N.C. Reed has 13 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.7★ across 13 ratings. The most-rated is Odd Billy Todd.
Odd Billy Todd
Summary
A post-apocalyptic fiction by N.C. Reed. Billy Todd has always been different. Most people called him odd, and those were the nice people. Though he was born with a learning disability, Billy's parents never allowed him to consider himself disabled. Raised to be self-sufficient, Billy might not be as smart as some, but he was a lot smarter than people realized. When the entire world is devastated by a plague that kills over 95 percent of the population, Billy is not helpless. Believing he may be the only survivor in his town, he manages to place himself in a good position to survive alone in a new world.
©2015 N.C. Reed (P)2019 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
Fire from the Sky
Summary
Clayton Sanders left home the minute he had his high school diploma in hand. He waited that long only because the army wouldn't accept him without one. Now, 10 years later, he's home, with no warning, no advance notice, no anything after being gone 10 years with almost no contact with his family. Home carrying a secret that is burning him up from the inside. A secret that has pushed him to the brink, forcing him to become a criminal in order to be where his family needs him to be, even though they don't realize it yet. Because Clayton knows something they don't. Something that hasn't happened but will. Something that will burn everything it touches. And change the face of the world forever.
©2017 N.C. Reed (P)2017 N.C. Reed
Parno's Destiny
Summary
Parno McLeod has managed to stave off disaster for now, but his kingdom is still besieged by the Imperial forces of the Norland Empire. Assuming command of the entire Soulan military in place of his deposed brother, Therron, Parno must turn Soulan's fortunes around before his home is completely overrun and his people destroyed or enslaved. His ailing father has placed a great burden on his youngest son, because he simply doesn't have anyone else that can do the things that Parno can get done. But Parno has enemies at home as well as abroad, and some of them are much closer than anyone realizes.
©2016 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Podium Publishing
Fire from the Sky
Summary
Post-Apocalyptic Fiction by N.C. Reed Clayton Sanders left home the minute he had his high school diploma in hand. He waited that long only because the Army wouldn't accept him without one. Now, 10 years later, he's home. Home with no warning, no advance notice, no anything after being gone 10 years with almost no contact with his family. Home carrying a secret that is burning him up from the inside. A secret that has pushed him to the brink, forcing him to become a criminal in order to be where his family needs him to be, even though they don't realize it yet. Because Clayton knows something they don't. Something that hasn't happened, but will. Something that will burn everything it touches. And change the face of the world forever. Friendly Fire, Book Six: Friendly fire. Two words no soldier ever wants to hear. Having ended the threat of his father's oldest enemy and the group he controlled, Clayton Sanders believes he can finally put his feet up a bit and relax. Figuratively of course, since there is no relaxing on a farm and ranch. But some peace and quiet will be greatly appreciated and welcome. Too bad he won't get it. With the remainder of his old team on their way, Clay starts to think he might be able to breathe easier. Sure, they did say they were running from a big problem out west, but that's out west, right? No reason to worry about that. True, there's still that nutty end times guy on the radio, but he's more comic relief than anything else at this point. Still, it does remind him that he has heard no news from outside their immediate area, forcing him to rethink his initial plans for isolation of the farm from others. On the whole, however, it seems that trouble is a distant problem for the moment. But his friends find trouble much closer to home as they make their journey to join Clay and the rest at the ranch, uncovering a threat that Clay hadn't known existed. Their arrival also awakens old prejudices and attitudes that will lead to a fracture among the ranch residents, and that fracture will in turn bring vicious enmity among people who had been friends only days before. That fracture will do what multiple attacks by greater numbers has failed to accomplish; divide a strong and independent group of survivors while taking their attention from the real threats to their safety, even as the farm takes the first steps in reaching out to others, attempting to help the town of Jordan to get on its feet, able to feed and defend itself once more. After all they've been through, after all they've endured and dealt with, conflict from within may well be what breaks them. The damage that comes from within, friendly fire, could well do more to cripple them than anything that has come from outside thus far. One thing is universal it seems; friendly fire....isn't.
©2019 N.C. Reed (P)2019 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
Parno's Company
Summary
The world died long ago. The world died long ago, leaving only a few here and there to rebuild. Their world had once been grand and magnificent, but too much was lost in the years after the time known as the Dying. Knowledge that had been gained over centuries disappeared from the world, lost when those who carried that knowledge died with it. The population has grown again over the last centuries, but the world has not regained its lost knowledge or former glory. A few things survive, here and there, and scholars seek to uncover more of their Ancients lost technology. But in the midst of that comes the threat of war with a rival nation. The latest in a long line of such wars for the Kingdom of Soulan. Enter Parno McLeod, third son of King Tammon McLeod, who is unloved by his family and laughed at by the nobility. A brawling, drinking, womanizing playboy still in his teens, the common soldiers and people love Parno because he doesn't preen and pretend and Parno loves his people and his Land, even though he doesn't love his family. When sent away by his family on an impossible mission, can young Parno overcome the odds and become the prince that destiny intends him to be?
©2015 N.C. Reed (P)2019 Podium Publishing
Hell Fire
Summary
Doom. Devastation. Death. Destruction. It seems that no matter what direction he looks, Clay Sanders can see little else. He has tried to maintain at least a small oasis of safety for the people closest to him. But that bubble is constantly threatened by those who want it for themselves or want to deny it to Clay and his family and friends, even though it belongs to them. The farm has already suffered, but what they have seen thus far has been nothing but a warm-up. Things are about to reach a new level, and there is absolutely nothing Clay or his friends can do to stop it or even slow it down. Clay knows that, as do the other former soldiers. The others are about to learn it the hard way. Friends will betray, families will suffer, brothers will bleed and die. Hard work and sacrifice will be lost to hard feelings, envy, and strife. Bridges built since the catastrophe will crash and burn, destroyed by lies and mistrust and not a little jealousy and a great deal of entitlement. Even at the end of the world as we know it, there are some who seem to think the world revolves around them and no one else. Trouble is on the horizon, even though another brand of trouble is already staring them in the eyes. Even as they try to build up, there are others waiting to set it afire. But the farm's enemies are about to learn that nothing burns like hellfire. A post-apocalyptic fiction by N.C. Reed.
©2019 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
Brimstone
Summary
Post-apocalyptic fiction by N.C. Reed Clayton Sanders left home the minute he had his high school diploma in hand. He waited that long only because the Army wouldn't accept him without one. Now, 10 years later, he's home. Home with no warning, no advance notice, no anything after being gone 10 years with almost no contact with his family. Home carrying a secret that is burning him up from the inside. A secret that has pushed him to the brink, forcing him to become a criminal in order to be where his family needs him to be, even though they don't realize it yet. Because Clayton knows something they don't. Something that hasn't happened, but will. Something that will burn everything it touches. And change the face of the world forever. Prologue They didn't have real names. Well, they had them of course. They just didn't use them. Not here. They were known by names their comrades had chosen. Names that suited their personalities. Names that only mattered to them. The men of CTG 31 were the kind of men that didn't exist in the modern, civilized world. There was no place for them in an enlightened society. Except when that society needed them. They were the kind of men who visited dark places in the middle of the night, doing violence to those who preyed on the weak and the helpless. Rough men, yes, but honorable. They had a code of their own, these men, and they lived by it as if it were a writ from a higher authority. No one broke that code, that set of unwritten rules that kept them from sliding over the edge. Kept them from becoming like those they hunted. Like those they were pursuing right now. “We're about twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes behind, Boss-man” The man known as Boss-man stopped, hand raised in a fist. Those following halted and spread out without being told. “Status?” Boss-man asked tersely. He was angry. They were all angry. Something they had to guard against in their business. Keeping things strict and orderly helped. “Still on the trail for now,” the scout replied. “Continue,” Boss-man ordered and waved his hand forward. The squad of men behind him began moving again. They were in a hurry today. Before dawn a group of terrorists had attacked a small village that the squad had befriended. Or that had befriended them. The men of CTG 31 weren't sure which was the case. They did know that the people of the small village known as home had become their friends. The village had become a place where they could relax, even if only slightly, and be people for just a few hours at a time. A place of sanity in a world that had lost it's own. And that place had been violated. People they knew had been killed. Children they had grown to care for taken, herded toward a fate that no one in their group wanted to consider. Someone had to pay for that. Someone would pay for that. Dearly. They had been in pursuit for hours, running the entire way. Hard men who pushed themselves to be harder still, banking that toughness against a day like today. A day of reckoning. Had the attackers known the kind of men they were offending, it's entirely possible they would not have committed the atrocity. They were not brave men, these thugs known as terrorists. By nature terrorists were cowards, using fear and intimidation to force their will upon those too weak to resist them. But they hadn't known, and so they had attacked a place that was sacred to this squad of hard, violent men. And in so doing had assured that they, themselves, would not see another day on this mortal plane. Time meant nothing as they ran. There was only the objective and nothing else. A dozen pairs of eyes roamed the country around them, missing nothing as they moved."
©2020 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
Parno's Peril
Summary
Parno Mcleod has enough problems for three people. A brother trying to steal the throne. A former fiance who has ripped him apart emotionally, and an enemy army twice the size of his own camped out on millions of acres of prime farm land he needs to feed his people. The last thing he needs to add to all that are assassination attempts, his surrogate mother meddling in the relationship, or lack thereof, with his "fiance", and word that his traitorous brother, unaware of the death of his twin, is trying desperately to reach the Coastal Province government for "help" in "restoring" him to the throne. But he gets all that and more as he faces off against perhaps the biggest military challenge of the war when the northern army finally seems to have had enough of just sitting there, occupying southern farm land. It's always a gamble any time Parno makes a move. Every time he moves any troops under his command he risks needing them somewhere else to prevent a disaster. He doesn't have enough anything except trouble, and those he has aplenty. And none of those causing his troubles seem to care that they are distracting him from his most important duty of all. Like, you know, protecting the kingdom from invasion and takeover. Such is life for Parno McLeod. The son everyone loves to hate.
©2018 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Podium Audio
Parno's Gambit
Summary
In a post-apocalyptic world thrown back into medieval times, young Prince Parno McLeod's family troubles have gone from bad to worse of late. His father has been murdered by his insane sister and his brother has only narrowly escaped death at her hand. Now as Parno struggles to adapt to his new position as Marshal of the Army after so many years of being ignored, he must prevent his sister with her elite company of Soulan Calvary from installing her evil twin brother on the throne in his father's place. Likewise, he must struggle to prevent the realms other enemies from driving any deeper into his Kingdom's territory and with getting "reluctant" bureaucrats to help him by simply doing their jobs correctly in the King's name. Parno has been fortunate, and he is a gifted leader for one so young, but he is young, and inexperienced. He has a plan that will save his people, but he's about to learn a very important lesson; no plan survives contact with the enemy. He will also learn that despite his successes so far, he is as close to losing the war as he has been since it began. Now, gambling with his people's freedom, Parno tries to do too much, too soon, and with too few men. A gambit that he admits is dangerous, and may yet see the capitol of Soulan in flames!
©2017 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Podium Publishing
Fire from the Sky: Hostile Fire
Summary
Fire from the Sky is a post-apocalyptic fiction by N.C. Reed. Clayton Sanders left home the minute he had his high school diploma in hand. He waited that long only because the Army wouldn't accept him without one. Now, 10 years later, he's home. Home with no warning, no advance notice, no anything after being gone 10 years with almost no contact with his family. Home carrying a secret that is burning him up from the inside. A secret that has pushed him to the brink, forcing him to become a criminal in order to be where his family needs him to be, even though they don't realize it yet. Because, Clayton knows something they don't. Something that hasn't happened, but will. Something that will burn everything it touches. And change the face of the world forever. Excerpt from Hostile Fire: William Shirley watched as the people he had assembled for what others were calling a "reconnaissance in force" gathered their equipment and shook down their ranks. He had combined three different "squads" into a new platoon of 31 people, adding that force to an established platoon of 35 more. They would head north in a small string of vehicles that included a school bus to investigate the situation north of the Alabama-Tennessee state line. Shirley's group, the self-entitled "North Alabama People's Militia", had lost a great deal of personnel and equipment in that area, and he wanted to know why and to who. It was inevitable that the group would have to head north at some point in search of supplies. They had stripped their own area nearly bare over the last few months, and moving too far south was out of the question. While he considered Decatur to be part of their "territory", moving any further south than that risked a confrontation with the gangs of Birmingham, something his group lacked the strength for. There had already been a few skirmishes between the two groups, and Shirley was determined to avoid any more clashes with such a large and vicious outfit. So, north it was, into rural middle Tennessee. The area immediately north of the line should be safe enough and resource-rich. That area was full of farms and livestock operations that should yield a good amount of food for his operation, and he meant to have it. If they waited too long, then someone stronger, either from Nashville or perhaps Chattanooga, might move into the area and declare it theirs. If the Militia wanted that territory and the goods it might provide, they had to act soon. And tomorrow should be soon enough. Sixty-six heavily armed troops would move north and keep moving until they found opposition or else found something worth sending word for trucks to carry it back to the compound. If he was lucky, they would also find out who had killed his niece and his fellow board member's son. He looked forward to that. When he found whoever had killed his people, he would show them what a mistake they had made.
©2019 N.C. Reed (P)2019 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC
Parno's Gift
Summary
The tide of battle has turned. In a magnificent feat of maneuvering, Parno McLeod has lured his enemy into an ambush that has left the Imperial Army with half its strength dead or dying and all of its material support destroyed. And yet, the remaining Imperial Army on Soulan soil still numbers over 150,000 men. Men who are now angry and hungry, which is a dangerous combination. Plans that Parno has developed since his ascension to Marshal are finally coming together as highly trained reinforcements arrive at the front, along with rested and refit units that had been pulled from battle due to losses. Everything seems to be leaning in Parno's favor for once. But the Imperial Army is still there, before him, and Parno wants nothing so much as to tear that army into shreds and have it simply disappear, as if Soulan herself opened up and swallowed them without a trace left behind. So, he hatches one final campaign to ensure that happens. For better or worse, Parno McLeod is about to ride into history. But will it be as a savior to his people, or as a butcher of a beaten army? And will either choice make any difference to those who see him as a hero?
©2020 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Podium Audio
Fire from the Sky: Trial by Fire
Summary
Post-apocalyptic fiction by N.C. Reed. Clayton Sanders left home the minute he had his high school diploma in hand. He waited that long only because the army wouldn't accept him without one. Now, 10 years later, he's home. Home with no warning, no advance notice, no anything after being gone 10 years with almost no contact with his family. Home carrying a secret that is burning him up from the inside. A secret that has pushed him to the brink, forcing him to become a criminal in order to be where his family needs him to be, even though they don't realize it yet. Because Clayton knows something they don't. Something that hasn't happened, but will. Something that will burn everything it touches. And change the face of the world forever.
©2018 N.C. Reed (P)2018 N.C. Reed
Damned Nation
Summary
Post-Apocalyptic Fiction by N.C. Reed So far, the Apocalypse has not gone according to plan. At least, not according to the plan Clay Sanders and his friends had laid out. Things are finally changing, though for better or worse remains to be seen. Clay has agreed to offer what assistance the farm can spare to aid Captain Adcock and his National Guard contingent, hoping their presence will help bring order to the area. But trouble is brewing to the south and Adcock must take his men and women to Lewiston, where he finds a town reeling beneath multiple deaths from an unseen enemy. Believing this to be the retaliation that the suicidal zealot had called for with his cryptic message of "brimstone", Adcock tries to contain the situation, only to lose men of his own. Turning to Clay for help on a battlefield that is unfamiliar to soldiers trained for armored combat, Lake learns who and what Clay and the others are while all but begging for help. Clay is determined to refuse until the problem turns personal, stirring many of his men to make a move toward Lewiston. As if this isn’t enough of a problem, Captain Adcock’s boss, Major Whitten, decides to visit, expressing concerns with having what he considers a Private Military Contractor, or PMC, running loose in his Area of Operations. Oh, and as a lovely parting gift, Whitten uses his authority as the Regional Commander under the martial law provision to appoint Greg Holloway, the sole surviving member of the Calhoun Sheriff’s Office, as the new Sheriff. An appointment Greg is less than thrilled about. The news they have gotten from Adcock and others has painted a very grim picture indeed to the residents of the farm. Conditions in the larger cities and towns are much worse than even Clay had allowed for and the nation itself is completely crippled. The surviving command structure is unable to communicate with itself or with anyone else and the various services needed to try and rebuild and reestablish order have ceased to function or even exist except possibly on paper. Whatever may remain of the government, wherever they may be, will have an enormous struggle ahead in trying to regain control of the major cities that are rife with violence and atrocities that make Third World nations seem tame. Until, or unless, that happens, the residents of the farm and the area around them are completely on their own. There will be no material assistance for them, no assistance at all other than the occasional presence of Captain Adcock and his team, trying to keep violence to a minimum wherever they can. If the people of Calhoun and the surrounding counties want the return of any kind of civilized society in the new era they now find themselves living in, then it will be up to them to create that society, and to make it work. They know now that it will be the work of years, perhaps decades, before any form of organized government on that scale can rise from the ashes of the Fire From the Sky. Their once great nation lies in ruin, all that they have worked for gone in a flash of sunlight. The economy, justice system, public services, all of it will now have to be done by the people themselves or else it won’t be done at all. But even as the friends begin to try and piece together how they can possibly begin rebuilding at least their part of the world into something approaching a working society, one question continues to arise. A burning thought at the back of every mind. Who in their right mind would want to preside over and be responsible for repairing a Damned Nation like the one the US seems to have become?
©2020 N.C. Reed (P)2020 Creative Texts Publishers, LLC