Search Worlds Without End

From the award-winning author of Things That Fall from the Sky, a richly nuanced and deeply moving novel about the disappearance of a young girl, as told by her devastated father.

Celia is seven years old on the day she goes missing. Her father, Christopher, is giving a tour of their historic house; her mother, Janet, is at an orchestra rehearsal. Celia is outside playing. She rides her bicycle. She throws a rubber ball against the roof. She disappears.

A writer of fantasy and science fiction, Christopher finds himself drawn into a grief-induced world of wishful fantasy in which Celia still exists. Plunging into his work to help him cope with her disappearance, he writes of its effects from the points of view of the people who are still haunted by her absence: Janet, the policeman who is in charge of the case, and Christopher himself--each voice contributing to the heart-wrenching picture of a town subtly, but lastingly, changed.

The Truth About Celia is a novel of remarkable understanding--an extraordinary exploration of profound loss and inconsolable grief.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy and Horror (2006), edited by Ellen Datlow. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2007), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. Originally published in Subterranean Press Magazine, Fall 2013. It has been antologized in The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best of Subterranean (2017), edited by William Schafer.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean.

A runaway and indentured thief, Eri must provide a new secret to open each new lock, at the cost of her own memory. Hundreds of locks later, Eri can barely recall her own past. An unanticipated alliance with a musician may prove the key to both their freedoms - if Eri doesn't lose herself in the process.

This story was the first place winner of the LeVar Burton Reads writing contest, as co-presented by FIYAH Literary Magazine and Tor.com!

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

This novelette originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (2014), edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein. It later appeared in Strange Horizons on 26 January 2015. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

A dissident scientist, her granddaughter, and an elf who created himself from thought journey to a tiered city built in a giant vertical conch. Here, they seek an audience at the top in order to convince them that their planet orbits its star instead of the other way around. But the road to paradigm shift is never easy--and rarely straightforward--and reveals many truths of its own.

You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did.

The text of The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains was first published in the collection anthology Stories: All New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (2010). This gorgeous full-color illustrated book version was born of a unique collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman and artist Eddie Campbell, who brought to vivid life the characters and landscape of Gaiman's story.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, Issue 108, May 2019.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Twelve stories by science fiction master Stanislaw Lem, nine of them never before published in English, making this the first "new" book of fiction by Lem since the late 1980s. The stories display the full range of Lem's intense curiosity about scientific ideas as well as his sardonic approach to human nature, presenting as multifarious a collection of mad scientists as any reader could wish for. Many of these stories feature artificial intelligences or artificial life forms, long a Lem preoccupation; some feature quite insane theories of cosmology or evolution. All are thought-provoking and scathingly funny.

Written from 1956 to 1996, the stories are arranged in chronological order. In the title story, The Truth, a scientist in an insane asylum theorizes that the sun is alive; The Journal appears to be an account by an omnipotent being describing the creation of infinite universes--until at the end, in a classic Lem twist, it turns out to be no such thing; in An Enigma, beings debate whether offspring can be created without advanced degrees and design templates. Other stories feature a computer than can predict the future by 137 seconds, matter-destroying spores, a hunt in which the prey is a robot, and an electronic brain eager to go on the lam. These stories are peak Lem, exploring ideas and themes that resonate throughout his writing.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Hunt - [Pilot Pirx] - novelette
• Rat in the Labyrinth - novelette
• Invasion from Aldebaran - (2011) - short story
• The Friend - novelette
• The Invasion - novelette
• Darkness and Mildew - (2011) - short story
• The Hammer - novelette
• Lymphater's Formula - novelette
• The Journal - novelette
• The Truth - novelette
• One Hundred and Thirty-Seven - short story
• An Enigma - [Robots' Fables] - short story

An authoritative, wide-ranging, and incredibly timely history of 1984 - its literary sources, its composition by Orwell, its deep and lasting effect on the Cold War, and its vast influence throughout world culture at every level, from high to pop.

1984 isn't just a novel; it's a key to understanding the modern world. George Orwell's final work is a treasure chest of ideas and memes - Big Brother, the Thought Police, Doublethink, Newspeak, 2+2=5 - that gain potency with every year. Particularly in 2016, when the election of Donald Trump made it a best seller ("Ministry of Alternative Facts", anyone?). Its influence has morphed endlessly into novels (The Handmaid's Tale), films (Brazil), television shows (V for Vendetta), rock albums (Diamond Dogs), commercials (Apple), even reality TV (Big Brother).

The Ministry of Truth is the first book that fully examines the epochal and cultural event that is 1984 in all its aspects: its roots in the utopian and dystopian literature that preceded it; the personal experiences in wartime Great Britain that Orwell drew on as he struggled to finish his masterpiece in his dying days; and the political and cultural phenomena that the novel ignited at once upon publication and that far from subsiding, have only grown over the decades. It explains how fiction history informs fiction and how fiction explains history.

In Veritas, people have been conditioned to always tell the truth, no matter how unnerving the truth may be. Jack Sperry must learn to lie in order to save his son in this witty science fiction novella. Recipient of a 1992 Nebula Award.

This novelette originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #157, October 2014. It was anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 edited by Rich Horton, and collected in The Father of Lies (2018).

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

This Novelette was first Published by tor.com in June, 2020.

Stella thought she'd made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mom. Why doesn't Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.

This work can be found here.

Tor - Two Truths and a Lie

The Dogs of Truth contains 17 new or previously uncollected short stories. Included are "High Rise High," about a student revolt at the ultimate "secure" high school; "Focus Group," where a star-struck fan dictates the fate of soap opera characters through a biochip implant; "Escape from Shark Island," which looks at an extreme version of today's trendy "family bed;" and "Precautions," where germ-phobia reigns supreme.

The new stories tell of the "Grand Opening" of the world's largest mega-mall, study the relationship of a writer and his muse in "Getting It Back," and, in "The Shop of Little Horrors," take a dark look at the child-free lifestyle.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2005) - essay by Kit Reed
• Grand Opening - short story
• Visiting the Dead - (2003) - short story
• High Rise High - (2004) - novelette
• Incursions - (2003) - short story
• Focus Group - (2003) - short story
• Yard Sale - (2004) - short story
• Into the Jungle - (2003) - short story
• Escape from Shark Island - (2004) - short story (variant of Family Bed)
• Old Soldiers - (2001) - short story
• Playmate - (2001) - short story
• No Two Alike - (2003) - short story
• Getting It Back - short story
• Precautions - (2000) - short story
• The Shop of Little Horrors - short story
• The Zombie Prince - (2004) - short story
• Captive Kong - (2001) - short story
• Perpetua - (2004) - short story

A car crashes in Montana. This is just after 9/11, and the unconscious driver is trying to smuggle bomb-grade uranium into the United States. Weeks of hard interrogation yield nothing. The prisoner won't speak, much less break. And just as his torturers are about to give up, he asks for a pen and paper, making a list of celestial events that have not yet happened. Somehow, he knows the future. And the evidence, incredible as it sounds, leads to the conclusion that he came from the distant future with a group of time-traveling terrorists.

Ramiro is the world's most important prisoner, and Carmen is his new interrogator. Years have passed since the car crash. Humanity has been transformed by war and by paranoia. A battered government, desperate to survive, gives Carmen total power to do whatever she needs to uncover the truth about Ramiro.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2008. The story can also be found in the anthology The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume, edited by Mary Robinette Kowal. It is included in the collection Eater-of-Bone and Other Novellas (2012).

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthology Wilde Stories 2016: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction, edited by Steve Berman.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2010, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2018.

Read or listen to the full story for free at Escape Pod.

As monster theory highlights, monsters are cultural symbols, guarding the borders that society creates to protect its values and norms. Adolescence is the time when one explores and aims at crossing borders to learn the rules of the culture that one will fit into as an adult. Exploring the roles of monsters in coming-of-age narratives and the need to confront and understand the monstrous, this work explores recent developments in the presentation of monsters–such as the vampire, the zombie, and the man-made monster–in maturation narratives, then moves on to discuss monsters inhabiting the psychic landscapes of child characters. Finally, it touches on monsters in science fiction, in which facing the monstrous is a variation of the New World narrative.

Discussions of novels by M. R. Carey, Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Sarah Maria Griffin, Seanan McGuire, Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Ness, and Jon Skovron are complemented by analysis of television series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Westworld.

In a bleak, far-northern land, a wandering storyteller is arrested on charges of witchcraft. Though Chant protests his innocence, he is condemned not only as a witch, but a spy. His only chance to save himself rests with the skills he has honed for decades - tell a good story, catch and hold their attention, or die.

But the attention he catches is that of the five elected rulers of the country, and Chant finds himself caught in a tangled, corrupt political game which began long before he ever arrived here. As he's snatched from one Queen's grasp to another's, he realizes that he could either be a pawn for one of them... or a player in his own right. After all, he knows better than anyone how powerful the right story can be: Powerful enough to save a life, certainly. Perhaps even powerful enough to bring a nation to its knees.

Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving--but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell.

That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. At Sterre's command, Ylfing begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms, Ylfing must face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: a man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or will he embrace the power of story to save ten thousand lives?

Book #2 of the Illuminated Ones duology of Deathlands

Allied with a tribe of women warriors, Ryan Cawdor and his band of survivalists continue their quest to locate the Illuminated Ones, a pre-dark sect who may possess secret knowledge of Deathlands. But their dangerous pursuit becomes even more treacherous when their quarry unleashes a deadly plague in a twisted plot to cleanse the earth.Destiny's Truth is the second episode in The Illuminated Ones, a two-book story arc in which the warrior survivalists battle the remnants of the pre-dark U.S. government -- otherwise known as the Illuminated Ones.

While filling his pages with reports of local club meetings and pictures of humorously shaped vegetables, William accidentally discovers dark forces plotting to overthrow the city's ruler.

Enjoy the final chapter in the sweeping tale of honor, glory, and battle that is the history of the kingdom and Knights of Solamnia.

In relentless pursuit of Earl Dumarest come the emotionless minions of the Cyclan. Seeking the body-switching formula which would make them masters of the universe, they must seize Dumarest alive to gain his secret.

It all comes together on the world of the Guardians, where in the great temple of their fanatical faith, the true co-ordinates of Earth are listed. There Dumarest will battle the Cyclan... while the fate of all humanity hangs in the balance.

This concluding title to The Four Winds Saga explores a different character's perspective on the events taking place in the series. The overall storyline is based on the Gold Edition set for the Legend of the Five Rings trading card game released by AEG. The ending of this title will actually be decided by the Legend of the Five Rings readers and fans in a tournament during the Summer of 2003, allowing players to have direct impact on novel content.

Mr. Elives's magic shop is back, and this time it is on the other side of Tucker's Swamp. And Tucker's Swamp is where Charlie Eggleston heads to escape a beating-for lying. Charlie can't seem to keep from lying, though sometimes his lies are for a good cause. When Charlie stumbles into Mr. Elives's magic shop, his eyes light upon The Skull. Charlie steals The Skull and it puts him under some sort of spell-he can only tell the truth. Trouble is, now no one believes him....

What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That's the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick's futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface - where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utlizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

The human race is at a crossroads; we know that we are not alone, but details about the alien presence on Earth are still being withheld from the public. As the political climate grows more unstable, the world is forced to consider the ramifications of granting human rights to nonhuman persons. How do you define "person" in the first place?

Cora Sabino not only serves as the full-time communication intermediary between the alien entity Ampersand and his government chaperones but also shares a mysterious bond with him that is both painful and intimate in ways neither of them could have anticipated. Despite this, Ampersand is still keen on keeping secrets, even from Cora, which backfires on them both when investigative journalist Kaveh Mazandarani, a close colleague of Cora's unscrupulous estranged father, witnesses far more of Ampersand's machinations than anyone was meant to see.

Since Cora has no choice but to trust Kaveh, the two must work together to prove to a fearful world that intelligent, conscious beings should be considered persons, no matter how horrifying, powerful, or malicious they may seem. Making this case is hard enough when the public doesn't know what it's dealing with--and it will only become harder when a mysterious flash illuminates the sky, marking the arrival of an agent of chaos that will light an already-unstable world on fire.

Long-dormant magical forces are moving once again in Sartorias-deles. Agents of Norsunder, a mysterious bastion of incredible dark power, have reappeared in the world, amassing resources and sowing instability.

But with numerous nations led by young rulers brought too early to their thrones, the world is hardly ready to defend itself. Atan is still uncomfortable with her new queenship, gained after her country was freed from a Norsundrian enchantment that left it frozen outside time for a century. Senrid strives to establish rule of law, after deposing his brutal and cruel uncle, seeking to exert control over rebellious jarls and a distrustful military academy. Jilo never expected the responsibility of leading his nation, but when its dictator vanishes after a Norsundrian attack, Jilo finds himself stepping into the power void, taking the reins of a country so riddled with dark magic that its citizenry labors for mere survival. Clair and CJ lead a band of misfits against magical threats that overshadow their tiny country, including a direct incursion from the Norsundrians.

Those in power are not the only individuals working to subvert the plans of Norsunder. Liere, a young shopkeeper's daughter, battles her own debilitating insecurities to live up to her reputation as a former savior of the realm. Hibern, a mage's apprentice, must act as a liaison between national leaders, negotiating politics still foreign to her. Rel, a traveling warrior, stirs powerful allies to action encourages common folk to take up arms.

These leaders soon realize that any significant victory against Norsunder will require an alliance between their nations. Yet good intentions may fracture in the face of personal grudges, secrets, and inexperience. As the Norsundrian attacks become bolder, the members of this tenuous alliance must find ways to trust one another and bind themselves together--lest they fail to defend against a host that has crushed entire worlds.

Innkeeper's daughters Adele and Eleda are "mirror twins"--identical twins whose looks are reflections of each other's--and their special talents are like mirrors, too. Adele is a Safe-Keeper, entrusted with hearing and never revealing others' secrets; Eleda is a Truth-Teller, who cannot tell a lie when asked a direct question. The town of Merendon relies on the twins, no one more than their best friend, Roelynn Karro, whose strict, wealthy father is determined to marry her off to the prince. When the girls are seventeen, a handsome dancing-master and his apprentice come to stay at the inn, and thus begins a chain of romance, mistaken identity, and some very surprising truths and falsehoods.

DESPERATE TIMES...

He was only a "beginner" shaman, but Sam Verner had to find a cure to ward off the curse on his sister. Only something of great magic would do the trick. His quest took him to a mystical citadel in Australia, where, with the aid of his shadowrunner friends, he recovered a strange artifact he hoped would prove helpful.

DESPERATE MEASURES...

But instead of anything that even remotely resembled help, an unexpected and ancient terror was released--a terror that erupted into a shadow war for dominion over an awakened earth. And while the evil kept growing, inexorably drawing him into battle, the curse's power over his sister was also growing, bringing her closer and closer to death.

Soon, a truly desperate Sam realized that the last and only hope for saving his sister was to find the greatest shaman of the Sixth World, former leader of the Great Ghost Dance--a man who may no longer exist...

A social experiment was conceived. Its goal was to breed the best, the brightest, the most malleable and most loyal soldiers to ever serve. To this end, the Romulan Empire used its own children, blinded by the belief that anything that would bring glory to the praetor was justified. And when the winds of politics changed, these children were abandoned, left to die on a world so horrifying that it was dubbed -- by those who dared to cling to life -- Hellguard.

One wild child, Saavik, was rescued by Spock. He took the half-Vulcan, half-Romulan child home to his parents, knowing that if anyone could reach and rescue Saavik, it was them.

Now a Starfleet officer, Saavik has striven to honor her mentor and her Vulcan heritage. But recent events have shaken her. Left behind on Vulcan while the rest of the Enterprise crew goes to face court-martial for stealing and destroying their ship, the young science officer is adrift when two men from her past confront her. Tolek, another Hellguard survivor, tells Saavik that the survivors are being killed one-by-one and only they can discover who and why. The other, a Romulan who claims to be her father, swears it is the Vulcans who are eliminating the Hellguard survivors because they are an embarrassment to all of Vulcan, but that she has the power to stop it, by bringing down the Vulcan ambassador, Sarek.

Not knowing where to turn, not knowing whom to trust, Saavik must find her own answers, and discover who she truly is.

The road less traveled...

After suffering a brutal attack off-world, each member of SG-1 finds themselves stranded alone in the Ancient Egyptian afterlife - and on a journey through the Book of the Dead.

With reality shifting around them, Colonel O'Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, Major Carter and Teal'c must each navigate a treacherous path toward final judgment in the Hall of the Two Truths. On the way, they will be tested to their mental and physical limits by their past mistakes, their greatest fears and their deepest desires...

In this classic SG-1 adventure, the team must dig deep to survive. Their only hope of escape lies in finding each other, but in this place where nothing and no one is what it seems, who do they trust and what do they dare to believe?

In the aftermath of the brutal murder of his father, a mysterious woman, Kahlan Amnell, appears in Richard Cypher's forest sanctuary seeking help ... and more. His world, his very beliefs, are shattered when ancient debts come due with thundering violence. In their darkest hour, hunted relentlessly, tormented by treachery and loss, Kahlan calls upon Richard to reach beyond his sword-- to invoke within himself something more noble. Neither knows that the rules of battle have just changed ... or that their time has run out. This is the beginning. One book. One Rule. Witness the birth of a legend.

An Epic of Awesome Power

Kahlan has at last gained the one goal she had always thought was beyond her grasp ... love. Against all odds, the ancient bonds of secret oaths, and the dark talents of men long dead, Richard has won her heart.

Amid sudden and disastrous events, Richard's life is called due to satisfy those treacherous oaths. To save his life, Kahlan must forsake Richard's love and cast him into the chains of slavery, knowing there could be no sin worse than such a betrayal.

Richard is determined to unlock the secrets bound in the magic of ancient oaths and to again be free. Kahlan, alone with the terrible truth of what she has done, must set about altering the course of a world thrown into war. But even that may be easier than ever winning back the heart of the only man she will ever love.

An Epic of Two Worlds

In a world as rich and real as our own, Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell stand against the ancient forces which besiege the New World -- forces so terrible that when last they threatened, they could only be withstood by sealing off the Old World from whence they came. Now the barrier has been breached, and the New World is again beset by their evil power.

War and treachery plague the world, and only Richard and Kahlan can save it from an armageddon of unimaginable savagery and destruction.

Terry Goodkind, author of the brilliant bestsellers Wizard's First Rule and Stone of Tears, has created his most masterful epic yet, a sumptuous feast of magic and excitement replete with the wonders of his unique fantasy vision.

On the red moon will come the firestorm...

Wielding the Sword of Truth, Richard Rahl has battled death itself and come to the defense of the D'Haran people. But now the power-mad Emperor Jagang confronts Richard with a swift and inexorable foe: a mystical plague cutting a deadly swath across the land and slaying thousands of innocent victims.

To quench the inferno, he must seek remedy in the wind...

To fight it Richard and his beloved Kahlan Amnell will risk everything to uncover the source of the terrible plague-the magic sealed away for three millennia in the Temple of the Winds.

Lightning will find him on that path...

But when prophecy throws the shadow of betrayal across their mission and threatens to destroy them, Richard must accept the Truth and find a way to pay the price the winds demand...or he and his world will perish.

Richard Rahl has traveled far from his roots as a simple woods guide. Emperor of the D'Haran Empire, war wizard, the Seeker of Truth--none of these roles mean as much to him as his newest: husband to his beloved Kahlan Amnell, Mother Confessor of the Midlands.

But their wedding day is the key that unlocks a spell sealed away long ago in a faraway country. Now a deadly power pours forth that threatens to turn the world into a lifeless waste.

Separated from the Sword of Truth and stripped of their magic, Richard and Kahlan must journey across the Midlands to discover a dark secret from the past and a trap that could tear them apart forever. For their fate has become inextricably entwined with that of the Midlands--and there's no place so dangerous as a world without magic...

Terry Goodkind author of the enormously popular Sword of Truth novels, has forged perhaps his best novel yet, pitting Richard Rahl and Kahlan Amnell against threats to the freedom of the world that will take them to opposite ends of the world to defeat the forces of chaos and anarchy.

Emperor Jagang is rising once again in the Old World and Richard must face him, on his own turf. Richard heads into the Old World with Cara, the Mord-Sith, while his beloved Kahlan remains behind. Unwilling to heed an ancient prophecy, Kahlan raises an army and goes into battle against forces threatening armed insurrection in the Midlands.

Separated and fighting for their lives, Richard and Kahlan will be tested to the utmost.

Sequel to the New York Times bestselling Faith of the Fallen

New York Times bestselling author Terry Goodkind has created his most lavish adventure yet. Tormented her entire life by inhuman voices, a young woman named Lauren seeks to end her intolerable agony. She at last discovers a way to silence the voices. For everyone else, the torment is about to begin.

With winter descending and the paralyzing dread of an army of annihilation occupying their homeland, Richard Rahl and his wife Kahlan must venture deep into a strange and desolate land. Their quest turns to terror when they find themselves the helpless prey of a tireless hunter.

Meanwhile, Lauren finds herself drawn into the center of a struggle for conquest and revenge. Worse yet, she finds her will seized by forces more abhorrent than anything she ever envisioned. Only then does she come to realize that the voices were real.

Staggered by loss and increasingly isolated, Richard and Kahlan must stop the relentless, unearthly threat which has come out of the darkest night of the human soul. To do so, Richard will be called upon to face the demons stalking among the Pillars of Creation.

Discover breathtaking adventure and true nobility of spirit. Find out why millions of readers the world over have elevated Terry Goodkind to the ranks of legend.

Beginning with Wizard's First Rule and continuing with six subsequent fantasy masterpieces, Terry Goodkind has thrilled and awed millions of readers worldwide. Now Goodkind returns with a broad-canvas adventure of epic intrigue, violent conflict, and terrifying peril for the beautiful Kahlan Amnell and her husband, the heroic Richard Rahl, the Sword of Truth.

Richard Rahl has been poisoned. Saving an empire from annihilation is the price of the antidote. With the shadow of death looming near, the empire crumbling before the invading hordes, and time running out, Richard is offered not only his own life but the salvation of a people, in exchange for delivering his wife, Kahlan, into bondage to the enemy.

With Wizard's First Rule and seven subsequent masterpieces, Terry Goodkind has thrilled readers worldwide with the unique sweep of his storytelling. Now Goodkind returns with a new novel of Richard and Kahlan, the beginning of a sequence of three novels that will bring their epic story to its culmination.

After being gravely injured in battle, Richard awakes to discover Kahlan missing. To his disbelief, no one remembers the woman he is frantically trying to find. Worse, no one believes that she really exists, or that he was ever married. Alone as never before, he must find the woman he loves more than life itself....if she is even still alive. If she was ever even real.

On the day she awoke remembering nothing but her name, Kahlan Amnell became the most dangerous woman alive. For everyone else, that was the day that the world began to end.

As her husband, Richard, desperately searches for his beloved, whom only he remembers, he knows that if she doesn't soon discover who she really is, she will unwittingly become the instrument that will unleash annihilation. But Kahlan learns that if she ever were to unlock the truth of her lost identity, then evil itself would finally possess her, body and soul.

If she is to survive in a murky world of deception and betrayal, where life is not only cheap but fleeting, Kahlan must find out why she is such a central figure in the war-torn world swirling around her. What she uncovers are secrets darker than she could ever have imagined.

Descending into darkness, about to be overwhelmed by evil, those people still free are powerless to stop the coming dawn of a savage new world, while Richard faces the guilt of knowing that he must let it happen. Alone, he must bear the weight of a sin he dare not confess to the one person he loves... and has lost.

Join Richard and Kahlan in the concluding novel of one of the most remarkable and memorable journeys ever written. It started with one rule, and will end with the rule of all rules, the rule unwritten, the rule unspoken since the dawn of history.

When next the sun rises, the world will be forever changed.

An epic fable about truth, falsehood, and the shackles of history...

The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.

500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.

Seventeen-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God's Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility?destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God's Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.

Magic! Murder! Shipboard romance!

Maud Blyth has always longed for adventure. She expected plenty of it when she volunteered to serve as an old lady's companion on an ocean liner, in order to help her beloved older brother unravel a magical conspiracy that began generations ago.

What she didn't expect was for the old lady in question to turn up dead on the first day of the voyage. Now she has to deal with a dead body, a disrespectful parrot, and the lovely, dangerously outrageous Violet Debenham, who's also returning home to England. Violet is everything that Maud has been trained to distrust yet can't help but desire: a magician, an actress, and a magnet for scandal.

Surrounded by the open sea and a ship full of suspects, Maud and Violet must first drop the masks that they've both learned to wear before they can unmask a murderer and somehow get their hands on a magical object worth killing for?without ending up dead in the water themselves.

In the penultimate book of Michael Pryor's brilliant steampunk adventure series, the war that has loomed for so long is finally declared. Can Aubrey's magic save him this time?

The unthinkable has happened: Albion is at war. Aubrey and George are swept up into the military - but not in the way they expect. With Caroline drafted into the Special Services, Aubrey is sure the combination of his magic, George's practical skills and Caroline's fighting secrets will make them a formidable team. But what if the military hierarchy has other ideas?

When Aubrey's top secret espionage unit is sent to Gallia to investigate mysterious magical emanations, what they discover is intelligence gold. Holmland is about to unleash an unstoppable horror upon the world. It could win the war within weeks. Aubrey is in a dilemma: should he obey orders and simply observe, or should he and his friends do their best to stop a bloodbath?

Saving thousands of lives could cost Aubrey his own. But that's never stopped him before.

Alissa doesn't believe in magic. Her father's stories about the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers learn magic from the enigmatic Maters, are just that - stories. But her mother insists that Alissa has inherited her father's magical ability, and so she must go to the Hold - the only place her talents can be trained.

On her way, she crosses paths with Strell, a wandering musician from the plains. And though Alissa is not sure she can trust a plainsman, Strell has something she needs - one of her father's old maps. Travelling together, they can reach the Hold before the snow sets in.

But they don't know that the Hold is nearly empty. Something is very wrong and someone believes that Alissa and Strell knows about a book called First Truth.

Alissa never believed in magic. But then she went to the Hold, a legendary fortress where human Keepers once learned magic from enigmatic Masters. Under the tutelage of the last surviving Master, Alissa discovered that she had inherited, her father's magical ability.

But the Hold, is ruled by Bailic, the renegade Keeper who seized the First Truth, a book of magic he will use to harness the might of the city of the dead and wreak a war of total devastation. The book has thwarted Bailic's every attempt to access it, while it continually calls to Alissa - who must summon all her will to resist it. For, if she gives in to the First Truth's ultimate power and knowledge, she will be utterly changed - and the man she loves could be lost to her forever...

When a shapeshifting student is transported back four centuries, she is in danger of being permanently changed into her dragon form, with no memory of her human life - or love.

Apt and eager Alissa is the only student of the last surviving master of magic. She easily shifts from human to raku, or beast counterpart, and has learned many advanced magics on her own. One afternoon, a tiny miscalculation sends her back in time 400 years within the Hold in which she lives. Now it is peopled by names and faces from stories the master has told of his and the Hold's history. As Alissa and a new, young teacher search for how to send her back, another problem arises: the primal living force behind her raku form is surfacing more often and without summoning. It is just a matter of time before Alissa will be overcome. Her transformation to raku will be permanent. It will be as if she had never existed.

Alissa is steadily advancing in her magical studies with the last surviving Master at the legendary Hold. But she's haunted by dreams - dreams revealing that other Masters have survived.

Alissa's dreams lead her to a distant island where she and a rescue party discover countless Masters, alive and part of a flourishing magical society. But instead of being welcomed, Alissa finds that she herself may need to be rescued. The Masters' leader, Keribdis, believes that she should be Alissa's teacher, whether Alissa likes it or not. When Alissa rebels, she endangers not only her magic but also her life.

Having left the Marine Corps, former Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr is attempting to build a new life with salvage operator Craig Ryder. Turns out, civilian life is a lot rougher than she'd imagined. Torin is left for dead when pirates attack their spaceship and take Craig prisoner. But "left for dead" has never stopped Torin. Determined to rescue Craig, she calls in her Marines. And that's when her mission expands to stopping the pirates from changing the balance of power in known space.

On a continent ruled by three empires, some are born with a "witchery," a magical skill that sets them apart from others.

In the Witchlands, there are almost as many types of magic as there are ways to get in trouble--as two desperate young women know all too well.

Safiya is a Truthwitch, able to discern truth from lie. It's a powerful magic that many would kill to have on their side, especially amongst the nobility to which Safi was born. So Safi must keep her gift hidden, lest she be used as a pawn in the struggle between empires.

Iseult, a Threadwitch, can see the invisible ties that bind and entangle the lives around her--but she cannot see the bonds that touch her own heart. Her unlikely friendship with Safi has taken her from life as an outcast into one of reckless adventure, where she is a cool, wary balance to Safiya's hotheaded impulsiveness.

Safiya and Iseult just want to be free to live their own lives, but war is coming to the Witchlands. With the help of the cunning Prince Merik (a Windwitch and privateer) and the hindrance of a Bloodwitch bent on revenge, the friends must fight emperors, princes, and mercenaries alike, who will stop at nothing to get their hands on a Truthwitch.

Peter Higgins' Vlast is a superbly imagined 'other' Russia, an epic land of trackless forest, sentient rain and deep powers in the Earth. Its capital Mirgorod is home both to a brutal dictatorship centuries old and fleeting glimpses of the houses and streets of another city. Compared to the works of both China Mieville and John Le Carre WOLFHOUND CENTURY was a hugely original creation. Now Peter Higgins returns to that world.

Investigator Lom returns to Mirgorod and finds the city in the throes of a crisis. The war against the Archipelago is not going well. Enemy divisions are massing outside the city, air-raids are a daily occurrance and the citizens are being conscripted into the desperate defence of the city.

But Lom has other concerns. The police are after him, the mystery of the otherworldly Pollandore remains and the vast Angel is moving, turning all of nature against the city.

But will the horrors of war overtake all their plans?

ACROSS TWO EXTRAORDINARY WORLDS, TRUTH IS THE DEADLIEST MAGIC

Gifted with an uncanny intuition, Lara Jansen nonetheless thinks there is nothing particularly special about her. All that changes when a handsome but mysterious man enters her quiet Boston tailor shop and reveals himself to be a prince of Faerie. What's more, Dafydd ap Caerwyn claims that Lara is a truthseeker, a person with the rare talent of being able to tell truth from falsehood. Dafydd begs Lara to help solve his brother's murder, of which Dafydd himself is the only suspect.

Acting against her practical nature, Lara agrees to step through a window into another world. Caught between bitterly opposed Seelie forces and Dafydd's secrets, which are as perilous as he is irresistible, Lara finds that her abilities are increasing in unexpected and uncontrollable ways. With the fate of two worlds at stake and a malevolent entity wielding the darkest of magic, Lara and Dafydd will risk everything on a love that may be their salvation - or the most treacherous illusion of all.