Showing results by author "D. J. Butler" in All Categories

Cheerful in the face of dark opposition. Innovative to improve a backward world. Industrial as a cure for oppressive conditions. Unyielding beneath all who seek to bind and control them. Faithful until they conquer the fear of death and rise to great acts of heroism and service. Mormons and steampunks are two faces of the same coin. Twelve authors spin tales of true believers facing impossible odds, risking this life in the hope of gaining something better after.

Sarah Calhoun is the 15-year-old daughter of the Elector Andrew Calhoun, one of Appalachee's military heroes and one of the electors who gets to decide who will next ascend as the Emperor of the New World. None of that matters to Sarah. She has a natural talent for hexing and one bad eye, and all she wants is to be left alone - especially by outsiders.

Thirteen incredible authors. Thirteen stories about the Depik - what they were and where their society goes from here!

An encounter with her father's goddess has not turned out to be the end for Sarah Elytharias Penn. Now, with the Imperial fist tightened around her city of Cahokia and the beastkind of the Heron King ravaging across the river, she must find a way to access the power of the Serpent Throne itself. To complicate her efforts, Cahokia's Metropolitan, a beloved and charismatic priest who despises the goddess as a demon, returns from a long pilgrimage and attempts to finalize the Wisdom-eradicating reform that dogged Sarah's father when he was king.

Sarah Calhoun paid a hard price for her entry onto the stage of the Empire's politics, but she survived. Now she rides north into the Ohio and her father's kingdom, Cahokia. To win the Serpent Throne, she'll have to defeat seven other candidates, win over the kingdom's regent, and learn the will of a hidden goddess - while mastering her people's inscrutable ways and watching her own back. In New Orleans, a new and unorthodox priest arises to plague the chevalier and embody the curse of the murdered Bishop Ukwu.

From Japanese legends to mafia mermen, from carnival freaks to flying aces, from bayou legends to kraken-like behemoths, these tales explore the darker side of merfolk: desire, envy, love unfulfilled, grace ungranted, and loneliness turned to rage....

Prepare for a pulse-pounding adventure that transcends time itself in the riveting Time Trials. Meet Marty Cohen, a brilliant linguist turned woodworking shop owner who thought he had left behind the politics and rivalries of academia for good. But when his woodworking business takes a hit, an offer he can't refuse pulls him back into the world of Egyptology. Marty is summoned to an off-the-grid archaeological dig, where ancient texts may hold the key to Earth's past and future. With the promise of riches, Marty embarks on a journey that defies belief.

Join the last vestiges of Humanity and their alien allies (the reptilian Thrynn, the insectoid Velox, and the plant-based Elowan) as they attempt to carve out their own territory in a sector of space filled with wondrous opportunity and deadly threats. Brave explorers seek out new worlds to colonize while merchants cruise from starport to starport, their holds laden with exotic goods. Not all in this futuristic setting have noble intent. For every prospector and trader attempting to make a difference, a dozen pirates, smugglers, and mobsters engage in all manner of criminal enterprise.

From abandoned mines and forgotten trails to Native American ruins and an apple orchard, the Superstition Mountains are full of history and intrigue. Forming the eastern border of Arizona's Valley of the Sun, the Superstitions have not only been an incredible source of beauty and outdoor adventure but also a place riddled with superstition and mystery. To this day, treasure hunters scour the mountains for gold. They research old landmarks and maps, along with clues from generations past.

The band is eating at a cheap diner with the local club manager, making arrangements for the evening's gig, when they are attacked by a swarm of flying snakes. Adrian, the organ player and wizard, is bitten. Before he puts himself into a magical coma, face turning purple, he warns his band mates that they only have three hours to save him. Can the band find a cure before Adrian's time is up? Why is the town's preacher obsessed with the ancient Israelite serpent icon, the Nehushtan? And can the band get out of town before the snake god Apep arrives?

Bucky McCrae won't take nonsense from you. Not if you're poor Evil Patten (named, with bad spelling, after Evel Knievel), and you just want to be Bucky's boyfriend and get through the summer without an accident on your highway construction job. Not if you're Bucky's dad - friendly, charming, and a little bit short on ambition, running your law practice out of the back of bowling alley in the rural northwest. Not even if you're a stone cold killer, and you have Bucky in your sights.

Even ghosts need help from a Cunning Man. Hiram and his son Michael are dowsing a well in Eastern Utah when they hear a cry of help from the ghost of a small boy, torn to pieces by wild animals. Before they can even begin to look into that tragedy, however, a prosperous local rancher is murdered right before their eyes. In an attempt to both help the ghost and find the killer, Hiram and Michael must navigate an eccentric cast of characters that includes failed bank robbers, a seductive fortune-teller, an inept sheriff, a crazy prospector, and a preacher with an apocalyptic grudge....

Hiram is a man with mystical abilities derived from the commonsense application of Scot-Irish folk wisdom and German Braucher magic. He possesses an arcane Bloodstone that allows him to see a lie the moment it is spoken. Behind the played-out farms and failed businesses are demons, curses, sorcerers, and unatoned wrongs. Bags of groceries and carpentry won't be enough this time. The job will take a man who has known sorrow. A man who has known war. A man of wisdom. A man of magic. The job will take a cunning man.

Sarah Calhoun has taken her father's throne and ascended into her goddess' presence in Unfallen Eden as her father never did. And Sarah Calhoun is dying. Her uncle Thomas Penn isn't done with her. Armed with new powers conferred upon him by the Necromancer and with new allies won via his impending marriage, Penn aims to remove Sarah from her throne - and from the world of the living.

Spend an afternoon antiquing, and it’s not hard to figure out why picking has become one of America’s fondest pastimes. It’s treasure hunting while connecting with history. But what if those treasures hunt us back? From old books, vinyl records, antique mirrors, vintage figurines, and a Bob’s big boy piggy bank, curses have no limits.

Buza System is Dyan’s world. She has been a Crecheling, one of the System’s children, trained in a broad range of skills and knowledge and prepared to take her place as an Urbane, a full-fledged adult member of the desert community with a Calling given to her by the System and its Cogitant Council. Between receiving her Calling and admission into the System, though, stand the Hanging and the Selection. The System has a lesson it wants to teach Dyan about death. Against that brutal experience, and entwined within it, destiny has a different lesson for her, about the family she has never known…and about love.

Can prosperity economics be the answer you need? Typical financial advice - what you listen to and hear in the mainstream financial media - will get you typical results. But what if you want better-than-typical results? If your goal is wealth and prosperity, not just safety and security, then you want the financial advice wealthy and prosperous people follow. The mission of the Prosperity Economics Movement is to share exactly this - making it available not just to the wealthy, but anyone who truly seeks wealth.

Sam Clemens, leading the U.S. Army's expedition aboard his amphibious steam-truck, the Jim Smiley, has a mission: to ensure that the Kingdom, with its air-ships and rumored phlogiston guns, brain children of the Madman Orson Pratt, enters on the side of the United States and peace.

Marty Cohen ist ein kompetenter Linguist und Experte für antike Militärstrategie. Allerdings hat er sich von akademischer Ägyptologie abgewandt und eine Tischlerwerkstatt eröffnet. Abseits frustrierender Politik und kleinlicher Rivalitäten kümmert er sich um seine Mitarbeiter, vergnügt sich gelegentlich mit einem Kriegsspiel und führt ein beschauliches Leben. Allerdings rauben ihm mysteriöse Visionen den Schlaf. Dann wird er zurück nach Ägypten gerufen.

Bass player Mike Archuleta is down on his luck in a major way. The shattered survivor of a misspent youth, he is haunted by the ghost of his dead brother, and is now driven to planning his suicide. Halfway through the show that's supposed to be his last, a hellhound bursts into the club and attacks the band. The band members pull out karate moves, guns, and even a sword...and then things start to get strange.