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And introducing the first
epilogue to these novels... |
| New For Autumn 2025! Telostic Publishing is very proud to announce that the entire Angel Brings Fire series (Angel of Mailànkh, Doubt Me Not, Angel and The Empire and Children of The Fire), is now available in audio-book-format! These audio-books can be purchased from the Rakuten Kobo service... surf to this URL and then do a search for "Marcus Shields" and you will see all four books in audio-book format. (Note : Direct links to the audio-book versions of all the books are provided in the novel descriptions, below.) The Angel Brings Fire series is, in total, a little over 80 hours long (as dictated) in audio-book format, which represents a fantastic entertainment experience for sci-fi , super-hero and modern fantasy enthusiasts with busy lifestyles or for who, for whatever reason, would prefer to listen to a book as opposed to reading it. Our audio-books are available on Kobo as downloadable volumes, broken into numerous chapters, each of which is in standard .mp3 file format. We have tried to retain the structure of the corresponding printed books as closely as possible, with only very minor adjustments (for example verbal notification of scene changes, where applicable) to accommodate audio-book mode. Also, each of the Kobo The Angel Brings Fire audio-books includes a sample chapter that can be freely accessed by anyone with a Web browser, so you can experience a little of the audio-book in question, before making the commitment to buy it. Converting The Angel Brings Fire to audio-book format has required a great deal of work on our part... but we're sure that it was worth the effort. Purchase and download your The Angel Brings Fire audio-books, today! 8-) (Note : Work is now underway on also converting the successor series to The Angel Brings Fire, namely The Future Burns Bright, to audio-book format. According to our current schedule, we expect this project to be done by late 2nd Quarter 2026 (or thereabouts). Stay tuned to The Angel Brings Fire blog, for updates and further details!) |
| The
Angel Brings Fire (series #1 in the tale
of the "Storied Watcher"), tells the unique and
exciting story of an alien goddess' first encounter
with human beings... and of the critical role that she
must play, in the very survival of human-kind, itself! |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Angel Brings FireBook 1 :Angel of MailànkhEarth's second
manned expedition to Mars lands safely enough, and
is looking forward to a historic expedition of
science and exploration.
But the enthusiasm of Commander Sam Jacobson's 5-person crew is about to be severely tested : news arrives that Earth is under threat of annihilation, due to an impending collision with a comet named "Lucifer". None the less, the crew of the Eagle II Mars lander have a mission to complete; so, with heavy hearts, they set out to explore the surface of the Red Planet. Little do they know that the fate of their entire home-world, will shortly rest on the slender shoulders of an enigmatic being... who lies asleep... and... awaiting! |
| New For Autumn 2025! Angel of Mailànkh is available as an audio-book! You can now enjoy Angel of Mailànkh as an audio-book, by surfing to this URL at the Rakuten Kobo service! Angel of Mailànkh is a little over 17 hours long (as dictated) and is ideal for sci-fi and fantasy enthusiasts with a busy lifestyle... or (for example) for those who want to listen to a novel while driving on a road trip. Note : You can also order conventional e-book copies of Angel of Mailànkh, at the Kobo service. |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Angel Brings FireBook 2 :Doubt Me NotThe Destroying Angel,
Karéin-Mayréij, has crashed to Earth after a
near-fatal encounter with a Doomsday comet. She has
saved the planet from total destruction... but only at
a fearful cost, for the fall has left her dazed,
crippled and, most of all... alone.
Doubt Me Not describes the adventures of a now-humbled "Storied Watcher", as she learns how to survive in the paranoid, oppressive United States of the near future. But Karéin-Mayréij isn't the only one whose life has been forever changed by her appearance upon the face of the Earth... history will never be the same! |
| New For Autumn 2025! Doubt Me Not is available as an audio-book! You can now enjoy Doubt Me Not as an audio-book, by surfing to this URL at the Rakuten Kobo service! Doubt Me Not is about 23 hours long (as dictated) and is ideal for sci-fi and fantasy enthusiasts with a busy lifestyle... or (for example) for those who want to listen to a novel while cooking dinner for the family. Note : You can also order conventional e-book copies of Doubt Me Not, at the Kobo service. |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Angel Brings FireBook 3 :Angel and The EmpireHaving
saved the Sun's third planet from a Doomsday
comet, Karéin-Mayréij, the alien 'Storied
Watcher', finds herself in the declining,
undemocratic United States of 2040.
All's not going well : her new, adopted family has just been kidnapped by parties unknown, and the U.S. Air Force, among others, is trying to kill her. But Karéin-Mayréij isn't known as the 'Destroying Angel' for nothing, and the U.S. government is about to find out why. Her lethal supernatural abilities are returning, and her friends and family are starting to inherit super-human powers of their own. And the President of the future United States is about to learn the truth of the saying : "Never get on the bad side, of a fallen-angel." |
| New For Autumn 2025! Angel and The Empire is available as an audio-book! You can now enjoy Angel and The Empire as an audio-book, by surfing to this URL at the Rakuten Kobo service! Angel and The Empire is about 20 hours long (as dictated) and is ideal for sci-fi and fantasy enthusiasts with a busy lifestyle... or (for example) for those who want to listen to a novel while sewing a quilt or clothes. Note : You can also order conventional e-book copies of Angel and The Empire, at the Kobo service. |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Angel Brings FireBook 4 :Children of The FireThe fourth and final book of The Angel Brings Fire series!As her two adopted
"families" of friends and acquaintances fight an
unequal, last-ditch battle for survival, deep
underground in a distant, secret prison-facility,
Karéin-Mayréij travels across America, recruiting
a new group of super-human followers along the
way.
She's desperate to rescue both the Billings and Jacobson parties, but distractions (like street gangsters, rogue nuclear weapons, double-crossing Presidents and the U.S. Air Force) have a bad habit of getting in the way. Time's running out on all fronts... especially for the United States of 2040, which risks annihilation at the hands of an angry, guilt-ridden alien mother, who's searching for her adopted son! |
| New For Autumn 2025! Children of The Fire is available as an audio-book! You can now enjoy Children of The Fire as an audio-book, by surfing to this URL at the Rakuten Kobo service! Children of The Fire is about 20 hours long (as dictated) and is ideal for sci-fi and fantasy enthusiasts with a busy lifestyle... or (for example) for those who want to listen to a novel while mowing the lawn (using headphones, of course). Note : You can also order conventional e-book copies of Children of The Fire, at the Kobo service. |
| The Future
Burns Bright
(the second series of the narrative), picks up where The Angel Brings Fire,
left off : the undemocratic, authoritarian United
States of 2040 has the tables turned on it, as the
followers of an alien goddess, set out to teach the
government a thing or two about "antagonizing people
with superhuman powers"! Don't miss this exciting conclusion to the story of Karéin-Mayréij (the "Storied Watcher"), upon Planet Earth! |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Future Burns BrightBook 1 :Storm In The NorthThe desolate,
windswept Alaskan island of Amchitka is the scene
of a desperate and fateful conflict, as the
Storied Watcher – Karéin-Mayréij – and
her super-human followers, use their formidable
supernatural powers to resist and defeat the
murderous attacks of the U.S. government.
After the battle, the alien-girl and her coterie of fugitive “more-than-humans” gather in the woods of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Unbeknownst to the President, they are there to decide the long-term fate of the United States – not to mention, of the world itself. The subtle, semi-divine hand of Karéin-Mayréij is now well at work as two super-human teams, led by Minnie Chu and Sam Jacobson respectively, embark on competing quests… to save the United States of 2040, from itself. Who will prevail? |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Future Burns BrightBook 2 :The
Race
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 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Future Burns BrightBook 3 :Against TimeContinuing the
narrative from the last book in the series, Against
Time opens with the legitimate President of
the United States trying to wrest control of the
government from his corrupt, cruel former
Vice-President, who – along with the Director
of the CIA – is obsessed with murdering the
Storied Watcher (Karéin-Mayréij) and her “New
People”.
The sinister plans of these two conspirators appear to be succeeding, as they place the Sam Jacobson (“Mars Gang”) and Minnie Chu teams – along with their families and friends – in mortal jeopardy. And they aren’t the only ones thus endangered. The aircraft in which Chu travels, contains a nuclear weapon smuggled aboard by the fanatical “Brother” Harold Crowford, of the “Klan of Jesus Christ”; and yet another nuke has been launched by the Agency director – its bulls-eye set squarely on Karéin-Mayréij, who has finally returned to the United States to confront the President in the Oval Office. The lives of millions of innocent people in the Washington, D.C. region hang in the balance, as the Storied Watcher and her super-powered followers fight desperately for survival! |
 Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
The Future Burns BrightBook 4 :The
Future Alight
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| Cover illustration by Val Fullard (www.valfullard.com) |
Bonnie's
New Auntie
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| How to purchase these books
(and other interesting stuff) : The easiest way (by far) to order a copy of these books is simply to search for the author's name on Amazon. Amazon's search results are often somewhat inconsistent, but really all you need to do is to find one book authored by Marcus Shields (any one will do); after zeroing in on that one, subsequent searches will likely find the other books in the series. Be advised, Amazon has a rather odd way of managing "series" of books as well as "downstream distribution" (that is, to Amazon U.S. subsidiaries such as amazon.ca, amazon.uk and so on). It would take several books'-worth of prose to explain exactly how this works (or... doesn't...) but suffice it to say that not all content that is available from the Amazon "master" site in the United States, is always immediately available on the "downstream" sites. If you are trying to purchase a copy of one of the books in your local Amazon subsidiary site and they aren't showing up (or, more often, it looks as if one or more volumes is missing), please contact us by e-mail and we'll try to steer you in the right direction. Obtaining The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright in paperback format : If you want the paperback (hardcopy) version of any volume of either series of novels, you'll have to order it from Amazon, as (so far as we're aware) this is the only on-line distributor that can ship you a good old-fashioned paper version of the book. However, don't forget that you can always go in to a B&N and ask them to order a paperback copy to be delivered to the store, for your later purchase, since B&N is a downstream distributor for Amazon. Obtaining The Angel Brings Fire and The Future Burns Bright in e-Book format : The on-line POD publishers frequently change their searching methodologies and algorithms. We do try to keep on top of this and update the links provided below as necessary, but it is possible that one or more of these URLs may not work. If that happens please contact us and we'll investigate. With that said, users with e-Books have considerably more flexibility in terms of where you can buy the product.
Things to consider about ordering different versions of these e-Books :
Please
help me make this new model work, by paying for these
books, if you think they're worth reading!
Special notes regarding
e-Books downloaded from Apple's iTunes and Google Play
Store : It has come to our attention that
apparently (despite our clearly-stated requests to the
publishers involved), even though we have been very
careful not to enable DRM at any time during the e-Book
publishing process, Apple and Google have elected to
apply some type of DRM to e-Books downloaded from iTunes
and the Play Store.
The symptom is, when attempting to open the e-Book on anything other than an "approved" Apple device (e.g. an iPhone, iPad etc.), the user is confronted with an error message like "Locked With DRM, Cannot Open Book" (or words to that effect). With Google the situation isn't as clear but is likely to be annoying in a similar way. Needless to say, this is a very unwelcome development that we obviously had no hand in implementing, but we'll try to help sort it out if it happens to you. If you purchase one of our e-Books from iTunes or Google and want to use it in a way that Apple and Google, in their infinite wisdom, have elected not to "approve of", please send us an e-mail and we'll send you an "unlocked" (non-DRM'ed) version of the same e-Book. We apologize for this problem, which is unfortunately out of our control to completely resolve... all we can do is complain, which we're definitely doing! One other thing about iTunes : It has also been noted that the iTunes application is highly resource-intensive and it has a number of bugs that can make trying to access content, including but not limited to e-Books, quite challenging. In particular, some of our readers have repeatedly encountered a "Timeout Error" when trying to download copies of our e-Books, from iTunes. There is no single solution to this, but here are some suggestions : (1.) Upgrade to the latest version of iTunes (this worked for us); (2.) Upgrade your Microsoft Internet Explorer to IE11 or later; (3.) Disable any software firewalls on your PC while you're trying to download (please immediately re-enable the firewall when you're done) and (4.) Failing all the above, do a search for "iTunes time-out error" on Google; you will find more potential work-arounds, there.
Generally,
we have found that .MOBI (the Amazon format) and .EPUB
(the iTunes / Sony / Kobo format) are best at retaining
the look and feel of the original (paperback)
manuscript... so we'd recommend that you use one of
these two formats if your e-Reader can interpret them.
As
another example, the .PDF format does not generally
allow "on-the-fly" hyphenation, so the book may look
somewhat strange if you try to read it in this format
after setting very narrow right and left margins; also,
although the novel has been rendered to .PDF using a
pretty standard-looking Serif font, Acrobat Reader
isn't that good at font substitution (and is not very
flexible in allowing the user to pick a different body
typeface), so here again, "what you see is what you get,
whether or not you like it".
In a similar vein, while we have done our level best to make the Table of Contents work for all e-Book versions, due to differences in formats and implementation between different e-Readers, we cannot make any hard and fast guarantees. (Speaking of .PDFs and Tables of Content... one very odd thing that we have recently noticed is that the TOC of the .PDF versions of these books seems to render perfectly in some third-party .PDF readers, for example Evince under Linux... but it doesn't work at all in certain versions of Adobe's "standard" Acrobat Reader... we have no idea at all why this is!) The best way in which to deal with such issues is just to become familiar with the capabilities of your own e-Book reader... for example, if you don't like the default font size or typeface, most e-Readers will allow you to change this fairly easily.
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About the AuthorHaving been an avid
consumer (and part-time supplier) of science fiction
and fantasy content is nothing new to Marcus
Shields, who has been partaking thereof since he was
old enough to read (modesty precludes the author
from revealing exactly how long ago, that
was).
Shields is responsible for a large number of creative works, including the Shakhan series of pen and paper fantasy role-playing games. And, of course, he's the author of the Angel Brings Fire, Future Burns Bright and Bonnie's New Auntie series of science fiction / modern fantasy / superhero novels. Marcus Shields resides in beautiful Ontario Cottage Country, where he shares a comfortable home with his wife, daughter and the memory of a beloved but now departed, puppy dog. If you want to comment about The Angel Brings Fire or just want to contact Marcus Shields, this is the e-mail link to use. |
