Bartering their expertise to a nautical band of brilliant technomads, Ryan Cawdor's group find themselves stranded by merciless storms and pirates in Haven, in the steaming, fetid swamps of the Louisiana Gulf. With the gravely injured Krysty Wroth's fate uncertain, Ryan is desperate to save Haven from a genetic blood curse.

A year has passed since the catastrophic event known as "Daybreak" began, 9 months since Daybreak killed seven billion people, 8 months since Daybreak vaporized Washington, 6 months since rival governments emerged in Athens, GA and Olympia, WA, 4 months since the two governments of what was formerly the United States went to the brink of war, 3 months since war was (barely) avoided, 2 months since Athens and Olympia agreed to work together, 1 month since they discovered that Daybreak isn't over...

Anne de Vernase rejoices that she has no talent for magic. But she is dismayed to learn the king intends to barter her hand in marriage. Anne recognizes that the summoning carries implications far beyond her bleak future. And a murder in the queen's inner circle convinces Anne that her young sister's magical death wasn't accidental. With no one to trust, Anne must take on her sister's legacy to discover the truth - thrusting herself into a centuries-old struggle that could forever alter the boundaries of magic, nature, and the divine.

Consumed with despair, the blind necromancer Dante seeks refuge in a magical puzzle-a puzzle that supposedly fulfills one's utmost desires. But its actually a seductive trap, threatening to unleash the very cataclysm he fears...

Joe Sunday has been a Los Angeles low-life for years, but his life gets a whole lot lower when he is killed by the rival of his crime boss, only to return as a zombie. His only hope is to find and steal a talisman that he learns can grant immortality. But, unfortunately for Joe, every other undead thug and crime boss in Los Angeles is looking for the same thing.

University astronomer Dr. Jake Ross has been recruited to be the science advisor to an ambitious politician with his eye on the U.S. Senate. The key is MHD, or magnetohydrodynamics, a new innovation that will allow electricity to be generated efficiently and cheaply. But MHD is still in its infancy, and there are great - and deadly - risks. Moreover, the incumbent senator will not give up his seat without a fight. Nothing has prepared Dr. Ross for the extreme tactics that desperate and powerful people are willing to use.

Bean has fled to the stars with three of his children - the three who share the engineered genes that gave him both hyper-intelligence and a short, cruel physical life. But the Delphikis are about to encounter a derelict Formic colony ship. Aboard it, they will find both death and wonders - the life support that is failing on their own ship, room to grow, and labs in which to explore their own genetic anomaly and the mysterious disease that killed the ship's colony.

It was the last great science hero fight, but the energy blast ripped a hole in reality, and birthed the Empire State - a young, twisted parallel prohibition-era New York. When the rift starts to close, both worlds are threatened, and both must fight for the right to exist.

Two HAMMER'S SLAMMERS novels in one volume: CROSS THE STARS and VOYAGE.

Born in California during the twilight years of a weary millennium, nine-year-old Joby Peterson has been subjected to a life of crippling self-doubt and relentless mediocrity inflicted by an enemy he did nothing to earn and cannot begin to comprehend. Though imperiled themselves, the angels are forbidden to intervene. And so when he is grown to manhood, Joby's once luminous love of life seems altogether lost, and Lucifer's victory assured.

The newest in the anthology of the fun stuff that fills in the pieces of the Ring of Fire political, social and cultural puzzle: the supporting characters we meet in the novels get their own lives, loves and life-changing stories.

It's a big Spiral Arm, and the scarred man, Donavan buigh, has gone missing in it, upsetting the harper Mearana's plans for a reconciliation between her parents. Bridget ban, a Hound of the League, doubts that reconciliation is possible or desirable; but nonetheless has dispatched agents to investigate the disappearance. The powerful Ravn Olafsdottr, a Shadow of the Names, slips into Clanthompson Hall to tell mother and daughter of the fate of Donovan buigh.

Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the 'Arkangel' races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out what is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of? What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them? Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men? And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself?

The world is falling apart. The magical apocalypse has come. Now is the time to guard the covenstead against both raiders and refugees. But Max has been stolen by a powerful demi-god who is determined to force her to find a way to use a magical power she never knew she had - even if it kills her. Meanwhile, back in Horngate, a Fury is birthing. When the creature breaks free of the fragile bonds that enclose her, her rage will scour the covenstead from the earth.

An ancient sorcerer slaughters the rightful King of Yaskatha before the unbelieving eyes of his son, young Prince D'zan. With the Giant-King lost to a mysterious doom, it seems that no one has the power to stop the coming storm. It is an Age of War. The fugitive Prince seeks allies across the realms of Men and Giants to liberate his father's stolen kingdom. Six foreign Princes are tied to his fate. Only one thing is certain: War is coming.

Essays and articles never before collected by the author of NEUROMANCER. Many were written for widely varying publications including 'Rolling Stone', 'The New York Times Magazine', and 'Wired', while others have never appeared in print at all.

John Taylor is a P.I. with a special talent for finding lost things in the dark and secret centre of London known as the Nightside. He's also the reluctant owner of a very special-and dangerous-weapon, Excalibur, the legendary sword. To find out why he was chosen to wield it, John must consult the Last Defenders of Camelot, a group of knights who dwell in a place that some find more frightening than the Nightside. London Proper. It's been years since John's been back-and there are good reasons for that.

John Taylor is marrying the love of his life, Suzie Shooter, the Nightside's most fearsome bounty hunter. But before he can walk down the aisle he has one more case to solve as a private eye - a case that has him on the run from friends and enemies both, with his bride-to-be looking to collect the bounty on his head.

Deep in the stacks of Oxford's Bodleian Library, young scholar Diana Bishop unwittingly calls up a bewitched alchemical manuscript in the course of her research. Descended from an old and distinguished line of witches, Diana wants nothing to do with sorcery, so after a furtive glance and a few notes, she banishes the book to the stacks. But Diana has stumbled upon a coveted treasure lost for centuries-and she is the only creature who can break its spell.

Young journeyor Wynn Hygeorht sets out with her companions, the vampire Chane Andraso and Shade, an elven wolf, in search of a dwarven stronghold that may well be the last resting place of a mythical orb - one of five such mysterious devices from the war of Forgotten History. And now, a direct descendant of that war's infamous mass murderer - the Lord of Slaughter - is tracking Wynn. If only that were all she had to worry about.

Magiere and Leesil must rescue Wynn Hygeort from her captivity in the Guild of Sagecraft. But Wynn doesn't want to give up access to the ancient scrolls that may help them locate the last of the magical Orbs coveted by the Ancient Enemy.

It is eighty-three years after the last of the thinking machines were destroyed in the Battle of Corrin, after Faykan Butler took the name of Corrino and established himself as the first Emperor of a new Imperium. These are the times that see the beginnings of the Bene Gesserits, the Navigators, the Mentats -- and the Butlerian movement.

1863, the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, believes that by using the three stones, Eyes of Naga, he will manipulate events and avoid a world war. He has two stones, but the third stone is hidden somewhere in the Mountains of the Moon. Palmerston sends Sir Richard Francis Burton to recover it. Burton realizes that the stakes are far higher than even he suspects. The final confrontation takes place in the Mountains of the Moon where he faces Spring Heeled Jack.

Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her strange rescuer claims he is on the run himself from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals. Purity doubts his story until she hears reports of the terrible Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweeping all before them.

The vampires of Ashville, North Carolina, want to establish their own clan, but since they owe loyalty to the Master Vampire of New Orleans they must work out the terms with him. To come up with a solution, he sends an envoy with the best bodyguard blood money can buy: Jane Yellowrock. But when a group of local campers are attacked by something fanged, Jane goes from escort to investigator. Unless she want to face a very angry master vampire, she will have to work overtime to find the killer. It's a good thing she's worth every penny.

Zoe and Jack are caught in an avalanche during a skiing holiday in the French Pyrenees. They struggle back to the village only to find it deserted. As the days go by they wait for rescue, then try to leave. But each time they find themselves back in the village, with the entire resort to themselves. Then come the visions and the dreams and the glimpses of familiar figures out in the snow. And the realization that perhaps no-one could have survived the avalanche.

The Pendleton was built as a Gilded Age palace, a tycoon's dream home in the late 1800s as a tycoon's dream home. Almost from the beginning, its grandeur has been scarred by episodes of madness, suicide, mass murder, and whispers of things far worse. But since its rechristening in the 1970s as a luxury apartment building, the Pendleton has been at peace. But now inexplicable shadows caper across walls, security cameras relay impossible images, phantom voices mutter in strange tongues, not-quite-human figures lurk in the basement, elevators plunge into unknown depths.

Suddenly, all world governments were simultaneously attacked by soldiers in giant mecha robotic suits with the swastika symbol of the Third Reich on their metal arms. If these were Nazis, where had they been hiding since the end of World War II? And where had they gotten armor and weapons far in advance of anything on the planet? Weapons against which even the metahuman heroes seemed to be helpless . . .

When the bond Maxine Kiss shares with the demons tattooed on her skin is deliberately severed, the demon hunter is left vulnerable and unprotected. For the first time in ten thousand years, the demons have a taste of freedom. And as the little demons grow more violent and unpredictable, Maxine starts to fear they will lose their minds without her. Reuniting won't be easy, since a greater temptation waits for these hellions: a chance to return to their lives as Reaper Kings, and unleash hell on Earth.

Jane Navio is the resource manager of an asteroid colony. A mishap has dumped megatons of water and methane out the colony's air lock, putting the entire human population at risk. Jane discovers that the crisis may have been engineered by the Martian crime syndicate, as a means of executing a coup that will turn the colokny into a client-state. And if that wasn't bad enough, an AI that spawned during the emergency has gone rogue...and there's a giant x-factor in the form of the transhumanist Viridian cult that lives in the colony's bowels.

Thief and con man Locke Lamora must live with the past in order to survive the day - the Bonds Magi who he crossed in THE LIES OF LOCKE LAMORA are out to exact revenge, and Locke must also counter his first love, a woman who needs him dead. A heady mix of high adventure and low subterfuge, and dark magic.

Baron Jassion, Rebaine's old nemesis, is hunting him once more, aided by a mysterious sorcerer named Kaleb, whose powers and secrets make him a more dangerous enemy than Rebaine has ever known. Even worse, accompanying them is a young woman who hates Corvis Rebaine perhaps more than anyone else, his own daughter, Mellorin. Suddenly Rebaine seems to have no choice. To clear his name, to protect his country, and to reconcile with his family, he must once again become the Terror of the East.

Chester and Jubal stumble right into the middle of things, in the process uncovering the lost secrets of the Mauan civilization. But that's not all they uncover. In the forgotten catacombs deep below the Mauan capital, something has awakened. Something as old as the universe. Something that hungers to devour all light and life--and that bears an undying hatred for cats.

For once, Genny's life seems quiet. Her sexy boss isn't pushing for a decision on their relationship, and the witches have declared that she is no longer a threat. But when a teenaged faeling is fished out of the River Thames and another disappears, Genny finds herself in a race to stop a curse from taking its next victim.

Kat Redding is the very thing she hunts--a vampire, thirsting for blood, capable of killing any creature unlucky enough to get in her path. The difference is, Kat kills her own kind in order to protect human Purebloods. But now a vampire Count is intent on merging his House with a werewolf cult to create a force of terrifying power, and Kat cannot allow that to happen. Even if it means taking on a den of weres and a vampire more ruthless than any she has encountered before.

Each curse that Amber Sarga breaks ages her. Then Rafe Davail arrives. He doesn't believe in curses, even though he knows that in his family every first son dies young. Amber won't break the curse, but as she grows closer to Rafe, she wonders if, this time, for this man, she should risk it all.

Welcome to Paris, 1633, where dragons menace the realm. Cardinal Richelieu, the most feared and powerful man in France, is on his guard. He knows that France is under threat and that a secret society known as the Black Claw is conspiring against him from the heart of the greatest courts in Europe. They strike from the shadows, and each blow is both terrible and deadly.

Pompeii, two millenia after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, is a popular theme park eagerly awaiting the celebration of the big anniversary. But Vesuvius can still erupt, and even more worrisome are the terrorists who wish to draw attention to their cause.

Jean le Flambeur, post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist and trickster, made one mistake and was condemned to play endless variations of a game-theoretic riddle in the vast virtual jail of the Axelrod Archons - the Dilemma Prison - against countless copies of himself. Then Mieli and her spidership arrive and offer Jean a chance to win back his freedom and the powers of his old self in exchange for finishing the one heist he never quite managed.

150 years hence: Geoffrey Akinya wants only to continue his studies into the elephants of the Amboseli basin. But after the death of Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur, something awkward has come to light on the Moon, and Geoffrey is tasked - well, blackmailed, really - to go up there and make sure the family's name stays suitably unblemished.

Toby O'Dare, former government assassin, is summoned by the angel Malciah to 15th century Rome to solve a terrible crime of poisoning and to uncover the secrets of an earthbound restless spirit, a diabolical dybbuk.

The homicide beat in Lousiana isn't just terrifying, it's demonic. Detective Kara Gilligan of the supernatural task force has the ability to summon demons to her aid, but she herself is pledged to serve a demonic lord...in every way he desires. And now, people who've hurt Kara in the past are dying from what appear to be strokes. To clear her name and save both the demon and human worlds, she's in a race against the clock and in a battle for her life that just may take her to hell and back.

Boss is searching for ancient technology to help her friends and find answers to the mystery of her past. Boss's most difficult friend, Squishy, needs help. Boss, who is a fugitive in the Empire, knows how to make a Dignity vessel work. Boss knows that the Dignity Vessels house the very technology that the Empire is searching for. Should Boss help Squishy, or should she continue on her mission for other friends?

Saberhagen's alternate universe MASK OF THE SUN, along with stories that expand on Saberhagen's concept from David Weber and Harry Turtledove, as well as Walter Jon Williams, John Maddox Roberts, Jane Lindskold.

The Emperor Claudius is in danger. The Praetorian Guard has been infiltrated by traitors. Macro and Cato are summoned to Rome by Narcissus where they are placed undercover in the Guard to uncover the plot.

Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex-other things, runs the best brothel in Scalentine; city of many portals, two moons, and a wide variety of races, were-creatures, and religions, not to mention the occasional insane warlock. But it's tax time, so when the mysterious Darask Fain offers her a job finding a missing girl, Babylon decides to take it. But the missing girl is not what she seems, and neither is Darask Fain.

Twenty-year-old Russ arrives in the northern California town of Freedom to visit his dad. Freedom has peculiarities other than its odd name. The local mayor's ideas of "decentralization" have left it without normal connections to state or federal government and minimal public services. Russ meets an interesting young woman, Pendra, but before he can get to know much about Freedom or its people, a savage tsunami strikes the West Coast. The wave of human brutality that soon hits the isolated town proves more dangerous to the survivors than the natural disaster.

An asteroid storm has obliterated the Earth. Billy and Linda West have built enough space-going arks to save a small number of people who now roam the void in search of a new home. Desperate to find a safe haven, Billy makes a dangerous attempt to exceed the speed of light. When his plans go terribly wrong, the Wests' severely-damaged ship is separated from the fleet and left drifting near a mysterious planet. This world's conditions are hospitable - but its inhabitants are not.

When Jessie Shimmer traveled to a nightmare underworld to save her lover, Cooper Marron, she gained magical powers . . . which soon seemed more like curses. Her beloved familiar, the ferret Pal, became a monster. Her enemies multiplied like demons. Worst of all, she hasn't found a moment of peace to be with the man she adores. Now a switchblade-wielding demigoddess commanding a private hell stocked with suffering innocents is after her. The blademistress' vengeance sends Jessie and Pal on a dark journey through strange, perilous realms.

All of Steele's NEAR SPACE stories. This massive collection is back in print - complete with a new introduction, five additional stories, and a revised timeline.Includes the Hugo Award-winning novella "The Death of Captain Future" and the Hugo Award-winning novelette "The Emperor of Mars.

Notorious con-men Darger and Surplus have lied and cheated their way onto the caravan that is delivering a priceless gift from the Caliph of Baghdad to the Duke of Muscovy. The only thing harder than the journey to Muscovy is their arrival in Muscovy. An audience with the Duke seems impossible to obtain, and Darger and Surplus quickly become entangled in a morass of deceit and revolution. The only thing more dangerous than the convoluted political web surrounding Darger and Surplus is the gift itself, the Pearls of Byzantium, and Zoesophia, the governess sworn to protect their virtue.

Colin has become a master of the five magics, and has gifted the human, Dwarren, and Alvritshai races with magical protective Trees. But the power of the dark spirits is spreading despite this. Can Colin unite the races against this menace and prevent their enemy from taking complete control of the land's magic?

While NASA stages a fiftieth anniversary return to the Moon, a gritty private company puts together its own moonshot, complete with space tourists in tow. Across the globe, the Chinese are determined to arrive first this time. What's more, they'll do whatever it takes to win - including stealing every bit of American technology they can pilfer and hack. But just as politics and spectacle threaten to overshadow real accomplishment yet again, something goes horribly wrong on the lunar surface. Now the front-line troops, the astronauts themselves, must put aside the squabbles of others and take fate into their own hands.

After her half-mad mother tried to bend spirits to dark ends, Morwena was forced to confront her in a magical battle that left her crippled - and her twin sister dead. Fleeing to her father whom she barely knew, Mori was sent to boarding school in England - a place all but devoid of true magic. There, outcast and alone, she tempted fate by doing magic herself, in an attempt to find a circle of like-minded friends. But her magic also drew the attention of her mother, bringing about a reckoning that could no longer be put off.

When a string of sadistic murders threatens to stall treaty negotiations between the mages and the vampires, Sabina Kane pitches in to find the killer. But her investigation soon leads her down dark paths that have her questioning everyone she thought she could trust. And the closer she gets to the killer, the more Sabina begins to suspect this is one foe she may not be able to kill.

Once Jewel was an orphan, struggling to survive in the slums of the realm until she was rescued by Rath and sent to live at House Terafin - the most powerful of the ruling Houses in the Essalieyan Empire. But as Jewel finds her place within the House, she becomes crucial to the Empire's survival in the demonic war that's about to begin.

At long last, Jewel is preparing to announce her candidacy to become the next Terafin and claim the House Seat. But it is a decision that has her targeted by demons who will stop at nothing to destroy Jewel and her allies as the House War begins.

The monstrous Rust Warriors are back! In a land struggling to cope with the onset of the fatal bone flu, street-nick Tom and Kat - the leader of the Tattooed Men - must find a way to despatch both threats. Meanwhile, the Soul Thief is still at large, and still killing.

Novelette. Theater legend Claire Havilland fears she might be entering the Sunset Boulevard phase of her career. That is, until her manager arranges a media appearance with her biggest fan--a famous artificial intelligence pioneer's teenage niece. After precocious Emily's backstage visit, Claire decides she's in a different classic film altogether. While unnaturally charming Emily swears she harbors no desire for the spotlight, Claire wonders if she hasn't met her very own Eve Harrington from All About Eve.

A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person - while Skip is in his forties. They go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage, but it rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom.

The Troft invasions of Qasama and the Cobra Worlds has had at least one result: it has turned long-time antagonists into uneasy and unwilling allies. As the aliens battle to consolidate their conquered territories, a small group of Cobras and Qasaman Djinn work together to create a victory that will rock the invaders to the core, a victory designed to bring other Troft demesnes into the conflict on the humans' side. Now one young Cobra must forge a new political order as a devastating alien enemy strikes - an enemy more deadly than any humanity has ever faced.

The Cresent Moon Kingdoms are populated by Djenn and Ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, Khalifs and killers, opulent wealth and grinding poverty. The city of Dhamsawaat has reached the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron-fisted Khalif and a mysterious Robin Hood figure known as the Falcon Prince. Three heroes are drawn together by a series of brutal supernatural massacres. The companions soon learn that the magical murders and political upheaval are connected, and they race against time to unravel a sorcerous plat that threatens to turn the city, and the world itself, into a flaming, bloody ruin.

The headquarters of the Cerebrus rebels is destroyed and archivist Brigid Baptiste has been lost to the enemy. Now, as Kane succumbs to incapacitating hallucinations, Brigid's dark avatar lays siege to a special child who is the link to a ghastly pantheon of despotic rule.

In a world of ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies, Pressia has reached the age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets. So she is on the run. And inside the Dome, where the Pures dwell, young Partridge discovers that his mother might be still alive and risks his life to leave the Dome. When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

As a lawyer, Mallory Caine considers it her duty to defend the innocent. As a flesh-eating zombie, she know how to take a bite out of crime. So when a scared ten-year-old boy asks for her help - claiming that his mother wants to eat him - Mallory rises to the occasion. Unfortunately, the occasion is a Satanic ritual, the mom is a monster, and the boy is a sacrifice. As if she doesn't have enough on her plate, the brain-chomping lawyer has to defend her zombie-hunting father in court. And her flesh-eating secret is about to be exposed by a sexy LAPD detective who is good enough to eat.

George Carole ran away from home to join the Vaudeville circuit. Sixteen years old, uncommonly gifted at the piano, he falls in with a strange troupe - even for Vaudeville. Under the watchful eye of the enigmatic figure of Silenus, George comes to realize that the members of the troupe are more than they appear to be. And their travels have a purpose that runs deeper than entertainment. George must uncover the mysteries of Silenus's Company before it is too late.

In the Lancashire town of Kempforth, people are vanishing. Mist hangs heavy in the streets, and in those mists move the "masked figures" the local kids call the Spindly Men. When two year old Roseanne Trevor disappears, Detective Chief Inspector Renwick vows to stop at nothing until she finds her. In Manchester, terrifying visions summon TV psychic Allen Cowell and his sister Vera back to the town they swore they'd left forever. And local historian Anna Mason pieces together a history of cruelty and exploitation almost beyond belief, born out of the horrors of war - while in the decaying corridors and lightless rooms of a long-abandoned hospital, something terrible is waiting for them all.

Car mechanic Mercy Thompson has always known there was something different about her, and not just the way she can make a VW engine sit up and beg. Mercy is a shapeshifter, a talent she inherited from her long-gone father. She's never known any others of her kind. Until now. An evil is stirring in the depths of the Columbia River-one that her father's people may know something about. And to have any hope of surviving, Mercy and her mate, the Alpha werewolf Adam, will need their help.

Once a simple student, Karigan G'ladheon finds herself in a world of deadly danger and complex magic, compelled by forces she cannot understand when she becomes a legendary Green Rider - one of the magical messengers of the king. Forced by magic to accept a dangerous fate she would never have chosen, headstrong Karigan has become completely devoted to the king and her fellow Riders. But now, an insurrection led by dark magicians threatens to break the boundaries of ancient, evil Blackveil Forest - releasing powerful dark magics that have been shut away for a millennium.

For millennia, Cassiel was a powerful Djinn, until she was exiled to live among mortals. With the threat of an apocalypse looming, Cassiel finds herself fighting those she once called her own. With Weather Warden Luis Rocha and the rescued child Ibby by her side, Cassiel struggles to come to terms with the leadership role she never asked for, as she tries to stop a rival Djinn from starting a war that will wipe all of humanity from the face of the earth.

Lieutenant Oscar Britton of the Supernatural Operations Corps has been trained to hunt down and take out people possessing magical powers. But when he starts manifesting powers of his own, the SOC revokes Oscar's government agent status to declare him public enemy number one.

Includes the 4th, 5th, and 6th novels (OLD TIN SORROWS, DREAD BRASS SHADOWS & RED IRON NIGHTS) in the Garrett, P.I. urban fantasy series.

Alien Commander Arid Ricimer attempts to defect to Earth with his officers and an entire spaceship, a vessel that mounts a superweapon of almost unimaginable power. Hot on his heels is his former fleet, a force that has already devastated Earth once, and is poised to wipe humanity from existence forever, ready to do almost anything to deny Earth a chance. To the defenders of Earth he is an enigma - and potentially a Trojan horse.

Omnibus containing the FRED THE MERMAID trilogy: SLEEPING WITH THE FISHES, SWIMMING WITHOUT A NET, and FISH OUT OF WATER. A gorgeous but cranky mermaid is torn between her love for a landlocked marine biologist and her duty to an underwater prince.

Prince Jehal's lover, Zafir, now sits atop the Realms with hundreds of dragons and their riders at her beck and call. Yet Jehal wants the glory of commanding the earth and sky for himself, no matter whom he must sacrifice to get it. But Jehal may not need to act at all when Zafir puts the old queen on trial for treason, angering those loyal to the former regime. And their discontent is fed by rumors of the return of the Red Riders, heralds of revolution and doom. Jehal doesn't fear prophecies, but he does fear that the white dragon still lives - and if that is so, then blood will flow on all sides.

Connor Grey is a druid consultant for the Boston PD on their "strange" cases. So his world is turned upside down when he suddenly finds that he himself has become one. Wrongly accused of a terrorist attack that rocked the city to its core, Connor evades arrest by going underground, where rumors of war are roiling. A final confrontation between the Celtic and Teutonic fey looks inevitable - with Boston as the battlefield.

The Hierarchy, high priests of the religious order the Light, has installed King Ethan as the monarchical figurehead, ruling both the magical kingdom of Albi and its predominant religion. Scattered throughout the land, worshippers in the old ways of the Earth Mother are persecuted as heretics. And when young missionary student Rollo Woodbridge returns home to Albi, he is immediately arrested for heresy and treason, setting off a chain of events that plunges the land into utter chaos.

One of the surviving children of a royal dynasty, Queen Corinn bestrides the world as a result of her mastery of spells found in the ancient Book of Elenet. Her younger brother, Dariel, has been sent on a mission to the Other Lands, while her sister, Mena, travels to the far north to confront an invasion of the feared race of the Auldek. Their separate trajectories will converge in a series of world-shaping, earth-shattering battles.

Max August, unaging since his studies with the legendary alchemist Cornelius Agrippa, employs his powers against a right-wing cabal. When he learns that two of the nine members of the cabal are en route to Wickr, a Burning Man-like festival held in the American Southwest, he tries to turn one of them against the others. But his plan fails and the cabal stages a nuclear accident as a lesson.

Overnight, the greater Los Angeles area found itself in the horrifying grasp of a werewolf epidemic. Every full moon, they are the most ravenous creatures man has ever seen. Rawson is an agent for Lycan control and his job is to make sure all the afflicted are found, monitored, and kept at bay on the night they change. One night, a woman changes in front of Rawson and it is not a full moon. Someone deep in the annals of Hollywood has managed to trip the logic of the werewolves' being.

All-out Genre war is rumbling, and the BookWorld desperately needs a heroine like Thursday Next. But with the real Thursday apparently retired to the Realworld, the Council of Genres turns to the written Thursday. The Council wants her to pretend to be the real Thursday and travel as a peacekeeping emissary to the warring factions. A trip up the mighty Metaphoric River beckons-a trip that will reveal a fiendish plot that threatens the very fabric of the BookWorld itself.

Sequel to COURSE OF EMPIRE. Humanity is first subjugated by haughty alien colonizers calling themselves the Jao when Earth is unexpectedly attacked by the implacable and nearly-unstoppable Ekhat, exterminators of all intelligent life not their own. Now the fragile Human-Jao alliance is put to the test. A devastating encounter with the Ekhat in a distant nebula reveals a powerful alien society that may hold the key to defeating the Ekhat once and for all. There's one big problem: they utterly loathe humanity's ally, the Jao.

Tess Noncoire, successful fantasy writer and Celestial Blade Warrior, has made a deal with the Powers That Be, forfeiting her own dreams in order to save those nearest and dearest to her. Having survived this unprecedented experience, Tess, along with her imp Scrap, is determined to hunt down a demonic intruder from another dimension, the Norglein, who seems bent on ravishing young women, leaving them pregnant, and waiting for the proper time to steal their babies away for his own purposes.

It's Valentine's Day and the D'Artigo women are preparing for their friend Iris's wedding. But when Delilah and her sisters get word that the Supe Community Center has been bombed, things get really ugly. The evil coyote shifters, the Koyami, are back, and Newkirk, their new leader, has joined forces with a group of rogue sorcerers. Then, just when they think things can't get worse, the demon lord Shadow Wing sends in a new front man, and life really goes to hell!

From a Western circus where monsters and heroes collide, to a Civil War robot that clanks into battle, to a mining family that encounters parallel universes, WESTWARD WEIRD features thirteen original stories that open the Old West to new frontiers of science fiction and fantasy.

Ritually murdered corpses are appearing across Cincinnati, terrifying amalgams of human and "other." Pulled in to help investigate by the I.S. and the FIB, former witch turned day-walking demon Rachel Morgan soon realizes a horrifying truth: a human hate group is trying to create its own demons to destroy all Inderlanders, and to do so, it needs her blood. She's faced vampires, witches, werewolves, demons, and more, but humanity itself might be her toughest challenge yet.

Now, as the misfit band approaches its final destination, dragons and keepers alike face a challenge so insurmountable that it threatens to render their long, difficult odyssey utterly meaningless.

Nola O'Grady has enough trouble when a were-leopard accuses her of receiving stolen property. But when her younger brother Michael goes searching for their missing father, he lands himself and his brother, Sean, in a world of hurt - quite literally - in a deviant world version of San Francisco. Can Nola and her partner in the Apocalypse Squad, Israeli Interpol agent Ari Nathan, find her brothers in time to save them from death by radiation poisoning? The search will lead them through a city of secrets, but the worst secret of all lurks at the heart of the only thing Nola loves more than Ari, her family.

The meta-hero organizations Echo and sometime Russian ally CCCP must go on the offense and battle back. Task one: to hunt down the secret puppet masters behind the Nazi robot invasion, the Thule Society. To do so, the heroes of Echo, led by Bulwark and Red Djinni, face the guardians of a hidden trove of Nazi armor. Meanwhile, a sadistic genius super villain arises who is determined to defeat both heroes and Thulians alike-a villain who just may have the wealth and cunning to pull it off.

Two complete novels of interstellar adventure in one volume: EARTHBLOOD by Laumer and Brown, and SIBYL SUE BLUE by Rosel George Brown, the story of one of the toughest cops on a future Earth. Plus, for the first time in one volume, all of Keith Laumer's other stories of the Niss, as well as a generous assortment of stories by Rosel George Brown.

Kate Archer left home years ago, swearing that she would die before she returned to Maine. As plans go, it was a pretty good one -- simple and straightforward. Not quite fast enough, though. Before she can quite manage the dying part, Kate gets notice that her grandmother is missing, leaving the carousel that is the family business untended. And in Archers Beach, that means way more trouble than just a foreclosure.

Eric has taken control of the Void City's supernatural hierarchy, putting all the deals and contracts that allow the city to function up for renegotiation. When he installs his insane vampire daughter, Greta, as Void City's sheriff of the supernatural, bloody mayhem ensues. To further complicate things, the love of Eric's life is back from the dead, immortally young, at a cost that has put Eric under the thumb of a very powerful demon. The mysterious mouser Talbot, morose mage Magbidion, and all of Eric's thralls are trying to help him keep things under control. But with early onset Alzheimer's, vampire hunters, demons, a band of chupacabra, a cursed cousin with a serious grudge, and Rachel as his new 'handler'--there's just not an app for that.

Cass has survived the worst Aftertime has to offer: civilization's meltdown, humans turned mindless cannibals, men visiting and revisting evil upon one another. But finally, beneath the wastelands of California, hope emerges. Cass has reclaimed her stolen daughter. And a mysterious traveler may hold the key to defeating the Beaters once and for all.

Summoner-King Tris Drayke takes what remains of his army north to a war he is ill-prepared to fight, as reports from spies confirm Tris's worst fear. A new threat rises across the sea, a dark summoner who intends to make the most of the Winter Kingdoms's weakness. And in Isencroft, Kiara's father is assassinated and she will now have no choice except to return and claim the crown. But she must leave behind her husband Tris and their infant son and face the dark power that threatens her rule.

Diana should have known that the perfect apartment was too good to be true. As it turns out, it was already inhabited - by monsters. Vom the Hungering was the first to greet Diana and to warn her that his sole purpose in life was to eat everything in his path. This poses a problem for Diana since she's in his path...and is forbidden from ever leaving the apartment. But Vom was nothing compared to the older and more ancient monstrous entities afoot - ones who want to devour the moon and destroy the world as we know it.

Alex White, a young American soldier recently wounded in the Great War, comes to a pastoral English village to heal his wounded body and soul. He meets Magda Variel, an alluring red-haired widow rumoured to be a witch. She warns him to steer clear of the wood and the perilous faerie kingdom it borders, but Alex cannot help himself.

Greatshadow is the primal dragon of fire, an elemental evil whose malign intelligence spies upon mankind through every candle flame, waiting to devour any careless victim he can claim. The Church of the Book has assembled a team of twelve battle-hardened adventurers to slay the dragon once and for all. But tensions run high between the leaders of the team who view the mission as a holy duty and the super-powered mercenaries who view the mission primarily as a chance to claim Greatshadow's vast treasure trove. If the warriors fail to slay the beast, will they doom mankind to death by fire?

Searching for a stolen foal, several farming folk inadvertently cross through a gateway into a different world. Not long after, the lord and lady of a nearby keep begin a trip to find the sire of the lady's empathetic cat. They too traverse a gate unwittingly and find themselves in the same strange world. The world they have all entered is in great danger. Somehow the cat and the foal are the keys to the possible salvation of this world, which may prove a home to them and their owners...or their doom.

Monster hunter Evangeline Stone, barely recovered from her extended torture at the hands of mad scientist Walter Thackery, now sees the battered Triads that keep Dreg City safe under attack by half-Blood vampires who have somehow retained their reason, making them twice as lethal. Worse, the Halfies are joined by a breed of were-creature long believed extinct. Meanwhile, Evy's attempts at reconciliation with the man she loves take a hit after Wyatt is viciously assaulted - an attack traced to Thackery, who has not given up his quest to exterminate all vampires . . . even if he has to destroy Dreg City to do it.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak. Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language. When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties - to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

Lyonya's Kieri Phelan is being hounded to marry and provide his kingdom with an heir - but a strange rift has developed between him and his grandmother and co-ruler, the immortal elven queen known as the Lady. And then there is the ex-pirate Alured, who schemes to seize Kieri's throne for himself - and Mikeli's, too, while he's at it.

The wild offspring of a dragon are on the loose, sowing death and destruction and upsetting the ancient balance of power between dragonkind, humans, elves, and gnomes. In Lyonya, King Kieri is about to celebrate marriage to the half-elf Arian. But uncanny whispers from the spirits of his ancestors continue to warn of treachery and murder. Meanwhile, in Tsaia, the young king Mikeli must grapple with unrest among his own nobility over his controversial decision to grant the title and estates of a traitorous magelord to a Verrakaien who not only possesses the forbidden magic but is a woman besides, Dorrin, once one of Kieri's most trusted captains.

Rumours of threatened strife from ancient enemies reach the eastlands of Aeshau Vaalthe. They auger an onslaught of raids and destruction more severe than any since the legendary Convocation of Seats, a gathering unknown in the land for generations without number. An author's son, an expectant mother, a simple huntsman, an exile who fosters orphans in a desolate waste, a rogue member of a powerful ancient brotherhood, and a woman warrior of a legendary race will fight the past even as they face a dark future. Because the threats are more than rumour.

Detective Cass Jones is given a note from his dead brother Christian, written before his murder--They took Luke. Cass knows immediately who they are, Mr. Bright and the shadowy Network. His dead brother has set him a task from beyond the grave and as Cass tries to divide his time between three investigations, it's not long before he discovers links, where there should not be. The mysterious Mr. Bright is once again pulling his strings, and there's nothing DI Cass Jones hates more.

A young reporter comes to the Northern California coast for a story and finds himself inexplicably attacked - bitten - by a beast he cannot see in the rural darkness. As he both resists and delights in his new condition, he is desperately hunted as "the Man Wolf" by authorities, the media, and scientists (evidence of DNA threatens to reveal his dual existence). He comes to realize that there may be others like him who are watching - guardian creatures who have existed throughout time who possess ancient secrets and alchemical knowledge.

Artificial Nature makes its final bid to destroy Virga, and it is up to Leal to unite the quarrelling clans of her world to fight the threat.

As an angel, Remy posseses powers he puts to good use in his profession as a PI. And when the Garden of Eden suddenly reappears, he needs them more than ever. Because there are those who want him to find a key that will open the Gates of Eden, and those who will do anything to keep them closed. Desperate for help, he turns to a very old acquaintance - a fallen angel who is sometimes friend, sometimes foe, and always deadly.

Esswood House. Home and estate of the Seneschal family, aristocratic patrons of the literary arts for well over a hundred years. Even minor poets such as Isobel Standish found in Esswood a respite from the outer world and its refined atmosphere an inspiration for her work. When Professor William Standish receives an Esswood Fellowship, and the chance to study Isobel's private manuscripts at close hand, he senses something slightly off at Esswood House. He hears faint laughter in the halls, the pitter-pattering of small feet in the night; strange faces appear in the windows of the library, and there are those giant dollhouses in the basement...

The New Empire intends to mark its victory over the Nationalists with a bloody celebration. On the high holiday of Wintertide, the Witch of Melengar will be burned and the Heir of Novron executed. On that same day the Empress faces a forced marriage, with a fatal accident soon to follow. The New Empire is confident in the totality of its triumph but there's just one problem-Royce and Hadrian have finally found the true Heir of Novron - -and they have their own holiday plans.

Meet Easie Damasco, rogue, thieving swine and total charmer. Even the wicked can't rest when a vicious warlord and the force of enslaved giants he commands invade their homeland. Damasco might get away in one piece, but he's going to need help. Big time.

When Mycroft Holmes is murdered in London, it is up to retired shadow executive Smith to track down his killer. Fresh from liberating a strange alien object in Abyssinia - which might just be the mythical Ark of the Covenant - young Lucy Westerna, Holmes' protege, must follow her own path to the truth while, on the other side of the world, a young Harry Houdini must face his greatest feat of escape - death itself. As their paths converge the body count mounts up, the entire world is under threat, and in a foreboding castle in the mountains of Transylvania a mysterious old man weaves a spider's web of secrets and lies.

Ever since a monster murdered his family, Deacon Chalk hunts any creature that preys on the innocent. So when a pretty vampire girl "hires" him to eliminate a fellow slayer, Deacon goes to warn him, and barely escapes a vampire ambush. Now Chalk's got a way-inexperienced newbie hunter to protect and everything from bloodsuckers to cursed immortals on his trail. There's also a malevolent force controlling the living and the undead, hellbent on turning Deacon's greatest loss into the one weapon that could destroy him.

Young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to beautiful bride of Koschei the Deathless, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power.

Celia West, only daughter of the heroic leaders of the superpowered Olympiad, has spent the past few years estranged from her parents and their high-powered lifestyle. Then she is called into her boss' office and told that as the city's top forensic accountant, Celia is the best chance the prosecution has to catch notorious supervillain the Destructor for tax fraud. In the course of the trial, Celia's troubled past comes to light and family secrets are revealed as the rift between Celia and her parents grows deeper.

This fifth volume in the popular Worlds of Honor series explores the Honorverse with the help of Jane Lindskold, Timothy Zahn, and more - including an all-new Honor Harrington adventure, set in her younger years, when a mob of space pirates made the mistake of tangling with Commander Harrington. That was a fatal mistake - for the pirates.

Dagmar Shaw got out of the game... and into the movies. Sean is a washed-up child actor reduced to the lowest dregs of reality television to keep himself afloat. His life was a downward spiral of alcoholism, regret, and failure... until he met Dagmar. Except Sean has secrets, dark even for the Hollywood treadmill of abuse, addiction, and rehab. And Dagmar is a cipher. There are dark rumors about her past, the places she's been, the things she was involved in. People tend to die around her and now, she wants Sean for something. A movie, she says, but with her history, who's to say what her real game is?

Omnibus edition of the ELI MONPRESS series: THE SPIRIT THIEF, THE SPIRIT REBELLION, and THE SPIRIT EATER.

Captain Dominic Flandry has been knighted for his many services to the Terran Empire - an Empire which is old, jaded, and corrupt, as Flandry well knows. He has come to understand that there may be no more point to all his victories than that a few trillion of his fellow creatures may live out their lives before the inevitable coming of the Long Night of galactic barbarism. At best, he may have postponed its coming and shortened its duration.

Canada hides a trove of Cold War era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride with a convoy heading west to retrieve four portable nuclear reactors. But they have death on their tail...

As Anasurimbor Kellus and his Great Ordeal march ever farther into the wastes of the Ancient North, Esmenet finds herself at war with not only the Gods, but also her own family. Achamain, meanwhile, leads his own ragtag expedition to the legendary ruins of Sauglish, and to a truth he can scarcely survive, let alone comprehend. Into this tumult walks the White Luck Warrior, assassin and messiah both.

Tormented by nightmares of a woman's death, Sheriff Taylor Mooreland is shocked to find the woman from his visions chained to an altar in the woods. He barely knows her, but something compels Taylor to protect the mysterious Lenore Whyte no matter what. Even if it means dealing with magic. And when an investigation into a series of suicides leads Taylor deep into the town's past, he discovers that the key to saving Lenore and the town of Nevermore may have a surprising connection.

In a devastated, splintered, post-apocalyptic United States, with technology thrown back to biplanes, black powder, and steam trains, a tiny band of visionaries struggles to recreate Constitutional government and civilization itself, as a New Dark Age takes shape around them.

For centuries, the wampyr has drifted from one place to another. From one life to another. It's 1962, and he's returned to New Amsterdam for the first time since he fled it on pain of death some sixty years before. On the eve of social revolution, on the cusp of a new way of life, he's nevertheless surrounded by inescapable reminders of who he used to be. For a thousand years, he's chosen to change rather than to die. Now, at last, he faces a different future.

All Calliope Reaper-Jones ever wanted out of life was a fabulous job in New York City and a really hot boyfriend. But now, she's the brand-new President of Death, Inc. With the Board of Death breathing down her neck and her dad's copy of 'How to Be Death (A Fully Annotated Guide)' unopened, Callie's really feeling the tension. And when the guide book is stolen at a fancy formal dinner, Callie has to figure oput how to be the boss - before the powers held within the book get out and destroy humanity forever.

Four all-new novellas in the BLACK JEWELS world.

When wizards threaten Glorianna Belladonna and her work to keep Ephemera balanced, her brother Lee sacrifices himself in order to save her-and ends up an asylum inmate in the city of Vision. But a darkness is spreading through Vision, perplexing the Shamans who protect it. And Lee is the only one who can shed any light on its mysteries...

Eddie LaCrosse, freelance sword jockey is on his way home when his horse nearly runs down a half naked blonde in serious trouble. He promises to protect the blonde and is waylaid by unknown assailants and left for dead beside her mutilated body. Eddie's quest for payback leads him to a tangled mystery involving a notorious crime lord, royal scandals, a backwoods dragon cult, and a femme fatale who has trouble keeping her clothes on.

The dead walk the streets. The docile amphibian slaves of humanity have taken up arms. Jianna's home lies in ruins. Her only happiness resides in her growing attraction to Falaste Rione, a brilliant nomadic physician whose compassion and courage have led him to take dangerous risks. Jianna, stronger and more powerful than she knows, has a role to play in the unfolding destiny of her world. But a wave of madness is sweeping across the land, and time is running out - even for magic.

The son, and enforcer, of the leader of the North American werewolves, Charles is a dominant alpha, while Anna, an omega, has the rare ability to calm others of her kind. Charles and Anna are sent to Boston when the FBI requests the pack's help on a local serial killer case. All of the victims were werewolves. Someone is targeting their kind. And their investigation has put Anna and Charles right in the killer's sights.

The Gaia Corporation plans to terraform Earth with thousands of tiny mirrors that will roll back global warming. But this floating sunshade can also work as a superweapon. Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard who finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. She has confiscated a nuclear weapon from smugglers that may be the only thing that can stop the floating sunshade after it falls into the wrong hands.

Young Alaska skydancer Orr Sitka makes a reckless, record-breaking jump that catapults him into celebrity. It's the last straw, however, for his girlfriend Dyce, who is wooed away by a promising job in the thriving underground city of Seattle. When Orr learns that Dyce has become addicted to virtual reality, controlled by an eccentric media billionaire and his decadent daughter, he does everything in his power to rescue her.

When Jazen reluctantly hires on to a Trueborn Earthman tycoon's safari to bag a deadly trophy, the reluctant mercenary finds himself shipped out to Downgraded Earthlinke 476, the outpost at the end of the universe known to everyone except its tourism bureau as "Dead End." But the hunt goes terribly wrong, and Jazen must survive a tough, beautiful local guide who hates mercenaries, an eleven ton beast that can crush main battle tanks with one claw tied behind its back, and the return of a nightmare that has haunted Jazen since birth.

Alexia Tarabotti, Lady Maccon, receives a summons from Alexandria that cannot be ignored. With husband, child, and Tunstells in tow, Alexia boards a steamer to cross the Mediterranean. But Egypt may hold more mysteries than even the indomitable Lady Maccon can handle. What does the vampire Queen of the Alexandria Hive really want from her? Why is the God-Breaker Plague suddenly expanding? And how has Ivy Tunstell suddenly become the most popular actress in all the British Empire?

The civil war among the alien atevi has ended. Tabini-aiji, powerful ruler of the Western Association, along with Cajeiri, his son and heir, and his human paidhi, Bren Cameron, have returned to the Bujavid, their seat of power. But factions that remain loyal to the opposition are still present, and the danger these rebels pose is far from over.

Bren Cameron's mission is to negotiate with Machigi - a young atevi lord who has never actually seen a human - and somehow persuade him to cease his hostile actions against the west. Is Bren a shrewd enough negotiator to stay alive, and not alienate Ilisidi or Tabini, while also representing the interests of their enemy?

For a thousand years, the Church Knights have sent to the stake anyone who can hear the songs of the earth. One of their own, novice Knight Gair can hear that beautiful, terrible music, that music with power. But an unlikely intervention gives him a chance to flee the city and escape the flames. With the Church Knights and their witchfinder hot on his heels, Gair must learn how to use the power before it tears him apart. He must find the Guardians of the Veil. The few who are left are preoccupied by stirrings of the Hidden Kingdom and the weakening of the Veil.

Humankind's vast intergalactic power struggle and future war to bring down an insidious evil alien empire reaches its climax. Determined space soldiers are pitted against the powerful race of creatures bent upon the total annihilation of a human race on the brink of technological transcendence.

Necromancer and spy Isyllt Iskaldur, hounded by assassins, seeks asylum in Assar, the empire she so recently worked to undermine. There a darkness stirs in the deep desert, and ancient spirits long held captive are waking. Accompanied by an outcast jinn, Isyllt must travel into the heart of the desert to lay the darkness there to rest once more. But her sympathies are torn between the captive spirits and the order of mages sworn to bind them. And whichever choice she makes could raze the empire to dust.

The seminal 1967 anthology, in 688 pages, available after 15 years out of print. The contributors list is a who's who of 20th century SF: Delany, Dick, Aldiss, Zelazny, Farmer, Leiber, Niven, Silverberg ...

The fifth volume of The Vampire Files collects two adventures (SONG IN THE DARK & DARK ROAD RISING) of former reporter Jack Fleming and his adjustment to his new life as an Undead Private Eye, nightclub owner - and reluctant player in the politics of gangland Chicago in the 1930s.

Since Gin Blanco, the Spider, destroyed her nemesis Mab Monroe, all of Ashland's lowlifes are gunning to make a name for themselves by taking her out. So she leaves behind her beloved barbecue joint and heads south with her sister Bria for a holiday. But when a powerful vampire with deadly elemental magic threatens an old friend of Bria's, it looks like Gin will have to dig her silverstone knives out of her suitcase after all. Complicating matters further is the reappearance of Detective Donovan Caine, her old lover.

Pug - now Midkemia's most powerful sorcerer - faces a major magical cataclysm that forces him to question everything he's ever held as true and dear...including the loyalty of his beloved son Magnus.

It's Titanic meets 30 Days of Night. When the survivors of the Titanic are picked up by the passenger steamship Carpathia, they thought their problems were over. But something's sleeping in the darkest recesses of the ship. Something old. Something hungry.

Ancient Egypt. Huy, renowned seer and son of a humble farmer, is appointed scribe and counsel to twelve year old Amunhotep III. It is a position of power and responsibility, for Huy controls the treasury, the military, all construction, and taxation, and he must choose the young pharaoh's queen. His position and his legendary past create many enemies.

Something is wrong with the souls of Chicago's dead. Ghosts are walking the streets, and Agent of Death Madeline Black's exasperating boss wants her to figure out why. And while work is bad enough, Maddy has a plethora of personal problems too. Now that Gabriel has been assigned as her thrall, their relationship has hit an impasse. At least her sleazy ex-fiance Nathaniel is out of the picture - or so she thinks.

Meet Sam Thornton, Collector of Souls. Sam's job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure they are dispatched to the appropriate destination. But when he's sent to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that's doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before. "No."

Alex Verus is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running a magic shop in London. And while Alex's own powers aren't as showy as some mages, he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible future - allowing him to pull off operations that have a million-to- one chance of success. But when Alex is approached by multiple factions to crack open a relic from a long-ago mage war, he knows that whatever's inside must be beyond powerful. And thanks to his abilities, Alex can predict that by taking the job, his odds of survival are about to go from slim to none.

Caitlin R. Kiernan, Brian Stableford, Ramsey Campbell, Michael Shea, Darrell Schweitzer, Donald R. Burleson, and David J. Schow delve deep into the psyche, expanding on concepts H.P. Lovecraft created and taking them in new directions. The result is stories that are wholly original, some even featuring Lovecraft himself as a character.

When Cinderella is run over by a New Never City bus, her not-so-ugly stepsister, Asia, suspects murder. So she hires RJ, a private eye, to investigate. Little does she know RJ is on mental health leave from the Villains's Union. Cursed with an inability to say no to damsels in distress, RJ travels to the Kingdom of Maldetto, meets the rest of Cinderella's family - including her fiance, the flamboyant Prince Charming, her crazy stepmother, and a seriously twisted version of Hansel and Gretel - and dodges bullets, explosions, fires, and his own ex-wife to slip his own version of glass handcuffs on the wrists that fit.

Corvus, the strange and brilliant boy-general, is now High King, having united his people in a fearsome, bloody series of battles and sieges. He is not yet thirty years old but he intends to surpass the deeds of his father and the previous generation of the Macht. The preparations will take years, but when they are complete, Corvus will lead an invasion the like of which the world of Kuf has never seen. Under him, the Macht will undertake nothing less than the overthrow of the entire Asurian Empire.

India Morgan Phelps-Imp to her friends-is schizophrenic. Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with creatures out of myth-or from something far, far stranger...

Three dragon siblings find themselves at odds over the coming human war. AuRon thinks dragons should have no part in the affairs of humans. Wistala believes dragons and men can peacefully co-exist. Copper has designs of his own on the world - and mankind just may have given him the perfect opportunity to fulfill his plans.

Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. To get an edge, he designs a genetic code using an experimental supercomputer. The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Now Silas must find a way to stop it.

A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship.The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century. In April 2012, Joseph Kennedy - nephew of John F. Kennedy - lives in an America occupied in the East by Greater Germany and on the West Coast by Imperial Japan. He is one of six people who can restore history to its rightful order - even though it would mean his death, and the deaths of everyone he loves.

If Balboa is to finish the job of freeing itself from the Tauran Union, everything and everyone will have to be dedicated to the task. This is the story of the Tercio Amazona, the Amazon Regiment.

Emperor Mollusk. Intergalactic Menace. Destroyer of Worlds. Conqueror of Other Worlds. Mad Genius. Ex-Warlord of Earth. He stirs out of retirement to meet a new threat. Mollusk isn't about to let the Earth slip out of his own tentacles and into the less capable clutches of another. So it's time to dust off the old death ray and come out of retirement. Except this time, he's not out to rule the world. He's out to save it from the peril of THE SINISTER BRAIN!

A war between human and posthuman civilizations is about to erupt -- and it will determine not only the future of the human species but its past.

Catherine is a soldier. Fast, strong, lethal, she is the ultimate in military technology. Bred by scientists, grown in vats, indoctrinated by the government, she and her sisters will win this war, no matter the cost. And the costs are high. Their life span is short; as they age they become unstable and they undergo a process called the spoiling. On their eighteenth birthday they are discharged. Lined up and shot like cattle. Yet Catherine may have only known death, but she dreams of life and she will get it at any cost.

Despite the fact that her family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and humanity from them, Verity Price turns her back on cryptozoology and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. It would be simple if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumours about a dragon sleeping under the city.

The wizard who supposedly saved Captain Corrain and his comrades has merely claimed the island of the corsair's for his own, and no one knows what the enigmatic newcomer intends to do next. This disastrous turn of events cannot be concealed from Hadrumal's powerful mages. The Chief Mage Planir's leadership is now openly questioned. Surely he will enforce his authority by crushing this upstart? But the Aldabreshin warlords act first. The warlords are watching the ominous skies as a once in a lifetime conjunction of the stars approaches. Will the warlords be content to drive this solitary wizard out of the Archipelago or has the time come for them to destroy all magic?

Her personal life in turmoil, her job as a cop over, Joanne Walker is called to Ireland by the magic within her. She goes there to rescue the woman who sacrificed everything for Joanne--the woman who died a year ago. Now, through a slip in time, she's in thrall to a dark power and Joanne must battle darkness, time and the gods themselves to save her.

Newly allied with the powerful African empire of the Tswana, the French have occupied Spain and brought revolution and bloodshed to Brazil, threatening Britain's last desperate hope to defeat Napoleon. Laurence and Temeraire are brought back from Australia to negotiate a peace with the angry Tswana, who have besieged the Portuguese royal family in Rio. Joined by the egotistical fire-breather Iskierka and the still-growing Kulingile, who has already surpassed Temeraire in size, they embark for Brazil, only to meet with a string of unmitigated disasters that leave the dragons and their human friends forced to make an unexpected landing in the hostile territory of the Inca empire, where they face new unanticipated dangers.

Fourteen original stories about being Fae in the modern world. What if the fae were still here doing their best to pass for human? Or struggling to fit it? Are they outcasts, or do their powers ensure success in the mortal realm?

One day, as they rush to save another group of kids who are about to be captured by police, Whit and Whisty discover not only their own faces plastered to buildings on wanted posters, but also their parents'. When the hunting party sent out after the siblings always seems to be one step ahead of them, they begin to fear that it is controlled by a very powerful force. They are in much more danger than they feared.

Saddened because they have left one of their number in a grave in the wilderness, Harold and his companions continue their journey to the dreaded underground palace of Hrad Spein. There they must fight legions of untold, mysterious powers before they can complete their quest for the magic horn that will save their beloved land from The Nameless One.

Cayden Silversun is part Elven, part Fae, part human Wizard - and all rebel. His aristocratic mother would have him follow his father to the Royal Court, to make a high society living off the scraps of kings. But Cade lives and breathes for the theater, and he's good - very, very good. With his company, he'll enter the highest reaches of society and power, as an honored artist - or die trying.

This volume contains all three books in the Clockwork Vampire Chronicles: KELL'S LEGEND, SOUL STEALERS and VAMPIRE WARLORDS.

Messenger Melina Markowitz, a go-between for paranormal forces and supernatural creatures, must find an envelope stolen from her - or watch out-of-control Chinese vampires take down rival gang members in an all-out street war.

An escalating rivalry with a powerful member of the nobility forces Kvothe to leave the University. Adrift, penniless, and alone, he travels to Vintas, where he becomes entangled in the politics of courtly society. All the while Kvothe searches for answers attempting to uncover the truth about the mysterious Amyr, and the death of his parents. Traveling into the Fae realm he meets Felurian, the faerie woman no man can resist and who no man has ever survived. Under her tutelage, Kvothe learns much about true magic and the ways of women.

The best of both science fiction and fantasy from the previous year. Includes work from Beagle, Bray, Broderick, Crowley, Fowler, Mieville, Kiernan, Park, Stross, Parker, Straub, Watts, Baxter, Doctorow, Gaiman, Hopkinson, Sterling, Swanwick & Valente.

For years, people have feared that sexual material removed from victims of alien abductions might lead to the creation of something that modern science considers impossible: hybrids of the alien and the human. They would think like aliens, but appear human, and be able to do something that full-blooded aliens can't - walk the earth freely.

Charlie Hardie, trapped inside a satellite parked in orbit 500 miles above the Earth, must complete 12 months of duty or his wife and son will have an "accident." But Hardie realizes he's sitting in a veritable zero-G vault containing the most dangerous secrets in the world -- which he can use as leverage against his faceless captors and force a crash-landing in one of the grittiest of urban hellholes.

Tynisa is running but she cannot escape the demons of her own mind. Amidst the fragmenting provinces of the Dragonfly Commonweal her past will at last catch up with her. Her father's ghost is hunting her down. Meanwhile the Wasp Empress Seda is on the move, her eyes on the the city of Khanaphes, the fallen jewel of the ancient world.

Half-human/half-monster Cal Leandros knows that family is a pain. But now that pain belongs to his half-brother, Niko. Niko's shady father is in town, and he needs a big favour. Even worse is the reunion being held by the devious Puck race - including the Leandros' friend, Robin - featuring a lottery that no Puck wants to win. As Cal tries to keep both Niko and Robin from paying the ultimate price for their kin, a horrific presence from Cal's own past arrives to remind him that blood is thicker than water - and that's why it is so much more fun to spill.

Ten fascinating tales from Vance's long and influential career, among them his two Miro Hetzel adventures, "The Dogtown Tourist Agency" and "Freitzke's Turn," the intriguing "The Narrow Land," a second outing for Jean Parlier in "Choldwell's Chickens," and the classic space opera of "Son of the Tree."

The High Lord of the Immortal Darkyn has sent his most trusted warrior, Korvel, to retrieve a coveted scroll that's rumored to contain maps to Templar treasures and the secrets to eternal life. Uniting with Korvel to recover the dangerous artifact is Simone Derien, the daughter of the scroll's guardian, and a woman with many deadly secrets.

The war between the People's Republic of Haven and the Star Kingdom is finally won and peace established, but a shadowy organization known as the Mesan Alignment plans to enslave the entire human species. Task number one for Honor is to shut down and secure the wormhole network that is the source of the Star Kingdom's wealth and power-but also its greatest vulnerability. Yet this is an act that the Earth-based Solarian League inevitably will take as a declaration of war. The thunder of battle rolls as the Solarian League directs its massive power against the Star Kingdom.

Turk Findley and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself. Recommended.

Saint-Germain learns that Madelaine - now a vampire - has been arrested by France's Revolutionary Tribunal and is soon to lose her head. Desperate to rescue her, the Count sneaks into France with a troupe of actors led by the glamorous Photine, who soon becomes Saint-Germain's mistress. Photine's teenage son, driven by jealousy and revolutionary fervor, betrays the Count.

In the wake of apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans are captured by the Master Builder. Misplaced during a furious battle in space, they now find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky, and where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and neglect. For they have become both research animals and strategic pawns in a cosmic game whose madness knows no end - a game of ancient vengeance between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life, and the Forerunners who expect to inherit their sacred Mantle of duty to all living things.

Captain MacKenzie Calhoun must deal with two simultaneous threats. One is the D'myurj - a mysterious and powerful alien race bent on either the complete domination of humanity or its destruction. The other is Morgan Primus, once a living creature with a soul and a conscience, now an incredibly sophisticated computer simulation taking up residence within the very core of the Excalibur.

Original short stories from some of the best fantasy writers in the Black Library. Themed on the early history of the Warhammer fantasy world, The Time of Legends is when heroes roamed the old world - both good and bad.

Darth Plagueis has learned to command the ultimate power--over life and death. His chosen apprentice, Darth Sidious, secretly studies the ways of the Sith, while publicly rising to power in the galactic government, first as Senator, then as Chancellor, and eventually as Emperor. Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious, Master and acolyte, target the galaxy for domination - and the Jedi Order for annihilation. But can they defy the merciless Sith tradition? Or will the desire of one to rule supreme, and the dream of the other to live forever, sow the seeds of their destruction?

This omnibus edition contains three novels - "Dark Apostle, Dark Creed "and "Dark Disciple" plus a new short story about the Chaos Space Marines from the Word Bearers Chapter.

After his legion is decimated during the Istvaan landing and the initial battles of the Heresy Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard, returns to Terra. Here he attempts to find a way to restore his legion.

Aoth Fezim and his mercenary company have restored their tarnished reputation and attracted new recruits for their depleted ranks. But too many griffon mounts were killed in the battles in Thay Chessenta. If "the Brotherhood of the Griffon" is to be more than a name, new mounts must be found. As it happens, the masked witches in Rashemen have griffons available to a worthy few who can slay the undead that are committing atrocities throughout the land. Aoth volunteers his band, as do other groups who are in the market for the fighting beasts. But things are not as they seem.

The dead are restless in the magic-rich realm of Thay, and a necromancer has gathered them to his cause. The living citizens must unite and mount a defense before they die and join the enemy's ranks. And the mageocracy is in exile, watching from distant shores as the new King of Thay prepares a great magical ritual - one they cannot allow him to bring to completion.

An encounter with an alien probe sends the commander of the first manned mission to Saturn into the future. A similar encounter in the future by the Enterprise sends James T. Kirk into the past.

Every fifty thousand years the Reapers, a race of sentient machines, invades our galaxy to harvest all organic life-forms. Navy admiral David Anderson and his partner, Kahlee Sanders have uncovered grisly evidence proving that the Reaper threat is real. But in so doing they have exposed the machinations of Cerberus, a secretive paramilitary organization, and its mysterious leader, the Illusive Man - putting David and Kahlee in mortal danger, for Cerberus will stop at nothing to protect its secrets.

The search for the source of an alien threat leads Ciaphas Cain to a drifting space hulk. But when the Reclaimator Space Marines suffer terrible losses, Cain and his trusty aide Jurgen must go it alone. With the tyranids waking and a group of stowaway orks on the loose, Cain must use all his ingenuity and cunning to escape the space hulk alive.

Imperial commissar Ciaphas Cain returns to Nusquam Fundumentibus to crush the ork attacks which have been plaguing the frozen planet. But when his ship crashes into the wastelands outside the capital it disturbs a far greater enemy, one which has lain dormant under the permafrost since long before the Imperium came to this world, and could now threaten the whole sector. Faced with ongoing greenskin raids and keeping an over-enthusiastic novice commissar under control, Cain must rally his men and confront whatever emerges from beneath the rapidly melting ice...

A pair of protagonists are duplicated over and over again from the 1870s to the present day - they are effectively immortal. Their existence will have a dramatic effect on American and world history. This stand-alone novel is part of a multimedia project, which includes separate online material, including original artwork, fiction (different from the material in the novel), and websites (of fictional businesses and characters from the novel) and videos produced for the novel.

BLACK TIDE and RED FURY, plus two short stories.

Onboard systems, controls, and their operation are described in detail and supported by a host of photographs, line art, floor plans, exploded diagrams, and stunning computer-generated artwork. Covering operational history, piloting, propulsion, weapons, engineering systems, sensors, and crew facilities, this is the most thorough technical guide to the "Millennium Falcon" available.

Witch hunter Lukas Eichmann investigates a series of bizarre murders, which ultimately lead him into the haunted depths of the Empire at the head of an army of fanatical warriors. In the Drakwald forest, Luthor Huss, warrior priest of Sigmar, battles to free the denizens of the forest from a plague of the walking dead. As their fates entwine, the two warriors confront a threat that will decide their future, while Huss must face a secret from his past if he is to survive and embrace his destiny as the Hammer of Sigmar. Few warrior priests are as devout - or as feared - as Luthor Huss.

Unaware of the wider Heresy and following the Warmaster's increasingly cryptic orders, Roboute Guilliman returns to Ultramar to muster his Legion for war against the orks massing in the Veridian system. Without warning, their supposed allies in the Word Bearers Legion launch a devastating invasion of Calth, scattering the Ultramarines' fleet and slaughtering all who stand in their way. This confirms the worst scenario Guilliman can imagine - Lorgar means to settle their bitter rivalry once and for all. As the traitors summon foul daemonic hosts and all the forces of Chaos, the Ultramarines are drawn into a grim and deadly struggle in which neither side can prevail.

For millennia, Asdrubael Vect has ruled the dark city of Commorragh, crushing any who dare to cross him. His reach is long and his position unassailable... or so he thinks. Yllithian, an ambitious archon with the desire to unseat the tyrant, joins forces with a twisted haemonculus in an attempt to revive a long-dead warrior and challenge the might of the overlord, both racing to achieve their goal before Vect discovers their treachery. But a cataclysm is coming, and Yllithian's actions may in fact be the cause.

FATE OF THE JEDI series finale: the Jedi and Sith face off at Coruscant.For Abeloth, it's a giant step in her quest to conquer all life everywhere. For Luke Skywalker, it's a call to arms to eradicate the Sith and their monstrous new master once and for all.

At the Maelstrom, the center of a cataclysmic instability, former Horde warchief Thrall and other accomplished shamans struggle to keep the world from tearing apart in the wake of Deathwing's attack. Yet a battle also rages within Thrall regarding his new life in the shamanic Earthen Ring, hampering his normally unparalleled abilities. Unable to focus on his duties, Thrall undertakes a seemingly menial task from an unexpected source: the mysterious green Dragon Aspect, Ysera.

An omnibus edition of the STAR TREK DESTINY trilogy: GODS OF NIGHT, MERE MORTALS and LOST SOULS in one volume.

This omnibus follows the schemes of the embittered Warsmith Honsou in his struggles against the hated Space Marines of the Imperium. STORM OF IRON and the novella "Iron Warrior" are gathered along with short stories "The Enemy of My Enemy, The Heraclitus Effect "and "The Skull Harvest."

On expedition with her family to harvest the forbidden terazul flower, a powerful drug that has gathered many a dreamer into its narcotic embrace, Zaltys is about to unearth a truth long buried by the feculent loam of deception. As the veil is lifted on the world Zaltys thought she knew, a pathway to the Underdark promises the answers her family never gave.

Hector Goetz, Knight of the Blazing Sun, and his battle brothers fight to protect the Empire and Marienburg from an onslaught of Norscans and chaos

Young Jedi Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. Suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous. For the rare black orchid that she has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula that promises to grant Darth Scabrous his greatest desire.

A spatial rift allows access to a small, mineral-rich planetoid inside the rift. A science vessel studying the rift crashes on the planetoid, bringing the Enterpise to mount a rescue. It soon becomes evident that the rift is artificial. It also becomes evident that the Romulans are interested in the rift.