The Eighth Sword follows The Swords of Athos. It begins when a young merchant, Adrian, is captured by Genghis Lin to steal the magical sword of Ibernia from his cousin, Antoine. Genghis can’t defeat his arch enemy, King Leopold, unless this sword is disabled. After refusing, Adrian is saved by the mythical gods and sent with Antoine to find the magical sword of Amazonia, an eighth world that has just been discovered and is threatened by the evil wizard Xena. Things immediately go awry, forcing the gods to summon all the keepers of the swords. Join these heroic men on their adventurous quest to keep peace in the worlds.
Awarded the Navy Cross for gallantry under fire, Staff Sergeant Jeremiah Workman is one of the Marine Corps’ best-known contemporary combat veterans. In this searing and inspiring memoir, he tells an unforgettable story of his service overseas–and of the emotional wars that continue to rage long after our fighting men come home. Raised in a tiny blue-collar town in Ohio, Jeremiah Workman was a handsome and athletic high achiever. Having excelled on the sporting field, he believed that the Marine Corps would be the perfect way to harness his physical and professional drives. In the Iraqi city of Fallujah in December 2004, Workman faced the challenge that would change his life. He and his platoon were searching for hidden caches of weapons and mopping up die-hard insurgent cells when they came upon a building in which a team of fanatical insurgents had their fellow Marines trapped. Leading repeated assaults on that building, Workman killed more than twenty of the enemy in a ferocious firefight that left three of his own men dead. But Workman’s most difficult fight lay ahead of him–in the battlefield of his mind. Burying his guilt about the deaths of his men, he returned stateside, where he was decorated for valor and then found himself assigned to the Marine base at Parris Island as a “Kill Hat”: a drill instructor with the least seniority and the most brutal responsibilities. He was instructed, only half in jest, to push his untested recruits to the brink of suicide. Haunted by the thought that he had failed his men overseas, Workman cracked, suffering a psychological breakdown in front of the men he was charged with leading and preparing for war. In Shadow of the Sword, a memoir that brilliantly captures both wartime courage and its lifelong consequences, Workman candidly reveals the ordeal of post-traumatic stress disorder: the therapy and drug treatments that deadened his mind even as they eased his pain, the overwhelming stress that pushed his marriage to the brink, and the confrontations with anger and self-blame that he had internalized for years. Having fought through the worst of his trials–and now the father of a young son–Workman has found not perfection or a panacea but a way to accommodate his traumas and to move forward toward hope, love, and reconciliation.
Better to die sharp in war than rust through a time of peace. A mother struggling to repress her violent past, A son struggling to grasp his violent future, A father blind to the danger that threatens them all. When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire's enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name 'The Sword of Kaigen.'Born into Kusanagi's legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family's fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen's alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.
Joan Messi has spent thirteen lonely years hiding her supernatural abilities from her parents, her classmates, and everyone in her white bread suburban community. However, her little world of secrets is shattered when a pair of strangers arrive from a parallel dimension on the hunt for a nameless criminal. Now, after a lifetime of wondering how she got her powers, Joan might have found the beginnings of an answer. For Daniel Thundyil and his father, elemental powers and ego-maniacal supervillains are nothing new-although this is the first time a mission has brought them to a parallel dimension. Daniel's main concern in this new world isn't the looming threat of a godlike killer; it's fitting in at a school where the food is flavorless, everyone writes backwards in an ancient alphabet, and all the racial hierarchies seem to be reversed.
Synopsis: Several decades since the last Human War, and the World is almost back at its former glory. The scars of the last War can now only be found in the history books. After two millennia of self destruction, humanity finally managed to unify as a group under the rule of the Six Council. Under its regime, the remaining 156 countries around the world swore an oath to work toward peace and harmony. War becomes a taboo, and any country who breaks this rule will be punished severely. Technology progresses relatively fast in this so-called Utopia. Full dive technology that allows the user to experience a dream like reality known as VR (Virtual Reality) became really popular especially to the gaming industry. A world to escape humanity’s Utopia. Unlike reality who is heavily regulated by the rules and regulations of the Six Council. Virtual Reality becomes a symbol of freedom, far from the shackles that binds the current society. 2064 Human Era, a VRMMO (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online) game, was launched on its Closed BETA test, Hollow Earth Online. With the game under the most popular genres: Action, Fantasy, RPG (Role Playing Game), many people were keen to try and play the game. After all, HEO's predecessor Arcadia Online, a game released by Atlas Inc. several years ago that garnered a few million players around the globe. Unlike Arcadia, HEO’s world is scaled like the world, a virtual reality under a single instance. Just like a typical fantasy rpg, HEO has one thing that reality lacks, “Magic” a phenomena that can’t be explained nor recreated by science. A world where magic exists and you can be whatever you want, or so everyone thought. Several thousand players worldwide received invitations to participate in the three-day Closed Beta Test event. Asriel, a college student, was among those who received an invitation email from Atlas Inc. to partake in the event as a Beta Tester. HEO seemed like just another fantasy VRMMO from a well-known developer, living up to everyone's expectations. However, little did they know, it was actually the prelude to an apocalypse unlike anything humanity had faced in the last two millennia.
Now Available: Vandermine: The Swords Errand* 9 CD audio book at www.audiorealms.com Downloadable MP3 file at www.theaudiobookshop.com *Contains bonus sample from the sequel Vandermine: Children of the Apocalypse Jon Andrews is a fun-loving college football player who defies the stereotype by being as well-studied and thoughtful as he is physically intense. He enjoys studying medieval history almost as much as sacking quarterbacks. A trip to a medieval exhibit at a local museum sends a pair of bullets from the gun of a panicked robber his way and brings a stolen broadsword mysteriously into his possession. Before he can return it, the ancient weapon spirits him away to its own world. Gritty pain and true fear soon convince him that he is not simply dreaming when he finds himself in what appears to be medieval Europe. Captured by the kings soldiers, a wizard of the Holy Order reveals that the stranger carries the legendary sword Vandermine and that it is dead iron in the hands of anyone else. Jon is soon pressed into service joining a desperate quest to slay Cravos, the would-be conqueror of the kingdom and violator of all the laws of the Holy Order in unleashing forbidden and wildly destructive magicspower that once loosed threatens to bring to pass the prophesied second apocalypse. Jons companions on the quest are a veritable dream-teamthe kings championsthe best in their respective disciplines. The further the reluctant hero travels the more he sees things that seem to have leapt straight out of books of mythologynot history. It is soon painfully obvious that being in great physical shape and wielding a magic sword is not enough. Thrust into a life or death struggle in a world he cant understand, Jon relies on his faithful comrades to give him the skills he needs to command Vandermines full power before the reality of this impossible world catches up with him. The journey for Jon is not merely physically daunting and dangerous, but mentally and emotionally taxing as well. Before he was torn out of the world he once knew, he was accustomed to being one of the stronger and more competent members of his team. However, the harsh realities of the ancient world that has called for him soon humiliate him making him feel like the weakest-link. Through training, suffering, and conquering with the kings picked men as he strives to fulfill the swords errand, Jon gains the respect due a battle-hardened veteranearning it the hard way.
The quest of the Seven Swords has unleashed catastrophic war. Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, the only Swordbearer in the realm of Owyllain. He is allied with the noble King Hektor Pendragon, who fights to reunify the Seven Swords and to end the destructive war they have unleashed. But the tyrannical King Justin Cyros is marching to war against Hektor, and King Justin knows the secret of the malevolent New God, a secret that will kill everyone in Owyllain. Starting with Ridmark and his family...
