Short Stories/Novellas
The Warsaw Pact is officially dissolved. An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King. The Gulf War is over. Nirvana releases the album Nevermind. The Soviet Union collapses. The year is 1991, and the world is changing. For Landon Crane, the future couldn’t look brighter. He’s madly in love with a beautiful girl who’ll be leaving with him for college in just over a month. The small mountain town of Mineral Springs will be hosting the largest Independence Day celebration in its history to welcome home war hero Travis James, highlighting the ultimate summer of freedom. The year is 1991, and nothing will ever be the same. Travis has returned with more than the Medal of Honor. He’s brought something else with him, something capable of inflicting unimaginable pain and suffering. Before the night is through, Landon and the rest of the residents of Mineral Springs will be forced to answer the most terrifying question of all. Who among them will survive?
At 2:31 a.m., seismic monitoring stations in China and South Korea detect a magnitude-4 event consistent with a nuclear detonation in the southeastern corner of North Korea, within the Korean Demilitarized Zone. With the threat of full-scale war escalating by the minute, the United Nations Security Council dispatches an elite unit of peacekeepers to cross the border, penetrate the cloud of dust hanging over the site, and determine the exact nature of the seismic disturbance. What they find triggers a series of events that culminates in a civilian biomedical engineer boarding a transport carrier at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, bound for the Far East. His name is Dr. Parker Ramsey and he is uniquely qualified for this mission. He is the brains behind a secret project--Code Name Hindsight--developed under the oversight of the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Hindsight has never been field-tested, but with global catastrophe looming on the horizon, the only chance of averting it lies in utilizing the project's extraordinary capabilities. If it works, Dr. Ramsey will be able to unravel the mystery behind the detonation and identify the responsible party. For, thanks to Hindsight, Dr. Ramsey will be able to see something that no one has ever seen before... He'll be able to see the moment of death through the eyes of the dead. If he's able to survive long enough to do so. "Writing with the soul of a poet and the imagination of a demon, Michael McBride creates terrifying enchantments." - Bruce Boston, author of The Nightmare Collection "McBride just keeps getting better!" - Hellnotes "Whether he's writing stuff that's quietly creepy or stuff that's action-packed and blood-drenched, Michael McBride never fails to deliver a fantastic read!" - Jeff Strand, author of Dweller and Pressure "Make no mistake, Michael McBride is now ready to step in with the heavy hitters. Jeffery Deaver, Michael Marshall Smith, Thomas Harris--are you doing your roadwork?" - Gene O'Neill, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Taste of Tenderloin
Avery Banks is an Edinburgh based detective inspector, obsessively working to escape his personal demons. Embroiled within a case where two local nurses have gone missing. No trace. It all seems a bit too familiar, his own wife having disappeared in similar circumstances. Clifford Thomas is a detective working for Serious Crimes Office, looking into a nationwide burglary scam... If you discover the secrets of nature, can you heal the world? If you can heal the world, at what price? At who's cost..... Banks and Thomas are asked to work together to solve two separate crimes which have become intertwined because of circumstance, because of them... because of her...
Two short stories - Crime based - Exact - To plan for the whole time a person spends imprisoned for a murder; gives you time to perfect that planning. Planning how you will exact the necessary revenge. Stray Dog - Life is not always kind. A neglected child lives with horrors stuck in his head that one day will come out. If you like these try my other novellas/novels: Hunt Hunted Murder Murdered, Safety Man and Natures Way.
2 short stories Friendly Fire, Winner of May 2008 Global Short Stories prize; A soldier wants to come home as victory appears to be closer in Iraq Sunniside, A fable. What would your life have been like if you had been born to riches instead of to poor? If you like these try my other novellas/novels: Hunt Hunted Murder Murdered, Safety Man and Natures Way.
Critically acclaimed horror scribes Michael McBride and Norman Prentiss team up to bring you this atmospheric tale of a schoolroom descending into madness. Something is wrong with Julia Linder's sixth grade class. One boy's harmless tendency of getting lost becomes a crippling fog of disorientation. A girl's mild twitch turns into an obsessive pattern of frightened raps and repetition. The symptoms are spreading and the source seems to be stories that seize upon the children's deeply seated fears and intensify them exponentially. How can mere stories change their behavior? Abbie is a bright girl at the heart of the mystery. The others are inexplicably drawn to her and become increasingly devoted to her with each passing day. But should her classmates trust her? The secrets are locked in tales from the past, where only The Narrator can find them.
While deployed in the Middle East in 1991 to fight in the Gulf War, U.S. Navy SEAL Malcolm Jeffers learns that his wife and young son have been brutally killed by the "Infinity Killer," a serial killer preying on young children throughout the south. He returns home for their funerals...and to avenge their deaths. Twenty years later, Jeffers discovers that someone has started killing children again in the same fashion as the infamous "Infinity Killer." Is it a copycat killer, or is it someone who got away with their life, but not their mind? Jeffers doesn't know, but for his own sense of personal closure, he's determined to find out...
#1 Amazon Bestselling Author When Amelia Behrent is murdered, her sister—FBI Special Agent Emma Behrent—discovers her death is only the most recent in a series of killings spanning the American Southwest. Someone is hunting young women and setting fires to cover his tracks. All Special Agent Behrent has to go on is his unique signature as an arsonist and the fact that each of his victims had a dead firefly in her mouth. She must discover the killer's next victim if she hopes to stop a monster who wants nothing more than to watch the entire world burn.
When Marks father died there was a void. But by chance or natures way he receives a message from the grave. 'It begins' And with an adventure taking him from his home, covering England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States perhaps there was 'hope' after all! A story for all of those who have lost someone, but maybe, just maybe, all is not lost...
When Brian Niemand accepts a position as a research assistant in the theoretical physics department at the university, he has no idea that he’s about to become a part of one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time. The implications are staggering, but such knowledge always comes at a price, and as Brian finds out, the cost is measured in lives. Where did the project get its test subject, an amputated leg, and what’s inside Brian’s house that stalks him at night? The answers are buried where only he can exhume them, but when he finds himself surrounded by a series of brutal slayings, he learns that before he can take the first step to saving his own life, he must go back to Zero.
ONE OF HISTORY'S GREATEST MYSTERIES. In 524 BCE, Cambyses II, King of Persia, dispatched his forces to the Siwa Oasis to destroy the Oracle of Amun, whose priests refused to legitimize his claim to Egypt. According to historical records, 50,000 soldiers marched into the desert from Luxor and vanished into a sandstorm. NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN. Hoping to discover the lost army’s fate, a team of scientists utilizes satellite archeology to locate ancient ruins hidden beneath the dunes. Subsequent excavation reveals a temple devoted to Sekhmet, warrior goddess of destruction. Hidden within it are chambers filled with bones. THEY NEVER STOOD A CHANCE. The scientists quickly realize that they’re not alone. Something is hunting them inside the buried tomb, a creature that has evolved to live in complete darkness, an extant species that will stop at nothing to make sure that no one ever learns of its existence, because in the end… NATURE ALWAYS FINDS A WAY.