Pulpo. For the first time in X’s life, he is forced to lay down his arms and surrender.

    Back on the airships, the Hell Divers are recovering from a gruesome discovery at Red Sphere, where they learned the truth about World War III. Now they must fight another war—this time for what remains of their own endangered species. As the battle approaches, alliances will be forged, and others broken.

    Forced to fight in the Cazador army, X faces his toughest mission yet. Will he help his people come down from the sky and claim the promised land, or will humanity go extinct?

  • The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

    They dive so humanity survives. Now they take to the sea.

    In the fourth installment of the Hell Divers series, the Sea Wolf sets out to search for the Metal Islands. Leading the expedition is legendary Hell Diver Xavier Rodriguez. After enduring for a decade on the poisoned surface, his survival skills will be put to the test on the dangerous open seas.

    But storms, sea monsters, and the cannibalistic Cazadores aren’t the only threat to X and his small crew. Their mission will uncover hard truths about the history of the war that left humankind stranded in the air for centuries. And the fate of those still living on the airships might very well rest on this fragile and perilous journey to find a new home.

  • Not all the folks who roamed the Old West were cowhands, rustlers, or cardsharps. And they certainly weren’t all heroes.

    Give-a-Damn Jones, a free-spirited itinerant typographer, hates his nickname almost as much as the rumors spread about him. He’s a kind soul who keeps finding himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    That’s what happened in Box Elder, a small Montana town. Tensions are running high, and anything—or anyone—could be the fuse to ignite them: a recently released convict trying to prove his innocence, a prominent cattleman who craves respect at any cost, a wily traveling dentist at odds with a violent local blacksmith, or a firebrand of an editor who is determined to unlock the town’s secrets.

    Jones walks into the middle of it all, and this time, he may be the hero that this town needs.

  • Powers of Darkness is an incredible literary discovery: In 1900, Icelandic publisher and writer Valdimar Ásmundsson set out to translate Bram Stoker’s world-famous 1897 novel Dracula. Called Makt Myrkranna (literally, “Powers of Darkness”), this Icelandic edition included an original preface written by Stoker himself. Makt Myrkranna was published in Iceland in 1901 but remained undiscovered outside of the country until 1986, when Dracula scholarship was astonished by the discovery of Stoker’s preface to the book. However, no one looked beyond the preface and deeper into Ásmundsson’s story.

    In 2014, literary researcher Hans de Roos dove into the full text of Makt Myrkranna, only to discover that Ásmundsson hadn’t merely translated Dracula but had penned an entirely new version of the story, with all new characters and a totally reworked plot. The resulting narrative is one that is shorter, punchier, more erotic, and perhaps even more suspenseful than Stoker’s Dracula. Incredibly, Makt Myrkranna has never been translated or even read outside of Iceland until now.

    Powers of Darkness presents the first ever translation into English of Stoker and Ásmundsson’s Makt Myrkranna. With a foreword by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew and bestselling author, and an afterword by Dracula scholar John Edgar Browning, Powers of Darkness will amaze and entertain legions of fans of Gothic literature, horror, and vampire fiction.

  • The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

    They will dive, but will humanity survive?

    Left for dead on the nightmarish surface of the planet, Commander Michael Everhart and his team of Hell Divers barely escape with their lives aboard a new airship called Deliverance. After learning that Xavier “X” Rodriguez may still be alive, they mount a rescue mission for the long-lost hero.

    In the skies, the Hive is falling apart, but Captain Jordan is more determined than ever to keep humanity in their outdated lifeboat. He will do whatever it takes to keep the ship in the air—even murder. But when he learns the Hell Divers he exiled have found Deliverance, he changes course for a new mission—find the divers, kill them, and make their new ship his own.

    In the third installment of the Hell Divers series, Michael and his fellow divers fight across the mutated landscape in search of X. But what they find will change everything.

  • One of our most gifted writers of fiction returns with a bold and piercing novel about a young single mother living in New York, her eccentric aunt, and the decisions they make that have unexpected implications for the world around them.

    Reyna knows her relationship with Boyd isn’t perfect; yet she sees him through a three-month stint at Riker’s Island, their bond growing tighter. Kiki, now settled in the East Village after a youth that took her to Turkey and other far-off places—and loves—around the world, admires her niece’s spirit but worries that motherhood to four-year-old Oliver might complicate a difficult situation. Little does she know that Boyd is pulling Reyna into a smuggling scheme across state lines, violating his probation. When Reyna takes a step back, her small act of resistance sets into motion a tapestry of events that affect the lives of loved ones and strangers around them.

    A novel that examines conviction, connection, repayment, and the possibility of generosity in the face of loss, Improvement is as intricately woven together as Kiki’s beloved Turkish rugs, as colorful as the tattoos decorating Reyna’s body, with narrative twists and turns as surprising and unexpected as the lives all around us.

  • The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

    Betrayal and sacrifice in the skies …

    Ten years ago, Hell Diver Xavier “X” Rodriguez fell to Earth. Those he left behind went on without him aboard the airship he once called home. Michael Everhart—the boy once known as Tin—has grown into a man and the commander of Hell Diver Raptor Team. While Michael dives to help keep the Hive in the air, Captain Leon Jordan rules with an iron fist at the helm of the ship. But unrest stirs under his strict leadership as a prophecy of hope sweeps the lower decks.

    When a mysterious distress signal calls the Hell Divers to the surface, Michael and his loyal team begin to uncover long-buried truths and the secrets Captain Jordan will do anything to keep. They dive so humanity survives … but will they survive the ultimate betrayal?

    Nicholas Sansbury Smith delivers another heart-pounding thriller in Hell Divers II: Ghosts, the second book in the acclaimed science fiction series.

  • In a land sculpted by glaciers, the forest is on fire. Thick smoke chokes the mountain air and casts a twilight glow over the imposing mountains and vistas of Montana’s Glacier National Park. When firefighters are called in to dig fuel line breaks near the small town bordering the park, a crew member is shocked to unearth a shallow grave containing human remains.

    Park police officer Monty Harris is summoned to the site to conduct an excavation. But with a 2,500-degree incendiary monster threatening to barrel through the town and no forensic detective on hand, Monty must work outside protocol. So he seeks help from Gretchen Larson, the county’s lead crime scene investigator, and someone on whom Monty feels he can rely.

    The two are working against the clock to determine the true identity of the victim, when a teenager suddenly disappears from one of the campgrounds in Glacier. Could the cases somehow be connected? As chances for recovery of the missing boy grow slimmer, and the FBI finds only dead ends, Gretchen and Monty desperately race to fit all the pieces together in time.

    The Weight of Night is Christine Carbo’s latest book in a series which “paints a moving picture of complex, flawed people fighting to make their way in a wilderness where little is black or white” (Publishers Weekly). This gripping thriller is a tribute to the power of family, set against one of America’s most majestic and unforgiving landscapes.

  • Bill Pronzini is crime-writing royalty. His more than eighty published novels have won or been nominated for Edgar, Hammett, Anthony, Shamus, and Macavity awards—a clean sweep of the crime fiction award field—and received rave reviews from critics. He crafts masterful stories, often from multiple perspectives, in which the human condition is on full display. The Violated is no exception.

    In Echo Park, in the small town of Santa Rita, California, the mutilated body of Martin Torrey is found by two passersby. A registered sex offender, Torrey has been a suspect in a string of recent rapes, and instant suspicion for his murder falls on the relatives and friends of the women attacked. Police chief Griffin Kells and detective Robert Ortiz are under increasing pressure from the public and from a mayor demanding results in a case that has no easy solution.

    Pronzini cleverly unfolds the case through alternating perspectives—Martin Torrey’s wife, caught between her grief and the fear her husband was guilty; the outraged husbands of the women violated; the enterprising editor of the local paper; the mayor concerned most with his own ratings; the detectives, often spinning in circles—until a surprising break leads to a completely unexpected conclusion. The Violated is Bill Pronzini at the height of his storytelling powers.

  • Dreams and deception collide in David Carnoy’s page-turning tale of murder, manipulation, and mistaken identity.

    After Knife Music, his “gripping thriller debut” (Kirkus Reviews) and The Big Exit, called a “page-turner” (Examiner.com), David Carnoy’s Detective Hank Madden returns in this bicoastal caper that pits dreams against reality, where nothing can be taken at face value.

    Twenty years after the unsolved case of Stacey Walker’s disappearance went cold, a Silicon Valley executive hires the retired Menlo Park police detective Hank Madden to find her body and track down her missing husband, the prime suspect in her unsolved murder.

    Four months later, author Candace Epstein is pushed in front of a car near New York City’s Central Park. Her editor, Max Fremmer, becomes entangled in the investigation of her attempted murder, though he is adamant that he is uninvolved. As he digs into Candace’s background to clear his own name, Fremmer grows suspicious of his client’s connection to a nefarious institute for lucid dreaming on the Upper East Side and its staff, whose stories never seem to add up―all while an unexpected link to Madden’s investigation in California emerges.

    As similarities arise between the cases on each coast, Madden and Fremmer forge an unlikely partnership to expose what misconduct lurks beneath the façade of the Lucidity Center―but can they unravel the secret that links their investigations in time, or are they only dreaming?

    Carnoy’s Lucidity stuns with complex detail that will keep readers guessing until the final, satisfying jolt.

  • Now available for the first time with two additional stories!

    Have you ever wondered what it's like to be bitten by a zombie or live through a bioweapon attack? In Cory Doctorow's collection of novellas, he wields his formidable experience in technology and computing to give us mind-bending sci-fi tales that explore the possibilities of information technology—and its various uses—run amok.

    "Anda's Game" is a spin on the bizarre new phenomenon of "cyber sweatshops," in which people are paid very low wages to play online games all day in order to generate in-game wealth, which can be converted into actual money. Another tale tells of the heroic exploits of "sysadmins"—systems administrators—as they defend the cyberworld, and hence the world at large, from worms and bioweapons. And yes, there is a story about zombies too. Plus, for the first time, this collection includes "Petard" and "The Man Who Sold the Moon."

  • The New York Times and USA Today bestselling series

    They dive so humanity survives …

    More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers—men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

    When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past—something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.

  • A wildlife biologist’s shocking death leads to chilling discoveries in Christine Carbo’s haunting and compelling new crime novel set in the wilds of Glacier National Park.

    Glacier National Park police officer Monty Harris knows that each summer at least one person—be it a reckless, arrogant climber or a distracted hiker—will meet tragedy in the park. But Paul “Wolfie” Sedgewick’s fatal fall from the sheer cliffs near Going-to-the-Sun Road is incomprehensible. Wolfie was an experienced and highly regarded wildlife biologist who knew all too well the perils that Glacier’s treacherous terrain presents—and how to avoid them.

    The case, so close to home, has frayed park employee emotions. Yet calm and methodical lead investigator Monty senses in his gut that something isn’t right. So when whispers of irresponsibility or suicide emerge, tarnishing Wolfie’s reputation, Monty dedicates himself to uncovering the truth, for the sake of the man’s family and to satisfy his own persistent sense of unease.

    Monty discovers that Wolfie’s zealous studies of Glacier’s mysterious, embattled wolverine population, so vital to park ecology, had met resistance, both local and federal. To muddy the waters further, a wilderness facility for rehabilitating troubled teens—one that Monty’s older brother attended—may have a disturbing connection to the case. As Monty delves further into an investigation that goes deeper than he ever imagined, he wrestles with the demons of his past, which lead back to harsh betrayals he thought he’d buried long ago.

    And then a second body is found.

  • An encouraging collection of short stories by bestselling middle-grade authors.

    This one-of-a-kind treasury brings together the talents of nearly two dozen bestselling middle-grade authors including Shannon Hale, Brandon Mull, Ally Condie, and Jennifer A. Nielsen—who have created original short stories and modern-day fairy tales, based on the lives and dreams of children they have met who all have two things in common: they have very big hopes and dreams, and they are all cancer patients.

  • A bitingly funny, smart, and moving road novel about two hapless lost souls—an alcoholic Vietnam veteran turned bestselling author, and his awkward, shy college-student superfan—who form an unlikely connection on the world’s most disastrous book tour.

    Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own—an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness. Soon Vance has volunteered to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the book tour, and the two embark on a disastrous but often hilarious cross-country trip. When things go wrong, Richard and Vance forge an unlikely bond between two misanthropes whose mutual insecurities and disdain for the world force both to look at each other, and their lives, in a more meaningful way.

    As they reach the end of the book tour, The Grand Tour ultimately becomes a moving tale of unlikely friendship that should catapult Adam O’Fallon Price into the company of such masters of all-American dyspepsia as Sam Lipsyte, David Gates, and Walter Kirn.

  • For fans of Louise Penny, C. J. Box, and Nevada Barr comes a haunting crime novel set in Glacier National Park, where one man finds himself on a collision course with the dark heart of the wild and the even darker heart of human nature.

    It was a clear, starry night in Glacier National Park. Fourteen-year-old Ted Systead and his father were camping peacefully beneath the rugged peaks and sweeping sky when the unimaginable happened: Ted’s father was mauled by a grizzly bear and dragged to his death.

    Now, twenty years later, as special agent for the Department of the Interior, Ted is called back to investigate a crime that echoes the horror of that night. Only this time, the victim was tied to a tree before the animal’s attack. Ted teams up with one of the park officers—a man named Monty, whose pleasant exterior masks an all-too-vivid knowledge of the area. Residents of the nearby community are less than forthcoming. Suspicious of outsiders and intimately connected to the wilderness that surrounds them, they confront their fellow man and nature with equal measures of reverence and brutality. As the days pass with no clear answers, not only is human life at stake, so too is that of a majestic creature who carries with it valuable evidence. Ted’s search for truth takes him far into the wilderness, on the trail of a killer, and eventually to a shocking and unexpectedly personal conclusion.

    Rich in atmosphere and evocative, lush descriptions, The Wild Inside is a gripping debut novel about the wondrously perilous intersection between man and nature.

  • Have you ever wondered what it's like to live through a bioweapon attack or to have every aspect of your life governed by invisible ants? In Cory Doctorow's collection of novellas, he wields his formidable experience in technology and computing to give us mind-bending sci-fi tales that explore the possibilities of information technology—and its various uses—run amok.

    "Anda's Game" is a spin on the bizarre new phenomenon of "cyber sweatshops," in which people are paid very low wages to play online games all day in order to generate in-game wealth, which can be converted into actual money. Another tale tells of the heroic exploits of "sysadmins"—systems administrators—as they defend the cyberworld, and hence the world at large, from worms and bioweapons. And yes, there is a story about zombies too.