Bøger af Mike Shepherd

In 1895, Bram Stoker was busy writing a book in an Aberdeenshire fishing village. 'We were all frightened of him. It was up on a lonely part of the east coast of Scotland, and he seemed to get obsessed by the spirit of the thing.' That book was Dracula. Are you curious to know more...

How do you win a war lost 6000 years before you were born? Worse, what if you've won that war, and the word you've made isn't quite what you expected? Problem is, now you're 6000 years away from the on-going fight -- again! Here's the exciting conclusion of the Lost Millennium Trilogy as Launa and Jack set out to do it all over again!

How do you win a battle lost 6,000 years before you were born? How do you make sure winning that battle doesn't lose you the war? The 21st Century is dead, killed by a runaway designer plague. Only two people survived the century. 2nd Lieutenant Launa Obrian and her sole subordinate, Captain Jack Walking Bear. There mission, travel back 6,000 years and help a peaceful band of farmers fight off the horse raiders from the steppe and maybe, just maybe, turn human history from death and conquest to cooperation and construction. They've won their first battle, but they know there is more to come. Some of the farmers walk after the soldiers. Some refuse to consider killing, even to protect themselves. Most of the farmers just wish the horse raiders would go away. It is among these that Launa and Jack must find enough soldiers to stand between the lances of the raiders and the farms and herds of these people. But is just winning the battle enough? Is the changes they must bring to harden muscles, harden weapons, and harden hearts something that may destroy from within the very lives they were sent to save? Ride with Launa and Jack as they seek to start a Second Fire that will burn out the poison from the steppe without burning up the way of life that may be humanity's only hope.

How do you win a war lost 6,000 years before you were born? Those are the orders waiting Launa O'Brian, fresh out of West Point. They want her to help peaceful farmers win a war they're about to lose and beat back the Horse Raiders that destroyed them. The Army has a time machine. They even tested it once. It didn't work, but trust them, they fixed it. With the whole army to chose from, they've assigned her Captain Jack Walking Bear as a partner. As a captain, he outranks her. As a guy, he's got a lot of different ideas about how to run this show. But the President put Launa in charge, because his old anthropology professor says women spoke first back then and guys paid attention. So how come the first thing they see is a war band of horsemen who want to hit them over the head and steal everything they brought? Did the time machine blow it? Were the anthropologists overly optimistic?

Admiral Kris Longknife should have known the job offer was too good. Really, she knew by now that what was too good to be true really, really isn't. Still, she jumped at the chance to be the first human emissary to the Iteeche Empire. Only when she got there and met the Emperor, a teenage kid swamped by his throne, did Kris find out that there was a little civil war going on in the Iteeche Empire. The loyal forces were losing, and they needed the best fighting admiral they could get. So they got Kris Longknife. Now Kris is sweating out collecting a fighting force -- that won't make her their first target. Now she's trying to figure out how to fight ships identical to hers, that outnumber her four to one or worse. Oh, and she's got to keep the merchant princes in her embassy from making a mess of everything. A whole lot of people are hoping this Longknife can pull a grizzly bear out of her hat. A whole lot of other Iteeche are hoping the bear takes off her arm. This continuation of the Longknife Saga is 112,000 words of battle, intrigue and assassinations including a few wrong turns on Kris's part. Enjoy!

The victory parades are over and half the fleet is back in mothballs. The Navies better start getting them back in Commission! Rita Longknife, commander of the heavy cruiser Exeter, has proof. Proof that there is something else out there. Proof we are not alone in the galaxy. Aboard her ship is evidence that we have blown up an alien ship, and they have blown up one of ours. So far, contact with the aliens is being made by pirates, the worst scum humanity has. How do the right people take over making contact? Is there already too much bad blood between us? Have we already blown first contact?

The war is over. Hurray! Half the fleet is back in mothballs. But out on the rim of human space, ships are disappearing. Some are merchant ships going about their business. Others are exploration ships on deep space probes. What's happening to them? Captain Rita Nuu Longknife is ready to take the heavy cruiser Exeter to space and see what's out there. She may have a nursery next to the captain's cabin, and a two month old baby on her hip, but she's taking a warship out there and nobody better get in her way.

Sandy Santiago has problems coming out her ears. Granny Rita is out of control. The workers are out on strike. Worse, the murderous alien raiders are testing Alwa's defense perimeter. Once she has her hous in order, Sandy is strongly thinking of getting her own good look at what appears to be the alien home world. Last time Kris Longknife visited the place, she threw some serious shade on the aliens. Dare Sandy return? Might the aliens be waiting for her? What could a serious, organized scientific look at this world tell Sandy? Assuming she survives the look!

Grand Duchess Vicky Peterwald has everything. A loving fiance who's soon to be her husband, adoring crowds, and she gets to share her golden wedding carriage with Kris Longknife. What more could a girl want?Well, the Emperor, her father, could have showed up to walk her down the aisle, but she's not really bothered about that. Then suddenly, she is. It turns out that he didn't make the wedding because he's broke and living nearly homeless in an abandoned, half built, palace. How'd that happen?News isn't coming out of Dad's side of the Empire, so it looks like Vicky may need a battle fleet to go pay Daddy dear a visit. Oh, and four or six brigades of infantry and tanks. Somebody should have known better than piss Vicky Peterwald off. Now they have, and she won't let anything get in her way of being Vicky Peterwald: Dominator.

From the Nebula Nominated and New York Times Best Selling Author comes the long lost story of how Launa Obrian and Jack Walking Bear met, got to know each other, hit and did not hit it off and learned to train together. Here's the story that was referred to in the other books of the trilogy, but you've never had a chance to read before. Follow these two courageous troopers as they prepare for an insane mission even as the world around them descends into its own insanity.

Kris Longknife has been ordered back to human space. Sandy Santiago is a woman with a whole lot of problems. She's ordered to replace Kris Longknife, but can any mere mortal fill the shoes of a Longknife . . . and Kris Longknife most of all? Follow Sandy as she's introduced to the mess on Canopus Station. Watch her as she meets cats (with nuclear weapons!), birds, and vicious alien raiders. Oh, and she has to share Alwa Station with Rita Nuu-Longknife. How does a gal get so lucky?

Kris Longknife has discovered that this desk job is not at all what she expected. Being desk bound hasn't even decreased the number of assassination attempts! Then Kris gets home to find her two kids playing with an Iteeche. Ron has come back to human space with a request. Should Kris honor it? Can she finally get some straight answers for her Grampa Ray, King Raymond to most? Does she risk taking the kids into a situation with a whole lot of unanswered questions? Oh, and what can go wrong? Kris know something will go wrong. Something always goes wrong.

Blood Wine Anthology contains numerous short stories about the author'sexperiences as an Air Force radio news reporter in the Vietnam War in 1967 and '68, and episodes heexperienced after the war while traveling in Europe, and hitchhiking throughout the US. The anthology alsoincludes many poems about various subjects, along with some character sketches about people he had becomeacquainted with over the years.

Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife leads a reconnaissance mission of the vast uncharted regions of space. No one, least of all Kris, expects to find a hostile alien starship. Now, she must determine the extent of the alien threat-and whether to start an interstellar war...

Having used unorthodox methods to save a world-and every sentient being on it-Lieutenant Commander Kris Longknife is wanted across the galaxy for crimes against humanity. For her own safety, she's been assigned to a backwater planet where her Fast Patrol Squadron 127 enforces immigration control and smuggler interdiction.But Kris is a Longknife, and nothing can stop her from getting back to the center of things-not when all hell is breaking loose. Now she's on the run, hunted by both military and civilian authorities-and since the civilian authorities happen to be her immediate family, Kris soon finds herself homeless, broke, and on trial for her life on an alien world…

As part of an agenda to oust her father from his political position, Kris Longknife is relieved of command. But when an alien enemy launches an invasion, she defies both government and military authority to lead a rag-tag fleet against the threat.

A search for her lost friend leads the female space warrior into a galactic hellhole with no way out.

Kris Longknife is a daughter of privilege, born to money and power. Her father is the Prime Minister of her home planet, her mother the consummate politician's wife. She's been raised only to be beautiful and to marry well. But the heritage of the military Longknifes courses through Kris's blood-and, against her parents' objections, she enlists in the marines.She has a lot to live up to and a lot to prove in the long-running struggle between her powerful family, a highly defensive-and offensive-Earth, and the hundreds of warring colonies. And then an ill-conceived attack brings the war close to home, putting Kris's life on the line. Now she has only one choice: certain death on the front lines of rim space-or mutiny...

A Story of Salvation begins in Spunky Point, Illinois where the protagonist, Mick Scott, and his two younger sisters live with their grandparents after their parents split up. Their violent, suicidal, alcoholic mother is ruled unfit by a family court to care for them. She blames the court's decision on her ex-husband, so she enlists the assistance of her violent new lover to exact revenge on him and the children, thinking that they conspired against her in court. As the three siblings grow into adulthood, they, along with their father, are forced to deal with their mother's lover's vicious attacks against them. After all is said and done, do they succeed in ending his evil reign of terror, or do they succumb to it?

Coast to Coast and Back to Chicago begins with the protagonist Mick Scott hitchhiking out of the Windy City to escape a cold winter and a failed relationship with a cold-hearted woman. His trip takes him across the Deep South and up the east coast to Boston. He continues on through the west to San Francisco with stops in Austin, El Paso, Santa Fe, and Salt Lake City.He then returns to Chicago where he resolves his relationship with the woman he left while meeting the famous columnist Mike Royko, who helps him in his attempt to publish a book about his hitchhiking adventures.