Prince Yarvi has vowed to regain a throne he never wanted. But first he must survive cruelty, chains, and the bitter waters of the Shattered Sea. And he must do it all with only one good hand. Born a weakling in the eyes of his father, Yarvi cannot grip a shield or swing an axe, so he must sharpen his mind to a deadly edge. Gathering a strange fellowship of the outcast and the lost, he finds they can do more to help him become the man he needs to be than any court of nobles could.

Paradise has fallen, becoming the forty-third state of America. The rest of the world is in uproar. How can America claim the afterlife as it's own? It's certainly going to try as the President sets out for the town of Wormwood for talks with its governor, the man they call Lucifer. Hell has problems of its own. There's a new evangelist walking its roads, trying to bring the penitent to paradise, and a new power is rising. Can anyone stand up to the Godkiller?

Desperate to find water and shelter on the barren plains of former Oklahoma, Ryan and his team come upon a community that appears, at first, to be peaceful. Then the ville is attacked by a group of its own inhabitants - people infected with a parasite that has turned them into slave warriors for an unknown overlord. The companions try to help fend off the enemy and protect the remaining population, but when Ryan is captured during a second ambush, all hope seems lost. Especially when he launches an assault against his own crew.

The Republic of Aligned Worlds deploys mechanized armoured infantry to deal with pirate raids on the planet Montana. Leading the assault is Marine Corps Lieutenant and Montanan expatriate Promise Paen. Years earlier, Promise was driven to join the Marines after her father was killed by such a raid. Payback is sweet, but it comes at a devastating cost. Meanwhile, the forces of the RAW's most bitter rival, the Lusitanian Empire, have been awaiting the right moment to gain a beachhead in Republic territory, and with Promise's Marines decimated, they believe the time to strike is now.

When Elyse MacAllister's great-aunt Eleanora, the woman who raised her, becomes deathly ill, Lyse puts her comfortable life in Georgia on hold to rush back to Los Angeles. And once she returns to Echo Park, Lyse discovers her great-aunt has been keeping secrets - extraordinary secrets - from her. Not only is Lyse heir to Eleanora's Victorian estate; she is also expected to take her great-aunt's place in the Echo Park coven of witches. But to accept her destiny means to place herself in deadly peril - for the world of magic is under siege, and the battle the witches now fight may be their last...

James McLanahan leads a team of young engineers who are designing Starfire, the world's first orbiting solar power plant. Starfire will not only deliver unlimited and inexpensive electricity to anywhere on planet Earth, it can also transmit power to the Moon, and even to spacecraft and asteroids. It's a crucial first step in the exploration of the solar system, and Bradley and his team are on the cutting-edge. But U.S. President Kenneth Phoenix has plans to militarize and industrialize Earth's orbital space.

Darrow's kind have been betrayed and denied by their elitist masters, the Golds - and their only path to liberation is revolution. And so, in the name of the greater good for which Eo, his true love, laid down her own life, Darrow becomes a Gold, infiltrating their privileged realm so that he can destroy it from within. To wage and win the war that will change humankind's destiny, Darrow must confront the treachery arrayed against him, overcome his all-too-human desire for retribution - and strive not for violent revolt but a hopeful rebirth.

Insomnia has claimed everyone Biggs knows. Even his beloved wife, Carolyn, has succumbed to the telltale red-rimmed eyes, slurred speech and cloudy mind before disappearing into the quickly collapsing world. Biggs sets out to find her. He encounters others who are apparently immune, while all around, sleep has become an infinitely precious commodity. Money can't buy it, no drug can touch it, and there are those who would kill to have it.

Pisa, May 1364. Father Pierre is gathering men across Europe for a crusade, and as a donat of the order, Sir William is pledged to serve him. But before setting out for the Holy Land, Sir William and his companions face deadly adversaries closer to home. In the labyrinthine politics of Italy, not only would some cities rather side with the Saracen than their fellow Christians, but there are powerful princes of the church - the Count D'Herblay, husband of the woman who still holds Sir William's heart - whose ambitions would be better served if the crusade failed.

The survivors of the omega virus make a desperate effort to find the living. But the walking dead aren't done with them yet!

Five years have passed since the events in THE DEATHS OF TAO. The world is split into pro-Prophus and pro-Genjix factions, and is poised on the edge of a devastating new World War. A Gengix scientist who defects to the other side holds the key to preventing bloodshed on an almost unimaginable scale. With the might of the Gengix in active pursuit, Roen is the only person who can help him save the world, and the Quasing race, too. And you thought you were having a stressful day.

Justis Fearsson is a private investigator on the trail of a serial killer in Phoenix, Arizona. Justis is also a weremyste - a person with a wizard's gifts and the ability to see into the paranormal world. Unfortunately, weremystes also tend to go crazy on the full moon - which is why Justis is no longer a cop. Hard to explain those absences as anything but mental breakdowns. But now an old case from his police detective days has come back to haunt him, literally, as a serial killer known as the Blind Angel strikes again.

The titles collected in this omnibus come from the fertile beginning of his career and include his debut novel MIRROR IMAGE, CHARISMA and the BSFA Award-winning BRONTOMEK!

The oldest and fiercest of the Instrumentalities has been destroyed - by a mortal. There is no new Windwalker, nor will there ever be. The world, battered by savage change, limps toward its destiny. And the ice is coming.

Everybody in Chicago has a "superhero sighting" story. So when a villain attacks editorial assistant Gail Godwin and she's rescued by superhero Blaze, it's a great story, and nothing more. Until it happens again. And again. Now the media has dubbed her Hostage Girl, nobody remembers her real name, and people are convinced that Blaze is just her boyfriend, Jeremy, in disguise. Gail's not so sure. All she knows is that when both Jeremy and Blaze leave town in the same week, she's probably doomed. Who will save her now? Yet, miraculously, the villains lose interest. Gail is able to return to her life - until she wakes up strapped to a metal table by a mad scientist who hasn't read the news.

It's June 1, 1914 and Hugh Stanton, ex-soldier and celebrated adventurer is quite literally the loneliest man on earth. No one he has ever known or loved has been born yet. Perhaps now they never will be. Stanton knows that a great and terrible war is coming. A collective suicidal madness that will destroy European civilization and bring misery to millions in the century to come. He knows this because, for him, that century is already history. Somehow he must change that history. He must prevent the war. A war that will begin with a single bullet. But can a single bullet truly corrupt an entire century? And, if so, could another single bullet save it?

All her life Jessica Drake has dreamed of other worlds, some of them similar to her own, others disturbingly alien. She never shares the details with anyone, save her younger brother Tommy, a compulsive gamer who incorporates some aspects of Jessica's dreams into his games. But now someone is asking about those dreams...and about her. Then one night her house catches on fire, and when the smoke clears she discovers that her brother has been kidnapped.

Eleven new tales set in the legendary worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Contains stories by top writers such as Mercedes Lackey, Sarah Hoyt, and Mike Resnick.

The last few survivors of the apocalypse, surrounded by mutants and monsters, face a terrifying new danger as they hang on for survival in the tunnels of the Moscow Metro.

After Lauren Reardon's father passes away, she discovers a shocking secret about his past. Going on the only clue she could find - the name of a midwestern village, Gideon - she sets out to uncover the truth. But when she arrives at the isolated town, things are not as they seem - including Lauren herself.

In Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death. It will be an expansive journey that will first send him to England for an unexpected encounter with Jack the Ripper, then to New York City for the birth of a new American century, the dawn of the electric era of Tesla and Edison, and the blazing disaster of the 1937 Hindenburg crash. Along the way, Henry goes on the road in a Kerouac-influenced trip as Seth Grahame-Smith weaves vampire history through Russia's October Revolution, the First and Second World Wars, and the JFK assassination.

Ten short stories featuring the dangerous denizens of the Nightside - including a brand-new novella where John Taylor, the P.I. with a knack for finding lost things, confronts Sir Francis Vamey, King of the Vampires.

Non-sf mystery. Wounded in combat and honourably discharged nine years ago, Jack Daley still suffers nightmares from when he served his country as a sniper, racking up sixteen confirmed kills. Now a struggling author, Jack accepts an offer to write a near-future novel about a serial killer, based on a Hollywood script outline. It's an opportunity to build his writing career, and a future with his girlfriend, Kit Majors. But Jack's other talent is also in demand. A package arrives on his doorstep containing a sniper rifle, complete with silencer and ammunition - and the first installment of a $100,000 payment to kill a "bad man." The twisted offer is genuine. The people behind it are dangerous. They prove that they have Jack under surveillance. He can't run. He can't hide. And if he doesn't take the job, Kit will be in the crosshairs instead.

Although Danr's mother was human, his father was one of the hated Stane, a troll from the mountains. Now Danr has nothing to look forward to but a life of disapproval and mistrust, answering to "Trollboy" and condemned to hard labour on a farm. Until, without warning, strange creatures come down from the mountains to attack the village. Spirits walk the land, terrifying the living. Trolls creep out from under the mountain, provoking war with the elves. And Death herself calls upon Danr to set things right. At Death's insistence, Danr heads out to find the Iron Axe, the weapon that sundered the continent a thousand years ago. Together with unlikely companions, Danr will brave fantastic and dangerous creatures to find a weapon that could save the world - or destroy it.

A strange series of clues leads Wynn Hygeorht, her vampire protector Chane Andraso, and the elf Osha, to a remote keep built on the dark cliffs of the coast of Witeny. The young duke there has been undergoing some disturbing changes - and so have the people and livestock in the outlying villages. Wynn has no idea what awaits her at this keep - an old enemy who wants nothing more than to see her dead. At the same time, Dhampir Magiere, Leesil, and Chap continue their desperate search for the Orb of Air, still burdened with the master assassin, Brot'an, and the elven outcast girl, Wayfarer.

Waylaid in their quest for the orb of the Air, Magiere, Leesil, Chap and Wayfarer have all been wrongly imprisoned. But it is Magiere, the dhampir, who suffers the most as a cloaked interrogator employs telepathic torture.

The would-be queen Meridiana, banished for a thousand years, has returned in the body of a girl named Jeneta Aboderin, seeking an artifact that would grant her the power to command an army of the dead. Determined to rescue Jeneta, libriomancer Isaac Fainio must delve into the darker side of black-market magic, where he will confront beings better left undisturbed.

A story about technology becomes a personal quest into a changed world and the pursuit of a secret from the past. A secret about a missing mother, a secret that could hide a murder.

Hannah is frantically driving through the night - her daughter asleep in the back, her husband bleeding out in the seat beside her. In the trunk of the car rests a cache of diaries dating back 200 years, tied and retied with strings through generations. The diaries carry the rules for survival that have been handed down from mother to daughter since the 19th century. But how can Hannah escape an enemy with the ability to look and sound like the people she loves?

A lone man, driving a stolen Mercedes, plows through a crowd lined up for a spot at a job fair. Eight are left dead, fifteen wounded, and the driver escapes. In another part of town, months later, a retired cop named Bill Hodges is still haunted by the unsolved crime. When he gets a crazed letter from someone who self-identifies as the "perp" and threatens an even more diabolical attack, Hodges wakes up from his depressed and vacant retirement, hell-bent on preventing another tragedy.

Odd Thomas is back where it all started - because the time has come to finish it. Since he left his simple life in the small town of Pico Mundo, California, his journey has taken him to places strange and wonderful, mysterious and terrifying. Now, whatever destiny drives him has finally steered his steps home, where those he cares for most surround him, the memory of his tragically lost true love haunts him, and one last challenge--vast and dreadful--awaits him.

To weary Viking Ulfar Thormodsson, the town of Stenvik is the penultimate stop on what has been a long and perilous journey. After coming ashore, Thormodsson meets the beautiful and tragic Lilja, who immediately captures his heart. Stenvik is also home to solitary blacksmith Audun Arngrimsson, whose past hides many dark secrets. Soon, the conflict brewing between two factions of dangerous and determined men of the town threatens to sweep all of them, natives and visitors alike, into the jaws of war.

Ulfar Thormodsson and Audun Arngrimsson are battered, having barely survived the battle for Stenvik, waged between King Olav and the followers of the White Christ, and those whose allegiance remains to the gods of the Norse pantheon. Alas, the two Vikings' encounter with a mysterious witch just before escaping the town over the city's walls have left them without the one thing that made them human: their mortality. While Ulfar heads home to Sweden, hoping to find a safe haven where he can come to grips with his newfound inability to die, Audun travels by foot to the south, searching for answers on the open road.

When sailors came to Ardhi's homeland, they plundered not only its riches, but its magic too. Now disgraced islander Ardhi must retrieve what was stolen, but there are ruthless men after this power, men who will do anything to possess it.

Kate Archer, Guardian and carousel-keeper, has been busy making some changes of her own, notably beginning a romantic relationship with Borgan, the Guardian of the Gulf of Maine, Kate's opposite number, and, some would say, her natural mate. Oh, and she's been instrumental in releasing the prisoners that had been bound into the carousel animals - which she's inclined to think is a good thing. Until a former sea goddess sets up housekeeping in the Gulf of Maine, challenging Borgan's authority, endangering Kate and everything she holds precious!

Prince Corin has been chosen to free the dragons from their bondage to the powerful Mycenean Empire, but dragons aren't big on directions. They have given him some of their power, but none of their knowledge. Tam, sensible daughter of a well-respected doctor, had no idea before she arrived in Caithenor that she is a Seer, gifted with visions. Tam and Corin must both figure out how to master their powers in order to save Caithen. With a little help from a village of secret wizards and a rogue dragonrider, they just might pull it off.

Three friends, Rafi, Ntenman and Serendipity, attend the Lyceum, a school for the psionically gifted. Now the three are about to experience a moment of violent change as seething tensions between rival star-faring civilizations come to a head. For Serendipity, it will challenge her ideas of community and self. For Ntenman, it will open new opportunities and new dangers. And for Rafi, given a chance to train with some of the best Wallrunners in the galaxy, it will lead to the discovery that there is more to the game of Wallrunning than he ever suspected - and more to himself than he ever dreamed.

Drastically outnumbered and pursued by the enemy's best, Tamas must lead his men on a reckless march through northern Kez to safety, and back over the mountains so that he can defend his country from an angry god, Kresimir. In Adro, Inspector Adamat only wants to rescue his wife. To do so he must track down and confront the evil Lord Vetas. Tamas' generals bicker among themselves, the brigades lose ground every day beneath the Kez onslaught, and Kresimir wants the head of the man who shot him in the eye. With Tamas and his powder cabal presumed dead, Taniel Two-shot finds himself as the last line of defense against Kresimir's advancing army.

When Ran, the Shadow Warrior, is dispatched to investigate rumours of an invasion massing to the north, he signs on as protection for a trade caravan. But once underway, the caravan is attacked by an overwhelming force of slavers who take Ran and several others captive. Dragged into the bowels of the earth as slave labour for a despot-in-exile eager to reclaim his throne, Ran must make a desperate escape with his friends if he has any hope of uncovering the truth about the invasion above ground. But there's more at play than a mere power struggle in the catacombs, and the earth does not give up its secrets easily - even for Ran, the Shadow Warrior.

Before Quaeryt's dream to create the world's first Imager academy is realized, or Khel's fateful choice to accept or reject Lord Bhayar's rule is made known, the spectre of high treason threatens to unravel all that Quaeryt has achieved, catapulting him toward a fateful confrontation with Bhayar's most powerful military leaders.

It's been a year since Samantha Carter blasted back to 1888. Now she's pulled back to a city she does not recognize. London is in the grip of a terrible plague, where death haunts the night and a deeper, darker threat lurks underground, waiting for its chance. Fighting side by side with her friends once again, Sammy encounters horrors beyond her imagining; yet what really terrifies her are the endless questions, one most of all: who is she really?

Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead's most unusual agents - an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that's missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind - until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death. One such inbetweener is a sorcerer who has summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits. Spreading through the city like a plague, they've already taken out some of NYCOD's finest, leaving Carlos desperate to stop their master before he opens up the entrance to the Underworld.

The ramshackle B&B seems like the best chance for Jack and Annabel Devlin to save their marriage and start over. But locals whisper about the Blue Boy Inn and its long history of murders and mysterious disappearances. Soon Annabel hears noises within the walls and glimpses something--some things--scurrying in the shadows. The locked attic, the bricked-up fireplace...for years they've helped keep a ravenous evil at bay. Now Jack and Annabel's arrival has stirred the house to life again. Debts must be paid, hungers will be satisfied, and one by one, Annabel's worst fears are about to come true...

Cutter agrees to a support role offered by an old Army comrade who is now a general in a larger military force. The pay is good, the unit happy. All they have to do is basic ranger stuff: sneak and peek, shoot and scoot. But what starts out as a corporate fight to occupy a valuable piece of contested territory quickly goes sideways, and once again Cutter and crew find themselves in the middle of situations in which things aren't as they seem, and the unit must determine the truth - or lose more than just a battle.

The dangerous but charismatic Ack-Ack Macaque finds himself leading a dimension-hopping army of angry monkeys, facing an invading horde of implacable killer androids, and confronting the one challenge for which he was never prepared: impending fatherhood! Meanwhile, former journalist Victoria Valois fights to save the electronic ghost of her dead husband and reclaim his stolen soul from the sands of Mars.

As the world suddenly ends, sisters Hannah and Amanda Given find themselves elsewhere: a strange new Earth where restaurants move through the air like flying saucers and the fabric of time is manipulated by common household appliances. Soon they are joined by four other survivors - a mordant cartoonist, a shy teenage girl, a brilliant young Australian, and a troubled ex-prodigy. Hunted by enemies they never knew they had, and afflicted with temporal abilities they never wanted, the sisters and their companions begin a cross-country journey to find the one man who can save them - before time runs out.

THE HIDDEN DRAGON, THE DRAGON CIRCLE and THE DRAGON'S REVENGE in one volume. The O'Hara brothers are on the run from the intergalactic government when they stumble across an abandoned colony planet. They must face the dangers of the strange hunter-gatherer society they've found - where their technology could make the brothers seem like gods - as well as the continued threat of the interstellar police force still searching for them.

The Colony is a race of intelligent ants who for millenia have been silently building an army that would forever eradicate the destructive, oppressive humans. The final step in the Colony's war effort is transforming the surface animals into high-functioning two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters. Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on the most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bio-weapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his ongoing search for a pre-transformation friend - a dog named Sheba.

A hardened group of survivors fights back against a zombie plague that has brought down civilization. With the world consumed by a devastating plague that drives humans violently insane, what was once a band of desperate survivors bobbing on a dark Atlantic ocean has now become Wolf Squadron, the only hope for the salvation of the human race. Banding together with what remains of the US Navy, Wolf Squadron and its leader, Steve Smith, not only plans to survive - he plans to retake the mainland from the infected, starting with North America.

Babylon Restored, the city formerly known as the borough of Manhattan, flooded and miserable, is ruled by the mysterious High Epic Regalia. David is sure it's the path that will lead him to what he needs to find. Entering a city oppressed by a High Epic despot is risky, but David's willing to take the gamble. Because killing Steelheart left a hole in David's heart. A hole where his thirst for vengeance once lived. Somehow, he filled that hole with another Epic--Firefight. And now he will go on a quest darker and even more dangerous than the fight against Steelheart to find her, and to get his answers.

Africa, 1952. The plans of Walter Hochburg, messianic racist and architect of Nazi Africa, threaten Britain's ailing colonies. Sent to curb his ambitions is Burton Cole, a one-time assassin torn between the woman he loves and settling an old score with Hochburg. If he fails unimaginable horrors will be unleashed on the continent. No one - black or white - will be spared. But when his mission turns to disaster, Burton must flee for his life. It is a flight that will take him from the unholy ground of Kongo to SS slave camps to war-torn Angola - and finally a conspiracy that leads to the dark heart of The Afrika Reich itself.

College roommaktes Victor and Eli conduct research that should grant them extraordinary abilities, but things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find - aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will.

In the aftermath of Cresta's destruction, Sandy Kresnov discovers the alien Talee operative Cai in Tanusha, there to learn just how far the technologically-induced insanity has gone. The Talee have seen this before, and they are terrified of anything threatening a recurrence. Meanwhile, Sandy's old nemesis Renaldo Takewashi, the self-proclaimed "father" of synthetic intelligence, comes to the Federation seeking asylum. Takewashi may even have a cure - previously unknown Talee technology implanted into a human child subject - Sandy's little boy, Kiril. But it is exactly this technology that the Talee fear, and they will exterminate anyone caught using it.

Captain Ariane Austin must discover what it means to be the Leader of Humanity, both for herself and for humanity, before her enemies at home or in the Arena depose her, kill her, or worse. It will take all her luck, Marc DuQuesne's indomitable will, Simon Sandrisson's genius, and the peerless skill of a living legend. And, in the end, humanity's fate in the galaxy and beyond will hinge on the choice of an uncertain ally who has nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by aiding those neophyte upstarts, the humans.

1941. Learning that Hitler has charged Werner von Braun with creating a manned orbital spacecraft capable of attacking the US, Roosevelt gives Robert Goddard the task of building a spacecraft capable of intercepting it. So begins a race against time - between two secret military programs and two brilliant scientists whose high-stakes competition will spiral into a deadly game of political intrigue and unforeseen catastrophes played to the death in the brutal skies above America.

Laela's half-brother, Kullervo, is supposed to be her strongest ally. But as he comes to terms with both who he is and what his sister's reign means to the land, he begins to doubt his once strong loyalties. With the conflict drawing to its bloody close, he must decide what he's truly prepared to fight for, a choice that could have dire consequences for all he once held dear. Meanwhile, a new threat is lurking in the darkness, the Night God's final, deadly pawn.

Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making. Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of Heaven. They need a human patsy to make their plan work. Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe.

Daniel's crime-boss uncle has a heist he wants Daniel to perform: break into the Hierarch of California's storehouse of magical artifacts and retrieve his father, Sebastian's, sword, an object of untold power. Daniel brings in his closest friends from his years in the criminal world. There's Moth, who can take a bullet and heal in mere minutes. Jo Alverado, illusionist. The multitalented Cassandra, Daniel's ex. And, new to them all, the enigmatic, knowledgeable Emma, with her British accent and her own grudge against the powers-that-be. The stakes are high, and the stage is set for a showdown that might just break the magic that protects a long-corrupt regime.

In his first solo adventure, Cormac, struggling with a foreign consciousness trapped inside him, investigates a century-old crime in a Colorado mining town which could be the key to translating a mysterious coded diary...a tome with secrets that could shatter Kitty's world and all who inhabit it.

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community, populated by over ten thousand children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.

The island empire of Charis has declared its independence from the Church, and with Merlyn's help has vaulted forward into a new age of steam-powered efficiency. Fending off the wounded Church, Charis has drawn more and more of the countries of Safehold to the cause of independence and self-determination. But at a heavy cost in bloodshed and loss - a cost felt by nobody more keenly that Merlyn Athrawes. The wounded Church is regrouping. Its armies and resources are vast. The fight for humanity's future isn't over, and won't be over soon.

Lord Scott Oken, a prince of Albion, and Professor-Prince Mikel Mabruke live in a world where the sun never set on the Egyptian Empire. In the year 1877 of Our Lord Julius Caesar, Pharaoh Djoser-George governs a sprawling realm that spans Europe, Africa, and much of Asia. When the European terrorist Otto von Bismarck touches off an international conspiracy, Scott and Mik are charged with exposing the plot against the Empire. Their adventure takes them from the sands of Memphis to a lush New World, home of the Incan Tawantinsuyu, a rival empire across the glittering Atlantic Ocean.

The year is 10,515 AD. The Hyades Armada, traveling at near lightspeed, will reach Earth in just four centuries to assess humanity's value as slaves. Now, with the countdown to its arrival nearing its end, Hermeticist del Azarchel and Menelaus Montrose, the Judge of Ages, square off for what is to be their final showdown for the fate of Earth, a battle of gunfire and cliometric calculus; powered armor and posthuman intelligence.

Desperate to avenge her dead father, Thorn lives to fight. But she has been named a murderer by the very man who trained her to kill. She finds herself caught up in the schemes of Father Yarvi, Gettland's deeply cunning minister. Crossing half the world to find allies against the ruthless High King, she learns harsh lessons of blood and deceit. Beside her on the journey is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill, a failure in his eyes and hers, but with one chance at redemption. Will Thorn forever be a tool in the hands of the powerful, or can she carve her own path?

An anthology of the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King. Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

In the northern wilderness, behind an artificial curtain of winter, the legacy of the deposed god kings lives on. An experimental testing ground - where computers have replaced independent choice - is turning citizens into docile, obedient sheep. The brainchild of a dedicated Magistrate of the old order, Terminal White promises to achieve the subjugation of the human race. As the Cerberus warriors infiltrate and get trapped in this mechanized web, humanity's only salvation may be lost in a blinding white doom.

In a distant solar system, a mysterious and unprovoked attack upon Lightship Impulse resulted in the deaths of Peter's former girlfriend and many of her shipmates. Now Peter's plans are torn asunder as he is transferred to a Unified Space Navy ship under foreign command, en route to an unexpected destination, and surrounded almost entirely by strangers. To top it off, his superiors have given him secret orders that might force him to become a mutineer.

Flamboyant, charismatic Matthew Cannonbridge was touched by genius, the most influential creative mind of the 19th century, a prolific novelist, accomplished playwright, the poet of his generation. The only problem is, he should never have existed and beleaguered, provincial, recently-divorced 21st Century don Toby Judd is the only person to realise something has gone wrong with history.

Late 19th century Seattle, when airships plied the trade routes bringing would-be miners heading up to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront. Karen is a "soiled dove", a young woman making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap - a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

Sequel to RANGE OF GHOSTS. Set in a world drawn from our own great Asian Steppes, this saga of magic, politics and war sets Re-Temur, the exiled heir to the great Khagan and his friend Sarmarkar, a Wizard of Tsarepheth, against dark forces determined to conquer all the great Empires along the Celedon Road.

The appearance of two addictive drugs has sparked violence between the humans and the Others, resulting in the murder of both species in nearby cities. So when Meg has a dream about blood and black feathers in the snow, Simon Wolfgard - Lakeside's shape-shifting leader - wonders if their blood prophet dreamed of a past attack or a future threat. As the urge to speak prophecies strikes Meg more frequently, trouble finds its way inside the Courtyard. Now, the Others and the handful of humans residing there must work together to stop the man bent on reclaiming their blood prophet - and stop the danger that threatens to destroy them all.

Three years after her fateful journeys through the forbidding mountains of Vystrana, Mrs. Camherst defies family and convention to embark on an expedition to the wartorn continent of Eriga, home of such exotic draconian species as the grassdwelling snakes of the savannah, arboreal tree snakes, and, most elusive of all, the legendary swampwyrms of the tropics. The expedition is not an easy one. Accompanied by both an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat, merciless fevers, palace intrigues, gossip, and other hazards in order to satisfy her boundless fascination with all things draconian, even if it means venturing deep into the forbidden jungle known as the Green Hell... where her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.

Mercy's mate Adam's ex-wife is in trouble, on the run from her new boyfriend. But with Christy holed up in Adam's house, Mercy can't shake the feeling that something about the situation isn't right. Soon, her suspicions are confirmed when she learns that Christy has the farthest thing from good intentions. She wants Adam back and she's willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, including turning Adam's pack against Mercy. And, worse, Christy's ex is more than a bad man - in fact, he may not be human at all. Mercy will need to put her personal troubles aside to face a creature with the power to tear her whole world apart.

When Meena finds snakebites on her chest, her worst fears are realized: someone is after her and she must flee India. As she plots her exit, she learns of the Trail, an energy-harvesting bridge spanning the Arabian Sea that has become a refuge for itinerant vagabonds and loners on the run. This is her salvation. Slipping out in the cover of night, with a knapsack full of supplies including a pozit GPS, a scroll reader, and a sealable waterproof pod, she sets off for Ethiopia, the place of her birth.

Benvolio Montague, cousin to Romeo, expects to die for his cousin, for his house, but a spark of rebellion still lives inside him. At night, he is the Prince of Shadows, the greatest thief in Verona-and he risks all as he steals from House Capulet. In doing so, he sets eyes on convent-bound Rosaline, and a terrible curse begins that will claim the lives of many in Verona. And will rewrite all their fates, forever.

On the planet Ilmatar, under a roof of ice a kilometer thick, a team of deep-sea diving scientists investigates the blind alien race that lives below. The Terran explorers have made an uneasy truce with the Sholen, their first extraterrestrial contact. So long as they don't disturb the Ilmataran habitat, they're free to conduct their missions in peace. But when Henri Kerlerec, media personality and reckless adventurer, ends up sliced open by curious Ilmatarans, tensions between Terran and Sholen erupt, leading to a diplomatic disaster that threatens to escalate to war.

Six months have passed since the wizard Colby lost his best friend to an army of fairies from the Limestone Kingdom. But in vanquishing these creatures and banning them from Austin, Colby sacrificed the anonymity that protected him. Now, word of his deeds has spread, and powerful enemies from the past - including one Colby considered a friend - have resurfaced to exact their revenge.

Dr. Eliza Jekyll is a crime scene investigator, hunting killers with newfangled technological gadgets. Like her father, she has a hidden second self that emerges when she drinks his forbidden magical elixir. The members of the Royal Society do not trust Eliza, and they send their enforcer, the mercurial Captain Lafayette, to prove she's a dangerous sorceress. The careful doctor knows that one wrong step can make her prey to the clever Lafayette, a man who harbours an evil curse of his own. But as a serial killer case draws her into London's luminous magical underworld, Eliza will need the potion's power to help her - even if it might attract the attentions of Lafayette - and set the wild Lizzie Hyde free.

U.S. Navy Seal Jim Schweitzer is a hard man to kill, but when the enemy comes for him and his family, they succeed in taking him down. But Jim is raised from the dead by a sorcerer, and called back to duty by a secret unit dabbling in the occult. Now, as he wrestles with a literal inner demon, he begins to realize that his new superiors are keeping him in the dark on purpose - especially about his wife and son's future.

Earth has been invaded by the Illyri - a beautiful, civilized, yet ruthless alien species. Paul Kerr is one of a new generation of young Resistance leaders waging war on the invaders. And Syl Hellais is the first of the Illyri to be born on Earth. Trapped inside the walls of her father's stronghold, hated by the humans, she longs to escape. But on her sixteenth birthday, her life will change forever. Syl becomes an outcast, an enemy of her people, for daring to save the life of one human: Paul Kerr.

Time travel tales of love and the future, alternate realities, and the worlds of fantasy -- here's a collection of stories where lovers, happy and otherwise, are caught in bizarre twists of time.

In 2038, an act of bioengineered terrorism decimated humanity. Across the globe, those who survived are now divided between "mutants" and "norms". Detective Cassandra Lee of Los Angeles Special Investigative Section has taken down some notorious criminals, but when a Bishop's daughter is kidnapped by mutants, Lee must learn to trust her new partner: mutant lawman Deputy Ras Omo.

Cinnabar's chief spymaster's child is determined to search for treasure in the midst of a civil war. Who better to hold the boy's hand - and to take the blows directed at him - than Captain Daniel Leary, the Republic of Cinnabar Navy's troubleshooter, and his friend the cyberspy Adele Mundy? Daniel and Adele face kidnappers, hijackers, pirates and a death squad - even before they can get to their real business of ending the war on Corcyra. Only with planetary peace can the boy they're escorting get on with "his" mission.

Eric Albright is a twenty-six-year-old journalist living in London. That is to say he "would" be a journalist if he got off his backside. But this luckless slacker isn't all bad - he has a soft spot for his sometimes friend Stuart Casey, the homeless old drunk who mostly lives under the railway bridge near his flat. Eric is willing to let his life just drift by...until the day a small red door appears on the graffiti-covered wall of the bridge, and a gang of strange-looking people - Eric's pretty sure one of them is a giant - dash out of the door and rob the nearby newsagent.

Married now for a century, Morlock Ambrosius and Aloe Oaij will take different paths to counter the threat of the Sunkillers. As Aloe ferrets out the enemy within the Graith, Morlock joins forces with his sister, the formidable Ambrosia Viviana, and crosses the monster-haunted plains of the deep north to confront the Sunkillers in their own realm. Morlock and Aloe think their parting is temporary, but it is final. They may or may not save the world, but they will not save each other, or themselves.

Jake appeared from another Earth, shocked and angry, and restrained by government investigators for study. But when he unwittingly steals energy from parapsychologist Tess, it causes a ripple effect across two worlds. Ross is an FBI agent, ordered to protect Tess as she conducts her research into this dangerous phenomenon. His assignment was not random - he and Tess have a history. And when those feelings resurface, Ross will have to choose between his love for Tess, and his duty to protect his world.

Lost in the dark, half a year into their journey to the colony world of Tantalus, Sakura Kimei, her family, and her best friend, the alien 'Bemmie' nicknamed Whips, are torn from the safety of their colony ship. In a crippled lifeboat, they had one chance to find a habitable world. But even then, they would find that their apparent salvation was a world of a thousand secrets.

Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people can prevent global chaos, united in their belief that a space elevator is the path to the future, and willing to take the steps and make the sacrifices necessary to make their dream a reality.

Grieving the stillbirth of her son, Mac is driving across Texas when she swerves to avoid hitting a deer - and winds up in a dead spot, a place between the worlds of the living and the dead. If they can control their imaginations, people can bring dreams to life - but most are besieged by fears and nightmares. Mackenzie's mother and husband haunt her, driving her to the brink of madness. Then she hears a child call for help and her maternal instincts kick into overdrive. Grant, Mac's ally in the dead spots, insists Johnny is a phantom, but the boy seems so real, so alive...

His third collection of stories, following SMOKE AND MIRRORS and FRAGILE THINGS.

During the grand reopening for the Wayfarer, the D'Artigo sisters' cousin Daniel shows up while being chased by a rampaging ghost. He has procured a rare and valuable sword, and a ring of ghostly warriors comes attached to it. Protectors of the soul trapped within it, the spirits are out to stop anybody who threatens the weapon. As the D'Artigo sisters unravel the history of the sword, they quickly realize that the entity locked within the blade is a dangerous king from times gone by--and he's about to break free and try to recover his crown...

Books, libraries, and newspapers are gone, replaced by handheld Memes. Yet a few dedicated wordsmiths are still laboring on the final print edition of the "North American Dictionary of the English Language." But one evening, right before it's released, Anana Johnson finds that the chief editor - her father - has vanished. Anana and her bookish colleague Bart follow their only clue, the word "ALICE," down into subterranean passages, the stacks of the Mercantile Library, and secret meetings of an anti-Meme underground resistance, discovering a frightening connection to the growing "word flu" pandemic.

In Dson Faimon, the realm of the alfar, the warriors are planning a military campaign. Caphalor and Sinthoras are looking to enlist a powerful demon to strengthen their army - but the two alfar have very different goals. While Caphalor is determined to defend the borders of their empire and no more, the ambitious Sinthoras is intent on invasion: and he has the kingdoms of dwarves and the elves firmly in his sights.

Finn Gramaraye was framed for the crime of dark necromancy at the age of 15, and exiled to the Other Realm for twenty five years. But now that he's free, someone - probably the same someone - is trying to get him sent back. Finn has only a few days to discover who is so desperate to keep him out of the mortal world, and find evidence to prove it to the Arcane Enforcers.

The Mentats, the Navigators, and the Sisterhood all strive to improve the human race, but each group knows that as Butlerian fanaticism grows stronger, the battle will be to choose the path of humanity's future - whether to embrace civilization, or to plunge into an endless dark age.

London, 1882: Harold Spire and Special Branch Division Omega must find the Eterna Compound, which grants immortality. Catastrophe destroyed the hidden laboratory in New York City where Eterna was developed, but Queen Victoria is convinced someone escaped - and has a sample of Eterna. Also searching for Eterna is an American, Clara Templeton, who helped start the project after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln nearly destroyed her nation.

Respected horror anthologist Stephen Jones edits this collection of 17 stories inspired by the 20th century's master of horror, H.P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," in which a young man goes to an isolated, desolate fishing village in Massachusetts, and finds that the entire village has interbred with strange creatures that live beneath the sea, and worship ancient gods.

Sisters Sky and Phee, interred in the Red Allies prisoner of war camp that was once Manhattan, set a series of events in motion that end in the death of one of the camp guards. Now they're outlaws, forced to join strange Englishmen on an escape mission through Manhattan. Their flight takes them into subways haunted by cannibals, into the arms of a sadistic cult in the city's Meatpacking District and, through the pages of their mom's old journal, into the island's dark and shocking past.

On the streets of Manhattan, Quinn finds herself stuck in the middle of a three-million-year-old grudge match between the ghouls and the djinn, accidentally in possession of a hellish artifact that could turn the tide of the war, all the while being hunted by depraved half-ghoul twins intent on "taking" the object and ushering in a terrifying Dark Age.

Anya has failed in her mission to bring Prince Zabriel back to the Faerie realm of Chrior so that he can ascend his rightful throne. Instead, Zabriel, her prince, cousin and dear friend, is standing trial for crimes committed under the false name William Wolfram Pyrite. Worst of all, the last possible heir to the Faerie throne is Illumina - the cousin Anya suspects of the foulest betrayal possible.

Jonah Kirk tells of his life in the city as a young boy, introducing his indomitable grandfather, also a "piano man"; his single mother, a struggling singer; and the heroes, villains, and everyday saints and sinners who make up the fabric of the metropolis in which they live - and who will change the course of Jonah's life forever.

War with the Tauran Union is inevitable. Carrera intends to drive out the last vestige of foreign imperialism in Balboa, the Tauran Union Security Force. But then his own government calls a halt even as the commander of the United Earth Peace Fleet, High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein, injects a dose of realism and spine into the Tauran Union. But the Taurans are provoking Balboa mercilessly, and Carrera knows that sooner or later, he must fight. Only now the task will be more difficult and more bloody.

The Island is a place of hopelessness and death. And it is to this place that all the elderly and infirm are shipped, the scapegoats for the collapse of society. There's no escape, not from the punishment satellites that deliver instant judgment for any crime - including escape attempts - and not from the demons that come on foggy nights, when the satellites are all but blind. But when one of the Island's inhabitants, the aging "Big Guy" Clancy, finds a network of tunnels beneath the waste, there is suddenly hope.

A collection of her stories.

Contains Malan's first two epic fantasy adventures, THE SLEEPING GOD and THE SOLDIER KING, the swashbuckling tales of the mercenary partners Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane. Though from vastly different backgrounds, the two are drawn together by their guild memberships and a bond that can only be broken by death. Together they stand against magical traps, military invasions, and threats from gods and mortals alike.

While Daryan struggles to maintain the peace, Eofar and Rho are racing to their northern homeland to plead - or fight - for the Shadar's independence. But Norland has changed, and they soon find themselves embroiled in the court politics of an empire about to implode. Meanwhile, the Mongrel's path carries her deep into Norland's frozen wastes to redeem a promise - one that forces her into the heart of the growing conflict.

In Maradaine, the exotic city where both crime and punishment are fueled by magic, Veranix Calbert leads a double life. By day, he's a struggling magic student. At night, he's out to take down the drug trade of William Fenmere, crime boss and murderer of Veranix's father. When Veranix disrupts the delivery of two magical aartifacts meant for Fenmere's clients, the mages of the Blue Hand Circle, it marks a turning point in his personal war on crime. Using the power-filled objects in his fight, he quickly becomes a real thorn in Fenmere's side.

Field Marshal Tamas returns to his beloved country to find that for the first time in history, the capital city of Adro lies in the hands of a foreign invader. His son is missing, his allies are indistinguishable from his foes, and reinforcements are several weeks away. With the Kez still bearing down upon them and without clear leadership, the Adran army has turned against itself. Inspector Adamat is drawn into the very heart of this new mutiny with promises of finding his kidnapped son. And Taniel Two-shot, hunted by men he once thought his friends, must safeguard the only chance Adro has of getting through this war without being destroyed.

Three prominent Venetians - the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago - have lured the rascal-Fool Pocket, the erstwhile envoy from Britain who also happens to be a favourite of the Doge, to a dark dungeon, promising a spirited evening with a rare Amontillado sherry and a fetching young noblewoman. Their invitation is, of course, bogus. The wine is drugged; the girl is nowhere in sight. These scoundrels have something far less amusing planned for the man who has consistently foiled their quest for power and wealth. But this Fool is no fool - and the story is only beginning.

Vancouver author. Mexico City, 1988: Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mixtape. Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends - Sebastian and Daniela - and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the three friends begin to piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love. Mexico City, 2009. Meche returns to the city for her estranged father's funeral. When she runs into Sebastian, it revives buried childhood memories. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? And, is there any magic left?

Two people, brought together by a horrific act, are united in a common cause by the powers of the Silver Box. The two join to protect humanity from destruction by an alien race, the Laz, hell-bent on regaining control over the Silver Box, the most destructive and powerful tool in the universe. The Silver Box will stop at nothing to prevent its former master from returning to being, even if it means finishing the earth itself.

A violent vampire attack has left three women missing, and the mayor of Chicago has a simple demand for Merit and Ethan: Get your House in order. Or else. Merit needs to get to the bottom of the crime, but, unable to tell who is on her side, she calls in a dangerous favour from a member of an underground vamp group that may have intel on the attack. Merit soon finds herself in the dark heart of Chicago's supernatural society--a world ready to fulfill the protesting humans' worst fears, and a place where she'll learn that being a vampire means getting a little blood on your hands...

The warring Terrans and Phrenorians both have sights set on the rich resources of the jungle planet Makaum. Master Sergeant Frank Sage is sent there to bring the Makaum troops up to standards. But once there he discovers he must stop a brewing civil war with the power to unleash a galactic cataclysm.

Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They're looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it's time to take them to the sanatorium. No one returns from the sanatorium. And then a new arrival in the house shatters the fragile peace, and everything changes.

Arriving in New Orleans in 1722, Original vampire siblings Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah Mikaelson find it a lawless city, a haven for witches and werewolves unwilling to share territory. The siblings are at their mercy-especially after Klaus meets the beautiful and mysterious Vivianne. Her impending marriage is key to ending the war between the supernatural factions-and Klaus's attraction to her could destroy the uneasy alliance. As Elijah works toward securing a piece of the city for his family, and Rebekah fights her unexpected feelings for a French captain, will Klaus's volatile desires bring their world crashing down-and tear them apart for good?

Cayden, part Elf, part Fae, part human Wizard lives and breathes for the theater, and he's good, very good. He's a tregetour - a wizard who is both playwright and magicwielder. It is Cade's power that creates the magic, but a tregetour is useless without a glisker - an elf who can spin out the magic onto the stage, to enchant the audience. And Cade's glisker, Mieka, is something special too. So is their fettler, Rafe, who controls the magic and keeps them and the audience safe. And their masker, Jeska, who speaks all the lines, is every young girl's dream. They are reaching for the pinnacles of society and power, but not the way Cade's mother thinks they should. They'll change their world, or die trying.

The Renshai have won back Fields of Wrath. As the survivors limp homeward, wounded in body and spirit, craving only the mundane comforts of home, Tae Kahn becomes ever more certain that a far larger and fiercer wave of enemy soldiers is headed toward them. This time, Tae is certain, the ranks will include hundreds of the strong, magical, Island-dwelling giants. The only hope for the peoples of the Continent is to remuster their war-weary troops and find a way to convince the few magical beings of their own world to assist them.

There was a time known as the Grind - when Freeman's people lived as slaves to another race referred to simply as "Master." They were property. When a civil rights movement emerged, the Masters refused to bend. Instead, they declared war. And lost. Now, the freed world is threatened by a virus, spread through bites, sweeping through the population. Those infected are propelled to violence, driven to disperse the virus. Uniquely suited to respond to this new threat, Freeman searches for a cure, but instead finds the source - the Masters, intent on reclaiming the world.

Nathan died the summer before his final year in high school. But he wakes in his room - or in the shrine his mother has made of his room - confused, cold, and unable to interact with anyone or anything he sees. The only clear memory he has is a dream of a shining city and its glorious queen, but the dream fades, until he once again meets his girlfriend Emma by the side of his own grave. Nathan wants life. He wants Emma. But, even if Emma can deliver what he desires, the cost may be too high to pay.

As Scion turns its allseeing eye on Paige, the mimelords and mimequeens of the city's gangs are invited to a rare meeting of the Unnatural Assembly. Jaxon Hall and his Seven Seals prepare to take center stage, but there are bitter fault lines running through the clairvoyant community and dark secrets around every corner. Then the Rephaim begin crawling out from the shadows. But where is Warden? Paige must keep moving, from Seven Dials to Grub Street to the secret catacombs of Camden, until the fate of the underworld can be decided.

A gala opening at the Metropolitan Museum of Art attracts the upper crust as well as a trio of harpies who attack the crowd and steal a cluster of cursed diamonds known as the Dragon Eggs. Now seer Makenna Fraser, along with the other agents of the Supernatural Protection & Investigation team, has twenty-four hours to find the diamonds and prevent global panic. No biggie.

SPRING AD 235. Dawn on the Rhine. A surprise attack and the brutal murder of the Emperor Alexander and his mother ends the Severan dynasty and shatters four decades of Roman certainty. Military hero Maximinus Thrax is the first Caesar risen from the barracks. A simple man of steel and violence, he will fight for Rome. The Senators praise the new Emperor with elaborate oratory, but will any of them accept a Caesar who was once a shepherd boy? And in the streets of the eternal city, others merely pray to escape imperial notice. In the north, as the merciless war against the barbarians consumes men and treasure, rebellion and personal tragedy drive Maximinus to desperate extremes, bloody revenge and the borders of sanity.

Cop Richard Oort has become CEO of Lumina Enterprises, a mysterious, globe-girdling operation, replacing the previous guy, who appears to have also been Prometheus. Now Prometheus is bound, and the job of taking the fight to the next level is his

When the team led by particle physicist Jon Grady finally produces a device that can reflect gravity, Grady expects widespread acclaim for his entire team. The Nobel. Instead, his lab is locked down by a shadowy organization whose mission is to prevent at all costs the social upheaval sudden technological advances bring. Rejecting the opportunity to join the organization and improve his own technology in secret, Grady is thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison built to hold rebellious geniuses like himself. Can the prisoners break the restraints that the organization has placed on their intellects - and on the future of the human race?

Having barely escaped the clutches of the Darkwalker, Inspector Nicolas Lenoir throws himself into his work with a determination he hasn't known in years. But his legendary skills are about to be put to the test. A horrific plague is ravaging the city - and Lenoir must find a cure...and the men responsible for unleashing the deadly disease.

Sam is a golem created from the substance of his own magic by the late Hierarch of Southern California. Daniel Blackland is determined to protect and teach him. But Daniel is injured trying to stop the building of a Pacific firedrake, a kind of ultimate weapon of mass magical destruction, in LA. Sam manages to get Daniel to the place run by the Emmas. As the Emmas work on healing Daniel, Sam decides to go back to LA and prevent the firedrake on his own.

Including stories from the 1970s to the present day, the collection seeks to expand the conversation about feminism while engaging the reader in a wealth of imaginative ideas from contributors Angela Carter, Eileen Gunn, James Tiptree Jr., Carol Emshwiller, Eleanor Arnason, Hiromi Goto, Joanna Russ, Kelley Eskridge, Kit Reed, L. Timmel Duchamp, Pamela Sargent, Susan Palwick, Tanith Lee, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Zilwicki and Cachat are on the run in Mesa's underworld, not only hunted by the Alignment but threatened by the exploding conflict on the planet between Mesa's overlords and the brutalized slaves and descendants of slaves who have suffered under their rule for so long. But if Zilwicki and Cachat succeed in rooting out the ancient conspiracy, a great evil may be removed from the galaxy - and on a long-oppressed planet, freedom may finally dawn.

After the gristly murder of a dirty magic coven leader, Kate Prospero and The Magical Enforcement Agency team up with the local police to find the killer. But as the infighting between covens turns ugly, an all-out war brews in the slums of Babylon. When a tenacious reporter sticks her nose in both the investigation and Prospero's past in the covens, old ghosts resurface. The team will have to use all the weapons in their arsenal to stop the coven war and find the killer before the case brings down all their careers - and their lives.

The Broom clan of Cobra warriors finds itself pressed between two star empires headed for war. On the planet Aventine, the Broom's homeworld, pater familia Paul Broom has been taken prisoner by Commodore Santeros, an implacable operative of the Dominion of Man. Paul is due to have his memories sifted through by the dreaded and often destructive Dominion MindsEye in order to root out the location of legendary Qasamaa planet where huge advances in military hardware might give the Dominion of Man an edge in a coming war with the alien Troft. Santeros hopes to strike a deal with Qasama - but if a deal cannot be struck then Santores is prepared to take what he wants.

Brianna Hai runs an occult shop that sells useless trinkets to tourists - and real magic supplies to witches and warlocks. The magical painting that hangs in Brianna's apartment is the last portal between the fae and human worlds. A shocking magical assault on her home reveals to Brianna that her father, High King Liu of the Fae, is under attack. With the help of her gargoyle, Pug, her friend David, and Angelo, a police detective who doesn't believe in magic, Brianna recovers what was stolen from her and becomes an unwilling potential heir to the throne.

High fantasy action and adventure in a military vein by top authors including Jonathan Maberry, Tobias Buckell, Elizabeth Moon, Tanya Huff, Glen Cook, Simon R. Green, Seanan McGuire, and Linda Nagata.

An anthology of post-apocalyptic literature - an eclectic mix of tales that explores famine, death, war, pestilence, and harbingers of the biblical apocalypse - from some of the most renowned science fiction and fantasy authors in the field today including George RR Martin, Hugh Howey, Junot Diaz, David Brin and many more.

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor returns from exile to rule after his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "accident". Entirely unschooled in the art of court politics, he has no friends, no advisors, and the sure knowledge that whoever assassinated his father and brothers could make an attempt on his life at any moment - he can trust nobody. He must quickly adjust to life as the Goblin Emperor. All the while, he is alone, and trying to find even a single friend... and hoping for the possibility of romance, yet also vigilant against the unseen enemies that threaten him, lest he lose his throne - or his life.

1337. The French have the bankrupt Edward III back on his heels. But 16 year old Hal Romsey, a Luciferist and a visionary, has one of the keys to Hell -- and knows how to use it. Hell, it seems, is willing to ally with England.

After Elisha discovered his uncanny talent for wielding powerful magic, he unleashed that power to end an unjust war - and killed the king in the process. Now a wanted man, Elisha not only flees from those who fear and hate him, but from those who would use him and his magic for their own agendas.

As mate of the Beast Lord, former mercenary Kate Daniels has more responsibilities than it seems possible to juggle. She's struggling to keep her business afloat, dealing with pack affairs, and preparing for an attack from an ancient god-like being. Then, when a Master of the Dead is found murdered at the hands of a shapeshifter, Kate has 24 hours to hunt down the killer - or she may find herself embroiled in a war which could destroy everything she holds dear.

Featuring rare short stories published between 1880 and 1920, this original anthology spotlights a variety of important sci-fi pioneers, including Ethel Watts Mumford, Edith Nesbit, and Clare Winger Harris. Imaginative scenarios include a feminist society in another dimension, the east/west division of the United States with men and women on opposite sides, a man who converts himself into a cyborg, a robot housemaid, and many others.

In pursuit of a hardened enemy - Magus - Ryan and the companions find themselves in a land more foreign than any they've encountered. After unwittingly slipping through a time hole, the group lands in twentieth-century New York City, getting their first glimpse of predark civilization. And they're not sure they like it. Only Mildred and Doc can appreciate this strange metropolis, but Armageddon is just seventy-two hours away, and Magus will stop at nothing to make sure Ryan and his team are destroyed on Nuke Day...

Malin has always been different, and when her father dies, leaving her alone, her choice is clear: stay, and remain an outsider forever, or leave in search of the mythical inheritance she is certain awaits her. Apprenticed to a series of strange and wonderful characters, Malin embarks on a grueling journey that crosses oceans and continents - from the high seas to desert plains - and leads to a discovery that she could never have expected.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated - one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape - while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

In desperate need of answers, Simon Wolfgard, a shape-shifter leader among the Others, has no choice but to enlist blood prophet Meg Corbyn's help, regardless of the risks she faces by aiding him. Meg is still deep in the throes of her addiction to the euphoria she feels when she cuts and speaks prophecy. She knows each slice of her blade tempts death. But Others and humans alike need answers, and her visions may be Simon's only hope of ending the conflict.

Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, and finds both music and mystery in the mountains. Close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can't begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play, and a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit. Change is coming to Cloud County, and only the night wind knows what part Rob will play when the last leaf falls from the Widow's Tree.

A brilliant cellular biologist decides to treat his 10 year old granddaughter, diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour, with an experimental, unapproved enzyme. But he is too old to flee across the country, chased by the authorities, to reach a private research clinic in Oregon. So he injects himself with a genetic factor, also experimental and unapproved, to reverse aging. But though he begins to grow younger and stronger, his lung cancer is not abating - and his granddaugher is dying.

Art Thrasher is a man with the driving vision to send humans to Mars. The government has utterly failed, but Thrasher has got the plan to accomplish such a feat. Form a club of billionaires to chip in one billion a year until the dream is accomplished. But it's going to take all his wiles as a captain of industry and master manipulator of business and capital to overcome setbacks and sabotage and get a rocket full of scientist, engineers, visionaries, and dreamers on their way to the Red Planet.

For once, mated werewolves Charles Cornick and Anna Latham are not traveling because of Charles's new role as his father's enforcer. This time, their trip to Arizona is purely personal, as Charles plans to buy Anna a horse for her birthday. Or at least it starts out that way. Charles and Anna soon discover that a dangerous Fae being is on the loose, replacing human children with simulacrums. The Fae's cold war with humanity is about to heat up, and Charles and Anna are in the crossfire.

Devin is a reluctant conscript to an alien-run army. When the Accordance conquered Earth, they said it was to prepare against the incoming alien Conglomeration forces. But as Devin travels to the dark side of the moon for boot camp and better acquaints himself with his so-called allies, his loyalties are increasingly tested. Because the enemy of the enemy is not always a friend. Sometimes they're a far, far worse threat.

Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness trades the skills of her Winter Knight to pay off one of her debts. Harry discovers he must help a group of supernatural villains - led by one of his most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone - to break into the highest-security vault in town to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world - which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld and generally unpleasant character. Worse, Dresden suspects that there is another game afoot that no one is talking about. And he's dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience.

When Prudence Alessandra Maccon Akeldama (Rue to her friends) is given an unexpected dirigible, she does what any sensible female would under similar circumstances - names it the Spotted Custard and floats to India in pursuit of the perfect cup of tea. But India has more than just tea on offer. Rue stumbles upon a plot involving local dissidents, a kidnapped brigadier's wife, and some awfully familiar Scottish werewolves. Faced with a dire crisis and an embarrassing lack of bloomers, what else is a young lady of good breeding to do but turn metanatural and find out everyone's secrets, even thousand-year-old fuzzy ones?

War with Hell looms and the cruel demons could gain control of everything. And Emma Donahoe faces a new danger -- John's love for her could lead to complete annihilation. She must fight her own war to retain her identity as it disintegrates into the man she loves...

Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station. But the station's reclusive Commandant is nowhere to be seen, leaving Cleveland to deal with a hostile crew on his own. Persistent malfunctions plague the station's systems while interference from a toxic purple star makes even ordinary communications problematic. Cleveland reaches out to the universe via an old-fashioned space radio, only to tune in to a strange, enigmatic signal: a woman's voice that seems to echo across a thousand lightyears of space. But is this just a random bit of static from the past - or a warning of an undying menace?

Paul Kerr has been sent to fight at the edges of the growing Illyri Empire. His beloved Syd Hellais is the first alien child born on Earth, a creature of two worlds - and a being possessed of powers beyond imagining. Now both must endure the terrible exile that Syl's race has deemed just punishment for their love. But the conquest of Earth is not all it seems. There is another species involved, known only as the Others, and the Illyri will kill to keep their existence secret.

Meet ranger Charlie Windar and his adopted wild predator, and explore their home on a planet that has been raped and restored more than once. Meet Nona Hall, child of power and privilege from the greatest station in the system, the Diamond Deep. Meet Nona's best friend, a young woman named Chrystal who awakens in a robotic body.

Two braids in the 1632 series. Braid 1. Daring pioneers cross the Atlantic and found a new colony on the Wild Coast of South America. The colonists hope that with the up-timers' support and knowledge they can prosper in the tropics without resort to Indian and African slavery. Then a slave ship visits the colony, seeking water.... and the colonists must make a fateful choice. Braid 2. In 1633, the wave of change emanating from the Ring of Fire reaches Japan. The Shogun is intrigued by samples of up-time technology, but it's a peek at what fate had in store for Japan in the old time line that has the greatest impact.

The director of the very agency that Agent Franks works for is breaking the promise made long ago -- that no other like him would ever be created. Project Nemesis is making thirteen. Now all bets are off, and Hell hath no fury like a monster betrayed. Particularly if that monster happens to be an undying killing machine capable of taking out vampires and werewolves with one hand tied behind his back.

The complete trilogy on one volume. 600 years have passed since the events of THE OUTCAST CHRONICES occurred and much T'En knowledge has been lost, hidden or cloaked by lies. This is the story of Imoshen, named for her ancestor, Imoshen the First. The last pure T'En woman, she is a throwback to the mystics who settled Fair Isle. When the Ghebite invader, General Tulkhan, conquers her island she is torn between her duty to smooth the transition of power and her betrothal to Reothe, last throwback T'En male who leads the rebellion against Tulkhan.

A treasured toy box of all-original dark stories about dolls of all types, including everything from puppets and poppets to mannequins and baby dolls, from bestselling and critically acclaimed authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Seanan McGuire, Carrie Vaughn, Pat Cadigan, Tim Lebbon, Richard Kadrey, Genevieve Valentine, Jeffrey Ford, Stephen Gallagher, Gemma Files, Lucy Sussex, Stephen Graham Jones, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Richard Bowes.

Industrial workers for House Technis, farmers for House Arbor, and fisher folk of House Marin eke out a living and hope for a better future. But the philosopher-assassin Kata plots a betrayal that will cost the lives of godlike Minotaurs; the ambitious bureaucrat Boris Autec rises through the ranks as his private life turns to ashes; and the idealistic seditionist Maximilian hatches a mad plot to unlock the vaunted secrets of the Great Library of Caeli-Enas, drowned in the fabled city at the bottom of the sea, its strangeness visible from the skies above.

War was coming, a war that the colonies had to win if they were ever to be more than prison camps and a dumping ground for incompetent noblemen. The experience that had caused Allen Allenson to hate war made him the only man who could lead the colonial army. Allenson knew that he wasn't really a general, but he understood his fellow colonists better than any homeworld general could. He would free the Cutter Stream, or he would die trying. What Allen Allenson would not do, what he would never do, was quit.

The Wall at World's End has been brought down, war is coming to the land, and Eric and his newfound friends are caught in the thick of it. They are forced to flee from the Tormentors, dreadful creatures that have poured through the breach, and there are rumors that one of the great dragons has escaped its sky prison. Worse yet, the mad Lord Vous's journey to godhood is almost complete, and a mysterious being called Shadow (who is not but looks remarkably like Eric) is wandering Levaal with great power but no purpose it yet understands.

Dave decides that unfollowing someone just isn't enough. He's determined to make the internet a nicer place, and he won't stop at murder in order to achieve it. When he kills his best friend's girlfriend, he isn't planning on changing the world. She was just really annoying on Facebook. But soon Dave realises he's being manipulated. A conspiracy are using him to gain control of something dark forming at the heart of the world wide web...

In the wake of her older sister's suicide, Finn Sullivan and her father move to a quaint town in upstate New York populated with socialites, hippies, and dramatic artists. It holds bright possibilities - and dark enigmas, including the devastatingly attractive Jack Fata, scion of one of the town's most powerful families. As she begins to settle in, Finn discovers that beneath its pretty, placid surface, the town and its denizens - especially the Fata family - wield an irresistible charm and dangerous power, a tempting and terrifying blend of good and evil, magic and mystery.

Loki tells his story, from his recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself.

The river Irenicon is a feat of ancient Concordian engineering. Blasted through the middle of Rasenna in 1347, using Wave technology, it divided the only city strong enough to defeat the Concordian Empire. But no one could have predicted the river would become sentient - and hostile. Sofia Scaligeri, the soon-to-be Contessa of Rasenna, can see no way of stopping the culture of vendetta that has the city in its grasp. But the feuding factions of Rasenna must unite against their shared enemy - for Concord is about to unleash the Wave again.

Kismet Knight, a brainy Denver-based psychologist with a stalled career and a nonexistent love life, is about to have her world rocked. Not only does her newest patient, Midnight, long to become a vampire, but the teenager insists that a coven of the undead hangs out at a local goth club. The always-rational Kismet dismisses Midnight's claims as the delusions of an attention-starved girl - until bodies start turning up drained of blood and the hottest self-proclaimed vampire ever to walk the face of the earth enters her office.

Jack Cloudie, thanks to his father's gambling debts, survives the streets as a pickpocket. He is pressed into the Royal Aerostatic Navy and assigned to the most useless airship in the fleet, serving under a captain who is most probably mad, bound for a war in the faraway deserts of Cassarabia.2

The ultimate anthology of supernatural detective fiction, 18 stories in all, featuring some of the biggest names in dark fantasy and horror including Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Kim Newman, Brian Lumley and Manly Wade Wellman.

A chase through time, with two people bound together in enmity and fury takes us on a fascinating journey from Paris of the late 1300s with the alchemists Perenelle and Nicolas Flamel, to contemporary New York City. Along the way, there are interludes with Bernini in Rome in 1635; with Vivaldi in Venice of 1737; with Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier and Robespierre in the Paris of the French Revolution; with William Blake and John Polidori in 1814; with Gustav Klimt in fin de siecle Vienna; with Charlotte Salomon in WWII France.

Colin Doyle is a young Irish-American musician from Chicago, whose interest is traditional Irish music. Maeve Gallagher is an Oileanach, an "Islander" from Ireland's west coast. Islanders are outcasts treated with suspicion by the locals, who think them responsible for wild and strange happenings in the area. Colin soon discovers that he's connected to Maeve in ways he never could have imagined.

In a world where death lurks in the shadows, four people must discover how they fit into the world. Nethmi, the gentle princess, who discovers a strength she never knew she had. Dae Ho, the savage warrior,who finds that a lifetime of bravery cannot make up for a single mistake. Eric, who follows his heart only to learn that love can exact a terrible price. And Krish, the humble shepherd, with a destiny he hardly understands and can never accept.

16 all new stories set on the Venus of the pulps, the steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Featuring Eleanor Arnason, Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Tobias S. Buckell, Michael Cassutt, Joe Haldeman, Matthew Hughes, Gwyneth Jones, Joe R. Lansdale, Stephen Leigh, Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Garth Nix, Mike Resnick, Allen M. Steele and Lavie Tidhar.

Australia is a cryptologist's dream, filled with unique species and unique challenges. Unfortunately for Alexander Price, it's also filled with his girlfriend Shelby's family, who are dismayed by the length of her stay in America. And then there are the werewolves to consider: infected killing machines who would like nothing more that to claim the continent as their own. The continent which currently includes Alex. Alex may be very far from home, but there is one thing he knows for sure; he's not going down without a fight.

On a distant and mysterious island ruled by elves, where he was raised and trained by a trusted Captain of the slain High King, Reyer has now come of age. He has learned of his lineage - and those loyal to the bloodline of the true High King have rallied to his side. And though the forces of his enemy are far superior, Reyer will gather an army and lead them against the Usurper - to gain back the crown and kingdom stolen from him and to restore Mithgar to its rightful rule.

The dying Maitre summons Alastar, an obscure but talented senior Imager from Westisle far to the south who has little knowledge of politics in the capital, to become his successor. But Alastar arrives in L'Excelsis to find the Collegium in disrepute. He is immediately embroiled in a power struggle, with Rex Ryen demanding that the Collegium remove the strongest High Holders and the military leadership in turn plotting to topple Ryen and destroy the Collegium. But that, Alastar discovers, is only a fraction of the problems he and the Collegium face.

Through an overwhelming storm of pain and adversity Captain Lee Harden has fought and survived. But his mission continues. Recovering from his wounds, mental and physical, he must rally his companions at Camp Ryder and push back against the still swarming hordes of the infected that threaten to extinguish an already devastated society.

Matilda Case, like the other galvanized, is inhumanly strong, and ageless. With the powerful Houses at war and the world's peace shattered, Matilda Case must find a way to stop the ancient time experiment that gifted her and the other galvanized with immortality. Because this time, it may destroy her and everything she holds dear.

In the kingdom of Lyonya, Kieri, the half-elven, half-human king, struggles to balance the competing demands of his heritage while fighting a deadly threat to his rule: evil elves linked in some way to the rebirth of magic. Meanwhile, in the neighbouring kingdom of Tsaia, a set of ancient artifacts recovered by the former mercenary Dorrin Verrakai may hold the answer to the riddle of magery's return. Thus Dorrin embarks on a dangerous quest to return these relics of a bygone age to their all-but-mythical place of origin.

In the near future the experimental nano-drug Nexus can cause humans to link together, mind to mind. When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust way over his head into a world of danger and international espionage, for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.

When an enemy from her past appears to exact a terrible revenge, Marissa's life goes from hectic to hell on earth. With Grimm inexplicably gone and Ari trapped by a sleeping spell, Marissa decides to fight fire with hellfire - and accidentally begins a countdown to the apocalypse. With the end of days extremely nigh, Marissa will have to master royal politics, demonic law, and biblical plagues in a hurry - because even the end of the world can't keep the Agency from opening for business...

When Filene, a former noblewoman masquerading as a slave, attempts to assassinate the up-and-coming tribal king, Ottonius, she fails miserably and becomes fully enslaved. The story of her education in proper submission is told in counterpoint to the tale of the powerful but primitive warrior who dreams of an imperial destiny and pursues privately devious and publicly violent means to achieve his goal. The applications of power from person to person and on an interstellar scale show haunting resemblances.

A sudden switch takes place as Kepler is viciously beaten to death by a stinking vagrant in a dark back alley. Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself. He has gained the ability to roam from one body to another. He means his host bodies no harm. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth - and avenge Josephine's death.

The gaslight and shadows of the underground city of Recoletta hide secrets and lies. When Inspector Liesl Malone investigates the murder of a renowned historian, she finds herself stonewalled by the all-powerful Directorate of Preservation - Ricoletta's top-secret historical research facility. When a second high-profile murder threatens the very fabric of city society, Malone and her rookie partner Rafe Sundar must tread carefully, lest they fall victim to not only the criminals they seek, but the government which purports to protect them.

The German war machine has woken an ancient threat - the alien Vril and their Ubermensch have returned. With this new power, ultimate victory in the war for Europe is now within the Nazis' grasp. When Dunkirk veteran and Foreign Office trouble-shooter Major Guy Pentecross stumbles across a seemingly unbelievable conspiracy, he, together with pilot and American spy Sarah Diamond and SOE operative Leo Davenport, enter the shadow world of Section Z. All three have major roles to play as they uncover the Nazis' insidious plot to use the Vril's technology to win the war... at any cost.

While Elly's learned to trust the eclectic group of vampires, Renfields, and succubi at Night Owls bookstore, her new job guarding Boston's most powerful vampire has her on edge - especially when she realizes something strange is going on with her employer, something even deadlier than usual. Cavale isn't thrilled that his sister works for vampires, but he's determined to repair their relationship, and that means trusting her choices - until Elly's job lands all of the Night Owls in deep trouble with a vengeful necromancer.

Dalinar leads the human armies deep into the heart of the Shattered Plains in a bold attempt to finally end the war with the Parshendia. Shallan comes along, hoping to find the legendary, perhaps mythical, city of Urithuru, which Jasnah believes holds a secret vital to mankind's survival on Roshar. The Parshendi take a dangerous step to strengthen themselves for the human challenge, risking the return of the fearsome Voidbringers of old. To deal with it all, Kaladin must learn how to fulfill his new role as leader of the restored Knights Radiant, while mastering the powers of a Windrunner.

17 year old Toby McGonigal, lost in space, wakes to find he's been asleep for 14,000 years. Welcome to the Lockstep Empire, where civilization is kept alive by careful hibernation. Here cold sleeps can last decades and waking moments mere weeks. Its citizens survive for millennia, traveling asleep on long voyages between worlds. Not only is Lockstep the new center of the galaxy, but Toby is shocked to learn that the Empire is still ruled by its founding family: his own. Toby's brother Peter has become a terrible tyrant. Suspicious of the return of his long-lost brother, whose rightful inheritance also controls the lockstep hibernation cycles, Peter sees Toby as a threat to his regime.

Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, personal ambassador and adopted Prince of Red London, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of parallel London. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see - a dangerous hobby, and one that has set him up for accidental treason. Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs afoul of Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a dangerous enemy, and then forces him to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

1218 AD. Ever hungry for land and gold, the Emperor has sent Praetor Gaius Marcellinus and the 33rd Roman Legion into the newly discovered lands of North America. Marcellinus and his men expect easy victory over the native inhabitants, but on the shores of a vast river the Legion clashes with - and is destroyed by - a unique civilization armed with weapons and strategies no Roman has ever imagined. Spared by his captors, Marcellinus forms an uneasy friendship with the denizens of the city-state of Cahokia. But threats - both Roman and Native - promise to assail his newfound kin.

Valek's job - and his life - are in danger. As Yelena tries to uncover the scope of these plots, she faces a new challenge: her magic is blocked. She must keep that a secret - or her enemies will discover just how vulnerable she really is - while searching for who or what is responsible for neutralizing her powers. Yes, the days of tasting poisons were much simpler. And certainly not as dangerous...

Policeman Peter Glebsky heads on holiday to the Dead Mountaineer's Inn, a ski resort hotel in a small village in a secluded valley in the Alps. Not long after his arrival, an avalanche blocks the entrance to the valley. At the same time, a guest is found dead in his room, his door locked and his neck impossibly twisted.

When ambitious Doctor Paul Clement takes a job at the mission hospital on Saint Sebastien, he has dreams of discovering cures for tropical diseases. What he finds is a place where the black arts are just a way of life. He witnesses the ritualistic murder of a young man, said to be one of the living dead. On returning to Paris, Clement attempts to resusitate the dead with wholly unexpected results. Could it be that when one is resuscitated, he brings something back with him an ancient evil, so powerful that it can never be destroyed?

An anthology of alternate Civil War stories, including submissions from Orson Scott Card, S.M. Stirling, William Forstschen, Eric Flint, and Mike Resnick.

An important political delegation arrives and a human is found murdered in a horrific manner. The murders escalate, and their severity points to the kind of killer not seen for many generations. Something is challenging the rules and order of Hell, so Hell's Bureaucracy sends investigator Thomas Fool to identify and track down the killer.

When Suyana, Face of the United Amazonia Rainforest Confederation, was secretly meeting Ethan of the United States for a date that could solidify a relationship for the struggling UARC, the last thing she expected was an assassination attempt. Daniel, a teen runaway turned paparazzi out for his big break, witnessed the first shot hit Suyana, and before he could think about it, he jumped into the fray, telling himself it's not altruism, it's the scoop. Now Suyana and Daniel are on the run - and if they don't keep one step ahead, they'll lose it all.

130 essays on Jo Walton's rereading of all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. Among her many subjects here are: the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read.

Yes, we're going back deep underground for another twelve rounds with Mookie Pearl. Father, barkeep, former Mafioso, ruler of his subterranean crime-kingdom. The Organization is back, and they'll do anything to get Mookie on board, but Mookie has gone legit, and it's taking every ounce of effort for him to keep his new bar from crashing and burning. To top it all, his daughter is missing, and when Nora's not in plain sight, that's usually a sign of bad things to come! On one hand, the Organization. On the other, Nora. Why can't Family ever be easy...?

Archos has survived. Spread across the far reaches of the world, the machine code has fragmented into millions of pieces, hiding and regrouping. Survivors find one another, form into groups, and react to a drastically different (and deadly) technological landscape. All the while, the remnants of Archos's shattered intelligence are seeping deeper into new breeds of machines, mounting a war that will not allow for humans to win again.

When MI317 - the government department devoted to defending Britain from cosmic horrors and otherworldly threats - comes under attack, Arthur Wallace and his team begin a race from Area 51 to an Arctic town populated entirely by spore zombies to save the world and halt the destruction of humanity.

Crucial peace talks are being conducted aboard the Enterprise. But Kirk is distracted when he unexpectedly encounters Lenore Karidian. 20 years ago, the deadly daughter of Kodos the Executioner tried to kill Kirk, but she has since been declared sane and rehabilitated. Kirk gives her the benefit of doubt -- until a mysterious assassination threatens the already fragile peace process, and all clues point toward Lenore.

Doctor Julian Bashir sacrificed his career for a chance to infiltrate Section 31 and destroy it from within. Now it's asking him to help it stop the Breen from stealing a dangerous new technology from the Mirror Universe - one that could give the Breen control over the galaxy. It's a mission Bashir can't refuse - but is it really the shot he's been waiting for? Or is it a trap from which even his genetically enhanced intellect can't escape?

On Deep Space 9, despite the opposition of the station's security officer, Jefferson Blackmer, Captain Ro Laren offers aid to the People of the Open Sky, who have come to the station in search of sanctuary. But when Dr. Crusher's highly secure files are accessed without permission--the same files that hold the secrets of the Shedai, a race whose powerful but half-understood scientific secrets solved the Andorian catastrophe--the People seem the likeliest suspects.

Black ops squad Kilo-Five find their loyalties tested beyond breaking point when the father of their Spartan comrade, still searching for the truth about her disappearance, prepares to glass Earth's cities to get an answer. How far will Kilo-Five go to stop him? And will he be able to live with the truth when he finds it? The painful answer lies with a man long dead, and a conscience that still survives in the most unlikely, undiscovered place.

While their allies wage war on a thousand different fronts, the XVIth Legion descend upon the Knight world of Molech - home to the ruling House Devine, and a principal stronghold of the Imperial Army. The forces loyal to the Emperor stand ready to defy the Warmaster, but just what could have drawn Horus to attack such a well defended planet, and what might he be willing to sacrifice to fulfil his own dark destiny?

When renegade starships wreak destruction across the quadrant, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are shocked to discover the mastermind behind this sudden threat: none other than Picard's protege and friend, Admiral William T. Riker. The newly minted admiral is on special assignment aboard the U.S.S. Aventine, helmed by Captain Ezri Dax - someone who is no stranger to breaking Starfleet regulations. Her starship is by far the faster vessel, and Riker cannot yield, even to his former mentor.

In the second book of the Companions Codex, the latest series in the saga of dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden, we pick up with the fan-favourite storyline of dwarf king Bruenor Battlehammer and his bloody feud with the orc kingdom of Many Arrows.

It's kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy's worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object capable of obliterating the Jedi and conquering the galaxy.

Leia sends smuggler Han Solo on a mission to extract a high-level rebel spy from the very heart of the Empire. But when Han locates the brash rebel agent, Scarlet Hark, she's determined to stay behind enemy lines. A pirate plans to sell a cache of stolen secrets that the Empire would destroy entire worlds to protect - including the planet where Leia is currently meeting with rebel sympathizers.

Kirk and the Enterprise are en route to the extreme edge of the Alpha Quadrant, and to a region known as the Vara Nebula. Its mission: to investigate why science outpost Zeta Gibraltar is not answering all Federation hailing messages. When the "Enterprise" arrives, a scan shows no life forms in the science station. A landing party quickly discovers that signs of a violent firefight are everywhere. Zeta Gibraltar has been completely raided. Yet there are no bodies and the entire roster of station personnel is missing.

Luke and R2-D2 swap their X-wing for a sleek space yacht piloted by brash recruit Nakari Kelen, daughter of a biotech mogul, who has got a score of her own to settle with the Empire. Challenged by ruthless Imperial bodyguards, death-dealing enemy battleships, merciless bounty hunters, and monstrous brain-eating parasites, Luke plunges head-on into a high-stakes espionage operation that will push his abilities as a Rebel fighter and would-be Jedi to the limit.

The Governor's dark journey reaches its shocking, heartrending conclusion, as war breaks out and all of the plot lines from the previous three novels converge, tensions boil over into unthinkable mayhem, and the dark destinies of those few left standing are sealed in a series of stunning twists.

The Sundering has given way to months of cloud-cloaked darkness, and war rages under that oppressive sky. The orcs have broken a hard-fought treaty that's held, however tentatively, for a hundred years, and the time to settle old scores has devolved into an all-out brawl for control of the ancient realms of the North.

Autumn 1940. Children are evacuated from the cities of Britain, taken in groups to the country for safety. Teacher Eve Parkins is in charge of one such group. Their destination is Eel Marsh House. Desolate and forlorn, it is situated on a causeway and is sinking into the treacherous tidal marshes that surround it. Far from home and with no alternative, Eve and the children move in. But soon it becomes apparent that there is someone else in the house with them, someone Eve can't see but who is far more deadly than any number of German bombs...