Joe Ledger fans rejoice! Ledger returns with more dynamic adventures with his friends in the industry. 16 adventures edited by Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt.
Joe Unbreakable presents 15 all new stories and a bonus reprint by New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry starring Joe Ledger, Top, Bunny, Lydia, Church, and all your favorites from the Department of Military Sciences and Rogue Team International. Powerful edge-of-your-seat adventures by Kevin J. Anderson, John G. Hartness, Scott Sigler, Dana Fredsti, Wayne Brady & Maurice Broaddus, Tori Eldridge, Kevin Ikenberry, Heather Graham, Ray Porter, Kat Richardson, Keith R. A. DeCandido, Marie Whittaker, Bryan Thomas Schmidt, Peter Clines, and Maberry himself. Includes a brand new interview about the evolution of Ledger with Jonathan Maberry and Ray Porter (the voice of Joe Ledger).
From his early days as a Baltimore cop to his time with the Department of Military Sciences and then more recently leading Rogue Team International, these stories cover the range of the Ledger timeline bringing back old favorites and introducing new ones. The stakes are as high as ever, and Joe Ledger is there to save the day!
Contents:
Surf's Up Kevin J. Anderson
The Side of Angels A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter/Joe Ledger Adventure John G. Hartness
Little Murder Machine Scott Sigler
Busman's Holiday A Spawn of Lilith/Joe Ledger Adventure Dana Fredsti
Top of the Morning A Naz Scott/Top Sims Adventure Wayne Brady & Maurice Broaddus
Ninja Echo Charlie Mike A Lily Wong & Echo Team Adventure Tori Eldridge
True Friends Kevin Ikenberry
Ghost of a Chance A Krewe of Hunters/Joe Ledger Adventure Heather Graham
Bug Hunt Jonathan Maberry
A Long Ride off a Short Track Ray Porter
Chasing Chimera Kat Richardson
Another Dead Body on the Corner Keith R.A. DeCandido
Pretty Girls A Tommy & Arklight Adventure Marie Whittaker
Dogwatch A John Simon/Joe Ledger Adventure Bryan Thomas Schmidt
Crossover Story A Threshold/Joe Ledger Adventure Peter Clines
JONATHAN MABERRY is a NYTimes bestselling author, #1 Audible bestseller, 5-time Bram Stoker Award-winner, 4-time Scribe Award winner, Inkpot Award winner, comic book writer, and producer. He is the author of more than 50 novels, 190 short stories, 16 short story collections, 30 graphic novels, 14 nonfiction books, and has edited 26 anthologies. His vampire apocalypse book series, V-WARS, was a Netflix original series starring Ian Somerhalder. His 2009-10 run as writer on the Black Panther comic formed a large chunk of the recent blockbuster film, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. His bestselling YA zombie series, Rot & Ruin is in development for film at Alcon Entertainment; and John Wick director, Chad Stahelski, is developing Jonathan’s Joe Ledger Thrillers for TV. Jonathan writes in multiple genres including suspense, thriller, horror, science fiction, epic fantasy, and action; and he writes for adults, teens and middle grade. His works include The Pine Deep Trilogy, The Kagen the Damned Trilogy, NecroTek, Ink, Glimpse, the Rot & Ruin series, the Dead of Night series, The Wolfman, X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate, The Sleepers War (with Weston Ochse), Mars One, and many others. He is the editor of high-profile anthologies including Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird, The X-Files, Aliens: Bug Hunt, Out of Tune, Don’t Turn out the Lights: A Tribute to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Baker Street Irregulars, Nights of the Living Dead, Shadows & Verse, and others. His comics include Marvel Zombies Return, The Punisher: Naked Kills, Wolverine: Ghosts, Godzilla vs Cthulhu: Death May Die, Bad Blood and many others. Jonathan has written in many popular licensed worlds, including Hellboy, True Blood, The Wolfman, John Carter of Mars, Sherlock Holmes, C.H.U.D., Diablo IV, Deadlands, World of Warcraft, Planet of the Apes, Aliens, Predator, Karl Kolchak, and many others. He the president of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, and the editor of Weird Tales Magazine. He lives in San Diego, California. Find him online at www.jonathanmaberry.com
Simply OUTSTANDING!! I loved hearing short stories about Joe Ledger (and team) in crossover settings from some of my (other) favorite authors. And if that wasn’t enough, the voice of Joe Ledger — Ray Porter — authored one of the stories. Brilliantly. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Listened to the audiobook narrated by Ray Porter. Overall, the stories are 3ish stars. Ray adds his 5 stars for an average of 4 for the book of Joe Ledger stories. He is the voice of Joe and crew and I'm certain that helped some of the weaker stories.
That said, I need more of Peter Clines and Jonathan Maberry crossover stuff, please. Veek and Bunny together was fun.
Unbreakable is an amazing collection of short stories. It is such a brilliant idea. My favorite author, Jonathan Maberry, and some other well known authors, contributed short stories featuring Maberry's characters from his Joe Ledger series. Some were cross over stories and some featured only the Ledger characters. All the stories are great. This is the second collection like this and the first collection, Unstoppable, was equally exciting.
I really liked 'Little Murder Machine' but Scott Sigler. This story is told from the POV of Cobbler, Joe Ledger's 17lb cat. The Perfect size for a cat, BTW. The story is of how Cobbler protects Ghost, Ledger's combat dog, and the apartment building when Ledger isn't home.
I was also very excited to see the collection featured a story written by Ray Porter (he also writes??!!! 😀) was my first thought. He is an actor and has also been the audio book narrator of the Joe Ledger series since book one. So I was especially excited to read the story about Joe Ledger, written by the man who has been Joe Ledger for 13 books +. When I am reading the print copies of the books I 'hear' his voice.
This is such great way to meet, new to me, authors. I'm already well into the stories of Quincy Harker now, because of the story in this collection featuring him with Ledger. I had not heard of the author, John G Hartness before this collection.
The interview of Jonathan Maberry and Ray Porter is worth the read too. I do like the behind the scenes peek a great interview, like this one, gives you.
What a wonderful compilation of short stories from the Joe Ledger universe, all written by authors who are NOT Jonathan Maberry.
It was a fun peek into an already established and amazing world done all by different authors - giving the readers some new and interesting stories from some very different viewpoints.
There were 15 new stories and one story that was a "bonus" reprint that WAS written by Mr. Maberry. So there were 16 short stories in all.
I, of course, listened to the audio version of this which was expertly performed by one of my favorite narrators - Ray Porter. As usual, he completely knocked it out of the park and to my surprise, one of these stories was even written by him.
To top things off, at the end of the book, there is even a bonus interview between Mr. Maberry and Mr. Porter that gives us some insight on how Mr. Maberry came up with the character of Joe Ledger and how he evolved into the character he is today. If you are a fan of this series, you will definitely enjoy this anthology.
Book itself is really pretty. Think my favorite story is Little Murder Machine by Scott Sigler, about Joe's cat, Cobbler. Always nice to see some "old friends", so enjoyed the Dana Fredsti's story, "Busman's Holiday". Couple of other authors that I am not familiar with their series, but enjoyed the crossover with Joe enough to put them on my list to check out.
Another excellent collection of stories from the Ledger-verse. No duds, but some were better than others, of course. The standouts for me were Scott Sigler's very funny story about Cobbler, Peter Clines's Threshold crossover, Ray Porter's heartbreaking Church story, and, of course Maberry's own. Great little interview finishes off a fantastic volume.
Probably the weakest collection of stories from the Joe Ledger universe, but the stories do, for the most part, improve the deeper the reader gets into the book.
The first few stories are...well, they go from ridiculous (Ledger's cat and "dumb dog") to the utterly preachy (Wayne Brady is a brilliant comedian, but the story in here was like being yelled at for twenty minutes).
Here's the thing...I come to a Maberry book because Maberry writes with a certain quality. If he's getting a point across, he's never preachy, and he recognizes the grey between the black and white. He also never gets ridiculous. He says in the interview at the end that he'll use "nine truths to sell one lie" and he's not exaggerating. So, there's a quality to a Maberry story, evident in the two he pens for this collection, that virtually no other author can replicate.
Which is fine. Every author has their own style, as they should. So, this collection has authors who often seem to use their own style, but hybrid it into some sort of "writing in the style of Jonathan Maberry" and it mostly doesn't work, or they stick to their own style which has no place in the carefully crafted universe Maberry's created.
If there's one more story that grabbed me, it was, surprisingly, the one by narrator Ray Porter. It comes the closest to capturing the emotional tone of the Ledger novels.
I know there's likely two big reasons to put together a collection like this. The first is, Maberry gets to let other authors play in his sandbox, which is fine, why not? The second, unspoken reason, I'm sure, is to entice readers over to those other authors' works.
Of all the authors presented here, there's truly only one that grabbed me enough to consider looking at his books, and that's Peter Cline.
The rest? Nah.
A mostly unnecessary addition to the Maberry universe.
Great collection. As always, Ray Porter crushes the audible version. The story Little Murder Machine is worth the price alone. On top of that, there's a Joe Ledger/Monk Addison story. Great stuff. Now we need a Monk book like this. All those tattoos, imagine all the short stories. And Ray Porter is a must.
Good not as great as the character is normally treated. Some of the authors were too green to play in the sandbox they were stumbling about. Lack of research. Time inconsistencies. The Mayberry Monk story really was a stand out. A few stories were very Barry Eisler with the child trafficking stuff
'Little Murder Machine' buy Scott Sigler was my favorite story of this anthology. Cobbler is such a great character! The other standouts are from Maberry himself and Peter Clines as I love 14; book 1 of the Threshold Series (skip book 3 as it is dreadful to say the least).
If you are a fan of the Joe Ledger series, this is a fun book. Shorts about Joe or other characters set in the world, all by different authors. Some of these will break your heart, some will have you laughing and some will scare you, but all of them are great reading!
I love Joe Ledger, and I love even more when Maberry lets other authors play in his sand box. A great series of stories, and as always, fantastically narrated by Ray Porter.
Get ready to experience sixteen amazing new anthologies written by some of the best horror writers around.
These stories include both old and new friends and cover the whole gambit of Ledger's career to date. We get new insights into Joe's beginnings as a Baltimore cop, his time with the Department of Military Sciences, and up through his present gig, guiding the newly formed Rogue Team International.
True to form, narrator Ray Porter gives a stellar performance as the voice for all of the characters. In addition, we are treated to an exciting anthology he personally wrote. Porter's talents never cease to amaze.
Highly recommend Unbreakable to any and all Joe Ledger fans.