tp. A SHADOW IN WINTER and A BETRAYAL IN WINTER in one volume: The cities of the Khaiem resist the Galt Empire's industrial war machine with the andat - creatures of magic with godlike powers. Each andat is brought into being by a "poet" who must say the right words and exert the iron will needed to control gods. The industrialized Galt war machine is helpless against the powers of the andat...but political intrigue and deep treachery combine to shift the balance of power.

Stories about powered combat armour from such authors as Jack McDevitt, Sean Williams, Dan Abnett, Simon Green, and Jack Campbell. What happens when the armour starts to take over, even the generals may be at its mercy-and under its control. Then, what about the problem of armoured rescue when irradiated vacuum stands between the frail flesh of the living and safety? And what happens when the marriage of soldier and armour becomes a bit "too "intimate - and that marriage goes sour?

Corine Solomon can touch any object and learn its history. But right now, she's trying to rebuild her pawnshop and her life despite her being marked as a witch. When demons from her past kidnap her best friend, Corine puts everything on hold to save her.

Duncan was the naive son of a minor nobleman, more interested in romance than war. Mallory was a dragon, more interested in con jobs and quick money than being a fearsome monster. Teamed up, they are more than ready for misadventure.

A demon's assassin for centuries, Maliha Crayne has gone rogue, determined to save a life for every one she's destroyed in order to free herself from an eternity of enslavement, damnation, and excruciating torment. But her closest friends are beginning to disappear, one by one. Worse still, a beautiful Renaissance murderess is recruiting Maliha as her new assassin. Maliha is turning into a lethal puppet with an evil Immortal pulling the strings, forced to kill innocents or see her missing friends die horribly.

Jace is truly stumped: How is she, a mere human, supposed to penetrate the dark heart of a child-trafficking ring of pire orphans - one that turns out to be part of a blood-farm operation, in the crime-ridden border city of Vancouver, British Columbia? But with the help of her former lover, Tanaka - whose family is one of the last samurai clans left in Japan - she stands a chance at seeking justice for the condemned children... Until the Yakuza tries to put an end to Jace's investigation.

Temur, grandson of the Great Khan, is the legitimate heir by blood to his grandfather's throne, but he is not the strongest. Going into exile is the only way to survive his ruthless cousin. Once Princess Samarkar was heir to the Rasan Empire until her father got a son on a new wife. Then she was sent to be the wife of a Prince in Song, but that marriage ended in battle and blood. Now she has renounced her worldly power to seek the magical power of the wizards. These two will come together to stand against the hidden cult that has so carefully brought all the empires of the Celadon Highway to strife and civil war.

With war looming and turmoil sweeping the nation of Altania, nowhere is safe from the treachery that threatens all the Quents have risked to achieve. And an even greater peril is stirring deep within the countryside's beautiful green estates. As Ivy dares an alliance with a brilliant illusionist and a dangerous lord, she races to master her forbidden talents and unravel the terrible truth at the heart of her land's unrest - even as a triumphant, inhuman darkness rises to claim Altania eternally for its own.

In a South American jungle Special agent Caitlin Monroe works to free a former French official held prisoner by a ruthless despot. A vicious murder in Kansas City is sending teenager Sofia Peiraro back to the murder and mayhem of General Mad Jack Blackstone. In Darwin Australia Julianne Balwyn, aristocrat turned smuggler, waits to ambush the person who is hunting her.

An epilogue to the first Shannara trilogy. Two years have passed since Jair Ohmsford aided his sister Brin in her quest to destroy the evil living tome known as the Ildatch. When word comes that a single page of the book, covered in lines pulsing with dark energy, survived Brin's magic, Jair must take up the fight alone. But Jair's gift is not the equal of his sister's, and as he steals into the prison fortress of Dun Fee Aran where he almost died in his first foray against the Ildatch he has nothing to rely upon but the power of illusion. Illusion, and the memory of an ally who died to defend him.

Long ago, one of the gods fashioned an artifact called the silver tiassa. To Devera the Wanderer, it was a pretty toy to play with. To Vlad Taltos, it was a handy prop for a con he was running. To the Empire, it was a tool to be used against their greatest enemies--the Jenoine. To the Jhereg, it was a trap to kill Vlad. The silver tiassa, however, had its own agenda.

Fourteen-year-old Timas lives in one of the domed cities that float 100,000 feet above the deadly surface of Chilo, circling near the edge of a monstrous perpetual storm. His life is turned upside down when a strange man crash lands on the city. The newcomer is fleeing an alien intelligence intent on invading the planet and discovering the secret hidden deep inside the perpetual storm-a secret that could lead to interplanetary war.

The Alliance woke Captain John "Black Jack" Geary from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet in the century-long conflict against the Syndicate Worlds. Now Fleet Admiral Geary's victory has earned him the adoration of the people-and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing. Geary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup-so he can't help but wonder if the newly christened First Fleet is being deliberately sent to the far side of space on a suicide mission.

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their secrets for the Healing they so desperately want. Meanwhile, Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever. The rogue's influence over the city's underworld, however, is far greater than she feared. And in the University, two female novices are about to remind the Guild that sometimes their greatest enemy is found within...

Though Kate is about to be crowned Queen of the Underworld, she's as isolated as ever. And despite her growing love for Henry, ruler of the Underworld, he's becoming ever more distant and secretive. Then, in the midst of Kate's coronation, Henry is abducted by the only being powerful enough to kill him: the King of the Titans.

Classic space opera: an omnibus featuring future starship commander John Grimes as he works his way up the ranks. Includes THE ROAD TO THE RIM, TO PRIME THE PUMP, THE HARD WAY UP (7 Grimes short stories) and THE BROKEN CYCLE.

The next omnibus of four classic John Grimes GALACTIC RIM novels: THE ANARCH LORDS, THE LAST AMAZON, THE WILD ONES, and CATCH THE STAR WINDS.

The village of Marrowdell is an isolated pioneer community, but it is also the place where two worlds overlap, and at the turn of light - sunset - the world of magic known as Verge can briefly be seen. Jenn Nalynn belongs to both Verge and Marrowdell, but even she doesn't know how special she is or that her "invisible" friend Wisp is actually a dragon sent to guard her and keep her from leaving the valley. But Jenn longs to see the world, and thinking that a husband will help her reach this goal, she decides to create one using spells. Suddenly her invisible friend has been transformed into a man, and he is not the only newcomer to Marrowdell - and far from the most dangerous.

After a time-travel tour of Hell, vampire queen Betsy Taylor and her sister return. Something with a devilish agenda has followed them back and everyone in Betsy's circle--living and dead--is starting to feel the heat.

Having survived Jehal's betrayal, former Queen Zafir is determined to take back control of the kingdom. To that end, she seizes Jehal's wife and son as hostages. Desperate to save his queen and his heir, Jehal makes a tentative peace with the dragons of the north, and prepares to fly against his enemies. But as politics throw the realms of men into turmoil, a far greater danger threatens. The dragons are awakening from the spells cast upon them, and returning to their native fury. They are out for revenge. And that revenge will be brutal.

[Vancouver author]. Sequel to INDIGO SPRINGS. In a small town in Oregon Astrid Lethewood discovered an underground river of blue liquid - Vitagua - which is pure magic. Everything it touches is changed. The secret is out - and the world will never be the same. Astrid's best friend, Sahara, has been corrupted by the blue magic, and now leads a cult that seeks to rule the world. Astrid, on the other hand, tries to heal the world. Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots, with the fate of the world at stake.

Captain Daniel Leary with his friend (and spy) Officer Adele Mundy are sent to a quiet sector to carry out an easy task: helping the local admiral put down a coup before it takes place. But then the jealous admiral gets rid of them by sending them off on a wild goose chase to a sector where commerce is king and business is carried out by extortion and gunfights. With anarchy and rebellion in the air, a rogue intelligence officer plots the war that will destroy civilization and enlists the help of a brute whom even torturers couldn't stomach. And, of course, it's up to Leary and Mundy to put a stop to the madness.

Now an insidious power holding helpless ghosts in thrall is using any means necessary to discredit Jackie Rutledge and split her FBI special paranormal unit team apart for good. The only chance she has means baiting the terrifying Deadworld being stalking her dreams, haunting her every step-and growing ever more hungry for her ultimate sacrifice.

After the warrior she loves saved her from a murderous gargoyle, Chalice watched helplessly as Aydin turned into a gargoyle himself. Now, free from the curse that enslaved her, Chalice pledges to join her sister knights in The Order of the Hatchet - and do whatever it takes to regain Aydin's humanity...and his love. What she encounters within their hallowed sanctuary is pure intrigue. Someone - or something - is murdering her sisters in their sleep, provoking fear and suspicion among the order.

Savaged by the K'Chain Nah'Ruk, the Bonehunters march for Kolanse, where waits an unknown fate. Tormented by questions, the army totters on the edge of mutiny, but Adjunct Tavore will not relent. Awaiting Tavore and her allies are the Forkrul Assail, the final arbiters of humanity. Drawing upon an alien power terrible in its magnitude, they seek to cleanse the world, to annihilate every human, every civilization, in order to begin anew.

For 140 years, vampire Nathaniel Cade has been bound to protect and serve the United States of America. When an ancient evil is resurrected, the President's Vampire and his human handler, Zach Barrows, must track down its source. The prime suspect is a shady private defense contractor who may be dealing with powers far deadlier than any mortal weapon. So it's up to Cade and Zach to drag the forces of darkness into the light...

Nowhere is safe, including Ylith, Midkemia's strategic bastion, where Hal's younger brothers Martin and Brendan hold off an onslaught of brutal Keshian Dog Soldiers and a mysterious force from beneath the sea. Yet courage alone is not enough to withstand the continued enemy assault. Without reinforcements, hope of success fades. Martin, Brendan, and their compatriots know that while losing Crydee, the legendary city on the kingdom's edge, would be devastating, the realm can still be saved. But if Ylith falls, all is lost.

With Gustvaus Adolphus sidelined by injuries suffered in the Polish War, the new Prime Minister of the USE and the Swedish Chancellor are forcing their reactionary policies on the USE. Unrest spreads everywhere until revolution explodes in Saxony. Mike Stearns is faced with a terrible choice.

Agatha and Krosp, Emperor of All Cats, fall in with a traveling troupe of performers dedicated to staging dramatizations of the exploits of Bill and Barry Heterodyne and their allies. Pursued by the ruthless Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, his handsome son Gil, and their minions (not to mention Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer), Agatha hides in plain sight among the circus folk, servicing their clanks and proving herself adept in performing the role of Lucrezia Mongfish, nemesis to-and later wife of-Bill Heterodyne. She also begins training under Zeetha, swordmistress and princess of the lost city of Skifander.

Sequel to THE HUMAN BLEND. Dr. Ingrid Seastrom and Whispr take their quest to learn the secrets of the implant and the thread to the South African Economic Combine, otherwise known as SAEC. It has, it seems, the answers. It also has Napun Mole, a cold-blooded assassin whose genetic enhancements make him the equivalent of a small army. Mole has already missed one chance to kill Ingrid and Whispr and now he has followed them to South Africa. This time, he is not only going to succeed, he is going to make them suffer.

Ashley was just trying to get through a tough day when the world turned upside down. A terrifying virus appears, quickly becoming a pandemic that leaves its victims, not dead, but far worse. Attacked by zombies, Ashley discovers that she is a 'Wild-Card' - immune to the virus - and she is recruited to fight back and try to control the outbreak.

Young Meb, flung from her dragon-ruled homeland in another plane of existence into Lyonesse, happens to be an adept at the universe-folding skill of Planomancy, trained by a world-walking troubleshooter of the multiverse, the great Dragon Fionn himself -a dragon who is desperately searching for Meb, whom he's come to love. Accompanying Fionn is Dileas, Meb's pet and the most loyal magic sheep dog in a thousand universes. If anyone can track Meb across time and space, Dileas can.As the legions of Shadow Hall gather to bring down the leaderless kingdom, Meb must decide whether to use her ability to become the Defender everyone hopes for-if only to avoid becoming the plaything of tyrants.

Once she was Eon, a girl disguised as a boy, risking her life for the chance to become a Dragoneye apprentice. Now she is Eona, the Mirror Dragoneye, her country's savior - but she has an even more dangerous secret. She cannot control her power. Each time she tries, it twists into a killing force. And more destruction is on her trail - High Lord Sethon's army. She and her companions must find Kygo, the young Pearl Emperor, who needs Eona's power if he is to wrest back his throne. But to help him, she must drive a dark bargain with an old enemy, which could obliterate them all.

What do we really know about the Three Kings of the Nativity, besides the fact that they followed a star to Bethlehem bearing strange gifts? The so-called "Three Wise Men" are infamous thieves, led by the dark, murderous Balthazar. After a daring escape from Herod's prison, they stumble upon the famous manger and its newborn king. The last thing Balthazar needs is to be slowed down by young Joseph, Mary and their infant. But when Herod's men begin to slaughter the first born in Judea, he has no choice but to help them escape to Egypt.

Once young Abraham Lincoln understands that his mother's death was the work of vampires, his quest for vengeance leads him to master himself in both mind and body before embarking on his life-long assault on the undead.

Venice's future rests in the hands of three unwilling individuals. The newly knighted Sir Tycho defeated the Mamluk navy but he cannot make the woman he loves love him back. The grieving Lady Giulietta wants only to retire from the poisonous world of the Venetian court to mourn her husband in peace, but both the Byzantine and German emperors want her hand in marriage. And then there is the naked, mud-strewn girl who crawls from a paupers' grave on an island in the Venetian lagoon and begins by killing the men who buried her.

The powerful artificial intelligence designated k52 has a plan to take over the world. If it were to create an artificial reality based on our own universe it could theoretically gain enough data to be able to alter reality itself, turning k52 into the ultimate arbiter of mankind's fate. It's down to Richards and Klein to stop k52 - even though the alternative could be worse!

Recovering witch Garnet Lacey, manager of Wisconsin's premier occult bookstore, likes the looks of Sebastian von Traum. The only thing he's missing is an aura. Which means he's dead. And that means trouble.

With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but her attention is divided when she realizes that her lover Eric Northman and his "child" Pam are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot-which is much more complicated than she knows...

Chesney's efforts to Save The Day and Win the Girl make slow progress. Meanwhile, Boss Greeley's deal with the Devil makes him ever-stronger, and untouchable, while the Reverend Hardacre digs deeper and finds that not everything in reality is quite what it seems.

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.

As the streets of Middlesteel are under attack by an unseen enemy, thief Charlotte Shades is asked to steal King Jude's Sceptre from the Parliament vaults by two strangers. Only consulting detective Jethro Daunt and his steamman companion Boxiron know there is more than appears to these two men. They rescue Charlotte and are thrown into a plot thicker than even they realize.

Ten years ago Tali watched as two masked figures killed her mother and now, though a powerless slave, she has sworn revenge. Rix, heir to Hightspall's greatest fortune, is tormented by the fear that he's linked to the murder, and by a sickening nightmare that he's doomed to repeat it. When a chance meeting brings Tali and Rix together, the secrets of an entire kingdom are uncovered and a villain out of legend returns to throw the land into chaos. Tali and Rix must learn to trust each other and find a way to save the realm - and themselves.

Annabelle Lee, a Fairy Containment and Control agent with immunity to fairy venom, is once again called upon to help solve a murder deep in the bayou. But this one's off the books. Her ex-lover, Hitch, needs her help searching for a secret chemical weapons lab and an FBI mole providing it with human lab rats.

Nebula nominee. The gods have been freed and the ruthless grip of the Arameri family is slipping. Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family's interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for. As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom - which even gods fear - is summoned forth.

For twenty years after Tara Martin disappeared from her small English town, her parents and her brother, Peter, have lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. And then suddenly, on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents' home and there, disheveled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It's a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara's story just does not add up. And, incredibly, she barely looks a day older than when she vanished.

Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss - who also happens to be her drug dealer - to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic. Also, there's the little matter of Chess's real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead - and if Chess doesn't watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.

Being newlyweds and new parents is challenging enough. But Jeff and Kitty Martini are also giving up their roles as super-being exterminators and Commanders in Centaurion Division while mastering the political landscape as the new heads of Centaurion's Diplomatic Corps. Enter a shadowy assassination plot and a new set of anti-alien conspirators, and nothing will ever be the same.

The first new Spider novel in 65 years picks up where the last left off, packed to the gills with the greatest slam-bang action ever penned by master pulpster CJ Henderson! Richard Wentworth, the Spider, wonders if his long struggle against the forces of evil has been worth it? Should he continue, or grab for personal happiness before his time runs out? Then, at the moment he makes his decision, fate unleashes the most hellish horrors of all time against New York City!

In the tumultuous months after Napoleon abdicates his throne, Jane and Vincent go to Belgium for their honeymoon. While there, the deposed emperor escapes his exile in Elba, throwing the continent into turmoil. With no easy way back to England, Jane and Vincent's concerns turn from enjoying their honeymoon...to escaping it. Left with no outward salvation, Jane must persevere over her trying personal circumstances and use her glamour to rescue her husband from prison.

An alien race has trapped the last 26 humans in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell. Their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool. Meanwhile, in 2013, mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings. Suddenly her predictive algorithms begin to reveal more than just criminal activity.

The Perry family's new house is perfect - except for the weird behaviour of the neighbours, the dreadful nightmares, the obscene messages, and that odd smell coming from a dark corner in the basement. Pity no one warned the family about the house. And now it's too late. Because the darkness at the bottom of the basement stairs is rising.

The date is 4 Jaguar 1 Monkey 1 House - November 25th 2012 by the old reckoning - and the Aztec Empire rules the world. The Aztecs' reign is one of cruel and ruthless oppression, encompassing regular human sacrifice. In the jungle-infested city of London, one man defies them: the masked vigilante known as the Conquistador. Then the Conquistador is recruited to spearhead an uprising, and discovers a terrible truth about the Aztec and their gods. The clock is ticking. Apocalypse looms, unless the Conquistador can help assassinate the mysterious, immortal Aztec emperor, the Great Speaker. But his mission is complicated by Mal Vaughn, a police detective who is on his trail, determined to bring him to justice.

It is five years after the Darkswarm breached the Wall of Night and the Heir of Night, Malian, and her friend and ally Kalan went missing in the wild lands of Jaransor. Now, from the wealthy River city of Ij to the isolated Emerian outpost of Normarch, rumours of dark forces and darker magics are growing. As the great Midsummer tournament at Caer Argent approaches, Haarth will have one opportunity to band together against an enemy in which few believe - or be lost forever.

When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers' wake, bringing Native American goods - and a skrayling ambassador - to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I's capital? Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is seconded to the ambassador's bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems. What he learns about the skraylings and their unholy powers could cost England her new ally - and Mal his soul.

A bishop is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the tiny church, he discovers that it was deliberately bombed. That it is a terrorist act is soon beyond doubt. It has been a long time since anyone saw anything like this. Terrorism is history. At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities. But when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that something very old has risen from the ashes. Old and very, very dangerous.

Twenty years ago three young boys, missing for a weekend, staggered out of an old building with no idea of where they'd been beyond the same vague memory of a shadowed woodland grove. When Simon returns to the Concrete Grove to see his old friends and unearth painful memories from his childhood, things once buried begin to claw their way back to the surface. The hummingbirds are flying again, bringing a warning of something terrible. Bad dreams take on physical form and walk the streets of the estate. A dark, hideously patient entity is calling once again from the shadows, reaching out towards three terrified boys who have now grown into emotionally damaged men.

With no money and few allies, Mykella is faced with the difficult prospect of rebuilding her nation while trying to hold off a potentially devastating invasion. Fortunately for Mykella, an old magic has awakened in her; a power that gives her the ability to read the emotions of others and to spy on the movements of her enemies. But the resurgence of this power might herald the return of an ancient enemy, one that Mykella isn't sure how to face.

Haven Woods is suburban heaven, a great place to raise a family. It's close to the city, quiet, with great schools and its own hospital right up the road. Property values are climbing. The streets are clean, people keep their yards really nicely. It's fairly pet friendly, though barking dogs are not welcomed. The crime rate is practically non-existent, unless you count the odd human sacrifice, dismemberment, animal attack, demon rape and blood atonement.

Allison Beckstrom's talent for tracking spells has put her up against some of the darkest elements in the world of magic. But now, magic itself has been poisoned, and Allie's undead father may have left the only cure in the hands of a madman.

It is 1918 and Graf von Dracula is commander-in-chief of the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The War of the Great Powers in Europe is also a war between the living and the undead. Caught up in the conflict, Charles Beauregard, an old enemy of Dracula, his protege Edwin Winthrop, and intrepid vampire reporter Kate Reed go head-to-head with the lethal vampire flying machine that is the Bloody Red Baron... In the brand-new novella "Vampire Romance," Genevieve Dieudonne, newly returned to England, infiltrates a singular vampire gathering in the service of the Diogenes Club.

With the three children of prophecy-the seers Spar and Graize, and the warrior Brax-now grown, and the young God Hisar ready to stake his claim to a place in the pantheon of Anavatan, a time of chaos and change is fast approaching. For only if sworn enemies Spar and Graize can come together as Hisar's priests will the God stand any chance of surviving the coming battles with both the hungry spirits seeking to devour him, and the war with the mortal invasion fleet, which is even now sailing for Anavatan.

Former DI Cass Jones is on the run and moving closer to finding his nephew, as well as the truth about The Bank and the mysterious Mr. Bright. But for both sides the net is closing in.

When homicide detective Alexandra Jarvis sees a photo of Seth Benjamin on a police bulletin, she knows that Heaven's plan to halt Armageddon has gone terribly wrong. As the only mortal who knows of Seth's true nature, only she can save him. Aramael was a hunter of Fallen Angels until a traitor forced him into earthly exile. Now, with no powers and only a faint memory of Alex, his mortal soulmate, he will stop at nothing to redeem himself-even if it means destroying Seth in the name of the Creator...

Sigma Force stalwarts Painter Crowe and Commander Grayson Pierce must investigate a gruesome massacre in the Rocky Mountains and root out a secret cabal that has been manipulating momentous events since the time of the original thirteen colonies.

An experimental device that can modify or erase memories is accidentally amplified - and among those affected is the President of the United States, And the question now arises: if he has the memories of another person, who has HIS memories, which include plans for an upcominbg super-secret military operation?

The advent of Webmind--a vast consciousness that emerged from the infrastructure of the World Wide Web (WWW) is changing everything. Webmind seems to be a boon to humanity but Colonel Peyton Hume, the Pentagon's top expert on artificial intelligence, is convinced that Webmind is a threat. He turns to the hacker underworld to help bring Webmind down. The hackers are dying mysteriously and Colonel Hume suspects Webmind is killing them before they mount an attack. Caitlin Decter, the once blind math genius who discovered Webmind desperately tries to protect her friend. Can this new world of wonder survive or will everything, including Webmind, come crashing down?

A chance find allows independent contractor Jack Holloway to cut himself into ZaraCorp's exploitation of the planet Zarathustra. However, ZaraCorp's entire legal right to the verdant Earth-like planet, requires that Zarathustra has no sentient species. Then a small furry biped--trusting, appealing, and ridiculously cute--shows up at Jack's outback home. Followed by its family. Knowing ZaraCorp, Jake recognizes this to be an endangered species.

For fifteen years Maria Devane has been desperately, passionately in love with Dante Romano. But despite loving him with all of her heart and soul, Maria knows that Dante can never give all of himself back - at least not all the time. Every month, Dante shifts shape, becoming a wild animal, and leaving Maria alone. Since the beginning, she has kept his secret, knowing that their love is worth the danger. But when a string of brutal attacks occur in local parks during the times when Dante is in animal form, Maria is forced to consider whether the lies she's been telling about her life have become lies she's also telling herself.

In the not-distant-enough future, a man takes a boat trip up the Susquehanna River with his most trusted friend, intent on reuniting with his son. But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.

Four centuries after the end of the INDA series. After her sister, the queen, bears a child, Princess Lasva is no longer heir to the throne and leaves Colend. She marries Prince Ivandred of Marloven Hesea. When the sensational news makes its way to Lasva's sister, the queen worries for Lasva at the hands of the Marlovens, whose king's mage is in league with the magical land of Norsunder - considered by Colendi to be their enemy. The queen orders Emras, a scribe, to guard Lasva. But it may be too late. Lasva is already deeply involved with the Marlovens and their magic.

Phineas McKinney has sworn to devote his now undead life to stopping the Malcontents - evil vampires who consider mortals to be snacks. Word comes that they may be hiding in Wyoming--but what does a city boy like him know about horses? Good thing he's got Brynley Jones with him--if only she didn't hate every vampire on earth.

The northern wastes - a land of death and shadow where only the strongest survive. Yet that is where Caim must go to follow the mystery at the heart of his life. Armed only with his knives and his companions, he plunges into a world of eternal night where the sun is never seen and every hand is turned against him. Caim has buried his father's sword and found some measure of peace, but deep in the north an unfathomable power lays waiting. To succeed on this mission, Caim will have to more than just survive. He must face the Shadow's Master.

Sequel to HEROES DIE. Caine is washed up and hung out to dry, a crippled husk kept isolated and restrained by the studio that exploited him. Now they have dragged him back for one last deal. But Caine has other plans. Those plans take him back to Overworld, the alternate reality where gods are real and magic is the ultimate weapon. There, in a violent odyssey through time and space, Caine will face the demons of his past, find true love, and just possibly destroy the universe. Hey, it's a crappy job, but somebody's got to do it.

For three years, Miranda Grey-Solomon has kept her role as Vampire Queen of the South separate from her Grammy-winning music career. But now, her dual lives are starting to collide, threatening everything Miranda and David, her Prime, have worked for. The entire Signet Council has descended upon Austin for its ten-year summit, bringing with it Prime James Hart of the Northeast, a sworn enemy come to take his revenge on those who defied him. But Miranda and David receive an unexpected offer of help from David's sire, an ancient and powerful vampire with knowledge that may be their salvation-or their doom.

Think of it as the vacation resort of the collective unconscious. The Deadfall Hotel is where our nightmares go, it's where the dead pause to rest between worlds, and it's where Richard Carter and his daughter Serena go to rediscover life - if the things at the hotel don't kill them first.

For centuries it has been locked away, lost beneath the sea, warded from earth, air, water, fire, spirits, thought and sight. But now magic is rising to the world once more. And a boy called Gavin, who thinks only that he is a city kid with parents who hate him, and knows only that he sees things no one else will believe, is boarding a train, alone, to Cornwall.

When young women start dying, Boston cop Samantha Ryan is the perfect person to investigate, for only she knows what the archaic symbol carved into their flesh means. The last in a long line of ruthless witches, she grew up in a coven seduced by power and greed. And now she's sure that bad witches have returned to Salem. Reluctantly, Samantha goes undercover - into a town obsessed with black magic, into her terrifying past, and into the dark, newly awakened heart of evil.

There are new victims for John to work on at the mortuary, and a new mystery to solve. But this time something's different. John has tasted death, and the dark nature he used as a weapon - the terrifying persona he calls "Mr. Monster" - might now be using him. No one in Clayton is safe unless John can vanquish two nightmarish adversaries: the unknown demon he must hunt, and the inner demon he can never escape.

This new omnibus edition of MARSEGURO and TERRA INSEGURA brings together both books of the post-Apocalyptic series about an Earth ruled by religious zealots and a distant world that is humankind's last, best hope.

It is 1852 and the Indian empire of Rajthana has ruled Europe for more than 100 years. With their vast armies, steam-and-sorcery technology, and mastery of the mysterious power of sattva, the Rajthanans appear invincible - but a bloody rebellion has broken out in a remote corner of the empire, in a poor and backward region known as England. At first Jack Casey, retired soldier, wants nothing to do with the uprising, but then he learns his daughter, Elizabeth, is due to be hanged for helping the rebels. The Rajthanans offer to spare her, but only if Jack hunts down and captures his best friend and former army comrade, who is now a rebel leader.

Sisters Serena and Meteora, having played a prank that angered the Faerie Queen, were separated and banished to the mortal realm. There a sympathetic Meteora bonds with a troubled young girl with an ornate tattoo on her neck, recognizing it as a magic symbol that will surely bring danger down on them all. Serena, meanwhile, takes in a tortured homeless boy whose mind is plagued by dark visions that point to a rising power that could tear asunder both fairy and human worlds. Recommended.

The outbreak tore the US in two. The east remains a safe haven. The west has become a ravaged wilderness, known by survivors as the Evacuated States. It is here that Henry Marco makes his living. Hired by grieving relatives, he tracks down the dead and delivers peace. Now Homeland Security wants Marco for a mission unlike any other. He must return to California, where the apocalypse began. Where a secret is hidden. And where his own tragic past waits to punish him again.

War casts its shadow over the lands that the dragons once ruled. When an act of harrowing betrayal threatens to set the cities afire, all certainties are called into question. Only the courage of a young woman with the mind of a gambler and loyalty to no one stands between hope and universal darkness. The high and powerful will fall, the despised and broken shall rise up, and "everything" will be remade. And quietly, almost beneath the notice of anyone, an old, broken-hearted warrior and an apostate priest will begin a terrible journey with an impossible goal: destroy a Goddess before she eats the world.

In 1345 AD, as Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville is gathering an army to join King Edward III in the war against France, the alien Wersgorix land near a small English village, intending to launch their invasion of the planet. In the end, only one alien is left alive - and Sir Roger's grand vision is born. His plan is for the creature to fly the ship to France to aid his King. But the treacherous pilot takes the craft to his home planet, where, he thinks, these upstart barbarians will have no choice but to surrender.

Steeped in beauty and mysticism, the canyons of Mesa Verde, Colorado, survived the blast that altered the American west. Hired to track a group of missing children, Ryan Cawdor and his band follow the trail to a legendary city carved in stone, older and stronger than the nukecaust. The inhabitants of the palaces of light are more than warriors and survivors; they are masters of mind games that prey on illusion. And true believers in a metaphysical end game poised to push the companions over the edge of reality...into certain death.

The Cerberus operation lies in disarray, its members missing or broken, even as the Annunaki threat is reborn in a new and more horrifying form. Enlil, cruelest of the self-styled gods, is set to revive the sadistic pantheon that will rule the Earth. Based in his vast Dragon City, Enlil plans to create infinite gods--at the cost of humankind. With the Cerberus team at its lowest ebb, can they possibly stop his twisted plan? Or are they, too, destined to be absorbed by the God Machine?

20 of her best stories.

After escaping secret government cells and destroying a Miami landmark, Sylvie's trying to lay low - something that gets easier when a magical force starts taking out her enemies. But these magical attacks are a risk to bystanders, and Sylvie can't let that slide. When the war between the government and the magical world threatens the three people closest to her - her assistant, her sister, and her lover - Sylvie has no choice but to get involved with hidden powers bent on shaping the world to their liking.

Arcadia Bell, renegade magician and owner of a tiki bar that caters to Earthbound demons, is gearing up for the busiest day of the year - Halloween - when a vengeful kidnapper paralyzes the community. The influential head of the local Hellfire Club taps Cady to track down the fiendish bogeyman, and now that she's dating red-hot Lon Butler, the Club's wayward son, she can hardly say no. Cady and Lon untangle a gruesome thirty-year trail of clues that points to danger for the club members' children.

Debut novel. Ilse Zhalina is the daughter of one of Melnek's more prominent merchants. She has lived a life of privilege and wealth. Many would consider that she has a happy life but there are dark secrets, especially in the best of families. When Ilse meets the older man she is to marry, she realizes that he is far crueler and more deadly than her father is. Ilse chooses to run and this choice will lead her to Raul Kosenmark, master of one of the land's most notorious pleasure houses. She finds levels of magic and intrigue that she once thought unimaginable. She also finds the other half of her heart.

When an Oracle shows up, warning the Descendants about wild dog attacks in Washington, D.C., PI Nikki Glass, descendant of Artemis, is afraid it might be a trap. The Olympians believe the "dogs" are really jackals, controlled by a blood-crazed descendant of the Egyptian death-god Anubis. If Nikki hopes to muzzle Dogboy, she's got to catch him in the act. But when she stakes out a local cemetery, she ends up face-to-snout with a snarling pack of shadow-jackals whose bite is worse than their bark.

Ruled by the noble King Marcus Drake, the island kingdom of Grand Braun is an oasis of peace and justice in an imperfect world. At least until the beautiful Queen Jennifer is accused of adultery and murder. In the wrong castle at the wrong time, Eddie finds himself drafted at sword's point to solve the mystery. With time running out, and powerful nobles all too eager to pin the murder on Eddie himself, he must untangle a web of palace intrigues, buried secrets, and bewitching women--before the entire kingdom erupts into civil war.

INVINCIBLE continues the story from DREADNAUGHT as the Alliance fleet commanded by Admiral Geary tries to escape threats outside human space and return before danger can strike humanity again.

Returning to Terre d'Ange, Moirin finds the royal family broken. As tensions mount, King Daniel asks that Moirin become Desiree's oath-sworn protector. Navigating the intricate political landscape of the Court proves a difficult challenge, and when dire news arrives from overseas, the spirit of Queen Jehanne visits Moirin in a dream and bids her undertake an impossible quest.

1593: the call goes out to celebrated swordsman, adventurer and rake Will Swyfte -- find the alchemist John Dee and his feared looking-glass and return them to London before disaster strikes. But when Will discovers the mirror may help him solve the mystery that has haunted him for years -- the fate of his lost love, Jenny -- the stakes become acutely personal. With a frozen London under siege by supernatural powers, the sands of time are running out. Will is left with no choice but to pursue the alchemist to the devil-haunted lands of the New World in the very shadow of the terrifying fortress home of England's hidden enemy, the Unseelie Court.

Ex-con Jake Sullivan's ability to alter the force of gravity in himself and objects in his vicinity keeps him free, working for the Bureau of Investigation when they need his help in apprehending criminals with their own magical talents. But the last operation he was sent along to help with went completely wrong. There is a secret war being waged by opposing forces of magic-users, and Jake had no idea that he had just attracted the attention of one side, whose ruthless leaders were of the opinion that Jake was far too dangerous to be permitted to live.

With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow's comprehensive overview of the year in horror.

Skorl is an Ember, a soldier trained from birth to fight dragons. He is a living weapon, one-shot only, saturated with enough dragon-poison to bring down a monster all on his own. Misanthrope, violent and a drunk, to fulfil his purpose and slay a dragon, means to be eaten. Now Skorl has a choice: he can hang for his crimes, or he can go with the last of the Adamantine Men, fighting against an enemy he was born to face.

The first published volume of short fiction and poetry. This collection includes the prize-winning short story "Monsoon," as well as other tales and poems first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, the Vancouver Courier and the Manitoba Humanist.

During an elaborate staging of Hercules founding a city on the shores of Lusitania, a huge tentacled horror rises from the sea and devastates the city, much to the delight of the crowd. But a few in the audience understand this illusion is not mere stagecraft, but a sign of a dreadful intrusion of supernatural powers into the real world.

Includes HADON OF ANCIENT OPAR, FLIGHT TO OPAR, and the never-before-published THE SONG OF KWASIN, the trilogy's conclusion. In THE SONG OF KWASIN Hadon's herculean cousin returns to Khokarsa after long years of exile in the Wild Lands. But soon Kwasin finds that in order to clear his name he will have to take up the cause against King Minruth himself and stop him before he fulfills his mad quest for immortality high atop the sun god's bloody ziggurat.

The Presidential Campaign Trail, 2012: A political operative and a volunteer are brutally murdered while caught in a compromising position. Written in their blood on the wall of the crime scene: IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK. And with that, a centuries-old horror known only as the Boogeyman returns to taunt Nathaniel Cade, the President's Vampire.

A collection of her stories.

Naples, the 19th Century. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, holy music has power. But the Prince's Men, a secret society, hope to stage their own black opera to empower the Devil himself - and change Creation for the better! Conrad Scalese is a struggling librettist whose latest opera has landed him in trouble with the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Rescued by King Ferdinand II, Conrad finds himself recruited to write and stage a counter opera that will, hopefully, cancel out the apocalyptic threat of the black opera, provided the Prince's Men, and their spies and saboteurs, don't get to him first. And he only has six weeks to do it...

Plans for a new moon mission are brought to an abrupt halt by a shocking discovery at Shackleton Crater. Remote robots have uncovered human skeletal remains - and forensic analysis at NASA reveals the corpse to be over 700 million years old. As the news of this discovery is leaked across the universe - and a battle rages over the truth of our heritage - the Event Group is tasked to unravel the mystery behind this ancient visitor.

Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies. And if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this--things can always get worse.

Matthew Swift, sorcerer and Midnight Mayor, must deal with a new drug on the market--fairy dust. Its production process involves turning humans into walking drug labs. He must deal too with the mystical creature that is hunting teenage vandals, and with the deaths, by magical means, of the petty criminals of London. It becomes clear that not only is this Swift's mess to clean up, but someone is trying to tell him how to do his job. Now he has to sort out who is behind the crime wave and who is interfering in his business.

My name's Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets. A series of seemingly motiveless murders of supernatural creatures points to a vigilante targeting the supe community. Markowski wouldn't normally have much of a problem with that, but his daughter may be next on the killer's list...

In a last bid for peace, disgraced champion Yoechakanon Val Mora and his spirit lover Cybele are set free to find the long-missing Librarian of Mars, the only hope to save the remnants of mankind. In the near-future Dr Holland, a scientist running from a painful past, joins the Mars colonisation effort, cataloguing the remnants of Mars' biosphere before it is swept away by the terraformation programme. When an artefact is discovered deep in the caverns of the red planet, the actions of Holland and his team lead to tragedy, with profound consequences that ripple throughout time, affecting Holland's present, the distant days of Yoechakanon, and the eras that bridge the aeons between.

Declared enemies of the Crown, Alice Michaels and Gavin Ennock have little choice but to flee in search of a cure for the clockwork plague ravaging Gavin's mind. Accompanying them is Dr. Clef, a mad genius driven to find the greatest and most destructive force the world has ever seen: the Impossible Cube. If Dr Clef gets his hands on it, the entire universe will face extinction.

Sookie arrives at her vampire husband's Shreveport home to find him feeding on another woman while Felipe de Castro, the visiting King, and his retinue, ravage their own humans downstairs. Then the woman upon whom her husband was feeding is found dead on the front lawn, prompting a neighbour to call the police. Sookie isn't sure she wants to fix all this.

Finn has waited eight centuries for his destined mate--united they will be a powerful weapon. Unfortunately, she is the daughter of the President of the United States and she wants nothing to do with him. When gunfire awakens her powers and a kiss from Finn engulfs them in flames, her duty becomes clear when the witch hunt is on while the world burns.

30 BC. When Queen Cleopatra learns that her beloved husband, Antony, has died by his own hand, she summons the warrior goddess Sekhmet and strikes a bargain. In exchange for Antony's soul, she becomes a vampiric creature, an immortal shapeshifter with superhuman strength and an insatiable hunger for human blood. Bent on vengeance and battling witches and monsters, gods and warriors, she journeys from the tombs of Egypt to the great amphitheaters of Rome and down into the underworld.

Druid Atticus O'Sullivan hasn't stayed alive for more than two millennia without a fair bit of Celtic cunning. So when vengeful thunder gods come Norse by Southwest looking for payback, Atticus, with a little help from the Navajo trickster god Coyote, lets them think that they've chopped up his body in the Arizona desert. But the mischievous Coyote is not above a little sleight of paw, and Atticus soon finds that he's been duped into battling bloodthirsty desert shapeshifters called skinwalkers. Just when the Druid thinks he's got a handle on all the duplicity, betrayal comes from an unlikely source. If Atticus survives this time, he vows he won't be fooled again. Famous last words.

The kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, had a hard time dealing with their ignominious defeat by the leaf-eating humans. Some secretly hatched schemes for a rematch, others concentrated on gathering power within the kzin hierarchy, and some shamefully cooperated with the contemptible humans, though often for hidden motives.

Sequel to SWORD OF FIRE AND ICE. Called into service by the desperate young emperor of Alorea, Vidarian Rulorat must lead sky ships in a war against the neighbouring southern empire, train the demoralized imperial Sky Knights to ride beasts that now shapeshift, master his own amplified elemental magic, and win back Ariadel--all without losing his mind. Compounding his task is a political minefield laid by the Alorean Import Company, which may or may not be fomenting war across the planet, and a shapeshifter that bonds to Vidarian during his early attempts to subdue the rogue bird-like seridi--a wolf pup that will prove to be the fabled bridge between sky and earth magics, an electricity elemental that takes the shape of a dragon upon maturity: the lance of earth and sky.

In which the brave hares of the Long Patrol team up with the fearless sea otters of the Rogue Crew to defend Redwall Abbey from the terror of both land and sea - the pirate Razzid Wearat...

She's the new head of the Underworld Detection Agency's strangest division--a nightmare. Being a human immune to magic helped Sophie Lawson get promoted. But as a frightening number of demons start disappearing around the city, Sophie suspects that an Armageddon-level prophecy is about to become everyone's nightmare.

The duty of the Gujaareh's Gatherers, priests of the dream-goddess, is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe, and to kill those judged corrupt. But when a conspiracy blooms within the great temple, Ehiru, the most famous of the city's Gatherers, must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill, or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.

Graphic novelist Willow Tate has never wanted supernatural powers. But if you're from the little Long Island town of Paumanok Harbor you don't always have a choice. Still, she's managed to survive a giant red troll, night mare horses, and fire-setting bugs. This time it is a creature from Unity who needs her help. And it doesn't hurt that handsome verterinarian Matt Spenser is ready and willing to assist Willow in her efforts.

Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper Extraordinaire, is enlisted by her best friend Cookie when Cookie's friend Mimi disappears. Mimi has been acting oddly since learning an old friend from high school was murdered. Meanwhile, Reyes Alexander Farrow has left his corporeal body and has taken to haunting Charley. He's being tortured by demons who want to get to Charley and thereby gain a portal to heaven.

Allison Sekemoto has become what she despises most, one of the vampires. To survive, she must learn the rules of being immortal, including the most important: go long enough without human blood, and you will go mad. Then she is forced to flee outside her city walls. She joins a ragged band of humans--but it isn't easy to pass for human.

In his early days as a gunslinger, in the guilt ridden year following his mother's death, Roland is sent by his father to investigate evidence of a murderous shape shifter, a "skin-man" preying upon the population around Debaria. Roland takes charge of Bill Streeter, the brave but terrified boy who is the sole surviving witness to the beast's most recent slaughter. Only a teenager himself, Roland calms the boy and prepares him for the following day's trials by reciting a story from the "Magic Tales of the Eld" that his mother often read to him at bedtime.

Nine new stories.

Kit Livingstone's great grandfather Cosimo tells him that the ley lines throughout Britain are pathways to other worlds. One man who explored the ley lines tattooed a coded roadmap to the lines onto his own skin. Now a race is on to find the map and gain access to the multi-layered universe.

One piece of the skin map has been found. Now Kit Livingstone is trying to keep one step ahead of the savage Burley Men. Mina, from her outpost in seventeenth-century Prague, is quickly gaining both the experience and the means to succeed in the quest. Yet so are those with evil intent who, from the shadows, are manipulating great minds of history for their own malign purposes.

Werewolf Natalya Stravinsky, of South Toms River, New Jersey, outcast from her pack, seeks solace in her obsessively collected stash of holiday trinkets. But then her pack comes under attack from the savage Long Island werewolves - and Nat is their first target in a turf war.

Abner Marsh, a struggling riverboat captain, suspects that something's amiss when he is approached by a wealthy aristocrat with a lucrative offer. The hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York doesn't care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh's dilapidated fleet; nor does he care that he won't earn back his investment in a decade. York's reasons for traversing the powerful Mississippi are to be none of Marsh's concern - no matter how bizarre, arbitrary, or capricious York's actions may prove. Not until the maiden voyage of "Fevre Dream "does Marsh realize that he has joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare - and humankind's most impossible dream.

Set in the hardbitten world of Manhattan's Fifth Precinct - or "Fort Freak," as cops and malefactors alike call the cop-shop where every other desk sergeant, detective, and patrol officer is more than human. Original WILD CARDS work from Cherie Priest, Paul Cornell, David Anthony Durham and many others.

John Rayburn, an Ohio farm boy in his last year in high school finds his life taking an abrupt departure when his doppelganger appears and tempts him with a device that lets him travel across worlds. But then the device breaks, stranding him in a new universe trying to unravel the machine's secrets and fix it. Meanwhile, his doppelganger tries to exploit the commercial technology he's stolen from other Earths: the Rubik's Cube! John's attempts to lie low in his new universe backfire when he inadvertently introduces pinball.

From his place aboard the moletrain Medes, Sham Yes ap Soorap witnessed his first moldywarpe hunt: the giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey, the battle resulting in one's death and the other's glory. Then, coming across a wrecked train, Sham finds a series of pictures hinting at something, somewhere, that should be impossible. This leads to considerably more than he'd bargained for. Young adult.

Hundreds of years before the great Mage War, a land lies, unknowing, on the edge of catastrophe. Though Barl has a power within that calls to her, in her city only those of noble blood and with the right connections may learn the ways of the arcane. Her eagerness to use her power leads her astray and she is banned from ever learning the mystic arts. But a member of the Council of Mages realizes that with Barl's power he can create extraordinary new incantations.

A royal wedding could end the constant hostility between Splotze and Borovnik. But one of Gerald's fellow janitors goes missing after delivering a dire warning of danger surrounding the marriage treaty. So Gerald must embark on a dangerous mission to uncover the troublemakers, before wedded bliss becomes international war. But going undercover isn't as easy as it looks, even with Melissande and Emmerabiblia for camouflage.

Now second only to the governor, and still hiding his powers as an Imager, Quaeryt is enjoying his new position, as well as his marriage to Lord Bhayar's youngest sister, Vaelora, when a volcanic eruption devastates the old capital of Telaryn. He and his wife are dispatched to Extela, Telaryn's capitol city, to replace the governor killed in the eruption. Quaeryt and Vaelora must restore order to a city filled with chaos and corruption, and do so quickly. The regiment under his command must soon depart to bolster Telaryn's border defenses against a neighbouring ruler who sees the volcanic devastation as an opportunity for invasion and conquest.

In THE GIFT OF FIRE Prometheus is unbound and walks into South Central Los Angeles. In ON THE HEAD OF A PIN Joshua and Ana, at a cutting edge firm working toward high end movies indistinguishable from live action, discover something lingering in the rendered footage--an entity that will lead them into a new age beyond the reality they have come to know.

After the loss of friends and comrades, after betrayal and battle, after capture by fearsome orcs, Shadow Harold, Siala's master thief, finally reaches the dreaded Hrad Spein. But before he can complete his quest by stealing the magic horn, he will have to brave the most fearsome obstacles yet - obstacles that have destroyed everyone before him...and Harold must do so alone.

Sarah Beauhall learns that fairies and dwarves and giants abound and the fault line of the Pacific Northwest is rife with ancient Norse magic. Odin himself appears with ravens at his side and cryptic advice for the fledgling heroine. And the cherry on the sundae? She learns her girlfriend is from a family that has been battling these forces for generations and they look to Sarah as their last best hope. What's a girl to do when the powers of the world decide that you're responsible for cleaning up the magical mess?

2032. The name of the geopolitical game is control of oil. Former US Marine General Salter, now head of a company that provides corporations with mercenary armies, deftly seizes huge oil and gas fields, ultimately making himself the most powerful man in the world. Salter desires to take vengeance on those responsible for his exile and then come home--as Commander in Chief. The only man who can stop him is the novel's narrator, Gilbert "Gent" Gentilhomme, Salter's most loyal foot soldier and as close to him as the son Salter lost.

Skene Falls, Oregon, was a typical small town where everyone knew everyone else's business. But even small towns have their secrets--sometimes magical ones. Skene Falls was not only home to Desdemona and Benedict Carrick and their parents, it was also the dwelling place of the Pixies. When Thistle Down was exiled from Pixie and stranded in a human body, it marked the beginning of a campaign that would prove dangerous to all. Could Thistle, her human friends, and one Pixie named Chicory avert disaster?

The crew of the vast, ancient ship Chathrand have reached the shores of the legendary southern empire of Bali Adro. With landfall the battle for control of the Nilstone enters its final phase. Since no one is closer to mastering the Stone than the sorceror Arunis, Pazel and Thasha must join forces with their enemies, including the depraved Captain Rose and the imperial assassin Sandor Ott. But when a suspicious young crewmember turns his attentions to Thasha, it is the young lovers themselves who are divided - most conveniently for Arunis.

Tyler Vernon, and his troops aboard the gigantic battle station "Troy," face a desperate battle with the forces of galactic tyranny. And the very survival of the Earth and its people is not all that is at stake. The galaxy itself must choose to live free or die - and if the tyrants win this battle, darkness will fall across the galaxy for millennia to come.

2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But now an event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen. For Swan Er Hong, it is an event that will change her life. Swan was once a woman who designed worlds. Now she will be led into a plot to destroy them.

Escaping a horrible marriage, Carolyn Connor is on vacation in St. Lucia. She has no desire for male company -- but is no match for the matchmaking Marguerite Argeneau -- or for Christian Notte.

In an ocean of weightless air where sunlight has never been seen, the running lights of the city of Pacquaea glitter in the dark. Leal Hieronyma Maspeth, history tutor and dreamer, lives and dreams of love among the gaslit streets and cafes. Somewhere in the abyss of wind and cloud, a great voice has begun speaking. Only Leal has the courage to try and understand the message thundering from the distance.

Robert Sheckley was science fiction's in-house reply to the black humorists of the 1950s and 60s: Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and the young Thomas Pynchon were his none-too-distant relatives; Mort Sahl's comedy, Charles Schultz's cartoons, and Tom Lehrer's songs all mined similar veins. Sheckley targeted the conformity and consumerism of our mid-century technotopia while it was still under construction.

Magic dies with the mage or so the Darkborn believe. Lady Telmaine Hearne has been condemned to death for sorcery but she has escaped with her mageborn allies for the Borders. Balthasar, her husband, has learned of his family connection to the Shadowborn and is fighting for survival and sanity as magic turns him against everything he holds dear.

Forced onto the streets of Turnitia after the army destroys his home and murders his parents, Lucius Kane becomes an excellent thief, gaining notoriety in his new profession. Soon drawn into a war between rival thieves guilds, Kane fights for friends and profit but finds himself pulled into the darker and more mysterious world of the Shadowmage. Mercenary practitioners who combine stealth with magic, Shadowmages make the best scouts, infiltrators, spies ... and assassins!

When Simon Burns is fired from his job without warning, he is not happy with his new position as stay at home dad for his three year old son, and he harbours a simmering rage at his boss's betrayal. Then he meets a tight knit trio of dads at the playground, and soon he is lured into their mix. Then a guys' night out gets out of hand and Simon starts to suspect that when the guys welcomed him to their "pack," they were talking about much more than male bonding. And as he falls prey to his basest instincts, Simon must accept that werewolves exist if he is to turn the tides of his fortune.

The danui, a reclusive arachnid species considered the galaxy's finest engineers, have avoided contact with the Coyote Federation. Until, that is, the danui initiate trade negotiations, offering only information: the coordinates for an unoccupied world suitable for human life-a massive sphere, composed of billions of hexagons. But when the Federation's recon mission goes terribly wrong, the humans realize how little they know about their new partners...

High tech tycoon Richard Forthrast learns that someone has found a way to put a virus into his new videogame. His super-talented adopted niece Zula is given the task of sorting this out -- and she will need every one of her many and varied skills when faced with the panoply of bad guys she will need to confront.

Adrian Breze defied his own dark heritage as a near purebred Shadowspawn for years, until his power hungry sister Adrienne kidnapped his human lover Ellen. Now, Adrienne is dead, and the Council of Shadows is gathering its strength. To stop the Council from launching an apocalypse, Adrian and Ellen must ally with the Brotherhood, a resistance group dedicated to breaking the Council's hold on humankind...by any means necessary. In the coming confrontation, Adrian must fight not only the members of the Council but also his own nature and, as he will come to suspect, traitors within the Brotherhood itself...

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him. When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities - a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present - Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay.

110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Mieville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.

From the translations of Sir Richard Burton comes the epic tale of The Mongoliad, the journey of a small band of warriors and mystics as they fight to save Europe from the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century. It also exposes the secret workings of powerful clandestine societies that have been driving world events for millennia. Co-written by Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, E. D. deBirmingham, Mark Teppo, Joseph Brassey, Erik Bear, and Cooper Moo.

Sequel to A FIRE UPON THE DEEP. Ravna and the Tines, the pack animals for which their planet is named, have survived a war, and Ravna has saved more than one hundred children who were in cold-sleep aboard the vessel that brought them. While there is peace among the Tines, there are those among them - and among the humans - who seek power. No matter the cost, these malcontents are determined to overturn the fledgling civilization that has taken root since the humans landed.

NEKROPOLIS omnibus, containing NEKROPOLIS, DEAD STREETS, and DARK WAR. Meet Matt Richter. Private Eye. Zombie. His mean streets are the city of the dead, the shadowy realm known as Nekropolis. You've got to keep your head in Nekropolis. But when you're a zombie attempting to battle the vampire lords, that's not as easy as it seems.

POD is the story of a global cataclysmic event, told from the viewpoints of Megs, a twelve-year-old streetwise girl trapped in a hotel parking garage in Los Angeles; and sixteen-year-old Josh, who is stuck in a house in Prosser, Washington, with his increasingly obsessive-compulsive father. Food and water and time are running out. Will Megs survive long enough to find her mother? Will Josh and his father survive each other?

Omnibus. For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art - and he is the city's most accomplished artist. For Azoth, survival is just the beginning. He was raised on the streets and knows an opportunity when he sees one - even when the risks are as high as working for someone like Durzo Blint. Azoth must learn to navigate the assassins' world of dangerous politics and strange magics - and become the perfect killer.

The known world floats upon the Breath of God, a thick gas similar to Earth's oceans, with land masses accessible by airship. The largest of these land masses are ruled by the rival empires of Freya and Rosia. Magic is intrinsic to the functioning of these societies, and is even incorporated into their technological devices. But now a crucial scientific discovery has occurred that could destroy the balance of power-and change the empires forever.

With the Gods of the New Dawn amassing a vast army, Skylan Ivorson finds allies in former enemies. Calling upon the ogres to fight their common foes, the Vindrasi soon find themselves in the middle of an even larger war. Skylan and his Vindrasi clan must sail the Sea of Tears into the heart of the Forbidden Empire of the Cyclops, to implement a cunning yet delicate plan that risks his life and leadership at every corner. But a new enemy lies deep in the sea, one who draws upon powers never harnessed by land dwellers.

The fifth and final volume of the Laura Caxton vampire hunter series, the final confrontation between Caxton and her nemesis, Justinia Malvern. Caxton has given up everything to get one shot at the last surviving vampire. But Malvern has lived long enough to know some dirty tricks, and she's never been one to fight fair.

The epic conclusion to the amazing Sabina Kane urban fantasy series. Sabina Kane is on the hunt. Her prey is Cain, the father of the vampire race and the one who murdered her family and her friends. Unfortunately, Cain is hunting Sabina, too. The one man who holds the key to defeating Cain is, of course, Abel. A mage with secrets to spare and, hopefully, the power to match it. Unfortunately, for Sabina, he's in Rome and may not want to be found. Sabina sets out for Italy with her friends, Giguhl and Adam Lazarus, to track down the only man who can get her the revenge she hungers for. But will he help her or oppose her? And just who is Abel, really? Worst of all, when Sabina figures out the goddess Lilith has a plan for her-she realizes this trip is getting deadlier by the minute. As they say, when in Rome-SURVIVE.

Miriam Black knows when you will die. Still in her early twenties, she's foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name. Miriam has given up trying to save people, that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can't save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she'll have to try.

Alien invaders have chosen to make the human colonized world their new home. Quick learners, they have learned from human technology. They now know all about reactionless drives, so much more efficient than rocket engines. And they have learned about the jump points which make faster-than-light travel possible. With that knowledge, they plan to conquer the entire inhabited region of the galaxy - unless the old alliance of humans and other beings can stop them.

This is the way the world ends...not with a bang but a scream in the dark. It begins at dawn, when the sun rises late. Then the holes appear. The first forms in Central Park, in sight of an apartment where Repairman Jack and a man as old as time watch with growing dread. Gaping holes, bottomless and empty...until sundown, when the first unearthly, hungry creatures appear. NIGHTWORLD brings F. Paul Wilson's Adversary Cycle and Repairman Jack saga to an apocalyptic finale as Jack and Glaeken search the Secret History to gather a ragtag army for a last stand against the Otherness and a hideously transformed Rasalom.

Thief Eli Monpress and his best friend Josef have their hands full. The Spirit Court has been usurped by the Council of Thrones and someone calling herself the Immortal Empress is staging a massive invasion. But it is not just politics as the Immortal Empress has a specific target in mind--Eli Monpress, the greatest thief in the world.

A smorgasbord of macabre morsels laced with horrific humour, including a Harry Dresden story from Jim Butcher, and 26 other stories from such authors as Kelley Armstrong.

Sir Dominic Flandry, now an admiral, sees the rot in the Terran Empire on every hand and knows that the Long Night will inevitably fall upon the galaxy. Includes the two full-length novels A STONE IN HEAVEN and THE GAME OF EMPIRE.

The orphaned daughter of a sorcerer and a half-demon, Savannah Levine, is in terrible danger and she is powerless to help herself because she gave up her powers to help a young girl. Witch hunting assassins, necromancers, rogue witches and half-demons all seem to be after her. While most of her fellow supernaturals are gathering in Miami for a council meeting, Savannah is caught on the road. She is unable to use her vast spell-casting talent and is isolated from the friends who could protect her. They will soon learn that the greatest threat to supernaturals just may come from within.

When the love of her life returns to the land of the Fae, Maggie Graham must recover from that loss and take over the Crossroads Theatre. Maggie is about to discover that true magic is hard to banish and the past has a way of coming back to haunt you.

Certainly no strangers to peculiar occurrences, agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are nonetheless stunned to observe a fellow passenger aboard Britain's latest hypersteam train suddenly vanish in a dazzling bolt of lightning. They soon discover this is not the only such disappearance--with each case going inexplicably unexamined by the Crown. The fate of England is once again in the hands of an ingenious archivist paired with a beautiful, fearless lady of adventure. And though their foe be fiendishly clever, so then is Mr. Books, and Miss Braun still has a number of useful and unusual devices hidden beneath her petticoats.

While on leave from the Occult Special Investigation squad, Tess Corday is busy grappling with her own personal mysteries. She's searching for the truth about her demonic heritage, dealing with the effects her unauthorized drug investigations are having on her relationship with her undead boyfriend - and now there's a murder. This is not the vacation Tess was hoping for.

Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector. For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up. But there's something spinning a little bit higher than he expects, something that isn't on the decades' old orbital maps. An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumours fill Earth's infomesh about an "alien artifact." Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game-changer. A message in a bottle; an alien capsule that wants to communicate. The world reacts as humans always do, with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence. And insatiable curiosity.

The aliens are here, all around us. They always have been. And now, one by one, they're destroying our cities. Dodge Mercer deals in identities, which is fine until the day he deals the wrong identity and clan war breaks out. Hope Burren has no identity and no past, but she does have a multitude of voices filling her head. In a world where nothing is as it seems, where humans are segregated and aliens can sing realities and tear worlds apart, Dodge and Hope lead a ragged band of survivors on a search for sanctuary in what may be the only hope for humankind.

A space-opera series will introduce readers to the human smugglers, veterans and ne'erdowells who are part of the Expansion - and their uneasy neighbours, the Vetch Empire. When an evil race threatens not only the Expansion, but the Vetch too - an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding, only cooperation between them means the difference between a chance of survival and no chance at all.

The story begins in the beleaguered city of Cog. The protagonist, Jack Aviso, is himself a cog, a functionary in the soulless, profit-obsessed enterprise known as the Henry Sill Banking Corporation. When a routinely corrupt business transaction shatters both his marriage and his well-ordered life, Jack finds himself quite literally in Hell, where he embarks on a perilous, unprecedented journey of revenge.

2044. Most of humanity is jacked into OASIS, a sprawling virtual world. The creator has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune, and remarkable power, to whoever can unlock them. Wade Watts stumbles upon the first puzzle. Suddenly thousands of competitors join the hunt, among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Wade must not only keep ahead in the hunt, he must learn to exist in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL, MONSTER HUNTER VENDETTA, and MONSTER HUNTER ALPHA in one volume.

Sloan Skye was not thrilled when she was assigned to the FBI's Paranormal Behavoiral Analysis Unit. Sloan is searching for a suspect who slays his female victims at night, and bizarrely drains their bodies of blood. When the suspect guns for someone close to Sloan, it is time to throw out all the rules and face her deepest fears.

Exploring the theory that media is the real opium of the masses: stories by J. G. Ballard, Lisa Tuttle, Robert Silverberg, and William Gibson, among others, combine noir city elements with thought-provoking scenarios that look at the future of television, radio, and the internet.

Spellbinding stories featuring bigfoot, albino vampires, professional wizards, resurrected boyfriends and even a sex droid from the twenty- third century named Silicon Lily. But as our conjurers are about to discover, it's all fun and games until someone gets hexed. And sometimes, even the best spun spells can lead to complete and utter mayhem. Includes Stories From: Ilona Andrews, Jim Butcher, Rachel Caine, Carole Nelson Douglas, P. N. Elrod, Simon R. Green, Carrie Vaughn.

3 non-Malazan novelettes. The title story was originally published under his real name. The second story, Revolvo, appears to an thinly veiled polemic directed against the Canada Council.

Even at the best of times, the royal court at Rhiminee is a serpents' nest of intrigue, but with the war against Plenimar going badly, treason simmers just below the surface. And that's not all that poses a threat. A mysterious plague is spreading through the crowded streets of the city, striking young and old alike. Now, as panic mounts and the body count rises, hidden secrets emerge. And as Seregil and Alec are about to learn, conspiracies and plagues have one thing in common, the cure can be as deadly as the disease.

War with Poland is afoot and Russia itself is about to get a revolution from within-three centuries early. Bernie Zeppi, former Grantville auto mechanic, is going to have the chance to prove he's not the loser he believed himself to be. For now Bernie's task is to save the woman he loves and the country he has come to call his own from collapse into a new Dark Age.

The newest discoveries will take Helen, A. J., and their friends Jackie, Joe, and Madeline to a mysterious asteroid and beyond, in a desperate race to Jupiter's perilous miniature system of radiation- bombarded moons. The next gold rush is on -- for alien technology, hidden in lost bases around the system. And there are people willing to do anything to get it -- even plan the first interplanetary war, four hundred million miles from home!

1760. Lord John Grey - aristocrat, soldier, and occasional spy - finds himself in possession of a packet of explosive documents that exposes a damning case of corruption against a British officer. But they also hint at a more insidious danger. Time is of the essence as the investigation leads to Ireland, with a baffling message left in "Erse," the tongue favoured by Scottish Highlanders. Lord John, who oversaw Jacobite prisoners when he was governor of Ardsmiur prison, thinks Jamie Fraser may be able to translate - but will he agree to do it? Soon Lord John and Jamie are unwilling companions on the road to Ireland, a country whose dark castles hold dreadful secrets, and whose bogs hide the bones of the dead.

Counterterrorism agent Sam Deker is trying to build a new life in Los Angeles. The Pentagon, however, believes only he can endure their top secret neuro-simulation program known as the 34th Degree, a stunning technological breakthrough that gleans priceless intel from the sliced brain tissues of dead terrorists. Their target: SS general Ludwig von Berg, the legendary Third Reich "Baron of the Black Order." Deker's mission is to discover the fate of the ultimate weapon, a supernatural alchemy for a fatal thermodynamic technology, before his counterparts in the Alignment, a twenty-first-century successor to the Nazi SS, beat him to it.

After the murder of a Drood Matriarch, the family finds itself vulnerable to evil. The Satanic Conspiracy could throw humanity directly into the clutches of the Biggest of the Bads.

In Eddie Drood's absence Drood Hall was destroyed and all of his relatives killed. Then Eddie realized that someone had activated a dimensional engine, sending Drood Hall off to an alternate Earth, replacing it with a burnt-out doppelganger. His family was still alive out there. Somewhere. And nothing was going to stop him from finding them.

Quentin and his old friend Julia charter a magical sailing ship and set out on an errand to the wild outer reaches of their kingdom. Their pleasure cruise becomes an adventure when the two are unceremoniously dumped back into the last place Quentin ever wants to see, his parent's house in Chesterton, Massachusetts. And only the black, twisted magic that Julia learned on the streets can save them.

A serial killer is hunting the Pacific Northwest and US Marshals Anita BLake and Edward are called in to catch him. Edward thinks the serial killings are just a trap to lure Anita closer to the most dangerous vampire they have ever hunted.

After his wife died, Juno Mozambe's life went downhill. And then his first partner, the corrupt chief of the Koba Office of Police, was murdered. The man responsible, Emil Mota, is using the KOP for his personal gain. Juno has been laying low, but now he's ready to do whatever it takes to take down the bastard. He gets involved with a team of dirty cops and starts working as a rent-a-thug for a whorehouse that needs protection.

Sequel to LIGHT and NOVA SWING. She is waiting for you, she has been waiting for you for perhaps 10,000 years. She comes from the past, she comes from the future. She is about to speak--

Robert E. Howard, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Michael Moorcock, Joanna Russ, Charles R. Saunders, Karl Edward Wagner, Ramsey Campbell, David Drake, George R. R. Martin. 432 pages.

Includes Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Benford, Neil Gaiman, Nancy Kress, Michael Swanwick and others.

Betrayed by his beloved but still marked by a child's innocence, possessed of a remarkable aptitude for violence but capable of extreme tenderness, Cale will lead the Redeemers into a battle for nothing less than the fate of the human race. And though his broken heart foretells the bloody trail he will leave in pursuit of a personal peace he can never achieve, a glimmer of hope remains.

As the newest Gray Prince managing the city's underbelly, but with barely an organization to his name, Drothe is already being called out by other Gray Princes. And to make matters worse, when one of the others dies, all signs point to Drothe as wielding the knife. Members of the Kin begin choosing sides mostly against him for what looks to be another impending war. Then Drothe is approached by a man who has the solution to Drothe's problem and an offer of redemption. The only problem is the offer isn't for him. Now Drothe finds himself on the way to the Despotate of Djan, the empire's long-standing enemy, with an offer to make and a price on his head.

The 4th novel in the bestselling Conqueror series, continuing the life and adventures of the mighty Khan dynasty. Genghis Khan is dead, but his legend and his legacy live on. His son Ogedai has built a white city on a great plain and made a capital for the new nation. Now the armies have gathered to see which of Genghis' sons has the strength to be khan. The Mongol empire has been at peace for two years, but whoever survives will face the formidable might of their great enemy, China's Song dynasty. The great leader Tsubodai sweeps into the west: through Russia, over the Carpathian mountains and into Hungary. The Templar knights have been broken and there is no king or army to stop him reaching France. But at the moment of Tsubodai's greatest triumph, as his furthest scouts reach the northern mountains of Italy, Tsubodai must make a decision that will change the course of history forever.

Alex Verus was a little-known London magic-shop proprietor. But thanks to his second sight, he's suddenly infamous for defeating powerful dark mages. Now he's keeping his head down, training his apprentice, Luna, and trying to keep cursed artifacts out of the hands of novices, until he unearths the resurgence of a forbidden ritual. Someone is harvesting the life-force of magical creatures, destroying them in the process. And humans are next on the agenda.

The conclusion of the Night-Bound Land duology. The Roil has not yet been defeated - and the Roil extends its grip on Shale, following the commands of the Dreaming Cities. Wars will be fought. Doomsday weapons employed. And night will fall.

A mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up - but Gujaareh has known peace for too long. Someone must show them the way. Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess' priesthood and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams.

Essays by space scientists and engineers teamed with a collection of tales by an all-star assortment of award winning authors all taking on new methods of star travel. Ben Bova, Mike Resnick, Jack McDevitt, Michael Bishop, Sarah Hoyt and more.

The Vikings are laying siege to Paris. As the houses on the banks of the Seine burn, a debate rages in the Cathedral on the walled island of the city proper. The situation is hopeless. The Vikings want the Count's sister, and in return they will spare the rest of the city. Can the Count really have ambitions to be Emperor of the Franks if he doesn't do everything he can to save his people? Can he call himself a man if he doesn't do everything he can to save his sister?

Richard Whitestone is an Elemental Earth Master. Blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, he has sworn never to set eyes on his daughter, Suzanne. But when he finally sees her, a dark plan takes shape in his twisted mind-to use his daughter's body to bring back the spirit of his long-dead wife.

This story combines East of the Sun and West of the Moon, as well as Tam Lin, with the Selkie of Sul Skerry. We'll see Nan and Sarah (from Wizard of London) as adults, coming into their own--and Grey and Neville, of course!

Bella ventures into the forbidden forest to consult with the local wise woman. On the way home she's attacked by a wolf -- who turns out to be a cursed nobleman. Secluded in his castle, Bella is torn between her family and this strange man who makes marvelous inventions and makes her laugh -- when he isn't howling at the moon.

Though Lorana, now pregnant, has cured the plague, there are no longer enough dragons available to fight the Thread. However Lorana discovers a way, a risky way, in which the laws of time can be bent without being broken and thus used to circumvent the threats that Pern faces.

Possessing technology that allows him to travel across alternate worlds, John Rayburn begins building a transdimensional commercial empire, led by him, his closest friends, and their doppelgangers from several different parallel universes. But not every version of every person is the same, and their agendas do not always coincide. Despite their benign intentions, the group's activities draw unwanted attention from other dimensional travelers who covet their technology and will kill anyone to control it, a threat that culminates in a nuclear standoff for dominance throughout the multiverse.

In post-apocalyptic Africa. Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny -- to end the genocide of her people. Nebula nominee. World Fantasy Award winner.

When alive, 50 years ago, Griffin Shaw was a PI. Now he's an angel sent to collect another soul - Katherine "Kit" Craig, a journalist whose latest investigation is about to get her clipped. Bucking heavenly orders, Grif refuses to let her come to harm. Besides, protecting her offers a chance to solve the mystery of his own unsolved murder - and dole out some overdue payback for the death of his beloved wife, Evie.

A magic-wielding serial killer is prowling the Pacific Northwest -- and all of his victims have ties to Sarah Jane Beauhall, the blacksmith turned dragon slayer. Sarah must unravel the web she finds closing around her as a powerful necromancer and a crazed blood cult known as the Dragon Liberation Front work to tear apart everything she holds dear.

Manna - the utopian galaxy where all races exist in harmony, is ruled by Shamans, perfect alien machines. Manna is a place of wisdom, technology and art. On the edge of the galaxy, away from romantic holiday cruises, hides TOX1C, a reprocessing planet run by The Company and dealing with all Manna's waste - heavy metals, tox chems, nuclear sludge; there's no poison The Company will not "recycle."

Samantha just couldn't pass up a surprise kiss from her number-one unattainable crush. Now she feels hungry all the time, but not for food -- it's like part of her is missing. And then there's Bishop. At first she thought he was just a street kid, but the secrets he's keeping are as intense as his unearthly blue eyes. If he's what she thinks he is, he may be the only one who can help her.

Ensign Andrew Dahl is thrilled to be assigned to the Xenobiology laboratory of the starship Intrepid -- until he begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship's captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the Intrepid "really" is.

Imagine a city divided among humans, Fae, vampires and shapeshifting beasts, a city where a fragile peace is brokered by a treaty that sets the laws for all four races. Holly never planned on being a thief and a spy, but options are limited for a half-breed daughter of a Fae lord. She never expected to encounter a Templar knight, Guy DuCaine,and learn to trust him. Trust may be the only thing that saves them and their city.

I'm Raine Benares - and it sucks to be me. The Saghred, a soul-stealing stone that has given me unlimited power, has been stolen by a goblin prince, and with it went my magic. The Saghred is in the goblin capital of Regor in the hand of Sarad Nukpana, who's on the verge of becoming the most powerful mage ever - just as soon as I'm dead. Because Sarad can't use the stone while I'm alive. Incentive enough to plan a little trip to Regor with a small band of good friends, not-so-good friends, and outright enemies. All we need to do is destroy the Saghred, kill Sarad, and put a renegade prince on the throne.

Alex has been saved from the fate that awaited her in Bedlam, but in freeing her, Niall has released others of their kind into the population - half-breed fey who have been mistreated, abused and tortured by the institution that was supposed to help them. Now, as Warder, he must find them and persuade them to swap their new-found liberty for security in the courts - but is the price of sanctuary to swap one cage for another?

After some personal troubles, Simon Burns turned things around with the help of a new group of friends. They were stay-at-home dads like himself--but there was something 'off' about them, and Simon found himself slowly changing. There were nights he ravished his wife, nights he roamed the streets, nights he can’t remember. And it's one of those black-outs that's going to come back to haunt him--for Simon isn't the man he once was. He's a member of the pack. And once you're in, it's impossible to get out.

Something is wrong in Niceville. A boy literally disappears from Main Street, the instant of his disappearance caught on a security camera. An audacious bank robbery goes seriously wrong, with four cops gunned down; a TV news helicopter shot out of the sky, and a cascade of events that ricochet across 20 different lives over the course of just 36 hours. Nick Kavanaugh, a cop with a dark side, investigates. Soon he and his wife, Kate, a distinguished lawyer from an old Niceville family, find themselves confronted with a shadow world where time has a different rhythm and where justice is elusive.

Haunted by memories of children he could not save, Jon Moore is so increasingly self destructive that even his best friend, the hyper intelligent Predator Class Assault Vehicle, Lobo, is worried. When Jon risks meeting a woman from his distant past and undertakes a high-stakes mission, Lobo fears this will be their last. The job is illegal. They have to take on one of the oldest, most powerful men alive. Two different security forces are tracking them. And Jon is falling in love.

Showcases the very best, in the form of stories by Paul Di Filippo, Neil Gaiman, Cherie Priest, and many more.

Worldsoul, a great city that forms a nexus point between Earth and the many dimensions known as the Liminality, Worldsoul has been governed until recently by the Skein -- but they have gone missing and no one knows why. The city is also being attacked with lethal flower-bombs from an unknown enemy. Mercy Fane and her fellow Librarians are doing their best to maintain the Library, but...things...keep breaking out of ancient texts and legends are escaping into the city. Mercy must pursue one such dangerous creature.

Following a trail of deception and death to Proteus Station, Frank Compton has discovered a conspiracy that threatens all life in the galaxy: the Shonkla'raa, an ancient enemy thought to be long dead, is rising again. So serious is the danger that the Modhri, the enemy of his enemy, may now be his friend, as the burgeoning threat of a race of invincible soldiers emerges. If Compton and Bayta can't stop them, the Shonkla'raa will decimate all who oppose them, destroying the Quadrail and billions of lives throughout the galaxy.

Only safe as long as they hide, the heroes scout as close as they dare. But with Vestapalk growing ever-stronger and plague demons on the rise, they know they have to act soon. The world cannot afford to wait any longer. As they journey toward the greatest concentration of demons they learn they are on the right path and gain an ally. Kri, believed dead, resurfaces with wisdom garnered from the Chained God. It seems even Tharizdun himself is against Vestapalk.

The Soul Drinkers have been captured by the Imperial Fists, who intend to see them put on trial on the Phalanx, the Fists' vast space fortress. Inside, one of Iktinos' faithful breaks under interrogation and reveals the location of a vault hidden under Selaaca. An Imperial Fists squad opens up an ancient vault below the planet's surface. Inside the vault is Daenyathos, kept alive in his dreadnought body. He is brought back to the Phalanx to face trial with the rest of the Soul Drinkers.

A new and even more insidious threat than that of Abeloth is rising. Unless the Skywalkers survive to sound the alarm the galaxy will suffer as it has never suffered before. But the reinforcements they need remain grounded on Coruscant, where the political battle of wills between the Jedi Council and Galactic Alliance Chief of State Natasi Daala has reached a boiling point.

A group of Black Library authors give their own spin on stories based on and about the iconic characters of Warhammer Fantasy - Gotrek and Felix. Stories are by Nathan Long (x2), Josh Reynolds, John Brunner, Jordon Ellinger, Ben McCallum, David Guymer, Andy Smillie, CL Werner, and Richard Salter.

2494. Jim Raynor and Tychus Findlay were members of an elite Confederate marine unit until they made a stand against their corrupt commanding officer and were forced to go AWOL or risk being unjustly prosecuted and resocialized. Now, Raynor and Findlay are outlaws hounded by an unyielding interstellar marshal.

Four great nations - the Federation, the Klingon Empire, the Tholian Assembly, and the Romulan Star Empire - have all taken tremendous risks in their race to learn and control the technologies of the ancient interstellar hegemons known as the Shedai. Now get ready for the mystery of the Taurus Reach to be revealed....

Following the trajectory of a blood-red comet, the berserk World Eaters blaze a path of destruction across the galaxy in its wake. The small cemetery world of Certus Minor appeals to the Space Marines of the Excoriators Chapter for protection, but the force dispatched to deal with this grim threat is far too small and their losses against the renegades are high. Just as all seems lost, salvation is borne out of legend itself as sinister spectral warriors descend upon this planet of the dead, and the enemies of the Imperium come face to face with those who have already travelled beyond the realm of the living...

The agents of the Department of Temporal Investigations are assigned to look into a mysterious inactive vessel, one outfitted with some sort of temporal drive disrupting space-time and subspace. Its warp signature matches that of Enterprise NCC-1701 - but the vessel's hull markings identify it as Timeship Two, belonging to none other than the DTI itself. Its quantum signature confirms that it came from their own past, despite the fact that the DTI never possessed such a timeship.

For years the High Lady Ordalf, eladrin queen of Gwynneth Isle, has wanted her niece, the princess known as the Rose of Sarifal, dead. Now word has come that the princess lives on the island of Moray - a mad beauty who leads a nation of lycanthropes. A band of adventurers is enlisted to seek out the princess -- but will those heroes see the same threat the queen sees in the beautiful young maiden?

During a routine naval drill at Pearl Harbor, American forces detect a ship of unknown origins that has crashed in the Pacific Ocean. Lieutenant Alex Hopper, an officer aboard the USS John Paul Jones, is ordered to investigate the ominous looking vessel - which turns out to be part of an armada of ships that are stronger and faster than any on Earth. And that's when the Navy's radar goes down. Ambushed by a ravenous enemy they cannot see, a small U.S. fleet makes their last stand on the open ocean, armed with little more than their instincts, to defend their lives - and the world as we know it.

Talos and the rest of First Claw continue down their dark path, until it crosses that of the alien eldar - the Farseers of the Ulthwe craftworld divine a great threat posed by the Night Lords, and seek to bring the myriad skeins of fate back into alignment before their prophecy can be fulfilled. With the wrath of the ancients upon them, Talos reluctantly leads his warriors into battle once more...

The best and brightest 40k authors provide new material for upcoming Space Marine Battles books.

In the heart of crime-ridden Hutt Space, a Jedi Scholar searches for justice. While trying to obtain the coordinates of a secret, peril-packed, but potentially beneficial trade route, a novice Jedi is killed - and the motive for his murder remains shrouded in mystery. Now his former Master, Jedi archivist Mander Zuma, wants answers, even as he fights to erase doubts about his own abilities as a Jedi. What Mander gets is immersion into the perilous underworld of the Hutts as he struggles to stay one step ahead in a game of smugglers, killers, and crime lords bent on total control.

Ages before the events of Darksiders and Darksiders II, two of the feared Horsemen - Death and War - are tasked with stopping a group of renegades from locating the Abomination Vault: a hoard containing weapons of ultimate power and malice, capable of bringing an end to the uneasy truce between Heaven and Hell, but only by unleashing total destruction.

Barnabas Collins has recently become a human again through the efforts of his devoted descendent Dr. Julia Hoffman and is living in current day Collinsport, Maine trying to adjust to normal life. Normal life, however, turns out to be the same bizarre stew of concealed desire and guilt.

While Marcus Fenix and the Gears struggle to hold back the Lambent, a hideous and constantly mutating life-form that destroys everything in its path, the Coalition faces a stark choice - fight this new enemy to the last human, or flee to the wastelands to take their chances and live like the human pariahs known as the Stranded . . . even as Coalition chairman Richard Prescott still guards one last, terrible secret about the Locust, the Lambent, and the future of mankind.

Marcus Fenix, grieving for a father everyone believes is dead, is court-martialed for dereliction of duty and sentenced to forty years in the maximum security prison known as the Slab. But Adam is very much alive, in a prison of his own - a doomsday bunker hidden since the Pendulum Wars. Adam knew the Locust existed deep below the surface of Sera long before Emergence Day, and were being driven from their tunnels by a lethal parasite known as the Lambent. Now he has to find a way to destroy the Lambent while the dwindling COG forces fight to hold back a growing Locust army that threatens to overrun the city.

More than a thousand years after the Age of Sigmar, the Empire he struggled to create rests on the edge of destruction - the reign of the greedy and incompetent Emperor Boris Goldgather has shaken down the great and prosperous edifice of his erstwhile realm. Without warning, a terrible and deadly plague strikes, wiping out entire villages and leaving towns eerily silent through the long frozen months. As the survivors struggle to maintain order and a worthy military presence, vermin pour up from the sewers and caverns beneath the cities, heralding a new and unspeakable threat - the insidious skaven!

From popular science journalist and acclaimed science fiction author Stephen Baxter, THE SCIENCE OF AVATAR is a guide to the rigorous fact behind the fiction. It will enhance the readers' enjoyment of the movie experience by drawing them further into its imagined world.

The city of Varrock is at breaking point; people are fleeing from the country into the already full city and riots are breaking out as the government struggles to keep order. Meanwhile Gar'rth struggles with his dark destiny, Theodore chases a holy relic and Kara prepares for war. As the friends continue to fight against evil, Zamorak's power continues to rise, bringing with it the walking dead.

Created in the Emperor's own image, the primarchs had long thought themselves to be princes of the universe and masters of their own destiny - they led the Space Marine Legions in glorious conquest of the galaxy, and no enemy of the Imperium could stand against them. However, even amongst this legendary brotherhood, the seeds of dissent had been sown long before the treacherous Warmaster Horus declared his grand heresy. Gathered within this anthology are four novellas focusing on some of the mightiest warriors and leaders that mankind has ever known - Fulgrim, Alpharius, Lion El'Johnson and Ferrus Manus - and the roles that they may have yet to play in a war which threatens to change the face of the Imperium forever.

After the final Borg invasion, six races adversarial to the United Federation of Planets joined ranks to form the Typhon Pact. As Starfleet rebuilds itself, factions within the Typhon Pact grow restive, concerned about their own inability to develop a quantum slipstream drive to match that of the Federation.

Elminster's archenemy, the vampiric Lord Manshoon, thinks he has destroyed Elminster at last. But Elminster survives in the form of magical ash, and with the help of his scion and the vestige of the long-dead goddess of magic, he still has a chance to counter Manshoon's insidious plots.

The Stith Dark Lord Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. In the battle for the Jedi Temple he cut down the Master of the Rogue Jedi Aryn Leneer. And now she's going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book.

When a murdered Highborne is discovered on the outskirts of Darnassus, Malfurion and Tyrande move to stop further bloodshed and unrest by appointing one of the night elves' most cunning and skilled agents to find the killer: the renowned warden Maiev Shadowsong. Yet with all that is transpiring in Darnassus, the Alliance might be powerless to stop the relentless new warchief Garrosh from seizing the whole of Ashenvale.

Returning to Nuln after her adventures in Praag, Ulrika finds the Lahmian vampires preparing for war. Across the Old World, their rivals, the sinister von Carsteins, attack their strongholds and lead the witch hunters to their hidden lairs. Spurned by her sisters, Ulrika forms an uneasy alliance with the von Carsteins in a plot to destabilise the Empire by striking at its very heart - they plan nothing less than the assassination of Emperor Karl Franz. With enemies on all sides and the Empire in flames, Ulrika must decide whether her future will see her living among the humans, or as their enemy.

THE KILLING GROUND, COURAGE AND HONOUR, and THE CHAPTER'S DUE, as well as short stories from author Graham McNeill.