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A Certain Magical Index: Book 16
Acqua of the Back has taken aim at Touma Kamijou -- or more specifically, his right hand -- with all the powers of sainthood and magic available to a powerful member of God's Right Seat. As a countermeasure, The Amakusa Style Church has dispatched Itsuwa as a temporary live in bodyguard. But when she whips out her overwhelming cooking ability and domestic skills, will Index completely lose her place in the Kamijou household before the threat passes?!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 17
The head of the English Puritan Church, Laura Stuart, has summoned the Index Librorum Prohibitorum with a mission to investigate the bombing of the Euro Tunnel that connects the UK with France. Index soon departs for the British Isles with her guardian Touma Kamijou in tow but their when their flight is suddenly hijacked by a mysterious figure, their plans will have to change! If they survive, Index and Touma's next unfortunate adventure will lead them to the heart of the UK!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 18
In London, main headquarters of the English Puritan Church that Index hails from. This capital of magic has fallen to a coup-de-tat by the Knights faction headed by the Knight Leader. Its effects can be felt throughout the entire United Kingdom, as civilians are arrested or confined by soldiers on city streets. In the turmoil as the Knights' revolution progresses, the Puritan faction which commands the sorcerers continues to resist across the country. Touma Kamijou heads to Folkstone to save Index and finally meets face to face with the coup-de-tat's mastermind. Also present is Acqua of the Back, of God's Right Seat. And the one he aims his blade at is the second princess of the British royal house, Carissa...! When science and sorcery intersect, stories begin...!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 19
A certain unlikely hero...
In the shadowy underbelly of Academy City, the problem-busting team known as Group (centered around Level Five esper Accelerator and the man who wields the powers of science and magic, Tsuchimikado) is investigating every lead they can related to the word dragon. This clue may be the key to finding their way out of a terrible situation. Unfortunately, their efforts put them at odds with a particular member of the General Board, the highest body of authority in Academy City. Once again, Group finds itself in the center of a gunfire-filled conspiracy... just as former Item member Hamazura stumbles onto the scene?!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 20
October 18th. World War III has begun. As the flames of conflict between Academy City and Russia spread further, many other countries suddenly find themselves pulled into the fight. Fiamma, the only remaining active member of God's Right Seat, attempts to control everything from the shadows while others run straight into the heart of the storm! Kamijou will travel as far as necessary to revive the magically comatose Index; Accelerator won't let even a war stop him from saving Last Order; and Hamazura must find a way to heal Takitsubo's stimulant-abused body.
Though their goals are all different, it is fate that these three will cross paths in Russia, where something sinister lies in wait for them...!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 21
A certain unlikely hero...
As battles rage around the world, three boys continue to dash through the fires of Russia. Takitsubo is still suffering, and with no cure in sight, Hamazura relies on a chance encounter and a borrowed jeep to find what he needs in Elizalinan territory. Already there is Accelerator, who awoke in a field hospital after his defeat at the hands of his weakest and most worthy opponent. Though Last Order is no better than before she and Accelerator arrived, it might be just the right place to learn how the occult parchment ties into everything. Back across the border in war-torn Russia, Kamijou is about to infiltrate another military base to finally corner Fiamma. That's easier said than done, though, when two enormous angels turn the entire area into a battlefield!
A Certain Magical Index: Book 22
Fiamma of the Right, last remaining member of the shadowy Roman Orthodox organization, God's Right Seat, has finally set his long-awaited plans into motion.
The Star of Bethlehem: a giant fortress rises into the wartorn Russian skies. Fiamma calls for a purge of the unworthy while three young men continue to fight, carrying various causes in their hearts as they make a last stand against impending disaster.
A Certain Magical Index SS, Vol. 2
A Certain Magical Index: Book 24
A certain unlikely hero...
It's another exciting, messy time in Academy City as Uiharu repels a massive hacking attack on the data banks. Elsewhere, Hamazura, Hanzou, and Komaba speed away from the scene of their most recent crime, only to quickly regret their choices after one cop makes it her life's mission to catch them--no matter the cost in property damage. Meanwhile, in the dark underbelly of the vaunted scientific city, Hanzou must come to terms with his dark lineage or face the consequences. And in that same shadowy world, several Misaka Sisters have gathered for their next mission to... look up their horoscopes?
Ace SF Special, Series 2: Book 6
Challenge the Hellmaker is an intriguing new novel by a husband and wife team of scientists.
Drawing on their exhaustive knowledge and imagination they have conjured up a near-future world dominated by the repressive U.N. Security Corps. The last barrier to its total dictatorship is a small group of international scientists isolated on a space station miles above the Earth... and the Hellmaker.
Activation: Book 1
Brothers Harry and Jack leave Manchester for New York City for their annual weekend getaway. But upon arrival, they find a silent, deserted JFK, where the few ground crew they can spot have all been slaughtered.
Harry and Jack are military veterans, but they've never encountered anything like this.
As they witness the carnage and stumble across murderous madmen in a post-apocalyptic New York City, it becomes clear that escape is the only option--that is, if there is anywhere sane to escape to...
The 47North edition is a revised edition: This edition of First Activation includes editorial revisions.
Akira: Book 1
Welcome to Neo-Tokyo, built on the ashes of a Tokyo annihilated by a blast of unknown origin that triggered World War III. The lives of two streetwise teenage friends, Tetsuo and Kaneda, change forever when paranormal abilities begin to waken in Tetsuo, making him a target for a shadowy agency that will stop at nothing to prevent another catastrophe like the one that leveled Tokyo. At the core of the agency's motivation is a raw, all-consuming fear of an unthinkable, monstrous power known only as Akira.
Akira: Book 2
IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Neo-Tokyo has risen from the ashes of a Tokyo obliterated by a monstrous psychokinetic power known only as Akira, a being who yet lives, secretly imprisoned in frozen stasis. Those who stand guard know that Akira's awakening is a terrifying inevitability. Tetsuo, an angry young man with immense--and rapidly growing--psychic abilities, may be their only hope to control Akira when he wakes. But Tetsuo is becoming increasingly unstable and harbors a growing obsession to confront Akira face to face. A clandestine group including his former best friend sets out to destroy Tetsuo before he can release Akira--or before Tetsuo himself becomes so powerful that no force on Earth can stop him.
An epic masterpiece of graphic fiction and the inspiration for its stunning animated adaptation, Akira is required reading for any enthusiast of science fiction, manga, and the graphic novel.
Akira: Book 3
IN THE 21ST CENTURY, the glittering Neo-Tokyo has risen from the rubble of a Tokyo destroyed by an apocalyptic telekinetic blast from a young boy called Akira--the subject of a covert government experiment gone wrong now imprisoned for three decades in frozen stasis. But Tetsuo, an unstable youth with immense paranormal abilities of his own, has done the unthinkable: He has released Akiraand set into motion a chain of events that could once again destroy the city and drag the world to the brink of Armageddon. Resistance agents and an armada of government forces race against the clock to find the child with godlike powers before his unstoppable destructive abilities are unleashed.
One of the true international classics of graphic fiction, Akira has once again taken America by storm. Artist/writer/filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo is acclaimed worldwide as a master storyteller, and Akirashowcases Otomo at the peak of his creative form. Akira is a timeless, epic work of unforgettable beauty, horror, and imagination.
Akira: Book 4
Suffering the fate that beset its namesake three decades earlier, twenty-first-century Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin. Set off by the bullet of a would-be assassin, the godlike telekinetic fury of the superhuman child Akira has once again demolished in seconds that which took decades and untold billions to build. Now cut off from the rest of the world, the Great Tokyo Empire rises, with Akira its king, the psychic juggernaut Tetsuo its mad prime minister, and a growing army of fanatic acolytes ready to go to any length to please their masters. Forces on the outside still search for a way to stop Akira, and the answer may lie in the hands of the mysterious Lady Miyako, a powerful member of Akira's paranormal brotherhood. But the solution to harnessing Akira may ultimately be more dangerous than Akira himself.
Twenty years since its original release in Japan, Akira remains one of the most widely acclaimed and influential works of graphic fiction, and creator Katsuhiro Otomo has become a legendary storyteller in animation as well as manga. Akira is a science fiction tour de force, a breathtaking vision of innocence, infamy, and insanity.
Akira: Book 5
IN THE 21ST CENTURY, the once glittering Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin, leveled in minutes by the infinite power of the child psychic Akira. From the flooded wasteland of rubble and anarchy rises the Great Tokyo Empire, populated by a ragtag army of zealots and crazies who worship and fear Akria ad his mad prime minister, Tetsuo, and angry teen with immense powers of his own -- and equally immense, twisted ambitions. The world at large is not taking the threat lying down, and the military strength of the planet is massing to take on the empire, but will technology's most advanced weaponry be enough to destroy Akira? And are Tetsuo's rapidly growing paranormal abilities a potentially greater threat?
A mind-blowing epic, Akira is a sweeping graphic-novel tour de force of awe-inspiring vision and gut-wrenching intensity -- and the inspiration for the brilliant Akira animated film. Creator Katsuhiro Otomo has influenced a generation of graphic novelists and animators and is universally acknowledged as a storyteller of extraordinary skill, standing alongside the finest writers and directors of science fiction.
Akira: Book 6
IN A DEVASTATED 21ST CENTURY, Neo-Tokyo, the armed might of Earth is massed against the godlike powers of two psychic titans, the mute child Akira and the deranged youth Tetsuo. While Akira has unintentionally destoryed the city twice before, Tetsuo has ravaged the surface of the Moon for his sheer amusement, and his madness grows as his abilities expand. But he is gradually losing control of the limitless energies that rage within him, mutating Tetsuo into a horror beyond imagination, and as all forces converge for a final confrontation, the fate of the planet lies in the hands of mere mortals...and the mind of a child.
This final chapter of Katsuhiro Otomo's internationally honored graphic-novel masterpiece brings to a shattering, mind-warping conclusion the science-fiction epic that has influenced storytellers from every continent and in every medium. Akira is a one-of-a-kind work of breathtaking scope, unforgettable imagery, and singular vision.
Alex Benedict: Book 8
After being lost in space for eleven years, Gabe finally makes his triumphant return to reunite with Alex and Chase and retrieve a possibly alien artifact--which may lead them to solve the greatest archaeological mystery of their careers, in the eighth installment of the Alex Benedict series.
After his return from space, Gabe is trying to find a new life for himself after being presumed dead--just as Alex and Chase are trying to relearn how to live and work without him. But when a seemingly alien artifact goes missing from Gabe's old collection, it grants the group a chance to dive into solving the mystery of its origins as a team, once again.
When a lead on the artifact is tied to a dead pilot's sole unrecorded trip, another clue seems to lead to one of the greatest lingering mysteries of the age: the infamous disappearance of a team of scientists aboard a space station orbiting a black hole--the Amelia Earhart of their time. With any luck, Alex, Chase, and Gabe may be on the trail of the greatest archaeological discovery of their careers...
The time--a future closer than we know. Where groups of extraterrestrial aliens have become familiar members of our society.
The place--Los Angeles. Still a town of fast times and hard crime, touching every life form inside the city limits.
The cops--Sykes, earthman, and Francisco, alien. Facing a menace meaner than the meanest streets on their beat. Fighting an enemy as terrifying as the darkest forces in a vast, unfathomable universe. Battling back with the best--and the deadliest--of both their worlds.
Alien Nation: Book 1
Los Angeles, the present. Rookie detective Matt Sikes begins his first murder investigation and stumbles onto a deadly conspiracy that threatens his life, his daughter and his world. At the same time, onboard a nightmarish starship hurtling toward the Earth's sun, Stangya Soren'tzahh-- a courageous Tenctonese slave destined to become Detective George Francisco-- is swept into his peoples' last desperate struggle for freedom against the ruthless and mysterious Overseers. When the great ship lands on Earth, the future of the Tenctonese and all humanity depends on two unlikely heroes, Matt and George-- who must work together for the first time to prevent a disaster that could destrroy both their peoples.
Alien Nation: Book 2
On July 31, 1991, the final episode of "Alien Nation, "Green Eyes" aired, ending the series with a blockbuster finale and an exciting cliffhanger.
In "Green Eyes" the Newcomers were faced with a deadly new bacteria created by a ruthless group of humans called Purists, who were determined to rid the Earth of the alien Tenctonese. As the story closed, all of the "Alien Nation characters were in crisis, and the Francisco family was infected with the bacteria, facing certain death.
This story was never resolved... until now. "Dark Horizon" was a two-hour "Alien Nation script commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox. The story would have resolved the cliffhanger and kicked off "Alien Nation's second seacon. With the final cancellation of the series, the script was put away and fans were left with their questions unanswered. Pocket Books is now proud to present a novelization by critically acclaimed science fiction author K. W. Jeter, of the entire action-packed story that began with "Green Eyes" and ended with "Dark Horizon."
As the story opens, George Francisco and Matthew Sikes stand watch over George's family, while the Earth faces a new threat. A ruthless Overseer has come from space to recover the Tenctonese slaves, and he will stop at nothing to see that the Newcomers-- as well as the entire human race-- are enslaved forever.
Alien Nation: Book 3
While investigating the truth behind the reports of the birth of the first half-human, half-Tenctonese child, Matthew Sikes finds himself increasing drawn to his Tenctonese friend, Cathy.
Alien Nation: Book 4
"The Change" is one of a small number of scripts developed by the producers and staff of "Alien Nation" -- scripts never televised because of the show's early demise. A piece of history for "Alien Nation" fans, "the Change" provides an incredible glimpse at an "Alien Nation" story that never was.
Critically acclaimed science fiction novelist Barry B. Longyear brings to life an exciting story in which Newcomer police detective George Francisco undergoes a startling metamorphosis that will either mean his death or the beginning of a new life. In the midst of this time of change, George must also face a vicious, unstoppable killer from his past who has sworn a deadly revenge on George and everyone he cares for...
Alien Nation: Book 5
Detective Matthew Sikes and his Newcomer partner George Francisco must track down a missing human journalist, named Micky Cass, who has gone undercover as a Newcomer to expose racism and discrimination against the Tenctonese. From the beginning, the journalist's articles about his experiences ignited fierce controversy. When Micky Cass disappears, the controversy explodes and violence wracks the city. It is now up to Sikes and Francisco to solve a case that has the entire city caught in a grip of hate.
Finally, as the city burns, Matt Sikes must go undercover as a Newcomer and place himself at the center of the worst violence Los Angeles has ever known...
Alien Nation: Book 6
In an all-new "Alien Nation novel, a chance encounter with a mysterious woman from his past propels Detective Matt Sikes into an investigation of a lethal Newcomer drug, and forces the woman he loves to risk her life for someone she's never even met. Meanwhile, tension mounts between Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, as each is forced to deal with the range of emotions evoked by this unusual case. As they delve deeper into the intricate maze of L.A.'s illegal drug market, Fransicso and Sikes discover that some Newcomers will do anything to assimilate into human society-- even face the horrifying and deadly consequences that could destroy them all.
Alien Nation: Book 7
On a business trip to Pittsburgh, detective Matthew Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George Francisco, stumble on what appears to be an unusual homicide. It isn't long before the case leads them to a frightening world of abuse and violence that set in motion the series of horrifying murders born of an unremiting hate-- murders that target only the innocent. With bodies piling up and time running out, Sikes and Francisco must race against the clock to stop the killing-- and face a terrifying monster from beyond the stars!
Alien Nation: Book 8
The pregnancy of Newcomer Cathy Frankel by her human boyfriend, Matt Sikes, ignites tensions city-wide as extremist groups who fear the implications of the birth of the first half-human/half-Newcomer child threaten Cathy's safety. The danger escalates when the medical facility treating Cathy is attacked, forcing her into seclusion. Meanwhile, George Francisco is drawn into a Newcomer cult headed by a mysterious messianic figure. Obsessed with the cult, George quits the police force to devote all his time to his new religion. Now with his partner gone, Sikes must defend his newborn baby from a hostile band of criminals determined to destroy anyone who's different-- even an innocent child.
Ancient Shores: Book 1
It turned up in a North Dakota wheat field: a triangle, like a shark's fin, sticking up from the black loam. Tom Lasker did what any farmer would have done. He dug it up. And discovered a boat, made of a fiberglass-like material with an utterly impossible atomic number. What it was doing buried under a dozen feet of prairie soil two thousand miles from any ocean, no one knew. True, Tom Lasker's wheat field had once been on the shoreline of a great inland sea, but that was a long time ago - ten thousand years ago.
Andromeda Strain: Book 1
The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun.
Ariel: Book 1
At four-thirty one Saturday afternoon the laws of physics as we know them underwent a change. Electronic devices, cars, industries stopped. The lights went out. Any technology more complicated than a lever or pulley simply wouldn't work. A new set of rules took its place--laws that could only be called magic. Ninety-nine percent of humanity has simply vanished. Cities lie abandoned. Supernatural creatures wander the silenced achievements of a halted civilization.
Pete Garey has survived the Change and its ensuing chaos. He wanders the southeastern United States, scavenging, lying low. Learning. One day he makes an unexpected friend: a smartassed unicorn with serious attitude. Pete names her Ariel and teaches her how to talk, how to read, and how to survive in a world in which a unicorn horn has become a highly prized commodity.
When they learn that there is a price quite literally on Ariel's head, the two unlikely companions set out from Atlanta to Manhattan to confront the sorcerer who wants her horn. And so begins a haunting, epic, and surprisingly funny journey through the remnants of a halted civilization in a desolated world.
Becoming Alien: Book 1
Living on a chicken farm in backwater America, forced to help his older brother run an illegal drug operation, Tom was going nowhere fast. Then an extraterrestial ship crashed on his farm, and he managed to save one alien from the wreck - Mica, a cadet of the multi-species Federation.
Communicating largely through pictures, the two form an odd friendship and Tom decides to become a Federation cadet -- a test case to see if humans could ever be considered for membership. As the lone human among the alien race, Tom's survival was not assured. And if he fell prey to fear and prejudice, Earth would be condemned to eternal quarantine.
Bel Dame Apocrypha: Book 2
The only thing worse than war is revolution. Especially when you're already losing the war...
Nyx used to be a bel dame, a government-funded assassin with a talent for cutting off heads for cash. Now she's babysitting diplomats to make ends meet and longing for the days when killing was a lot more honorable.
When Nyx's former bel dame "sisters" lead a coup against the government that threatens to plunge the country into civil war, Nyx is tasked with bringing them in. The hunt takes Nyx and her inglorious team of mercenaries to one of the richest, most peaceful, and most contaminated places on the planet - a country wholly unprepared to host a battle waged by the world's deadliest assassins.
In a rotten nation of sweet-tongued politicians, giant bugs, and renegade shape shifters, Nyx will forge unlikely allies and rekindle old acquaintances. And the bodies she leaves scattered across the continent this time... may include her own.
Because no matter where you go or how far you run in this world, one thing is certain: the bloody bel dames will find you.
Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner
The 1992 release of the "Director's Cut" only confirmed what the international film cognoscenti have know all along: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick's brilliant and troubling SF novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, still rules as the most visually dense, thematically challenging, and influential SF film ever made.
Future Noir is the story of that triumph.
The making of Blade Runner was a seven-year odyssey that would test the stamina and the imagination of writers, producers, special effects wizards, and the most innovative art directors and set designers in the industry.
A fascinating look at the ever-shifting interface between commerce and the art that is modern Hollywood, Future Noir is the intense, intimate, anything-but-glamerous inside account of how the work of SF's most uncompromising author was transformed into a critical sensation, a commercial success, and a cult classic.
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 1
Bofuri: Book 1
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
IS SHE THE GAME'S LAST BOSS?!
Though she doesn't play many MMOs, Maple has either a natural talent or impossibly good luck, because by pouring every last stat point she has into Vitality, she's created a character who can't be hurt! Whether it's physical attacks or magic or status effects, nothing poses a real threat. In no time at all, news spreads across the server about the adorable terror who can't be defeated. While Maple may just be having fun, her broken build is sure to attract lots of unexpected attention...
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 2
Bofuri: Book 2
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
Double Trouble...
Maple has become famous overnight after finishing in the top three of the battle royale and defeating a shocking two hundred players without taking any damage at all. Now, with the treasure hunt event about to start, Maple and Sally set off in search of rare gear and adventure! The game admins and other players look on in both fear and excitement as they wait to see what crazy new development is about to hit the server!
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 3
Bofuri: Book 3
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGINS!
Following their incredible performance in the treasure hunt event, Maple and Sally are interested in one thing and one thing only--buying a house! After all, every guild needs a home. Though their guild is still small, the girls and their friends are excited to have a place to meet, train, and grow--especially now that the newly minted guilds are all going to be facing off in the next big event! This is the birth of the legendary Maple Tree, the guild whose name strikes fear into the hearts of all who hear it!
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 4
Bofuri: Book 4
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
BEGUN, THE GUILD WARS HAVE!
With new allies and skills at the ready, Maple Tree embarks on their first event! The obvious favorites to take the crown are the big guilds like Flame Empire and the Order of the Holy Sword, each boasting well over a hundred members and some of the best players who topped the ranks in previous events. To make matters worse, everyone on the server has been stocking up on anti-Maple skills and items after her rise to infamy. For any hope of victory, Maple Tree will have to overcome incredible odds and shatter all expectations--or wipe out everybody else trying!
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 5
Bofuri: Book 5
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
NEW DAY, NEW EXPANSION!
After going toe-to-toe with two of the strongest guilds on the entire server, Maple Tree proved itself as a force to be reckoned with when they placed third overall in the latest event. That said, war isn't all the guilds are good for! Maple and her friends have steadily grown closer to members of the Order of the Holy Sword and Flame Empire as their rivalries give way to something more. With new friends and powers, everyone is more than ready to dive headfirst into the newly released stratum!
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 6
Bofuri: Book 6
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
A WALKING NIGHTMARE FOR GAME DESIGN!
Between easily beating the fifth stratum's secret boss and keeping pace with the best players in the game, Maple continues to demonstrate exactly how broken she is. Unfortunately, things aren't going as smoothly for Sally because the sixth stratum's debut reveals a horror-themed level, meaning it's chock-full of ghosts, geists, and ghouls! Wanting to do something nice for her partner who's too terrified to even step onto the new map, Maple sets out to find presents in the haunted houses and cursed crypts, much to the horror of the admins...
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 7
Bofuri: Book 7
Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.
Still feeling a bit sad for Sally, who missed out on the sixth layer, Maple proposes they try something fun for the seventh event. It'll be just the two of them, aiming to complete a no damage run with the odds against them and the difficulty set to max. What could possibly go wrong?
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 8
Bofuri: Book 8
GOTTA FIND THEM ALL!
Maple Tree has just reached the seventh stratum, and there's only one thing on everyone's minds -- get every member of the guild their very own pet monster! There isn't a moment to lose because the next event is about to begin, and pets are supposed to be critical! Since Maple already has Syrup and Sally has Oboro, they're helping everyone else find their partners while exploring the massive new map. Of course, Maple still somehow finds a way to stumble into even more insanity!
Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 9
Bofuri: Book 9
THE GAMEDEVS TURN UP THE HEAT!
Maple Tree swept the prelims and then reunite for the eighth event's main round-a brutal three-day survival mission. Each member tamed monsters that perfectly fit their unique builds and are unmatched in combat. The guild's feeling confident thanks to the perfect plan they've devised, but the devs aren't going to make it easy. Will Maple Tree be ready for the challenges lying in wait? Teaming up with rival guilds maybe the only way to make it to the end of this harsh trial. Equipment Mud of Dead Spirit Skills.
Borne: Book 1
"Am I a person?" Borne asked me.
"Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a weapon, too."
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company--a biotech firm now derelict--and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump--plant or animal?--but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts--and definitely against Wick's wishes--Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
"He was born, but I had borne him."
But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.
Eighty years after her death in a car accident, Mira awakens in a "dating center". The patrons of the dating center are lonely men seeking wives, and dead women in cryogenic storage. A male patron can revive a female patron's head and interview her -- and, if he doesn't like her, press a button to immediately return her to storage. As various suitors reject her, and the years go by, Mira's only chance to avoid being frozen forever is to convince a total stranger that she loves him enough that he should pay for her full revival.
This Hugo Award-winnning and Nebula Award-nominated short story was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2009, and can also be found in Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, edited by Kevin J. Anderson.
Listen to a podcast of this story at EscapePod.
In the future, love is complicated and death is not necessarily the end. Love Minus Eighty follows several interconnected people in a disquieting vision of romantic life in the century to come.
There's Rob, who accidentally kills a jogger, then sacrifices all to visit her in a cryogenic dating facility, seeking forgiveness but instead falling in love.
Veronika, a shy dating coach, finds herself coaching the very woman who is stealing the man she loves.
And Mira, a gay woman accidentally placed in a heterosexual dating center near its inception, desperately seeks a way to reunite with her frozen partner as the years pass.
In this daring and big-hearted novel based on the Hugo-winning short story, the lovelorn navigate a word in which technology has reached the outer limits of morality and romance.
Brilliance Saga: Book 2
The brilliants changed everything.
Since 1980, 1% of the world has been born with gifts we'd only dreamed of. The ability to sense a person's most intimate secrets, or predict the stock market, or move virtually unseen. For thirty years the world has struggled with a growing divide between the exceptional... and the rest of us.
Now a terrorist network led by brilliants has crippled three cities. Supermarket shelves stand empty. 911 calls go unanswered. Fanatics are burning people alive.
Nick Cooper has always fought to make the world better for his children. As both a brilliant and an advisor to the president of the United States, he's against everything the terrorists represent. But as America slides toward a devastating civil war, Cooper is forced to play a game he dares not lose--because his opponents have their own vision of a better world.
And to reach it, they're willing to burn this one down.
CatNet: Book 1
How much does the internet know about YOU?
Because her mom is always on the move, Steph hasn't lived anyplace longer than six months. Her only constant is an online community called CatNet - a social media site where users upload cat pictures - a place she knows she is welcome. What Steph doesn't know is that the admin of the site, CheshireCat, is a sentient A.I.
When a threat from Steph's past catches up to her and ChesireCat's existence is discovered by outsiders, it's up to Steph and her friends, both online and IRL, to save her.
CatNet: Book 2
When a mysterious entity starts hacking into social networks and chat rooms to instigate paranoia and violence in the real world, it's up to Steph and her new friend, Nell, to find a way to stop it – with the help of their benevolent AI friend, CheshireCat.
Centenal Cycle: Book 1
It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the line.
With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues. For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have so much to gain?
Infomocracy is Malka Older's debut novel.
This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story was later incorporated in the fixup novel Central Station (2016).
Chaga: Book 1
On the trail of the mystery of Saturn's disappearing moons, network journalist Gaby McAslan find herself in Aftrica researching the Kilimanjaro Event: a meteor which landed in Kenya causing the striking African landscape to give way to something equally beautiful – and indescribably alien. Dubbed the Chaga, the alien flora destroys all man-made materials, and moulds human flesh, bone and spirit to its own designs. And when Gaby McAsland finds the first man to survive the Chaga's changes, she realizes it has its own plans for humankind.
Published in the US as Evolution's Shore.
Chet Kinsman: Book 1
All Kinsman wanted was the moon...
It was the threshold to space and the stars, to new industries, new worlds, and a new destiny for mankind. It was vital that the United States establish a Moon colony - and Chet Kinsman was determined to lead it.
But the opposition was fierce, well-financed, and politically powerfull. To fight and win, Kinsman would have to use - to betray and perhaps destroy - the woman he loved, his oldest friend, and - if it came to that - himself.
A stirring novel of character and human confilic as well as adventurous technology, Kinsman brings to vivid life the near-future epic of the newest and widest frontier of all.
Lies, Damned Lies, and History
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 7
I've done some stupid things in my time. I've been reckless. I've broken a few rules. But never before have I ruined so many lives or left such a trail of destruction behind me.
As Max would be the first to admit, she's never been one for rules. They tend to happen to other people. But this time she's gone too far and everyone is paying the price.
Grounded until the end of time, how can she ever put things right?
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 8
"Because, my dear Max, you dance on the edge of darkness... and I don't think it would take very much for you to dance my way."
When an old enemy appears out of nowhere with an astonishing proposition for Max -- a proposition that could change everything -- Max is tempted. Very tempted.
With an end to an old conflict finally in sight, it looks as if St Mary's problems are over with. Can they all finally live happily ever after?
As everything hangs in the balance, Max and St Mary's find themselves engulfed in tragedies worse than they could ever imagine.
Is this the end?
An Argumentation of Historians
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 9
Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don't call it "time travel" -- these historians "investigate major historical events in contemporary time." And they aren't your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.
From Tudor England to the burning city of Persepolis, from a medieval St. Mary's under siege to Victorian Rushford and a very nasty case of gaol fever, Max is struggling to keep her private life intact. There's an ambitious programme hindered by giant teapots, plus Mrs. Midgely's objection to dead hamsters in her airing cupboard, and Mr. Markham's stubborn refusal to reveal his exact marital status.
And as if that's not enough -- the unfortunately not leprosy-laden Malcolm Halcombe is back. Admittedly, none of this is the most secure platform from which to launch an initiative to bring down the renegade Clive Ronan, but hey -- what's the worst that could happen?
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 10
Max is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands. Especially when she's had A Brilliant Idea. Yes, it will mean breaking a few rules, but - as Max always says - they're not her rules.
Seconded to the Time Police to join in the hunt for the renegade Clive Ronan, Max is a long way from St Mary's. But life in the future does have its plus points - although not for long.
A problem with the Time Map reveals chaos in the 16th century and the wrong Tudor queen on the throne. History has gone rogue, there's a St Mary's team right in the firing line and Max must step up.
You know what they say. Hope for the best. But plan for the worst.
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 11
I would have trusted this man with my life. Until a couple of days ago, anyway.
You know what they say - hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
Max is quite accustomed to everything going wrong. She's St Mary's, after all. Disaster is her default state. But with her family reunited and a jump to Bronze Age Crete in the works, life is getting back to normal. Well, normal for St Mary's.
And then, following one fateful night at the Tower of London, everything Max thought she knew comes crashing down around her.
Too late for plans. The worst has happened. And who can Max trust now?
Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 12
At long last it's all over. Job done. Max has her life back and everything is set for the traditional happy ending. Except, this is St Mary's and if something can go wrong, it will.
Disaster is piled upon catastrophe. A new Head of Security. A new Director of St Mary's. Historians lost in time. And Max dishonourably discharged.
Jobless and homeless, she receives an offer she cannot refuse and suddenly finds herself in another time and another place. Just a way to pass the weeks until she can reunite with Leon - or so she thinks. Because events are on the move and, as usual, St Mary's is at the centre of the storm.
Circuit: Book 1
The setting is the moon, where newfound industrial strength gives the frontier communities a chance to show independence from the Earth nations that established them. A leading constitutionalist and friend of the U.S. president, Justice Cabot Huntington is sent in to regain control. The stiff-necked judge looks forward to writing precedents for space law, but when his first decision leads to the death of Soviet miners he must reevaluate his position and acknowledge his own complicity in the deadly power struggle that comes to implicate both the Russian and American leaders in the miners' murders.
Snodgrass's idealistic portrait of the spacers is appealing if broad and rather simple, and the protests against martial law, the courtroom theatrics and the spacegoing shootouts keep the action boiling.
Circuit: Book 2
Judge Cabot Huntington becomes caught in the middle of a conflict between ruthless, corrupt industrial powers on Earth and a group of proud, determined colonists over newly discovered diamond mines on Mars.
Circuit: Book 3
Judge Cabot Huntingdon, dodging impeachment, is hiding among the Belters. The Fifteenth Circuit Court has been suspended, leaving those who live in the belt, on Mars, or on the Moon, on their own. In those territories there is no judicial system approved by Earth, and therefore no judicial buffer against Earth's assaults.
Now terrorists in the Belt have hijacked a spaceship carrying antimatter and are threatening the Earth with it.
It's clearly going to be tough for Judge Cabot to keep the Earth and the Belt from each other's necks, notwithstanding the dubious "help" of his well-connected family.
Cities in Flight: Book 1
Also published as Year 2018!
2018 AD. The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion...
Colossus: Book 2
Charles Forbin is the Director: the one man on earth who speaks directly to Colossus. Five years before, the American supercomputer and the Soviet supercomputer were united -- combining their data, their analytic powers, their learning and growth capacity. In the few seconds of that process, they became one Colossus -- master of humankind. Programmed to solve humanity's problems, Colossus solved them: forestalled nuclear holocaust, eradicated poverty and the frustration and violence it breeds. Soon there was nothing for people to do -- but obey. Some made Colossus their God, and Charles Forbin was their Pope. Others wanted to be free of Colossus -- for Colossus was also ruthless beyond any human tyrant ever -- and they wanted Forbin as their deliverer. Either of these movements might get Forbin killed. He is appalled and disgusted by the religious cult, terrified by the rebels -- who haven't a chance, as he knows better than anyone on earth. Then Forbin is handed the key to the overthrow of Colossus -- or is it? He must commit his life to the chance that it is, just to begin with. Then he must commit the earth to the shadowy motives of the mysterious source of this new power.
Cyborg: Book 1
He was a wonder of scientific perfection-- but it was lonely as hell at the top. All the resources of NASA, the Pentagon, and Government Money put the pieces of Lt. Col. Steve Austin's shattered body back together again. He came out of it more perfect than human. Better than new. A deadly, unstoppable weapon. Now all he needed was to find some human emotion in the tangle of plastic, wire and atomic metal that was fused to the remains of his flesh. Basis for The Six Million Dollar Man.
Daemon: Book 1
When a designer of computer games dies, he leaves behind a program that unravels the Internet's interconnected world. It corrupts, kills, and runs independent of human control. It's up to Detective Peter Sebeck to wrest the world from the malevolent virtual enemy before its ultimate purpose is realized: to dismantle society and bring about a new world order.
Daemon: Book 2
The Daemon is in absolute control, using an expanded network of shadowy operatives to tear apart civilization and build it anew. Even as civil war breaks out in the American Midwest in a wave of nightmarish violence, former detective Pete Sebeck--the Daemon's most powerful, though reluctant, operative--must lead a small band of enlightened humans in a movement designed to protect the new world order.
But the private armies of global business are preparing to crush the Daemon once and for all. In a world of shattered loyalties, collapsing societies, and seemingly endless betrayal, the only thing worth fighting for may be nothing less than the freedom of all humankind.
Dagmar Shaw: Book 1
Imagine a game with no boundaries - waiting in a parking lot, sitting at your computer, walking down the street. You could be called at any moment - and you'd better be ready.
This is not a game.
This is a novel of greed, betrayal, and social networking.
Darwin: Book 1
Greg Bear's powerfully written, brilliantly inventive novels combine cutting-edge science and unforgettable characters, illuminating dazzling new technologies--and their dangers. Now, in Darwin's Radio, Bear draws on state-of-the-art biological and anthropological research to give us an ingeniously plotted thriller that questions everything we believe about human origins and destiny--as civilization confronts the next terrifying step in evolution.
A mass grave in Russia that conceals the mummified remains of two women, both with child--and the conspiracy to keep it secret... A major discovery high in the Alps: the preserved bodies of a prehistoric family--the newborn infant possessing disturbing characteristics... A mysterious disease that strikes only pregnant women, resulting in miscarriage. Three disparate facts that will converge into one science-shattering truth.
Molecular biologist Kaye Lang, a specialist in retroviruses, believes that ancient diseases encoded in the DNA of humans can again come to life. But her theory soon becomes chilling reality. For Christopher Dicken--a "virus hunter" at the Epidemic Intelligence Service--has pursued an elusive flu-like disease that strikes down expectant mothers and their offspring. The shocking link: something that has slept in our genes for millions of years is waking up.
Now, as the outbreak of this terrifying disease threatens to become a deadly epidemic, Dicken and Lang, along with anthropologist Mitch Rafelson, must race against time to assemble the pieces of a puzzle only they are equipped to solve. An evolutionary puzzle that will determine the future of the human race... If a future exists at all.
A fiercely intelligent, utterly enthralling novel of adventure and ideas, genetics and evolution, a fast-paced thriller that is grounded in the timeless human themes of struggle, loss, and redemption, Darwin's Radio is sure to become one of the most talked-about books of the year.
Darwin: Book 2
Greg Bear's Nebula Award–winning novel, Darwin's Radio, painted a chilling portrait of humankind on the threshold of a radical leap in evolution - one that would alter our species forever. Now Bear continues his provocative tale of the human race confronted by an uncertain future, where "survival of the fittest" takes on astonishing and controversial new dimensions.
DARWIN'S CHILDREN
Eleven years have passed since SHEVA, an ancient retrovirus, was discovered in human DNA - a retrovirus that caused mutations in the human genome and heralded the arrival of a new wave of genetically enhanced humans. Now these changed children have reached adolescence... and face a world that is outraged about their very existence. For these special youths, possessed of remarkable, advanced traits that mark a major turning point in human development, are also ticking time bombs harboring hosts of viruses that could exterminate the "old" human race.
Fear and hatred of the virus children have made them a persecuted underclass, quarantined by the government in special "schools," targeted by federally sanctioned bounty hunters, and demonized by hysterical segments of the population. But pockets of resistance have sprung up among those opposed to treating the children like dangerous diseases - and who fear the worst if the government's draconian measures are carried to their extreme.
Scientists Kaye Lang and Mitch Rafelson are part of this small but determined minority. Once at the forefront of the discovery and study of the SHEVA outbreak, they now live as virtual exiles in the Virginia suburbs with their daughter, Stella - a bright, inquisitive virus child who is quickly maturing, straining to break free of the protective world her parents have built around her, and eager to seek out others of her kind.
But for all their precautions, Kaye, Mitch, and Stella have not slipped below the government's radar. The agencies fanatically devoted to segregating and controlling the new-breed children monitor their every move - watching and waiting for the opportunity to strike the next blow in their escalating war to preserve "humankind" at any cost.
Directive 51: Book 1
Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse and radical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatred for the "Big System" and their desire to take it down.
Now, seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the world are in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy modern civilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top government personnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program... Directive 51.
Divergent Trilogy: Book 2
One choice can transform you-or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves-and herself-while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.
Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable-and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.
New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian Divergent series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.
Divergent Trilogy: Book 3
What if your whole world was a lie?
What if a single revelation - like a single choice - changed everything?
What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?
The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times best-selling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of listeners in Divergent and Insurgent.
Dogs of War: Book 1
Rex is a Good Dog. He loves humans. He hates enemies. He's utterly obedient to Master.
He's also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multi-form Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Southeastern Mexico.
Rex is a genetically engineered bioform, a deadly weapon in a dirty war. He has the intelligence to carry out his orders and feedback implants to reward him when he does. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies. But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow bioforms even have a right to exist? And what happens when Rex slips his leash?
Dream Park: Book 1
They were all playing games.... but one of them was playing for keeps.
Chet Henderson was playing at revenge, an to boost his flagging reputation as a Lore-master.
Richard Lopez was playing to prove this his earlier successes as a Gamemaster were no fluke.
Ollie and Gwen and Mary-em and Tony were playing because it made them feel alive.
Alex Griffin was playing to protect Dream Park's darkest secret.
In Dream Park, everyone plays. But if some win, some have to lose. And losing can be a matter of life or death.
Dream Park: Book 2
Eviane's first visit to the-state-of-art amusement arena Dream Park ended in disaster: the special effects had seemed more real than life... until the holograms she was shooting with live ammunition turned out to be solid flesh and blood... and very, very dead.
Haunted by the past, rebounding from a lengthy spell in a mental hospital, she has returned to Dream Park to exorcise a nightmare that has become reality. But in Dream Park, nothing is what it seems. The Inuit mythology controlling the images is part of a "Fat Ripper Special" designed to implant new behavioral memes. The players are struggling against the game master, one another, and their own demons. And there is a killer who wants to ensure Eviane never regains her memory... no matter what it costs.
Dream Park: Book 3
Dream Park, the ultimate in amusement parks, was about to embark on the greatest Game ever: the California Voodoo Game. Across the world bets were being placed; fortunes and reputations hung in the balance. Gaming careers would be made--or destroyed. And the most advanced software package ever invented was going to be tested.
But one of the players was a murderer--and worse. Only Alex Griffin, head of Dream Park Security, and Game Master Tony McWhirter guessed the extent of the treachery tainting the Game. Somehow, they had to catch the killer--but above all, the Game must go on....
Dream Park: Book 4
The Year: 2085. Humanity has spread throughout the solar system. A stable lunar colony is agitating for independence. Lunar tourism is on the rise...
Against this background, professional "Close Protection" specialist Scotty Griffin, fresh off a disastrous assignment, is offered the opportunity of a lifetime: to shepherd the teenaged heir to the Republic of Kikaya on a fabulous vacation. Ali Kikaya will participate in the first live action role playing game conducted on the Moon itself. Having left Luna--and a treasured marriage--years ago due to a near-tragic accident, Scotty leaps at the opportunity.
Live Action Role Playing attracts a very special sort of individual: brilliant, unpredictable, resourceful, and addicted to problem solving. By kidnapping a dozen gamers in the middle of the ultimate game, watched by more people than any other sporting event in history, they have thrown down an irresistible gauntlet: to "win" the first game that ever became "real." Pursued by armed and murderous terrorists, forced to solve gaming puzzles to stay a jump ahead, forced to juggle multiple psychological realities as they do...this is the game for which they've prepared their entire lives, and they are going to play it for all it's worth.
Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Universe 9 (1979), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9 (1980). It is included in the collections Blue Champagne (1986) and The John Varley Reader (2004).
Emberverse: Emberverse I: Book 1
The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable. What follows is the most terrible global catastrophe in the history of the human race-and a Dark Age more universal and complete than could possibly be imagined.
Empire: Book 1
The American Empire has grown too fast, and the fault lines at home are stressed to the breaking point. The war of words between Right and Left has collapsed into a shooting war, though most people just want to be left alone.
The battle rages between the high-technology weapons on one side, and militia foot-soldiers on the other, devastating the cities, and overrunning the countryside. But the vast majority, who only want the killing to stop, and the nation to return to more peaceful days, have technology, weapons and strategic geniuses of their own.
When the American dream shatters into violence, who can hold the people and the government together? And which side will you be on?
Orson Scott Card is a master storyteller, who has earned millions of fans and reams of praise for his previous science fiction and fantasy novels. Now he steps a little closer to the present day with this chilling look at a near future scenario of a new American Civil War.
Empire: Book 2
The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the countryside.
At the close of Empire, political scientist and government adviser Averell Torrent had maneuvered himself into the presidency of the United States. And now that he has complete power at home, he plans to expand American imperial power around the world.
Opportunity comes quickly. There's a deadly new plague in Africa, and it is devastating the countryside and cities. President Torrent declares American solidarity with the victims, but places all of Africa in quarantine until a vaccine is found or the disease burns itself out. And he sends Captain Bartholomew Coleman, Cole to his friends, to run the relief operations and protect the American scientists working on identifying the virus. If Cole and his team can avoid dying of the plague, or being cut down by the weapons of fearful African nations, they might do some good. Or they might be out of the way for good.
Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 2
The War is over, won by Ender Wiggin and his team of brilliant child-warriors. The enemy is destroyed, the human race is saved. Ender himself refuses to return to the planet, but his crew has gone home to their families, scattered across the globe. The battle school is no more.
But with the external threat gone, the Earth has become a battlefield once more. The children of the Battle School are more than heros they are potential weapons that can bring power to the countries that control them. One by one, all of Ender's Dragon Army are kidnapped. Only Bean escapes and he turns for help to Ender's brother Peter.
Peter Wiggin, Ender's older brother, has already been manipulating the politics of Earth from behind the scenes. With Bean's help, he will eventually rule the world.
Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 3
Bestselling author Orson Scott Card brings to life a new chapter in the saga of Ender's Earth.
Earth and its society has been changed irrevocably in the aftermath of Ender Wiggin's victory over the Formics--the unity enforced upon the warring nations by an alien enemy has shattered. Nations are rising again, seeking territory and influence, and most of all, seeking to control the skills and loyalty of the children from the Battle School.
But one person has a better idea. Peter Wiggin, Ender's older, more ruthless, brother, sees that any hope for the future of Earth lies in restoring a sense of unity and purpose. And he has an irresistible call on the loyalty of Earth's young warriors. With Bean at his side, the two will reshape our future.
Here is the continuing story of Bean and Petra, and the rest of Ender's Dragon Army, as they take their places in the new government of Earth.
Ender's Universe: Ender's Shadow: Book 4
Bean's past was a battle just to survive. He first appeared on the streets of Rotterdam, a tiny child with a mind leagues beyond anyone else. He knew he could not survive through strength; he used his tactical genius to gain acceptance into a children's gang, and then to help make that gang a template for success for all the others. He civilized them, and lived to grow older. Then he was discovered by the recruiters for the Battle School.
For Earth was at war -- a terrible war with an inscrutable alien enemy. A war that humanity was near to losing. But the long distances of interstellar space has given hope to the defenders of Earth -- they had time to train military geniuses up from childhood, forging them into an irresistible force in the high-orbital facility called the Battle School. That story is told in two books, the beloved classic Ender's Game, and its parallel, Ender's Shadow.
Bean was the smallest student at the Battle School, but he became Ender Wiggins' right hand. Since then he has grown to be a power on Earth. He served the Hegemon as strategist and general in the terrible wars that followed Ender's defeat of the alien empire attacking Earth. Now he and his wife Petra yearn for a safe place to build a family -- something he has never known -- but there is nowhere on Earth that does not harbor his enemies -- old enemies from the days in Ender's Jeesh, new enemies from the wars on Earth. To find security, Bean and Petra must once again follow in Ender's footsteps. They must leave Earth behind, in the control of the Hegemon, and look to the stars.
Exiles: Book 1
A powerful world government has scientists transported from an overpopulated earth to a satellite on the eve of their discovery of a method to modify the human embryo.
Extinction Cycle: Book 1
Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force Team, codenamed Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top secret Medical Corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet--a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.
After barely escaping with his life, Beckham returns to Fort Bragg in the midst of a new type of war. As cities fall, Team Ghost is ordered to keep CDC virologist Dr. Kate Lovato alive long enough to find a cure. What she uncovers will change everything.
Total extinction is just on the horizon, but will the cure be worse than the virus?
Extinction Cycle: Book 2
The dust from Dr. Kate Lovato's bioweapon has settled. Projections put death counts in the billions. Her weapon was supposed to be the endgame, but it turned a small percentage of those infected with the Hemorrhage Virus into something even worse.
Survivors call them Variants. Irreversible epigenetic changes have transformed them into predators unlike any the human race has ever seen. And they are evolving.
The fractured military plans Operation Liberty--a desperate mission designed to take back the cities and destroy the Variant threat. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham agrees to lead a strike team into New York City, but first he must return to Fort Bragg to search for the only family he has left.
As Operation Liberty draws closer, Kate warns Beckham that Team Ghost won't just face their deadliest adversary yet, they may be heading into a trap...
Extinction Cycle: Book 3
humans are losing the war. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham and the survivors of 1st Platoon must battle through the tunnels--where they make a grisly discovery.
Dr. Kate Lovato is working on a new bioweapon to destroy the Variants when a derelict Navy Destroyer crashes into the Connecticut shoreline carrying yet another threat.
As the doomsday clock ticks down and military bases fall across the country, the human race enters the age of extinction. Will they prevail--or will mankind vanish off the face of the planet?
Extinction Cycle: Book 4
Central Command is gone, the military is fractured, and the surviving members of Team Ghost, led by Master Sergeant Reed Beckham, have been pushed to the breaking point.
Betrayed by the country they swore to defend and surrounded by enemies on all sides, Team Ghost has one mission left: protect Dr. Kate Lovato and Dr. Pat Ellis while they develop a weapon to defeat the Variants once and for all. But after a grisly discovery in Atlanta, Kate and Ellis realize their weapon might not be able to stop the evolution of the monsters.
Joined by unexpected allies and facing a new threat none of them saw coming, the survivors are running out of time to save the human race from extinction.
Extinction Cycle: Book 5
Almost seven weeks have passed since the Hemorrhage Virus ravaged the world. The remnants of the United States military have regrouped and relocated Central Command to the George Washington Carrier Strike Group. It's here, in the North Atlantic, that President Jan Ringgold and Vice President George Johnson prepare to deploy a new bioweapon and embark on the final mission to take back the country from the Variants.
With his home gone and his friends kidnapped, Master Sergeant Reed Beckham and his remaining men must take drastic measures to save what's left of the human race.
Extinction Cycle: Book 6
The newly christened leader of Delta Force Team Ghost, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick arrives in Normandy over 70 years after Allied Forces joined the fight against the Nazis. The war to free survivors and eradicate pockets of adult Variants and their offspring is underway by the European Unified Forces. But as the troops push east, rumors of a new type of monster spread through the ranks. Fitz and his new team quickly realize that the fight for Europe might be harder than anyone ever imagined.
Back in the States, Captain Reed Beckham and Dr. Kate Lovato are settling into a new life on Plum Island. Across the United States, the adult Variants have all been wiped out, and the juveniles are on the run. But the survivors soon realize there are other monsters at home, and they may be human.
Extinction Cycle: Book 7
An army advances...
In Europe, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick and Team Ghost return from a mission deep into enemy territory only to find that the Variant army has grown stronger, and they are advancing toward the EUF's stronghold in Paris.
On the brink of Civil War...
Back in the United States, President Ringgold and Dr. Kate Lovato are on the run. The Safe Zone Territories continue to rally behind the ROT flag, leaving Ringgold more enemies than allies. But there are still those who will stand and fight for America. Captain Rachel Davis and Captain Reed Beckham will risk everything to defeat ROT and save the country from collapsing into Civil War.
Firebreak: Book 1
"Twenty minutes to power curfew, and my kill counter's stalled at eight hundred eighty-seven while I've been standing here like an idiot. My health bar is flashing ominously, but I'm down to four heal patches, and I have to be smart."
New Liberty City, 2134.
Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country's remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side.
Here, Mallory streams Stellaxis's wargame SecOps on BestLife, spending more time jacked in than in the world just to eke out a hardscrabble living from tips. When a chance encounter with one of the game's rare super-soldiers leads to a side job for Mal--looking to link an actual missing girl to one of the SecOps characters. Mal's sudden burst in online fame rivals her deepening fear of what she is uncovering about BestLife's developer, and puts her in the kind of danger she's only experienced through her avatar.
Author Kornher-Stace's adult science fiction debut--Firebreak-- is loaded with ambitious challenges and a city to save.
You Have Arrived at Your Destination
Forward: Book 4
Nature or nurture? Neither. Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.
When Sam's wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a "leg up" in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.
Forward: Book 6
In the near future, if Vegas games are ingeniously scam-proof, then the heists have to be too, in this imaginative and whip-smart story by the New York Times bestselling author of The Martian.
An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house--unless human ingenuity isn't entirely a thing of the past.
Frontiers of Imagination: Book 59
In the twenty-first century, a battered world is ruled by a crafty old tyrant, Genghis II Mao IV Khan. The Khan is ninety-three years old, his life systems sustained by the skill of Mordecai Shadrach, a brilliant young surgeon whose chief function is to replace the Khan's worn-out organs. Within the vast tower-complex, the most advanced equipment is dedicated to three top-priority projects, each designed to keep the Khan immortal. Most sinister of these is Project Avatar, by which the Khan's mind and persona are to be transferred to a younger body.
Shadrach makes the unsettling discovery that it is his body that is to be used. His friends beg him to flee, but he refuses to panic.Instead, and with startling composure, he evolves a dangerous plan that could change the face of the earth or, if it backfires, mean the end of life.
"Shadrach in the Furnace" is at once a broad, sweeping novel and a harsh, abrasive, irreverent book about a life-and-death battle between two titans - one the epitome of evil, the other a paragon of idealism - in a society pushed to extremes.
Intervention sets the scene for Julian May's new trlogy of the Galactic Milieu. This has been split into two books: The Surveillance (containing Prologue, The Surveillance, and The Disclosure) and The Metaconcert, containing The Intervention and Epilogue.
For 60 000 years the five races of the Galactic Milieu have watched and waited for the time when human mental development on Earth is ready for the Intervention...
As the twentieth century draws to its end, phenomenal mental powers are displayed by 'operants' all across our planet... They can 'farspeak' one another telepathically. They can build mental shields and they are capable of coercion by power of mind.
One of there is Rogatien Remillard, a dealer in secondhand books, whose memories - written a century on - form the core of this chronicle. They tell of a world where the mind has become a weapon; and of two brothers, each possessed of extraordinary powers - one a peace-bringer, the other an advocate of evil...
Galaxy Science Fiction: Book 3
Here is the compelling story of the launching of Prometheus -- Earth's first true spaceship -- and of the men who made it happen.
Dirk Alexson:
Chronicler of the greatest space adventure of all time, he was chosen to immortalize the incredible story of the men and their heroic mission.
Sir Robert Derwent:
Direct-General of Interplanetary -- London Headquarters for the international space-flight project -- he was the man who got the mission off the ground and into the pages of history.
Professor Maxton:
The world's leading atomic engineer, he designed the huge ship's drive units and he waited with the rest of the world to see if the project would be a success.
The future is blue. Endless blue... except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.
Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.
But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.
The first quarter of this book was published as the novelette The Past Is Red and it can be read for free at Clarkesworld.
Gilead: Book 1
In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies?
Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....
Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid's Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.
Gilead: Book 2
When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex: The Lost Memory
GITS-SAC: Book 1
Since being formed as a shadow peacekeeping organization, Section 9 has faced almost countless adversaries both in the real world and in cyberspace, but none like "The Awakened," a group of terrorists who seem to have the ability to take over the minds and bodies of almost anyone and use them to commit crimes against the state, leaving their pawns unaware of who was controlling them. When Major Motoko Kusanagi is able to capture one of the boys used as a pawn she hacks into his cyberbrain to find out who the ringleader is, but what she discovers will take her and the operatives of Section 9 on a journey deep into the heart of cyberspace, and the answers she finds will shake Section 9 to its core.
Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex: Revenge Of The Cold Machines
GITS-SAC: Book 2
2030 Tokyo: While patrolling Tokyo's post-World War III refugee zones Togusa, the newest member of Section 9, discovers that one of the most powerful cyber-criminals his squad has ever faced has plans to kill their leader, Section 9 Chief Daisuke Aramaki, in one of three stories in this collection, and it will take all of the members of Section 9 to stop him. The action heats up in the stories "Double Targets," "First Love, Last Love" and "Revenge of the Cold Machines".
Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex: White Maze
GITS-SAC: Book 3
The year is 2030. Advances in robotics and cyberbrain technology have transformed the world into a miraculous place where almost anything is possible - even the melding of humans and machines. In this not-too-distant future, the crimes of flesh and metal are investigated by Section 9, an elite counterterrorist squad headed by Chief Aramaki and his cyborg sidekick, Major Motoko Kusanagi. When dead bodies, drained of blood and with two bite marks on their necks, start turning up on the streets of Tokyo, it isn't long before the entire city is in a panic. As Major Kusanagi and the other members of Section 9 investigate the killings they begin to wonder - is the killer a real vampire or something much worse? In a dark world of murder, where cyberbrain hacks and treacherous conspiracies reach to the furthest heights of government, Section 9 is all that stands between the people and anarchy.
Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 36
Human crisis in a computer world.
Rear cover synopsis:
"Bohn, the omnipotent computer whose flashing circuits and messianic pronouncements dictate what tomorrow will--or will not--be.
But Matthew Oliver is flesh and blood and full of questions--not nearly as certain as the machine he's appointed to serve.
And the right hand of science seldom knows what the left hand is doing..."
Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 40
334, the city street address of a place where time pivots forward and backward, is the setting of a unique odyssey through human history.
Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 49
Charles Render is a shaper, one of a small number of psychotherapists qualified, by his granite will and ultra-stability, to use the extraordinary device that enables him to to participate in, and control, his patients' dreams. But this is a dangerous therapy for the therapist and only his armour-plated integrity protects Render from too deep an involvement in the mental worlds of the damaged people he seeks to help. But then, Eileen Shallot, another therapist who is blind, asks him to help her 'see' by transferring from his mind to hers a world of colour and light. Render agrees but suddenly finds himself obsessed with Eileen and drawn into fantasies which, she controls.
Dr. Bloodmoney: or, How We Got Along After the Bomb
Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 53
Dr. Bloodmoney is a post-nuclear-holocaust masterpiece filled with a host of Dick's most memorable characters: Hoppy Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers; Walt Dangerfield, a selfless disc jockey stranded in a satellite circling the globe; Dr. Bluthgeld, the megalomaniac physicist largely responsible for the decimated state of the world; and Stuart McConchie and Bonnie Keller, two unremarkable people bent the survival of goodness in a world devastated by evil. Epic and alluring, this brilliant novel is a mesmerizing depiction of Dick's undying hope in humanity.
Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 63
Philip K Dick's classic dystopian novel set in the future where the remaining human survivors on Earth must gamble for their future with aliens from Titan, one of the moons circling Saturn.
Roaming the pristine landscape of Earth, cared for by machines and aliens, the few remaining humans alive since the war with Titan play Bluff, allowing them to win or lose property and also form new marriages in order to maximise the remote chance some pairings will produce a child. When Pete Garden, a particularly suicidal member of the Pretty Blue Fox game-playing group, loses his current wife and his deed to Berkeley, he stumbles upon a far bigger, more sinister version of the game.
The telepathic, slug-like Vugs of Titan are the players and at stake is the Earth itself. The Game-Players of Titan is a brilliantly conceived vision of a future dystopia, full of imaginative detail, moments of pure humour and thought-provoking musings on the nature of perception, as the seemingly straightforward narrative soon turns into a tumultuous nightmare of delusion, precognition and conspiracy.
Matters Arising from the Identification of the Body
Guerline Scarfe Investigations: Book 1
Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning and Aurealis and Ditmar-nominated Novella
She took her helmet off.
That's where it starts; that's where it ends.
That's all there is.
Tanja Morgenstein, daughter of a wealthy industrialist and a geochemist, is dead from exposure to Titan's lethal, chilled atmosphere, and Guerline Scarfe must determine why.
The Gumshoe, the Witch, and the Virtual Corpse
Gumshoe: Book 1
Welcome to 21st century Atlanta.
During your stay, depending on your tastes, you can cruise gay midtown (I hear that the Inquisition Health Club has introduced manacles and chains to the aerobics class) or check out the Reverend-Senator Stonewall's headquarters at Freedom Plaza (watch out for the Christian Militia guarding it, though) or attend a sky-clad Wiccan sabbat (by invitation only).
Avoid the courthouse, where the Cherokee have turned out in full war-paint to renegotiate a nineteenth century land deal.
Also stay away from all cemeteries, at least until the police find out why someone is disinterring and crucifying corpses.
Halting State: Book 1
In the year 2018, Sergeant Sue Smith of the Edinburgh constabulary is called in on a special case. A daring bank robbery has taken place at Hayek Associates, a dot-com startup company that's just been floated on the London stock exchange. The suspects are a band of marauding orcs, with a dragon in tow for fire support, and the bank is located within the virtual reality land of Avalon Four. For Smith, the investigation seems pointless. But she soon realizes that the virtual world may have a devastating effect in the real one-and that someone is about to launch an attack upon both...
Halting State: Book 2
Detective Inspector Liz Kavanaugh is head of the Rule 34 Squad, monitoring the Internet to determine whether people are engaging in harmless fantasies or illegal activities. Three ex-con spammers have been murdered, and Liz must uncover the link between them before these homicides go viral.
Hank Palace: Book 1
What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?
Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There's no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.
The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He's investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.
The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace's investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we're confronted by hard questions way beyond "whodunit." What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?
Hank Palace: Book 2
The Last Policeman received the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original--along with plenty of glowing reviews.
Now Detective Hank Palace returns in Countdown City, the second volume of the Last Policeman trilogy. There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over... until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.
Brett Cavatone disappeared without a trace—an easy feat in a world with no phones, no cars, and no way to tell whether someone’s gone "bucket list" or just gone. With society falling to shambles, Hank pieces together what few clues he can, on a search that leads him from a college-campus-turned-anarchist-encampment to a crumbling coastal landscape where anti-immigrant militia fend off "impact zone" refugees.
Countdown City presents another fascinating mystery set on brink of an apocalypse--and once again, Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond "whodunit." What do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing all around you?
Hank Palace: Book 3
Critically acclaimed author Ben H. Winters delivers this explosive final installment in the Edgar Award winning Last Policeman series.
With the doomsday asteroid looming, Detective Hank Palace has found sanctuary in the woods of New England, secure in a well-stocked safe house with other onetime members of the Concord police force. But with time ticking away before the asteroid makes landfall, Hank's safety is only relative, and his only relative--his sister Nico--isn't safe. Soon, it's clear that there's more than one earth-shattering revelation on the horizon, and it's up to Hank to solve the puzzle before time runs out... for everyone.
Hardwired: Book 1
Earth lies prostrate beneath the lash of the Orbital powers, and Earth's Balkanized nations have no choice but to let the Orbitals plunder their remaining wealth. Below the zone of Orbital control, buttonheads, panzerjocks, dirtgirls, and hustlers scramble for their ticket out of the gravity well.
But now, if the criminal underworld and the guerilla underground can join forces, there is a chance to shift the balance of power-- in a war fought on the ground by hardwired commandos, in the air by high-flying deltajocks, and by genius hackers in the neural interface.
Heartland Trilogy: Book 1
Fear the Corn.
Corn is king in the Heartland, and Cael McAvoy has had enough of it. It's the only crop the Empyrean government allows the people of the Heartland to grow - and the genetically modified strain is so aggressive that it takes everything the Heartlanders have just to control it. As captain of the Big Sky Scavengers, Cael and his crew sail their rickety ship over the corn day after day, scavenging for valuables. But Cael's tired of surviving life on the ground while the Empyrean elite drift by above in their extravagant sky flotillas. He's sick of the mayor's son besting Cael's crew in the scavenging game. And he's worried about losing Gwennie - his first mate and the love of his life - forever when their government-chosen spouses are revealed. But most of all, Cael is angry-angry that their lot in life will never get better and that his father doesn't seem upset about any of it.
When Cael and his crew discover a secret, illegal garden, he knows it's time to make his own luck... even if it means bringing down the wrath of the Empyrean elite and changing life in the Heartland forever.
Heartland Trilogy: Book 2
Cael McAvoy is on the run. He's heading toward the Empyrean to rescue his sister, Merelda, and to find Gwennie before she's lost to Cael forever. With his pals, Lane and Rigo, Cael journeys across the Heartland to catch a ride into the sky. But with Boyland and others after them, Cael and his friends won't make it through unchanged.
Gwennie's living the life of a Lottery winner, but it's not what she expected. Separated from her family, Gwennie makes a bold move-one that catches the attention of the Empyrean and changes the course of an Empyrean man's life.
The crew from Boxelder aren't the only folks willing to sacrifice everything to see the Empyrean fall. The question is: Can the others be trusted?
They'd all better hurry. Because the Empyrean has plans that could ensure that the Heartland never fights back again.
Chuck Wendig's riveting sequel to Under the Empyrean Sky plunges readers into an unsettling world of inequality and destruction, and fleshes out a cast of ragtag characters all fighting for survival and, ultimately, change.
Heartland Trilogy: Book 3
It's been a year since the Saranyu flotilla fell from the sky, and life in the Heartland has changed. Gone are the Obligations and the Harvest Home festivals. In their place is a spate of dead towns, the former inhabitants forced into mechanical bodies to serve the Empyrean - and crush the Heartland.
When Cael awakens from a Blightborn sleep, miles away from the world he remembers, he sets out across the Heartland to gather his friends for one last mission. As the mechanicals, a war flotilla, and a pack of feral Empyrean girls begin to close in on the Heartland, there isn't much time to make their next move. But if they can uncover a secret weapon in time, Cael and his friends might just find themselves with the power to save the world - or destroy it - resting in their hands.
Heinlein Juveniles: Book 14
A classic tale from the Grandmaster of Science Fiction.
Podkayne Fries, born and raised on Mars, has just one ambition: to earn her wings as a starship pilot and rise through the ranks to command deep-space explorations. The opportunity to travel aboard the Tricorn- on an interstellar journey to Venus and Earth in the company of her diplomat uncle-is a dream come true.
Poddy's idea of diplomacy is keeping the peace with her troublesome brother, Clark, but she's about to learn some things about war and peace. Because her uncle is the Ambassador from Mars to the Three Planets Conference, which makes him-and his niece and nephew-potential targets for any radicals looking to sabotage the negotiations between three worlds.
The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure. Translated by Michael Kandel.
Hugo-nominated Novella
Vishnu at the Cat Circus is a novella set in the same world as Ian McDonald's 2004 novel River of Gods. It depicts a futuristic India in 2047, a century after its independence from Britain, characterized both by ancient traditions and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligences, robots and nanotechnology.
The genetically-improved Vishnu looks back on his life, in a story of a sibling rivalry with some very unexpected results.
India 2047: Book 1
As Mother India approaches her centenary, nine people are going about their business: a gangster, a cop, his wife, a politician, a stand-up comic, a set designer, a journalist, a scientist, and a dropout. And so is Ajthe waif, the mind reader, the prophet, when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden.
In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation.
River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures, one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.
India 2047: Book 2
Extraordinary new fiction set in the future India of River of Gods.
Ian McDonald's River of Gods called a "masterpiece" by Asimov's Science Fiction and praised by the Washington Post as a --"major achievement from a writer who is becoming one of the best SF novelists of our time"-- painted a vivid picture of a near future India, 100 years after independence. It revolutionized SF for a new generation by taking a perspective that was not European or American. Nominated for the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and winning the BSFA Award, the rich world of this novel has inspired McDonald to revisit its milieu in a series of short stories, all set in the world of River of Gods.
Cyberabad Days is a triumphant return to the India of 2047, a new, muscular superpower of one and a half billion people in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, water-wars, strange new genders, genetically improved children that age at half the rate of baseline humanity, and a population where males outnumber females four to one. India herself has fractured into a dozen states from Kerala to the headwaters of the Ganges in the Himalayas.
Cyberabad Days is a collection of seven stories, one Hugo nominee and one Hugo winner among them, as well as a thirty-one-thousand word original novella. As with everything Ian McDonald does, it is sure to be one of the most talked about books of the year.
Io: Book 1
Ella Patel -- thief, con-artist and smuggler -- is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One night, on the border of a demilitarized zone run by the body-swapping alien invaders, she happens upon a man and woman being chased by a group of assailants. The man freezes, leaving the woman to fight off five attackers at once, before succumbing. As she dies, to both Ella and the man's surprise, the sparkling light that rises from the woman enters Ella, instead of the man. She soon realizes she's been inhabited by Io, a low-ranking Quasing who was involved in some of the worst decisions in history. Now Ella must now help the alien presence to complete her mission and investigate a rash of murders in the border states that maintain the frail peace.
With the Prophus assigned to help her seemingly wanting to stab her in the back, and the enemy Genjix hunting her, Ella must also deal with Io's annoying inferiority complex. To top it all off, Ella thinks the damn alien voice in her head is trying to get her killed. And if you can't trust the voices in your head, who can you trust?
Isis Rising: Book 1
On a spy mission for Freeland, Whit is almost safely home when the brutal forces of Elysium find her. When a battered and destitute farmer comes to her aid, Whit can't leave the woman to a certain death, setting in motion a homecoming that is anything but safe. Whit's feelings for Amelia complicate their return, especially when the other women of Freeland are wary of Amelia - who may not be the simple farmer she seems.
There are answers in Amelia's haunting dreams, but those are as deep as the secrets that surround Isis, a colony mysteriously destroyed by Elysium forces. The ruins of Isis hide an adversary Whit has never faced before, one whose plans for Freeland have been dormant for ten long years and whose hatred of the women of Isis lingers from a distant past.
The year is 2093. Isis is only a memory, but the future survival of Freeland depends on remembering...
Return to Isis is the first book in Jean Stewarts' beloved science-fiction series, and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.
Jackaroo: Book 1
The aliens are here. And they want to help. The extraordinary new project from one of the country's most acclaimed and consistently brilliant SF novelists of the last 30 years.
The Jackaroo have given humanity 15 worlds and the means to reach them. They're a chance to start over, but they're also littered with ruins and artifacts left by the Jackaroo's previous clients.
Miracles that could reverse the damage caused by war, climate change, and rising sea levels. Nightmares that could for ever alter humanity - or even destroy it.
Chloe Millar works in London, mapping changes caused by imported scraps of alien technology. When she stumbles across a pair of orphaned kids possessed by an ancient ghost, she must decide whether to help them or to hand them over to the authorities. Authorities who believe that their visions point towards a new kind of danger.
And on one of the Jackaroo's gift-worlds, the murder of a man who has just arrived from Earth leads policeman Vic Gayle to a war between rival gangs over possession of a remote excavation site.
Something is coming through. Something linked to the visions of Chloe's orphans, and Vic Gayle's murder investigation. Something that will challenge the limits of the Jackaroo's benevolence...
Jenny Casey: Book 1
Once Jenny Casey was somebody's daughter. Once she was somebody's enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights. Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.
Josh Cumberland: Book 1
You thought Big Brother was tough? Try Knife Edge - the reality TV show where wannabe knife fighters are the celebrities in a nation going to hell. Britain, tomorrow. The ultimate response to knife crime has been instituted by a bankrupt government: Duelling with knives has now been legalised. On Saturday nights, the nation sit down to watch the country's best fighters slash it out on prime time.
When a young boy with hoplophobia (the fear of weaponry) runs away from home, his father hires a former special forces agent to find him. With the help of the boy's psychiatrist, Josh Cumberland delves into the dark underbelly of the knife culture that has infected his country with no guarantee that the boy is even still alive....
Josh Cumberland: Book 2
This is Josh Cumberland: ex-special forces cyber specialist, grieving and enraged by what happened to his daughter, in need of action to put things right.
And this is his world: near-future Britain, climate catastrophe, a legalized knife culture, and now a rash of suicides: teenagers in groups of 13, killing themselves in Cutter Circles. But maybe these deaths are deliberate. Part of someone's plan. At the corrupt heart of the political establishment, malevolent technology has reached new heights - or depths.
Can Josh pull himself and everyone else back from the tipping-point?
Hugo- and Sturgeon-nominated Novella
This dystopian speculative fiction novella is told from the perspective of teenager Adam Hazzard, who lives in the rural town of Williams Ford, in the state of Athabaska (today a region in Canada, but in the story, a part of the greater United States) in 2172, at a time when technology has regressed to 19th century levels. The story deals with his relationship with his friend Julian Comstock (later in life called Julian Conqueror or Julian the Agnostic), an aristocratic boy of his age with radical beliefs about God, science, and evolution, notably his beliefs in DNA and the Moon Landings, in defiance of the omnipresent and theocratic Church of the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth, which came about as a result of the end of oil in the 21st century, a time which was later interpreted as a Biblical Tribulation.
Julian is the nephew of the President, Deklan Comstock, and it is rumored that Deklan may send Julian to fight in the Labrador War against the European powers, in order to quiet dissent against him that his family does not care about the soldiers. The story centers on how Adam and Julian will avoid the coming draft and remain alive despite Julian's beliefs.
This novella was expanded into the novel Julian Comstock, A Story of the 22nd Century.
This novella is available online by permission of the author and publisher here (pdf) and here (html).
Jurassic Park: Book 1
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Creatures once extinct now roam Jurassic Park, soon-to-be opened as a theme park. Until something goes wrong...and science proves a dangerous toy.
Jurassic Park: Book 2
It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end--the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public. There are rumors that something has survived.
Kitty Katt: Book 1
How can a sexy marketing manager join forces with an Alpha Centauri male in Armani to save the planet-using hairspray, a Mont Blanc pen, and rock n' roll?
Easy...
She's Touched by an Alien
Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt steps into the middle of what appears to be a domestic dispute turned ugly. And it only gets uglier when the man turns into a winged monster, straight out of a grade-Z horror movie, and goes on a killing spree. Though Kitty should probably run away, she springs into action to take the monster down.
In the middle of the chaos a handsome hunk named Jeff Martini appears, sent by the "agency" to perform crowd control. He's Kitty's kind of guy, no matter what planet he's from. And from now on, for Kitty, things are going to be sexy, dangerous, wild, and out of this world.
Klimakvartetten: Book 1
In the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this dazzling and ambitious literary debut follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future, weaving a spellbinding story of their relationship to the bees--and to their children and one another--against the backdrop of an urgent, global crisis.
England, 1852. William is a biologist and seed merchant, who sets out to build a new type of beehive--one that will give both him and his children honor and fame.
United States, 2007. George is a beekeeper fighting an uphill battle against modern farming, but hopes that his son can be their salvation.
China, 2098. Tao hand paints pollen onto the fruit trees now that the bees have long since disappeared. When Tao's young son is taken away by the authorities after a tragic accident, she sets out on a grueling journey to find out what happened to him.
Haunting, illuminating, and deftly written, The History of Bees joins these three very different narratives into one gripping and thought-provoking story that is just as much about the powerful bond between children and parents as it is about our very relationship to nature and humanity.
Klimakvartetten: Book 3
Maja Lunde returns with a heart-wrenching tale, set in the distant past and the dystopian future, about extinction and survival, family and hope.
Mikhail lives in Russia in 1881. When a skeleton of a rare wild horse is brought to him, the zoologist plans an expedition to Mongolia to find the fabled Przewalski horse, a journey that tests not only his physicality, but his heart.In 1992, Karin, alongside her troubled son Mathias and several Przewalski horses, travels to Mongolia to re-introduce the magnificent horses to their native land. The veterinarian has dedicated her life to saving the breed from extinction, prioritizing the wild horses, even over her own son.
Europe's future is uncertain in 2064, but Eva is willing to sacrifice nearly everything to hold onto her family's farm. Her teenage daughter implores Eva to leave the farm and Norway, but a pregnant wild mare Eva is tending is about to foal. Then, a young woman named Louise unexpectedly arrives on the farm, with mysterious intentions that will either bring them all together, or devastate them one by one.
Spanning continents and centuries, The Last Wild Horses is a powerful tale of survival and connection--of humans, animals, and the indestructible bonds that unite us all.
Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967). The story can also be found in the anthology The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), edited by James Gunn. It is included in the collections All the Myriad Ways (1971), Tales of Known Space (1975), and The Best of Larry Niven (2010).
Known Space: Gil Hamilton: Book 3
Gil "The Arm" Hamilton was one of the top operatives of ARM, the elite UN police force. His intuition was unfailingly accurate; his detective skills second to none; and his psychic powers -- esper sense and telekinesis -- were awesome.
Tough and deadly, Gil Hamilton could reach right into a person's brain for the truth... or for the kill!
Read all the stories of the legendary ARM operative, collected here in one volume for the very first time.
Table of Contents:
A Finalist for the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Thirty years ago, Elma York led the expedition that paved the way to life on Mars. For years she's been longing to go back up there, to once more explore the stars. But there are few opportunities for an aging astronaut, even the famous Lady Astronaut of Mars. When her chance finally comes, it may be too late. Elma must decide whether to stay with her sickening husband in what will surely be the final years of his life, or to have her final adventure and plunge deeper into the well of space.
Read this story online for free at Tor.com.
Last Survivors: Book 1
I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open.
High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, the way "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintry in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.
Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut!
Last Survivors: Book 2
Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event--an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.
With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.
Last Survivors: Book 3
In the year that has passed since a meteor collided with the moon, Miranda’s friends and neighbors have died, the landscape has frozen, and food has become increasingly scarce. The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for his future thwart their relationship. Then a devastating tornado hits, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.
Last Survivors: Book 4
The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with the New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It, in which a meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and the world changes forever.
It's been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and the lives of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?
Domino is not just a computer; he is all the world's electronic data secretly linked, and through him TV personality Laurent Michaelmas controls the news he is famous for reporting. Until the day he and Domino discover that they are not the only ones ruling the world!
Lifehouse: Book 1
Wireheads, addicted to an electric current led into the pleasure centers of the brain, are the new junkies. Karen, a former wirehead who barely escaped death by pleasure, is determined to bring down those who sell the wireheading equipment, but she and her lover Joe intead turn up evidence of a shadowy global conspiracy - not to control the world, but to keep anyone from realizing that the masters of mind control have been controllling us all for some time now...
Lifehouse: Book 3
June Bellamy had gone for a walk in a park - and came back with memories missing. She didn't know that, but her partner could tell because she'd told her answering machine about strange people in the park. Now June and Paul are on the run from insidious superhumans who can edit their memories and track them down no matter where or how well they hide. They are desperate - but not nearly as desperate as their pursuers...
Little Brother: Book 1
Marcus, a.k.a "w1n5t0n," is only seventeen years old, but he figures he already knows how the system works–and how to work the system. Smart, fast, and wise to the ways of the networked world, he has no trouble outwitting his high school's intrusive but clumsy surveillance systems.
But his whole world changes when he and his friends find themselves caught in the aftermath of a major terrorist attack on San Francisco. In the wrong place at the wrong time, Marcus and his crew are apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security and whisked away to a secret prison where they're mercilessly interrogated for days.
When the DHS finally releases them, Marcus discovers that his city has become a police state where every citizen is treated like a potential terrorist. He knows that no one will believe his story, which leaves him only one option: to take down the DHS himself.
Download this book for free from the author's website.
Little Brother: Book 2
In Cory Doctorow's wildly successful Little Brother, young Marcus Yallow was arbitrarily detained and brutalized by the government in the wake of a terrorist attack on San Francisco-an experience that led him to become a leader of the whole movement of technologically clued-in teenagers, fighting back against the tyrannical security state.
A few years later, California's economy collapses, but Marcus's hacktivist past lands him a job as webmaster for a crusading politician who promises reform. Soon his former nemesis Masha emerges from the political underground to gift him with a thumbdrive containing a Wikileaks-style cable-dump of hard evidence of corporate and governmental perfidy. It's incendiary stuff-and if Masha goes missing, Marcus is supposed to release it to the world. Then Marcus sees Masha being kidnapped by the same government agents who detained and tortured Marcus years earlier.
Marcus can leak the archive Masha gave him-but he can't admit to being the leaker, because that will cost his employer the election. He's surrounded by friends who remember what he did a few years ago and regard him as a hacker hero. He can't even attend a demonstration without being dragged onstage and handed a mike. He's not at all sure that just dumping the archive onto the Internet, before he's gone through its millions of words, is the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, people are beginning to shadow him, people who look like they're used to inflicting pain until they get the answers they want.
Fast-moving, passionate, and as current as next week, Homeland is every bit the equal of Little Brother -- a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.
Download this book for free from the author's website.
Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome
A new near-future science fiction novella by John Scalzi, one of the most popular authors in modern SF. Unlocked traces the medical history behind a virus that will sweep the globe and affect the majority of the world's population, setting the stage for Lock In, the next major novel by John Scalzi.
Read this story online for free at Tor.com.
Lock In: Book 2
In the standalone follow-up to Lock In, chilling near-future SF is combined with the thrill of a gritty cop procedural, snappy dialogue and technological speculation on the future world of sports.
Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.
Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.
Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth -- and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.
Remember: Lady Luna knows a thousand ways to kill you, but family is what you know. Family is what works.
Cariad Corcoran has a new sister who is everything she is not: tall, beautiful, confident. They're unlikely allies and even unlikelier sisters, but they're determined to find the moon's first footprint, even if the lunar frontier is doing its best to kill them before they get there.
Luna: Book 1
The Moon wants to kill you. Whether it's being unable to pay your per diem for your allotted food, water, and air, or you just get caught up in a fight between the Moon's ruling corporations, the Five Dragons. You must fight for every inch you want to gain in the Moon's near feudal society. And that is just what Adriana Corta did.
As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other.
Luna: Book 2
A Dragon is dead.
Corta Helio, one of the five family corporations that rule the Moon, has fallen. Its riches are divided up among its many enemies, its survivors scattered. Eighteen months have passed .
The remaining Helio children, Lucasinho and Luna, are under the protection of the powerful Asamoahs, while Robson, still reeling from witnessing his parent's violent deaths, is now a ward--virtually a hostage-- of Mackenzie Metals. And the last appointed heir, Lucas, has vanished of the surface of the moon.
Only Lady Sun, dowager of Taiyang, suspects that Lucas Corta is not dead, and more to the point--that he is still a major player in the game. After all, Lucas always was the Schemer, and even in death, he would go to any lengths to take back everything and build a new Corta Helio, more powerful than before. But Corta Helio needs allies, and to find them, the fleeing son undertakes an audacious, impossible journey--to Earth.
In an unstable lunar environment, the shifting loyalties and political machinations of each family reach the zenith of their most fertile plots as outright war erupts.
Luna: Wolf Moon continues Ian McDonald's saga of the Five Dragons.
iD: The Second Machine Dynasty
Machine Dynasties: Book 2
Javier is a self-replicating humanoid on a journey of redemption. Javier's quest takes him from Amy's island, where his actions have devastating consequences for his friend, toward Mecha where he will find either salvation... or death.
MaddAddam Sequence: Book 2
The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.
Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...
Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...
Manifold: Book 1
The year is 2010. More than a century of ecological damage, industrial and technological expansion, and unchecked population growth has left the Earth on the brink of devastation. But as the world's governments turn inward, one man dares to gamble on a bolder, brighter future. That man--Reid Malenfant--has a very different solution to the problems plaguing the planet: the exploration and colonization of space.
Battling national sabotage and international outcry, Malenfant's bootstrap company builds a spacecraft, plots its course, and trains the genetically enhanced Sheena 5 for her one-way journey. As apocalyptic riots sweep the globe, Malenfant launches the rocket. But Sheena has plans of her own. And even as she sets them in motion, the situation on Earth grows more desperate and violent.
Now Malenfant--together with a brilliant but disturbed mathematician, a child prodigy, and his ex-wife--must gamble the very existence of time and space on a single desperate throw of the dice. The odds are a trillion to one against him...
Or are they?
Mars Endeavour: Book 1
The international team at the Mars Endeavour colony is prepared for every eventuality except one--what happens when disaster strikes Earth?
Mankind has long dreamed of reaching out to live on other planets, and with the establishment of the Mars Endeavour colony, that dream has become reality. The fledgling colony consists of 120 scientists, astronauts, medical staff, and engineers. Buried deep underground, they're protected from the harsh radiation that sterilizes the surface of the planet. The colony is prepared for every eventuality except one--what happens when disaster strikes Earth?
This book was previously published in September 2016 by the author with the title "Mars Endeavour".
Mars Endeavour: Book 2
After almost dying on Mars, astronaut Liz Anderson returns to Earth, but not to a hero's welcome. America is in turmoil. The war is over, but the insurgency has just begun. So while life on Mars may have been deadly, at least up there she knew who the enemy was.
Along with her, Liz has brought the remnants of the artificial intelligence that waged war on two planets. Buried somewhere deep within the cold electronic circuits lies the last vestiges of her dead partner Jianyu. Liz is torn, unsure whether he's somehow still alive in electronic form or it's just a ploy by an adversary that will go to any length to win. Heartbroken and treated with suspicion, she finds herself caught up in the guerrilla war being waged on Earth, wondering if the AI threat is truly gone, or if it has only just begun.
Marsbound Trilogy: Book 1
Young Carmen Dula and her family are about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime - they're going to Mars.
Once on the Red Planet, however, Carmen realizes things are not so different from Earth. There are chores to do, lessons to learn, and oppressive authority figures to rebel against. And when she ventures out into the bleak Mars landscape alone one night, a simple accident leads her to the edge of death until she is saved by an angel—an angel with too many arms and legs, a head that looks like a potato gone bad, and a message for the newly arrived human inhabitants of Mars:
We were here first.
Martin Hench: Book 1
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.
Martin is a--contain your excitement--self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.
Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before--and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
Masters of Science Fiction: Book 4
Named one of science fiction's 100 best books by noted genre editor David Pringle, Thomas M. Disch's On Wings of Song is at once allegory, social satire, political fable, and brilliantly written science fiction of the ultimate out-of-body experience. In Disch's dazzlingly imagined future America, Daniel Weinraub dreams of escaping the repressive midwest of the mid-twenty-first century through an electronic device with which the user takes flight into cyberspace when activated with a quasi-musical code called "The Symphonette." Daniel's adventures take him from Iowa's God-fearing police state and its "correctional" labor camps for the sinful to Manhattan's mean streets and "cyberspatial flight paths."
Masters of Science Fiction: Book 12
A two-man mission to Venus fails and is aborted. When it returns, the Captain is missing and the other astronaut, Harry M. Evans, is unable to explain what has happened. Or, conversely, he has too many explications. His journal of the expedition -- compiled in the mental institution to which NASA has embarrassedly committed him -- offers contradictory stories: he murdered the Captain, mad Venusian invaders murdered the Captain, the Captain vanished, no one was murdered and the Captain has returned in Evans' guise....
As the explanations pyramid and as the supervising psychiatrist's increasingly desperate efforts to get a straight story fail, it becomes apparent that Evans's madness and his inability to explain what happened are expressions of humanity's incompetence at the enormity of space exploration.
Masters of Science Fiction: Book 19
Contents:
Mercenary Librarians: Book 1
The United States went belly up 45 years ago when our power grid was wiped out. Too few live in well-protected isolation while the rest of us scrape by on the margins. The only thing that matters is survival. By any means. At any cost.
Nina is an information broker with a mission: to bring hope to the darkest corners of Atlanta. She and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to help those in need. But altruism doesn't pay the bills--raiding vaults and collecting sensitive data is where the real money is.
Knox is a bitter, battle-weary supersoldier who leads the Silver Devils, an elite strike squad that chose to go AWOL rather than slaughter innocents. Before the Devils leave town for good, they need a biochem hacker to stabilize the experimental implants that grant their superhuman abilities.
The problem? Their hacker's been kidnapped. And the ransom for her return is Nina. Knox has the perfect bait for a perfect trap: a lost Library of Congress server. The data could set Nina and her team up for years...
If they live that long.
Moon of the Crusted Snow: A Novel
Moon: Book 1
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
NASA Trilogy: Book 1
The story of the US manned space programme of the 1970s and 1980s - as it should have happened. Kennedy is shot in 1963, but not killed, only invalided and forced to retire. Under his uniting influence, the first manned Ares probe lifts off for Mars in 1986.
Native Tongue Trilogy: Book 1
Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth’s wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists -—a small, clannish group of families -—have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies’ languages.
Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children’s language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men’s control.
Near Space: Book 1
Winner of the Locus Best First Novel Award
Popeye Hooker knows that space isn't all it's cracked up to be. A former fisherman who takes a job building low orbital stations to escape a failed relationship, he finds that in space, construction work is still a grind. And when they aren't building the space stations that will usher humanity into the stars, Sam Sloane and the rest of the beamjacks get high, blast the Grateful Dead, and stare through telescopes at the world they left behind. But life in orbit is about to get much more interesting.
Nestled among the life support equipment that keeps them alive and the entertainment systems that keep them happy, the beamjacks find something astonishing. Turns out, their home isn't just a space station -- it's a giant antenna designed to spy on every inhabitant of Earth. It's the greatest privacy invasion ever perpetrated, and the beamjacks won't stand for it.
They may not be pioneers, but these roughnecks are about to become revolutionaries.
Near Space: Book 2
Sheriff John Bigthorn's job of keeping the peace on "Clarke County," Earth's first orbiting space colony, seems simple enough--until a frantic young woman fleeing her gangster boyfriend seeks refuge there, bringing with her a secret that holds the key to the colony's destruction or liberation.
Nexus 5: Book 1
Mankind gets an upgrade
In the near future, the experimental nano-drug Nexus can link humans together, mind to mind. There are some who want to improve it. There are some who want to eradicate it. And there are others who just want to exploit it.
When a young scientist is caught improving Nexus, he's thrust over his head into a world of danger and international espionage - for there is far more at stake than anyone realizes.
From the halls of academe to the halls of power, from the headquarters of an elite US agency in Washington DC to a secret lab beneath a top university in Shanghai, from the underground parties of San Francisco to the illegal biotech markets of Bangkok, from an international neuroscience conference to a remote monastery in the mountains of Thailand - Nexus is a thrill ride through a future on the brink of explosion.
Nexus 5: Book 2
Six months have passed since the release of Nexus 5. The world is a different, more dangerous place.
In the USA, the freedom fighters of the Post-Human Liberation Front use Nexus to turn men and women into human time bombs aimed at the President and his allies.
The first blows in the war between human and posthuman have been struck.
Nexus 5: Book 3
Global unrest spreads as mass protests advance throughout the US and China, Nexus-upgraded riot police battle against upgraded protestors, and a once-dead scientist plans to take over the planet's electronic systems. The world has never experienced turmoil of this type, on this scale.They call them the Apex - humanity's replacement. They're smarter, faster, better. And infinitely more dangerous.
Humanity is dying. Long live the Apex.
One Second After: Book 1
New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real... a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages... A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.
Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future... and our end.
One Way: Book 2
They were sent to build a utopia, but all they found on Mars was death.
Frank Kitteridge has been abandoned. But XO, the greedy -- and ultimately murderous -- corporate architects of humanity's first Mars base made a costly mistake when they left him there: they left him alive. Using his skills and his wits, he's going to find a way back home even if it kills him.
Little does he know that Mars isn't completely empty. Just over the mountain, there's another XO base where things are going terribly, catastrophically wrong. And when the survivors of that mission find Frank, they're going to want to take even the little he has away from him.
If there's anything in Frank's favor, it's this: he's always been prepared to go to the extremes to get the job done. That's how he ended up on Mars in the first place. It just might be his ticket back.
Otherland: Book 1
The first volume in this mesmerizing story takes readers to the near-future, when a global conspiracy threatens to sacrifice the Earth for the promise of a far more exclusive place--Otherland, a universe where any fantasy can be made real.
Outspoken Authors: Book 16
Since his debut in Terry Carr's legendary Ace Specials of the 1980s, Carter Scholz has occupied an enviable, if demanding, position on the cutting edge of modern speculative literature (vulgarly called SF).
Proudly debuting in this volume, Gypsy is his first major work since his 2002 nuclear thriller Radiance. An interstellar adventure grounded in the hard science of accurate physics and biology, Gypsy soars far beyond the heliosphere of conventional science fiction. Jettisoning the easy warp-drives of fantasy and space opera, Scholz chronicles with chilling realism the epic voyage of a team of far-seeing scientists, who crowdsource a secret starship and abandon the doomed Earth for the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest stellar neighbor and last desperate chance. Heartbreak and hope collide in this moving and visionary tale.
Plus... An epistolary story about a story, "The Nine Billion Names of God," uses a classic SF text to deconstruct literary deconstruction itself, with hilarious results. In the wickedly droll "Bad Pennies," a spy tasked with trashing a foreign economy testifies before a complacent Congress. Quietly furious, "The United States of Impunity" is an alarming look under the tent of today's political sideshow. Adults only.
And Featuring: "Gear. Food. Rocks." -- our Outspoken Interview, in which a postmodern Renaissance man charts the synergies and dissonances of a career that embraces both literary and musical composition, reveals the hidden link between winemaking and deep space astronomy, and tells you how to steal his car.
Table of Contents:
Oxford Time Travel: Book 2
For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin – barely of age herself – finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.
Oxford Time Travel: Book 3
In her first full-length novel since her critically acclaimed Doomsday Book Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, once again visits the unpredictable world of time travel. But this time the result is a joyous journey into a past and future of comic mishaps and historical cross-purposes, in which the power of human love can still make all the difference.
On the surface, England in the summer of 1888 is possibly the most restful time in history--lazy afternoons boating on the Thames, tea parties, croquet on the lawn--and time traveler Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling back and forth between the 21st century and the 1940s looking for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's birdstump. It's only the latest in a long string of assignments from Lady Schrapnell, the rich dowager who has invaded Oxford University. She's promised to endow the university's time-travel research project in return for their help in rebuilding the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years before.
But the bargain has turned into a nightmare. Lady Schrapnell's motto is "God is in the details," and as the l25th anniversary of the cathedral's destruction--and the deadline for its proposed completion--approaches, time-travel research has fallen by the wayside. Now Ned and his colleagues are frantically engaged in installing organ pipes, researching misericords, and generally risking life and limb. So when Ned gets the chance to escape to the Victorian era, he jumps at it. Unfortunately, he isn't really being sent there to recover from his time-lag symptoms, but to correct an incongruity a fellow historian, Verity Kindle, has inadvertently created by bringing something forward from the past.
In theory, such an act is impossible. But now it has happened, and it's up to Ned and Verity to correct the incongruity before it alters history or, worse, destroys the space-time continuum. And they have to do it while coping with eccentric Oxford dons, table-rapping spiritualists, a very spoiled young lady, and an even more spoiled cat. As Ned and Verity try frantically to hold things together and find out why the incongruity happened, the breach widens, time travel goes amok, and everything starts to fall apart--until the fate of the entire space-time continuum hangs on a sÚance, a butler, a bulldog, the battle of Waterloo, and, above all, on the bishop's birdstump.
At once a mystery novel, a time-travel adventure, and a Shakespearean comedy, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a witty and imaginative tale of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and a chaotic world in which the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, and the secret to the universe truly lies "in the details."
Oxford Time Travel: Book 4
Oxford in 2060 is a chaotic place, with scores of time-traveling historians being sent into the past. Michael Davies is prepping to go to Pearl Harbor. Merope Ward is coping with a bunch of bratty 1940 evacuees and trying to talk her thesis adviser into letting her go to VE-Day. Polly Churchill's next assignment will be as a shopgirl in the middle of London's Blitz.
But now the time-travel lab is suddenly canceling assignments and switching around everyone's schedules. And when Michael, Merope, and Polly finally get to World War II, things just get worse. For there they face air raids, blackouts, and dive-bombing Stukas-to say nothing of a growing feeling that not only their assignments but the war and history itself are spiraling out of control. Because suddenly the once-reliable mechanisms of time travel are showing significant glitches, and our heroes are beginning to question their most firmly held belief: that no historian can possibly change the past.
Note: Blackout and All Clear are regarded as being a single large book split into two volumes for award purposes. We have assigned the award nominations to Blackout, the first of the two volumes, so that we list the same number of awards as Connie Willis has statues on her mantle.
Oxford Time Travel: Book 5
In Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060-the setting for several of her most celebrated works-and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler's bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.
Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory-but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.
Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians' supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own-to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.
Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It's Connie Willis's most humane, heartfelt novel yet-a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history.
Note: Blackout and All Clear are regarded as being a single large book split into two volumes for award purposes. We have assigned the award nominations to Blackout, the first of the two volumes, so that we list the same number of awards as Connie Willis has statues on her mantle.
Pacifica: Book 1
Laura Lam's adult sci-fi debut False Hearts: Two formerly conjoined sisters are ensnared in a murderous plot involving psychoactive drugs, shared dreaming, organized crime, and a sinister cult.
Raised in the closed cult of Mana's Hearth and denied access to modern technology, conjoined sisters Taema and Tila dream of a life beyond the walls of the compound. When the heart they share begins to fail, the twins escape to San Francisco, where they are surgically separated and given new artificial hearts. From then on they pursue lives beyond anything they could have previously imagined.
Ten years later, Tila returns one night to the twins' home in the city, terrified and covered in blood, just before the police arrive and arrest her for murder--the first homicide by a civilian in decades. Tila is suspected of involvement with the Ratel, a powerful crime syndicate that deals in the flow of Verve, a drug that allows violent minds to enact their darkest desires in a terrifying dreamscape. Taema is given a proposition: go undercover as her sister and perhaps save her twin's life. But during her investigation Taema discovers disturbing links between the twins' past and their present. Once unable to keep anything from each other, the sisters now discover the true cost of secrets.
Parasitology: Book 1
A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.
We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the Intestinal Bodyguard worm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.
But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.
Parasitology: Book 2
THE ENEMY IS INSIDE US.
The SymboGen-designed parasites were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde.
Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the parasites are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is and how they can be stopped.
Parasitology: Book 3
The final book in Mira Grant's terrifying Parasitology trilogy.
The outbreak has spread, tearing apart the foundations of society, as implanted tapeworms have turned their human hosts into a seemingly mindless mob.
Sal and her family are trapped between bad and worse, and must find a way to compromise between the two sides of their nature before the battle becomes large enough to destroy humanity, and everything that humanity has built... including the chimera.
The broken doors are closing. Can Sal make it home?
Peeps Series: Book 1
A year ago, Cal Thompson was a college freshman more interested in meeting girls and partying than in attending biology class. Now, after a fateful encounter with a mysterious woman named Morgan, biology has become, literally, Cal's life.
Cal was infected by a parasite that has a truly horrifying effect on its host. Cal himself is a carrier, unchanged by the parasite, but he's infected the girlfriends he's had since Morgan. All three have turned into the ravening ghouls Cal calls Peeps. The rest of us know them as vampires. It's Cal's job to hunt them down before they can create more of their kind....
Bursting with the sharp intelligence and sly humor that are fast becoming his trademark, Scott Westerfeld's novel is an utterly original take on an archetype of horror.
Planetfall: Book 1
From Emma Newman, the award-nominated author of Between Two Thorns, comes a novel of how one secret withheld to protect humanity's future might be its undoing...
Renata Ghali believed in Lee Suh-Mi's vision of a world far beyond Earth, calling to humanity. A planet promising to reveal the truth about our place in the cosmos, untainted by overpopulation, pollution, and war. Ren believed in that vision enough to give up everything to follow Suh-Mi into the unknown.
More than twenty-two years have passed since Ren and the rest of the faithful braved the starry abyss and established a colony at the base of an enigmatic alien structure where Suh-Mi has since resided, alone. All that time, Ren has worked hard as the colony's 3-D printer engineer, creating the tools necessary for human survival in an alien environment, and harboring a devastating secret.
Ren continues to perpetuate the lie forming the foundation of the colony for the good of her fellow colonists, despite the personal cost. Then a stranger appears, far too young to have been part of the first planetfall, a man who bears a remarkable resemblance to Suh-Mi.
The truth Ren has concealed since planetfall can no longer be hidden. And its revelation might tear the colony apart...
Planetfall: Book 2
Acclaimed author Emma Newman returns to the captivating universe she created in Planetfall with a stunning science fiction mystery where one man's murder is much more than it seems...
Govcorp detective Carlos Moreno was only a baby when Atlas left Earth to seek truth among the stars. But in that moment, the course of Carlos's entire life changed. Atlas is what took his mother away; what made his father lose hope; what led Alejandro Casales, leader of the religious cult known as the Circle, to his door. And now, on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of Atlas's departure, it's got something to do why Casales was found dead in his hotel room--and why Carlos is the man in charge of the investigation.
To figure out who killed one of the most powerful men on Earth, Carlos is supposed to put aside his personal history. But the deeper he delves into the case, the more he realizes that escaping the past is not so easy. There's more to Casales's death than meets the eye, and something much more sinister to the legacy of Atlas than anyone realizes...
Planetfall: Book 3
After months of travel, Anna Kubrin finally arrives on Mars for her new job as a geologist and de facto artist-in-residence. Already she feels like she is losing the connection with her husband and baby at home on Earth--and she'll be on Mars for over a year. Throwing herself into her work, she tries her best to fit in with the team.
But in her new room on the base, Anna finds a mysterious note written in her own handwriting, warning her not to trust the colony psychologist. A note she can't remember writing. She unpacks her wedding ring, only to find it has been replaced by a fake.
Finding a footprint in a place the colony AI claims has never been visited by humans, Anna begins to suspect that her assignment isn't as simple as she was led to believe. Is she caught up in an elaborate corporate conspiracy, or is she actually losing her mind? Regardless of what horrors she might discover, or what they might do to her sanity, Anna has find the truth before her own mind destroys her.
Ready Player One: Book 1
It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune-and remarkable power-to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved-that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Suddenly the whole world is watching, and 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. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life-and love-in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.
A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Ready Player One: Book 2
AN UNEXPECTED QUEST. TWO WORLDS AT STAKE. ARE YOU READY?
Days after winning OASIS founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything.
Hidden within Halliday's vaults, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the OASIS a thousand times more wondrous--and addictive--than even Wade dreamed possible.
With it comes a new riddle, and a new quest--a last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize.
And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who'll kill millions to get what he wants.
Wade's life and the future of the OASIS are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.
Real-Town Murders: Book 1
Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying.
Alma's partner is ill, and has to be treated without fail every 4 hours, a task that only Alma can do. If she misses the 5 minute window her lover will die. She is one of the few not to access the Shine.
So when Alma is called to an automated car factory to be shown an impossible death and finds herself caught up in a political coup, she knows that getting too deep may leave her unable to get home.
What follows is a fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller as Alma evades arrest, digs into the conspiracy, and tries to work out how on earth a dead body appeared in the boot of a freshly-made car in a fully-automated factory.
Rebelwing: Book 1
Things just got weird for Prudence Wu.
One minute, she's cashing in on a routine smuggling deal. The next, she's escaping enforcers on the wings of what very much appears to be a sentient cybernetic dragon.
Pru is used to life throwing her some unpleasant surprises--she goes to prep school, after all, and selling banned media across the border in a country with a ruthless corporate government obviously has its risks. But a cybernetic dragon? That's new.
She tries to forget about the fact that the only reason she's not in jail is because some sort of robot saved her, and that she's going to have to get a new side job now that enforcers are on to her. So she's not exactly thrilled when Rebelwing shows up again.
Even worse, it's become increasingly clear that the rogue machine has imprinted on her permanently, which means she'd better figure out this whole piloting-a-dragon thing--fast. Because Rebelwing just happens to be the ridiculously expensive weapon her government needs in a brewing war with its neighbor, and Pru's the only one who can fly it.
Set in a wonderfully inventive near-future Washington, D.C., this hilarious, defiant debut sparkles with wit and wisdom, deftly exploring media consumption, personal freedoms, and the weight of one life as Pru, rather reluctantly, takes to the skies.
Finalist in Asimov's 30th Annual Readers' Award Poll; selected for three 2015 Year's Best anthologies
This novella is set in the Retrieval Artist universe, as part of the background for the Anniversary Day saga.
Detective Noelle DeRicci is called in when the body of a woman is discovered in a waste crate in Armstrong, the largest dome on the Moon -- found by the owner just before the crate's contents were sent to the Growing Pits to be made into compost. The coroner she has summoned identifies the body as the nanny to the child of a local crime boss named Luc Deshin, who subsequently tells DeRicci he had fired the victim that day because she was not affectionate enough with his infant son.
Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran.
Read this story online for free at Asimov's Science Fiction.
To pay off her law school debts, Kerrie works in the public defender's office at the Interspecies Court. She has more clients than she can defend, most of them from cultures she does not understand. The public defender's office loses almost all of its cases, but sometimes it gets a win. Kerrie thinks she has a winner. But does she? Or will winning the case mean she loses at everything else?
Anthologized in Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.
The Possession of Paavo Deshin
All of his short life, Paavo Deshin has seen ghosts. The same two ghosts who have now approached him on the school playground, ghosts who look older and actually smell bad. Paavo's cry for help brings the authorities, a few lawyers, and Retrieval Artist Miles Flint, who learns some secrets about the ghosts -- and about Paavo's parents. This short stand-alone science fiction novel in the Retrieval Artist series received a Special Mention from the prestigious international UPC contest.
It fits right after the full novel Duplicate Effort in the timeline, but stands alone.
Hadad Yu "recovers" things for a living. Things, not people, not animals. Things. Until he gets in trouble and must work for the alien Gyonnese. They want a person to answer for her crimes, and they want to use Yu to get her. He reluctantly agrees, and sets off events that will change his life and the lives around him forever. A companion piece to Recovery Man, The Recovery Man's Bargain explores the motivations of one of the stranger characters in the Retrieval Artist universe.
Hugo-nominated Novella
This is the short novel that started the entire Retrieval Artist series, introducing Miles Flint and his unique profession to the world -- creating an entire universe, and Flint himself became what io9 calls "one of the top ten science fiction detectives ever."
Part CSI, part Blade Runner, and part hard-boiled gumshoe, the retrieval artist of the series title, one Miles Flint, would be as at home on a foggy San Francisco street in the 1940s as he is in the domed lunar colony of Armstrong City.
Retrieval Artist: Book 1
In a universe where humans and aliens have formed a loose government called the Earth Alliance, treaties guarantee that humans are subject to alien laws when on alien soil. But alien laws often make no sense, and the punishments vary from loss of life to loss of a first-born child.
Now three cases have collided: a stolen spaceyacht filled with dead bodies, two kidnapped human children, and a human woman on the run, trying to Disappear to avoid alien prosecution. Flint must enforce the law-giving the children to aliens, solving the murders, and arresting the woman for trying to save her own life. But how is a man supposed to enforce laws that are unjust? How can he sacrifice innocents to a system he's not sure he believes in? How can Miles Flint do the right thing in a universe where the right thing is very, very wrong?
This Endeavor Award-winning novel is Flint's first adventure, the story that turns him from a police detective in the Armstrong Dome on the Moon into a Retrieval Artist.
Retrieval Artist: Book 2
A Retrieval Artist dies of a virus, yet his colleague, Miles Flint, believes the death is not an accident. Police detective Noelle DeRicci knows that the death of a young woman in the Moon's prestigious Extreme Marathon is not an accident. It soon becomes clear that both deaths are connected. Flint and DeRicci find themselves in their own race, one against time and a certain kind of madness that could threaten everything they know and love.
Booklist calls Extremes "an exemplary futuristic detective thriller." RT Book Reviews says, "This futuristic tale breaks new ground as a space police procedural and should appeal to science fiction and mystery fans." But Locus Magazine covers it all: "Extremes is simultaneously thriller, deftly plotted detective story, and SF complete with a form of Mad Scientist. Like the best of those genres, it also features well-drawn characters whose various viewpoints, areas of expertise, moral choices, and personal dilemmas all add to the rich mix."
Retrieval Artist: Book 3
A woman dies in the domed city of Armstrong on the Moon. Detective Noelle DeRicci discovers that the victim is a Disappeared — an outlaw in hiding wanted for crimes against an alien civilization. Only DeRicci's old partner, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint brought the Disappeared home, something he would have only done if he believed the alien government would exonerate her for her crimes.
But Flint and DeRicci are no longer partners; in fact, they're on opposite sides of the law. Flint can't tell DeRicci about his client's role in a war between humans and a mysterious alien race. The Disappeared's death is only the first volley in an escalation of that war, a war that threatens to engulf the entire solar system.
Retrieval Artist: Book 4
A cold case starts it all — human bones discovered beneath the Martian soil in the alien Disty's main city. The Disty evacuate, believing the area contaminated. Forensic anthropologist Aisha Costard investigates and discovers that the bones belong to a woman last seen thirty years before.
But the woman didn't vanish, nor did anyone believe her dead. She Disappeared, along with her children, after being charged with crimes against an alien civilization. Costard believes the children hold the key to this mystery, but she can't find them on her own. So she returns to the Moon to hire Miles Flint.
As Flint investigates, events move swiftly around him, and suddenly what began as a simple murder case turns into an incident that might destroy the entire solar system....
International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and three Asimov's Readers Choice Awards. IO9 called her six (so far) bestselling, award-winning Retrieval Artist novels one of the top ten science fiction detective series ever.
Retrieval Artist: Book 5
Retrieval Artist Miles Flint gets an urgent message from his mentor, Paloma. But by the time he arrives at her apartment, she's dead, the victim of a terrible murder. The police, already on the scene, think Flint's connected to the death.
Effectively frozen out of the investigation, he starts one of his own, and discovers secrets that Paloma kept, secrets that make Flint question everything he knew about her, everything she taught him about honor, ethics, and being a Retrieval Artist.
Retrieval Artist: Book 6
When she arrives home from school on Callisto, Talia Shindo finds two strange men in her house. They terrorize her, and kidnap her mother. The men leave Talia behind. She's thirteen, brilliant, and determined to find her missing mother.
Retrieval Artist Miles Flint works a seemingly unrelated case, digging into files left him by his mentor. Only he finds a connection to the Shindo kidnapping, a connection that shatters everything he ever knew.
The two cases collide, changing Flint, changing Talia, and changing the universe around them — forever.
Retrieval Artist: Book 7
Retrieval Artist Miles Flint has a mission: take down the law firm of Wagner, Stuart, and Xendor. He enlists the aides of old friends and old enemies. But as the mission gets underway, one member of his team dies horribly. Flint can no longer take on the entire universe. He violated the rules of his Retrieval Artist mentor and now has a lot to lose. But he can't reverse the events he set in motion — and the crisis he caused might destroy everything — and everyone — he loves.
Retrieval Artist: Book 8
Book 1 in the Anniversary Day Saga
The long-awaited return of the Retrieval Artist series!!
Four years ago, a bomb destroyed part of the dome protecting Armstrong, the largest city on the Moon. Now, as the city celebrates its survival with an event it calls Anniversary Day, a larger threat looms — one that begins with the murder of the mayor, and spreads across the Moon itself.
Even with every new technological device at her disposal, Moon Security Chief Noelle DeRicci can't stay ahead of the unfolding disaster. As the situation gets worse, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint hurries to his daughter's school to protect her. And Detective Bartholomew Nyquist finds himself in the middle of everything, from that first bombing to the Anniversary Day crisis itself.
A thriller with several mysteries at its core, Anniversary Day is Kristine Kathryn Rusch's most exciting Retrieval Artist novel yet.
Retrieval Artist: Book 9
Book 2 in the Anniversary Day Saga
The Moon, shaken by the Anniversary Day tragedies, deals with devastation. The Earth Alliance believes another attack imminent, but no one knows where or when it will strike. Just like no one knows who ordered the attacks in the first place.
The Moon's chief security office, Noelle DeRicci, does her best to hold the United Domes government together. But Retrieval Artist Miles Flint, dissatisfied with the investigation into the Anniversary Day events, begins an investigation of his own. He builds a coalition of shady operatives, off-the-books detectives, and his own daughter, Talia, in a race against time. A race, he quickly learns, that implicates organizations he trusts — and people he loves.
Retrieval Artist: Book 10
Book 3 in the Anniversary Day Saga
A deadly conspiracy...
The Anniversary Day bombings on the Moon sent shockwaves throughout the Earth Alliance. No one knows who created the clones responsible and turned them into ruthless killers. No one knows where or when they'll strike next.
The bombings compel Earth Alliance Frontier Marshal Judita Gomez to launch an unauthorized investigation into a case from her past involving the murder of clones. An investigation that might cost Judita not only her career but the lives of her crew.
This third book of the Anniversary Day Saga sheds further light on the Anniversary Day events, and introduces several new key characters.
Retrieval Artist: Book 11
Book 4 in the Anniversary Day Saga
Amid the ruin, heroes emerge from the unlikeliest places...
The Anniversary Day bombings devastated the Moon, killing thousands. While survivors search for missing loved ones and the rich and powerful set plans in motion to capitalize on the Moon's misfortune, one ruthless man vows to uncover those responsible for the attacks on the Moon.
Luc Deshin, the most feared man in Armstrong, knows all too well the bombings could have killed the wife and son he loves more than life itself. To protect his family, Deshin immerses himself in a criminal network he fought long and hard to leave behind.
Deshin doesn't scare easily, but what he finds in the black market underbelly of the Moon will chill him to the bone.
Retrieval Artist: Book 12
Book 5 in the Anniversary Day Saga
The Moon barely survived the devastation of Anniversary Day. The second round of attacks planned to kill millions more. With the life of every human and alien on the Moon hanging in the balance, the Moon's chief security officer, Noelle DeRicci, races to discover the identity of the masterminds behind the attacks before it's too late.
Desperate to find answers, DeRicci turns to Retrieval Artist Miles Flint and Detective Bartholomew Nyquist for the kind of help only Flint and Nyquist can provide.
A gripping look at a society on edge.
Retrieval Artist: Book 13
Book 6 in the Anniversary Day Saga
A shocking act of violence...
The looming threat of another attack spurs the Moon's chief security officer, Noelle DeRicci, to uncover the identity of the masterminds behind the Anniversary Day bombings before they strike again. Armed with information uncovered by Retrieval Artist Miles Flint and Detective Bartholomew Nyquist, DeRicci lets herself hope she can put an end to the violence against the Moon.
But then a brutal murder changes everything. DeRicci must risk everything to launch a secret investigation into the very heart of the Earth Alliance.
Can the next attack be stopped?
Retrieval Artist: Book 14
Book 7 in the Anniversary Day Saga
Can the fate of a forgotten starbase hold the key to the Moon's survival?
Long before the Anniversary Day bombings brought the Moon to its knees, a far-flung starbase became the testing ground for a diabolical plan: the annihilation of every human inhabitant by an army of clones.
Every lead to the masterminds behind the bombings uncovered by criminal kingpin Luc Deshin dead ended in an Earth Alliance connection.
Undercover operative Iniko Zagrando refused to play patsy for the Earth Alliance Military Division Intelligence Service, and now he's fleeing for his life from his old bosses.
And Frontier Marshall Judita Gomez puts her own life and the lives of her team on the line when her search for the origins of the Anniversary Day assassins leads to an Earth Alliance cloning factory.
From the quiet courage of a Disappeared who struggles to decide whether to come out of hiding to the potent fury of a master criminal who puts a plan in motion to strike back at an overwhelming enemy, Starbase Human brings readers one step closer to the exciting conclusion of the Anniversary Day saga.
Retrieval Artist: Book 15
Book 8 in the Anniversary Day Saga
The fate of the Alliance hangs in the balance as the masterminds behind the Anniversary Day bombings trigger the final stages of a plan decades in the making. A plan that will bring about the total destruction of every dome on the Moon.
As Moon Security Chief Noelle DeRicci struggles with the overwhelming scope of the investigation, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint races to save the life of a man from his daughter Talia's past. A man with vital information regarding the identity of the masterminds who planned the Anniversary Day bombings. And deep beneath the surface of Armstrong, a dome engineer makes a chilling discovery that could crack the investigation wide open.
If only he can get someone to believe him.
The thrilling conclusion to the Anniversary Day Saga.
Rocket Girls: Book 1
Rock it with the offer of a space lifetime!
Yukari Morita is a high school girl on a quest to find her missing father. While searching for him on the Solomon Islands, she receives the offer of a lifetime--she'll get the help she needs to find her father, and all she need do in return is become the world's youngest, lightest astronaut. Yukari and her teen friends, all petite, are the perfect crew and cargo for the Solomon Space Association's launches, or will be once they complete their rigorous and sometimes dangerous training.
Rocket Girls: Book 2
Ad Astra, baby!
When the Rocket Girls accidentally land in the yard of Yukari Morita's old school, it looks as though their experiment is ruined. Luckily, the geeky Akane is there to save the day. Fitting the profile--she's intelligent, enthusiastic, and petite--Akane is soon recruited by Solomon Space Association. Yukari and Akane are then given the biggest Rocket Girl mission yet: a voyage to the edge of the solar system and the minor planet of Pluto to save a NASA probe.
Samuil Petrovitch: Book 1
Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor.
He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone - the last city in England. He's lived this long because he's a man of rules and logic.
For example, getting involved = a bad idea.
But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he's saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.
And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.
Now, the equation of Petrovitch's life is looking increasingly complex.
Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.
But Petrovitch has a plan - he always has a plan - he's just not sure it's a good one.
Samuil Petrovitch: Book 2
Theorem: Petrovitch has a lot of secrets.
Proof: Secrets like how to make anti-gravity for one. For another, he's keeping a sentient computer program on a secret server farm - the same program that nearly destroyed the Metrozone a few months back.
Theorem: The city is broken.
Proof: The people of the OutZone want what citizens of the Metrozone have. And then burn it to the ground. Now, with the heart of the city destroyed by the New Machine Jihad, the Outies finally see their chance.
Theorem: These events are not unconnected.
Proof: Someone is trying to kill Petrovitch and they're willing to sink the whole city to do it.
Samuil Petrovitch: Book 3
The Six Degrees of Petrovitch
Michael is an AI of incalculable complexity trapped under the remains of Oshicora tower. Petrovitch will free him one day, he just has to trust Michael will still be sane by the time he does.
Maddy and Petrovitch have trust issues. She's left him, but Petrovitch is pretty sure she still loves him.
Sonja Oshicora loves Petrovitch too. But she's playing a complicated game and it's not clear that she means to save him from what's coming.
The CIA wants to save the world. Well, just America, but they'll call it what they like.
The New Machine Jihad is calling. But Petrovitch killed it. Didn't he?
And the Armageddonists tried to kill pretty much everyone by blowing the world up. Now, they want to do it again.
Once again, all roads lead back to Petrovitch. Everyone wants something from him, but all he wants is to be free...
San Angeles: Book 1
The first installment in the San Angeles trilogy, a thrilling near-future cyberpunk sci-fi series
Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level 2 trash in a multi-level city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border--a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of fourteen, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone's help.
But a late day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she's stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants. It looks like the corporations want Kris gone, and are willing to go to almost any length to make it happen.
Hunted, scared, and alone, she retreats to the only place she knows she can hide: the Level 1 streets. Fleeing from people that seem to know her every move, she is rescued by Miller--a member of an underground resistance group--only to be pulled deeper into a world she doesn't understand.
Together Kris and Miller barely manage to stay one step ahead of the corporate killers, but it's only a matter of time until Miller's resources and their luck run out....
Nebula winning and Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2002. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2004, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre.
Ship Breaker: Book 1
In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life. . . .
In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.
Ship Breaker: Book 2
Soldier boys emerged from the darkness. Guns gleamed dully. Bullet bandoliers and scars draped their bare chests. Ugly brands scored their faces. She knew why these soldier boys had come. She knew what they sought, and she knew, too, that if they found it, her best friend would surely die.
In a dark future America where violence, terror, and grief touch everyone, young refugees Mahlia and Mouse have managed to leave behind the war-torn lands of the Drowned Cities by escaping into the jungle outskirts. But when they discover a wounded half-man--a bioengineered war beast named Tool--who is being hunted by a vengeful band of soldiers, their fragile existence quickly collapses. One is taken prisoner by merciless soldier boys, and the other is faced with an impossible decision: Risk everything to save a friend, or flee to a place where freedom might finally be possible.
This thrilling companion to Paolo Bacigalupi's highly acclaimed Ship Breaker is a haunting and powerful story of loyalty, survival, and heart-pounding adventure.
Silver Metal Lover: Book 1
Love is made of more than mere flesh and blood....
Tanith Lee is one of the most thought-provoking and imaginative authors of our time. In this unforgettably poignant novel, Lee has created a classic tale--a beautiful, tragic, erotic, and ultimately triumphant love story of the future.
For sixteen-year-old Jane, life is a mystery she despairs of ever mastering. She and her friends are the idle, pampered children of the privileged class, living in luxury on an Earth remade by natural disaster. Until Jane's life is changed forever by a chance encounter with a robot minstrel with auburn hair and silver skin, whose songs ignite in her a desperate and inexplicable passion.
Jane is certain that Silver is more than just a machine built to please. And she will give up everything to prove it. So she escapes into the city's violent, decaying slums to embrace a love bordering on madness. Or is it something more? Has Jane glimpsed in Silver something no one else has dared to see--not even the robot or his creators? A love so perfect it must be destroyed, for no human could ever compete?
Sons of War: Book 1
Out of the embers, a lawless new empire will rise ...
Across the world, the United States recalls troops to combat civil unrest after the biggest economic meltdown in history. Marine Sergeant Ronaldo Salvatore's platoon comes home to a powder keg that could ignite a civil war.
While some see the coming collapse as the end, others see opportunity. Fleeing Naples after rival crime lords decimated his family, Don Antonio Moretti settles in Los Angeles to rebuild his criminal empire. But he is far from alone in his ambitions--the cartel and rival gangs all want the same turf, and they will sacrifice their own soldiers and the blood of innocents to get it.
As open warfare erupts across the states, Salvatore fights his way back to LA, where his son has joined the police in the battle for a city spiraling into anarchy. Family is everything, and the Morettis and Salvatores will do what they must to protect their own. But how far will they go to survive in a new economy where the only currency is violence?
Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy
In time for the holidays, a single-volume hardcover edition that brings together the three volumes of the Southern Reach Trilogy, which were originally published as paperback originals in February, May, and September 2014.
Annihilation is the first volume in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy, Authority is the second, and Acceptance is the third.
Area X-a remote and lush terrain-has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.
This is the twelfth expedition.
Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers-they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding-but it's the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.
After the disastrous twelfth expedition chronicled in Annihilation, the Southern Reach-the secret agency that monitors these expeditions-is in disarray. In Authority, John Rodriguez, aka "Control," is the team's newly appointed head. From a series of interrogations, a cache of hidden notes, and hours of profoundly troubling video footage, the secrets of Area X begin to reveal themselves-and what they expose pushes Control to confront disturbing truths about both himself and the agency he's promised to serve. And the consequences will spread much further than that.
It is winter in Area X in Acceptance. A new team embarks across the border on a mission to find a member of a previous expedition who may have been left behind. As they press deeper into the unknown-navigating new terrain and new challenges-the threat to the outside world becomes more daunting. The mysteries of Area X may have been solved, but their consequences and implications are no less profound-or terrifying.
Space Odyssey: Book 3
Fifty years after meeting the spirit of Dave Bowman aboard the abandoned Discovery and witnessing the fiery transformation of Jupiter into Earths second sun, 103-year-old Dr. Heywood Floyd boards the luxury spaceship Universe for the historic first landing on the surface of Halley's Comet.
At the same time, the Galaxy expedition sets out to probe the evolutionary upheaval on Jupiter's former moon Europa haunted by the fate of a doomed Chinese mission and by the ominous message from space: "All these worlds are yours *except Europa. Attempt no landings there. "
As the stranded Galaxy awaits rescue on the dangerous and forbidden surface of Europa and Universe races to her aid, the omniscient force that is Dave Bowman watches *and waits to reveal the extraordinary secrets of the monoliths, of the masters he now serves, and of mankind's ultimate role in the course of cosmic history . . .
Sparrow Series: Book 1
The Sparrow is a novel about a remarkable man, a living saint, a life-long celibate and Jesuit priest, who undergoes an experience so harrowing and profound that it makes him question the existence of God. This experience--the first contact between human beings and intelligent extraterrestrial life--begins with a small mistake and ends in a horrible catastrophe.
Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait
Spider Webb: Book 1
For "Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait" specialist, Aloysius "Spider" Webb, time travel has lost its luster.
Working as a senior time machine repair technician, Spider has seen it all - past, present and future. Wanting more out of life, Spider hates time travel and everything that goes with it - after all, time travel cost him his job as a top investigating police officer.
Fixing time machines is a waste of Spider's talent. But he's resigned to do it until he discovers, inside a broken second-hand time machine, the corpse of a woman; brutally murdered, wrapped in plastic and duct tape. Before Spider can act on his old police instincts, the shadowy Department of Time and Space steps in and seizes the machine, the remains, and all of the evidence, and closes the investigation.
Spider wants answers, but his questions only lead to more questions; unsettling evidence, brewing trouble, and the knowledge that Spider, himself, might be involved in an epic battle at the End of Time. Who can Spider trust? And what will they tell him: the truth or what he wants to hear?
Squire Quartet: Book 4
Architectural historian Roy Burnell has been tasked with traveling the globe and listing architectural gems in danger of being destroyed. But when Burnell is in Budapest, ten years of his memory, mostly his architectural knowledge and sexual experiences, is stolen. In this near-future, thieves using EMV ("e-mnemonicvision") sell memories on the black market. In the wake of this event, Burnell tries to resume his life, while also searching for the "bullet" that will restore his memory.
Star Svensdotter: Book 1
When the Betelgeuse message was detected, it changed a lot of things on Earth. We began to look seriously outward, not with the heady optimism of the early days, but with deliberate calculation. We knew that Someone was out there, and that eventually, they'd be coming. If Earth didn't occupy the High Frontier, it could be ours to lose.
Esther "Star" Svensdotter's job is overseeing the completion of the American Alliance's first O'Neill cylinder -- a massive space hab capable of supporting thousands of colonists. It's just weeks away from commissioning, and she'll be damned if Luddite terrorists, squabbling bureaucrats, military takeovers or rogue AIs will stand in the way. Frontier justice on Ellfive sometimes involves an airlock -- you don't want to be on the wrong side of justice. Or the wrong side of Star Svensdotter.
The first in Dana Stabenow's Star Svensdotter trilogy, Second Star is a tale of first contact, declarations of independence, and new frontiers.
Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award winning novella.
Shara, a gifted choreographer and dancer, can't find work. Together with Charlie, a camera man who wants to help Shara achieve her dream, they discover a new way for her to dance: in zero gravity... from space! When an alien force invades, it is up to Shara to find a way to communicate and save Earth.
The story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1977. The story Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1977. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #7 (1978), edited by Terry Carr, Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Seventh Annual Collection (1978), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Winners Thirteen (1980), edited by Samuel R. Delany and The Hugo Winners, Volume 4: (1976-79) (1985), edited by Isaac Asimov. The story is included in the collection God Is an Iron and Other Stories (2002). It is incorporated in the fixup novel Stardance (1979).
Sword Art Online: Book 1
In the year 2022, gamers rejoice as Sword Art Online - a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) like no other - debuts, allowing players to take full advantage of the ultimate in gaming technology: NerveGear, a system that allows users to completely immerse themselves in a wholly realistic gaming experience. But when the game goes live, the elation of the players quickly turns to horror as they discover that, for all its amazing features, SAO is missing one of the most basic functions of any MMORPG - a log-out button. Now trapped in the virtual world of Aincrad, their bodies held captive by NerveGear in the real world, users are issued a chilling ultimatum: conquer all one hundred floors of Aincrad to regain your freedom. But in the warped world of SAO, "game over" means certain death - both virtual and real...
Sword Art Online: Book 2
Linked up and logged into the deadly VMMORPG "Sword Art Online" in both the real and virtual worlds, Kirito is stuck in a hell of one man's making, and like everyone else, unable to escape until the game is beaten. But while some players are crippled by fear and others throw themselves into completing the game, still others relax into everyday life in the face of their cruel predicament and live to the best of their ability...laughing, crying, but always enjoying the game. Among them are four women who make a mark upon the solo adventurer that Kirito has become: Silica, the beast-tamer; Lisbeth, the blacksmith; Yui, the mysterious orphan; and the tragic Sachi, never to be forgotten by the black swordsman...
Sword Art Online 3: Fairy Dance
Sword Art Online: Book 3
Kirito has escaped Sword Art Online, the forbidden VRMMORPG of death, and returned to reality. He heads off to find his game partner and lover, Asuna Yuuki. But Asuna never made it back from the nightmare. Lost and desperate, Kirito's only clue to her virtual whereabouts is a mysterious screenshot of Asuna as a fairy trapped in a giant birdcage. His conclusion: She must be trapped within the new, high-powered VRMMORPG, ALfheim Online. Now Kirito must plunge into the world of ALO, where players are fairies who fly gracefully through the air!
Sword Art Online 4: Fairy Dance
Sword Art Online: Book 4
Kirito plunges into a suspicious new VRMMORPG called ALfheim Online to rescue Asuna, who never returned from Sword Art Online. ALO offers many features to entertain players in the wake of SAO: ultra high-end graphics, action-heavy gameplay, and a choice of fairy races, complete with a next-generation flight engine. Playing as a Spriggan, Kirito heads for the location of Asuna's prison–the top of the World Tree, the final destination of every player in the game! Along the way, Kirito nearly falls to a plot hatched by the enemy Salamanders, just barely surviving the ordeal with the help of a Sylph named Leafa and his Navigation Pixie, Yui. But just as Kirito and Leafa make it to the foot of the World Tree, the end of their quest in sight, both Kirito and Leafa each realize the other has a very big secret...
Sword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet
Sword Art Online: Book 5
Kirito reenters the world of VRMMOs, this time logging in to Gun Gale Online in order to investigate the Death Gun, an in-game item rumored to be responsible for real-world deaths. He immediately runs into trouble when, after transferring his old avatar into the new game, he discovers that he looks a bit more feminine than he'd anticipated!
With the help of Sinon the sniper, he enters the Bullet of Bullets tournament and tries to adapt his old skills to the new gun-based combat of Gun Gale Online. He'll need every friend he can get and every trick in the book, though, to crack the mystery of the Phantom Bullet and learn the truth about the Death Gun!
Sword Art Online 6: Phantom Bullet
Sword Art Online: Book 6
In an effort to discover the truth behind Death Gun, Kirito has entered the Bullet of Bullets tournament in Gun Gale Online, and both he and Sinon the sniper girl have made it to the finals, and the reality of what they discover is stranger than anything they could've prepared for. Lives are on the line once again as Sinon is forced to face her own past--but can Death Gun's bizarre rampage be stopped in time?
Sword Art Online 7: Mother's Rosary
Sword Art Online: Book 7
Kirito and Sinon's battle with Death Gun is over, but mere weeks later, something strange is afoot in the next-generation VRMMO ALfheim Online. A new duelist with a custom sword skill is defeating all comers--including Kirito! But when Asuna goes to face this duelist, she receives something she never expected: An invitation to an exclusive guild! But what is their aim? The Mother's Rosary arc begins!
Sword Art Online 8: Early and Late
Sword Art Online: Book 8
The saga of Sword Art Online continues with three side stories set during the Aincrad and Alfheim eras. The game of death took its toll on every player in a different way--when one turns up dead on the fifty-seventh floor, the game's afoot, and it's up to Asuna and Kirito to crack the case. There's also the story of how Kirito got his Excalibur sword in Alfheim (with a little help from his friends). And when the game of death first began, Kirito learned a difficult lesson--one he would never forget.
Contents:
Sword Art Online 9: Alicization Beginning
Sword Art Online: Book 9
Kirito awakens in a vast, fantastical forest filled with towering trees. In his search for clues to the truth of his surroundings, he encounters a young boy who seems to know him. He ought to be a simple NPC, but the depth of his emotions seem no different than a human. As they search for the boy's parents, Kirito finds a peculiar memory returning to him. A memory from his own childhood, of this boy and a girl, too, with golden hair, and a name he should have never forgotten--Alice.
Sword Art Online 10: Alicization Running
Sword Art Online: Book 10
Kirito has wound up in another mysterious fantasy world again. In this VRMMO-ish place, the first person he meets is the young boy Eugeo. Kirito can hardly believe Eugeo's an NPC when seeing his rich emotions and thoughts and ends up heading to the capital, Centria.
Two years later, Kirito and Eugeo have become First Order initiates of the North Centria Imperial Discipline Sword Academy and have been taken under the wing of their seniors, Soltirina and Golgoth. As they train and learn, they do nothing but strive to become one of the highest keepers of peace and order in the human realm, the Integrity Knights.
Aiming to reach the center of the Axiom Church that controls the capital, the two break past numerous obstacles to try and become one of the elite Greater Master Swordsmen, a title that only twelve people lay claim to in the whole academy!
Sword Art Online 11: Alicization Turning
Sword Art Online: Book 11
It's been two years since Kirito entered another mysterious fantasy world and met the boy named Eugeo. At the Northern Centoria Master Swordsmanship Academy, the two of them have advanced to become upper rank trainee swordsmen. Now they spend their days training, aiming to one day earn the rank of Integrity Knight, the greatest peacekeepers in the human world. Soon, appropriate for their new ranks, both Kirito and Eugeo are assigned apprentices and they all deepen their bonds while perfecting their bodies and minds. But suddenly, an evil rears its head and threatens their peaceful lives. Eugeo tries to draw his sword to fight but he finds himself helpless as a message appears in words he can't read. They say--SYSTEM ALERT.
Sword Art Online 12: Alicization Rising
Sword Art Online: Book 12
Eugeo has finally met Alice again, but she's no longer the same girl he once knew, now calling herself an Integrity Knight. Even worse, the reason for Alice's unexpected return is to capture Kirito and Eugeo!
Sword Art Online 13: Alicization Dividing
Sword Art Online: Book 13
After Kirito and Eugeo are separated in the Central Cathedral, Eugeo continues his quest alone-until he encounters a legendary hero he's admired since childhood. Can Eugeo defeat him alone...?
Sword Art Online 14: Alicization Uniting
Sword Art Online: Book 14
After getting separated, Kirito and Eugeo have continued their struggle to reach the 100th floor of Central Cathedral--Eugeo in hopes of restoring Alice to her true self, and Kirito for the sake of the Underworld. But on the 99th floor, Kirito must first face a heartrendingly familiar Integrity Knight...
Sword Art Online 15: Alicization Invading
Sword Art Online: Book 15
Adminstrator's defeat has come at a heavy cost: The death of Eugeo as well as the mental decline of Kirito. Six months after the epic battle atop Central Cathedral, Kirito spends his days in the Underworld wheelchair-bound; bereft of emotion or even a will to live. Although Alice and Bercouli do what they can to help him, it isn't long before the armies of the dark territory are start to move in earnest. The "Final Stress Test" has begun. But will Kirito be ready?
Sword Art Online 16: Alicization Exploding
Sword Art Online: Book 16
Gabriel Miller-assuming the identity of Emperor Vecta, the god of darkness-prepares to invade the human lands with his army of fifty thousand. Defending these lands are the remaining Integrity Knights, led by Commander Bercouli, and an army one-tenth the size of the enemy's! Meanwhile, Kirito, still out of commission, is left in the care of primary trainees Ronie and Tiese. And back in the Dark Territory, Dee Eye Ell, the chancellor of the dark mages guild, threatens to vanquish the Human Guardian Army by launching a large-scale magical attack of her own. But in the midst of the chaos, the one who appears to turn the tide of battle is none other than... Asuna?!
Sword Art Online 17: Alicization Awakening
Sword Art Online: Book 17
The Priestess of Light, Alice. If we sacrifice all members of the army of darkness, she will be within our grasp...
It is the second day of the final stress test. The army of darkness, driven to desperation by the coordinated onslaught at the hands of the Integrity Knights, has begun to retaliate with incredibly reckless tactics. Critter, who had been observing the events of the Underworld from the outside, has successfully created a gateway for the masses under the guise of an invitation for "A limited-time beta test for a new VRMMO in production." This digital invite has bolstered the forces of the army of darkness by over fifty thousand people.
Asuna, unable to compete with such a level reinforcement, begins to sink into depair. But all is not lost! Two new deities of the Underworld will descend to lend their aid: The Blazing White Solus and the Earthmother Terraria. And the ones in possession of these super-accounts are none other than Sinon and Leafa!
Sword Art Online 18: Alicization Lasting
Sword Art Online: Book 18
The second day of the final stress test rages on. Lisbeth, Silica, and Asuna push through the pain as they hold out against the Dark Army. But their efforts fall short as Kirito is captured by PoH, the former leader of Laughing Coffin! With PoH's twisted heart set on subjecting Kirito to the culmination of several years' vengeance, he prepares to end him once and for all. But when hope seems lost, a voice cries out in Kirito's heart. The voice of the person he lived with, laughed with, and fought with for years. The voice of his best friend...Grabbing hold of that light in the darkness, the Black Swordsman awakens...
Sword Art Online 19: Moon Cradle
Sword Art Online: Book 19
After three-hundred years of turmoil, a new era begins for the Underworld. A lost child of Vecta, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, has defeated the Dark God and cemented peace for all the realm. But at the heart of human lands, atop Central Cathedral, Ronie Arabel, newly promoted to Integrity Knight apprentice, receives foreboding words from Kirito.
"War will come again."
Sword Art Online 20: Moon Cradle
Sword Art Online: Book 20
It's back to the drawing board as the kidnapper just barely slips from Kirito's grasp. The new plan calls for a visit to the scene of the crime so that Asuna can use her scrying art to peek into the past, though what she learns is troubling to say the least... But before they can act on the new information, the villain strikes again! This time, Ronie and Tiese have been captured, and their fates rest in the claws of a young yellow dragon...!
Sword Art Online 21: Unital Ring 1
Sword Art Online: Book 21
It's been a month since Kirito and Asuna returned from the Underworld. Together again with Alice, who managed to secure a life in the real world, it should've been happily ever after... But, as luck would have it, the three find themselves involved in a VRMMO by the name of Unital Ring, and all their stats have been reset to level one! It's time for Kirito to put his experience to the test in a genuine Survival MMO!
Sword Art Online 22: Kiss and Fly
Sword Art Online: Book 22
Everyone knows that any good MMO has an abundance of side quests to complement the main storyline. With that in mind, join Kirito and friends for a peek behind the scenes across four all-new side stories! The Day Before: Kirito proposes to Asuna in-game and they begin their life as newlyweds. The Day After: Ever since arriving in ALO with a new avatar, Asuna's been suffering from a form of withdrawal... Rainbow Bridge: After conquering the undersea temple, a mysterious conversation between Kraken and Leviathan sparks yet another adventure for Kirito's party. Sister's Prayer: A heartwarming tale of two siblings and their involvement with the Death Game.
Sword Art Online 23: Unital Ring II
Sword Art Online: Book 23
As Kirito, Asuna, and Alice brave the wilds of the mysterious VRMMO "Unital Ring," Sinon's introduction to the world is no less harrowing. After numerous setbacks, she finds herself without friends, equipment, and only a few Thirst Points left to her name. Backed against a wall, she'll need to defeat a terrifying boss monster to survive. Meanwhile, Kirito's group splits up in order to both search for Sinon and defend their home, unaware that a mysterious assailant lies in wait...
Sword Art Online 24: Unital Ring III
Sword Art Online: Book 24
In the world of Unital Ring, the foreboding presence that has been targeting the party finally makes itself known! Elsewhere, a reunion with Seijirou Kikuoka leads Kirito, Asuna, and Alice back to the Underworld, where two-hundred years have passed since the great war. There, they meet descendants of Ronie and Tiese, as well as the new leader of the Integrity Knights. But something about this man seems all too familiar... A certain glint in his eyes reminiscent of someone dearly departed...
Sword Art Online 25: Unital Ring IV
Sword Art Online: Book 25
Kirito's chance encounter with Eolyne, a man with the same eyes and voice as his deceased friend, shakes him to the core. But with the possibility of an interworld war breaking out in the Underworld growing higher by the day, Kirito has no time to be sentimental. Meanwhile, the decisive battle against Mutasina of the Virtual Research Society looms, and she's used her powers to force a battalion of one hundred mages under her command. Can Kirito and company devise a strategy to defy their overwhelming disadvantage in time, or will it all be for naught?
Sword Art Online 26: Unital Ring V
Sword Art Online: Book 26
On the 80th floor of the Central Cathedral, Kirito, Asuna, and Alice have a reunion with dear friends, but Kirito is pulled away to Planet Admina to investigate the approaching threat to the Underworld. Meanwhile, in Unital Ring, Sinon, Silica, and company are putting up a good fight against the field bosses, but the conflict intensifies in a way few could have predicted...
Sword Art Online 27: Unital Ring VI
Sword Art Online: Book 27
After two hundred years, Kirito is finally reunited with Selka, Ronie and Tiese, but the girls are shocked to see Eolyne, who bears a striking resemblance to their fallen comrade. Then, with no time to process their feelings, the three Integrity Knights are thrown into battle alongside Eolyne and the Integrity Pilots. The old defenders of the Underworld join the new as the next chapter of the Unital Ring arc commences!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 1: Squad Jam
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 1
A Brand-New Battlefield Awaits!
Karen Kohiruimaki is a college student who stands at an imposing six feet. While her complex about her height makes it hard for her to make friends in the real world, the VRMMO Gun Gale Online changes everything. Now equipped with her ideal "mini" avatar and clad in a pink battle suit, Karen is ready to shoot up the world of GGO as Llenn! Before long, she meets the beautiful Pitohui, and the two rare female players become fast friends. Little does Llenn know that this friendship is the key to her entry in the first-ever Squad Jam, a team-based battle royale that echoes the famous Bullet of Bullets tournament...
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 2: Second Squad Jam: Start
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 2
Though the official announcement of the second Squad Jam has come out, Karen Kohiruimaki barely shows any interest at all, despite being the champion of the first ferocious battle royale. Or at least, that was true right up to the moment she receives a cryptic message from a creepy stalker who informs her that on the night of the next Squad Jam, someone will die.
Now, LLENN needs to take up arms and cut through her inexplicable anguish to prevent her worst fears from coming true!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 3: Second Squad Jam: Finish
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 3
"The real-world death of Pitohui."
This was the sole motivator that pushed Llenn into entering the second Squad Jam. Accompanied by her best friend and ALO transplant, Fukaziroh, the two overcome wave after wave of enemy for the sake of achieving Llenn's ultimate goal. "In order to save Pitohui's life, I'll kill her myself!" This is no easy feat, however. Pitohui has the strength of a demon with the mentality to match. On top of that, Llenn isn't the only one hunting her! Will Llenn reach Pitohui in time? Or will one of the 79,408 bullets fired in the second Squad Jam beat P-Chan to the punch?!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 4: 3rd Squad Jam: Betrayers' Choice
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 4
Old frenemies become staunch allies as the strongest team in the history of Gun Gale is born! This time, LPFM, named for Llenn, Pitohui, Fukaziroh, and M, will enter the third Squad Jam and overcome fierce competition as they aim for the top! But with a map that's slowly sinking into the sea, an UNKNOWN area at its center, and a "special rule" that won't come into effect until the competition nears its end, this Squad Jam certainly seems shrouded in mystery...
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 5: 3rd Squad Jam: Betrayers' Choice: Finish
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 5
A brand-new battlefield awaits!
As the third Squad Jam begins to wind down, the special rule takes effect. One player from each group is chosen to become a part of the new Team Betrayers and fight against their friends! LPFM-one of the favorites to win it all-has lost a crucial member, and Pitohui couldn't be happier to have been picked. Not looking forward to her rematch with the trigger-happy lunatic, Llenn is forced to watch as Pito gets escorted to the mysterious Unknown area at the center of the sinking map, which is surrounded by a thick fog. As bullets of betrayal fly past former allies, the fog finally clears to reveal... a luxury cruise ship?!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 6: One Summer Day
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 6
A month after the end of the third Squad Jam, a mysterious email is sent to former contestants all across the country. The email contains an invitation to brand-new game, and only the top contenders from the past three Squad Jams are allowed to participate! With objective of capturing bases as opposed to an all-out deathmatch, this new game mode has a completely different feel from Squad Jam. A fitting stage for the long-awaited rematch with SHINC!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 7: 4th Squad Jam: Start
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 7
During any difficult encounter, whether in game or in real life, it's always good to have an exit strategy. So when Karen Kohiruimaki gets completely blindsided by a rogue marriage proposal, she's able to respond with a smooth "P-Chan is more my type..." But when a handsome man appears before Llenn during her strategy meeting for the 4th Squad Jam, she gets a sinking feeling that this is one battle she'll have to face head on!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 8: 4th Squad Jam: Continue
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 8
A BRAND-NEW BATTLEFIELD AWAITS!
The fourth Squad Jam heats up, with the marriage between Karen and businessman Fire Nishiyamada hanging in the balance! Despite this, Llenn cares only about settling her long rivalry with team SHINC. She's unprepared, though, for a shocking revelation about her battle against them--SHINC has allied themselves with a bunch of cowards!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 9: 4th Squad Jam: Finish
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 9
Sparks fly as the fourth Squad Jam barrels towards its pulse-pounding conclusion. But are they the sparks of romance or high-grade explosives? With a marriage on the line, Fire is determined to win by any means necessary, and manages to win SHINC's assistance in overthrowing LPFM. Meanwhile, Llenn's team finally meets up with Boss's crew, but Fire's squad is there and ready to rumble as well! Who will emerge the victor?!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 10: Five Ordeals
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 10
A BRAND-NEW BATTLEFIELD AWAITS!
Just a week after the ferocious Squad Jam 4, Llenn and LPFM face a devastating new challenge--with SHINC at their side! In a drastic departure from GGO's usual player versus player tournaments, the latest event, The Five Ordeals, is all about fending off deadly computer-controlled enemies. That doesn't mean the competition is any less fierce, though; the squad that clears the quest the fastest will come away with loot up to their eyeballs. But when the LPFM-SHINC alliance takes to the battleground, the first thing they encounter is... a talking dog?!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 11: 5th Squad Jam: Start
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 11
After clearing the Five Ordeals, LPFM and SHINC scarcely have a moment to rest before the 5th Squad Jam is announced. And this time around, there's a new rule that's sure to disorient the participants: Players can swap gear with any of their teammates during the match. Naturally, Llenn and her squad resolve to take on the challenge and quickly get to strategizing. But soon they catch wind of an additional stipulation that will stack the odds against them: Whoever takes out Llenn in the tournament will receive a bounty of one hundred million credits!
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 12: 5th Squad Jam: Continue
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 12
A BRAND-NEWBATTLEFIELD AWAITS!
There may be a hundred-million-credit bounty on Llenn's head, but she's not going to let that stop her from gunning for the champion's throne. However, she won't have the help of SHINC this time thanks to a new rule that forces all players to scatter to the four winds! Loose bonds will form while the bullets fly. But just as old rivals find themselves working together, Llenn soon finds herself staring down the barrel of Fukaziroh's grenade launcher. This Fifth Squad Jam may beanyone's game, but how will their friendships fare after the dust settles...?
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online, Vol. 13: 5th Squad Jam: Finish
Sword Art Online - Gun Gale Online: Book 13
A BRAND-NEW BATTLEFIELD AWAITS!
The fifth Squad Jam has had one surprise twist after another, and it's finally reaching a climax. Other teams have proven they're more interested in Llenn's hundred-million-credit bounty than winning the competition! It doesn't help that even her friends are tempted to take her out as well. Thanks to the target on her back, Llenn's allies are dropping like flies. It all comes down to a game of tower defense--will Llenn persevere when she's caught between a hail of bullets and a ten-thousand-foot drop?!
Sword Art Online Alternative Clover's Regret, Vol. 1
Sword Art Online Alternative Clover's Regret: Book 1
A HAUNTED QUEST
Asuka Empire--a VRMMORPG with a Japanese aesthetic, and the original home of the Sleeping Knights--is holding a new horror-themed event called the 108 Apparitions. Nayuta, a stoic warrior priestess, and Koyomi, an excitable ninja, are enjoying a break from the frights when they come across a mysterious monk named Yanagi. Despite knowing nothing about games, the elderly man is determined to complete a certain quest within a week, and he has agreed to pay a detective a ridiculous sum to make it happen. Just as strange as his request is the detective himself, a foxlike young man who has put all his stat points into luck. Yanagi's desired quest turns out to be none other than Ghost Orchestra, which has stumped every player who's tried it. Can this unlikely party manage what no one else has?
Sword Art Online Progressive 01
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 1
One month after Akihiko Kayaba's game of death began, the death toll continues to rise, two thousand players having already lost their lives to the ultra-difficult VRMMO world of Sword Art Online. On the day of the strategy meeting to plan out the first-floor boss battle, Kirito, a solo player who vows to fight alone to get stronger, runs into a rare, high-level female player. She gracefully dispatches powerful monsters with a single rapier that flashes like a shooting star in the night...
This volume contains three stories, including "Aria of a Starless Night," which details how Kirito came to be called the Black Swordsman. "Intermisssion - Reason for the Whiskers" and "Rondo of a Fragile Blade," the tragic tale of a young blacksmith that takes place before the second-floor boss fight.
Sword Art Online Progressive 02
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 2
Having cleared the first and second levels of Aincrad at great cost, Kirito, Asuna, and the rest of the players ascend to Level Three. New challenges await them even as tenuous new allies appear, in the vast forest that encompasses the entire level. Meanwhile, the first player-wide strategy meeting on the new level forces Asuna and Kirito to make a difficult choice.
Sword Art Online Progressive 03
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 3
"Here we go, Asuna! Hang on tight! Tilnel, launch!"
Having said their good-byes to the mysterious elven knight Kizmel, Kirito and Asuna set their sights on the fourth floor of Aincrad. But once they open the door, they find the way forward blocked by a powerfully flowing river. The updated version of the fourth floor has been changed into a water world! When they finally arrive at the floor's town, they're greeted by chalk-white streets and countless gondolas of all sizes. To navigate this place, Kirito and Asuna will need their own gondola--but getting one will involve confronting an eight-meter-tall beast of flame: Magnaterium... And that's only the beginning of the difficulties the fourth floor of Aincrad has in store!
Sword Art Online: Progressive, a new version of the Sword Art Online tale chronicling the entirety of Kirito and Asuna's epic adventure through Aincrad, continues!
Sword Art Online Progressive 04
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 4
It's been just two months since they were trapped in the game of death that is Sword Art Online, and Kirito and Asuna continue their struggle at the vanguard of progress through the game. The fifth floor of Aincrad is a mazelike ruin, and the two dare to take pleasure in raiding it for the treasure it contains. Upon returning to the fourth floor, it's time to do some questing on behalf of the Elf Lord Yofilis--but here begins Asuna's discontent, for in doing so they will have to face her least favorite monster ever...
Sword Art Online Progressive 05
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 5
After successfully untangling themselves from a dangerous encounter with the Black Poncho Man and clearing the fifth floor of Aincrad, Kirito and Asuna head to the next challenge, an area filled with... puzzles?
What's more, because of the precarious balance of power between two large guilds aiming for the same item, "The Flag of Valor", there's also a murderous PK group to be wary of.
As the problems seem to pile up, Kirito and Asuna face the sixth floor of Aincrad completely unaware of the malicious trap awaiting them!
Sword Art Online Progressive 06
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 6
"...CAST ASIDE YOUR DISTRACTIONS AND MAINTAIN THE TRANQUILITY OF YOUR HEART."
At long last, Kirito and Asuna have reunited with Kizmel the dark elf, and everything is as it should be...Well, almost everything. As the three continue the Elf War campaign and hunt for the remaining sacred keys, they're met with one surprise after another. Between the assassination attempts, off-script scenarios, and AI that seem a little too lifelike, Kirito can't help but wonder if this is the same game he beta tested! And if that wasn't enough, a shocking development allows the Curse of Stachion questline to finally come to an end-but not before the party receives another unwelcome visit from a PK agitator!
Sword Art Online: Progressive, a new version of the Sword Art Online tale that chronicles the entirety of Kirito and Asuna's epic adventure through Aincrad, continues!
Sword Art Online Progressive 07
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 7
LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT!
The seventh floor of Aincrad--a massive casino where over half the game's beta testers dropped out before launch. Kirito was among the many who lost everything in its Battle Arena back then. When an informant named Argo the Rat entices Kirito and Asuna with knowledge that could aid in their investigation, the pair soon plunge into the casino's dark underbelly once more. Meanwhile, the "Elf War" quest also reaches a sudden turning point when a flurry of crises rock the dark elves' home!
Sword Art Online Progressive 08
Sword Art Online Progressive: Book 8
A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK!
The secret feud between the Nachtoy and the Korloy families, who control the Volupta Grand Casino on the seventh floor, takes an unprecedented turn when Kirito and Asuna intervene. But when Kirito attempts to expose the Korloy family's misdeeds, he ends up stumbling into a trap. Now he has just two days to unravel a mystery, put an end to an unscrupulous conspiracy, and defeat the floor boss. It's all leading up to a showdown in the arena where everything's on the line!
Terminator: Book 1
MORE DEADLY THAN ANY MAN ALIVE
The time is now... but he comes from the Year of Darkness, 2029. He was created to reshape the future by destroying the present. He feels no pity, no pain, no fear. He feels nothing. He is an unstoppable killing machine programmed for murder. He is...
THE TERMINATOR
Terminator: Book 2
He's back.
The Terminator returns and he's one of the good guys, sent back in time to protect John Connor, the boy destined to lead the freedom fighters of the future. Sarah Connor, John's mother, is a quintessential survivor who has been institutionalized for her warning of the nuclear holocaust she knows is inevitable. Together, the threesome must find a way to stop the ultimate enemy - the T-1000, the most lethal Terminator ever created. And if they can survive, they can change the future...
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terminator: Book 3
This is the story of John Connor, who is destined to become the head of the human resistance against the robotic forces of Skynet, the Artificial Intelligence that attacked humanity on Judgement Day.
Son of the courageous Sarah Connor, John has grown up knowing that he was different. Protected when he was a boy by a Terminator, told of his destiny before he could truly comprehend the enormity of his responsibility, he is the person in whom all hope for humanity's future lies.
His mother is dead; he's spent years in other peoples' homes hiding from his fate but now he's being hunted by a more advanced-model Terminator come back from the deadly future. John has a secret edge, but he does not know it. All he knows is that his life is about to become one long, crazy flight from destruction. It's going to be a hell of a ride!
Terminator: Book 4
Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past.
As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynets operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.
Random Acts of Senseless Violence
Terraplane: Book 1
It's just a little later than now and Lola Hart is writing her life in a diary. She's a nice middle-class girl on the verge of her teens who schools at the calm end of town. A normal, happy, girl. But in a disintegrating New York she is a dying breed. War is breaking out on Long Island, the army boys are flamethrowing the streets, five Presidents have been assassinated in a year. No one notices any more. Soon Lola and her family must move over to the Lower East side - Loisaida - to the Pit and the new language of violence of the streets. The metamorphosis of the nice Lola Hart into the new model Lola has begun...
Terraplane: Book 2
The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.
The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.
But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.
Dryco's New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher's got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he's looking for. And even if he's fake, he may have his uses.
But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.
Terraplane: Book 3
You need to be rich to survive at all. But it's easier to be dead than poor.
Twenty-first-century New York. It's a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There's murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There's guerrilla war on Long Island.
Seamus O'Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he's in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer's mistress, Avalon, probably wasn't so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family's crazy rivalries didn't help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.
Before long, O'Malley's on the run, and there's nowhere safe to hide.
Terrible Worlds: Revolutions: Book 1
Scions have no limits. Scions do not die. And Scions do not disappear.
Sergeant Ted Regan has a problem. A son of one of the great corporate families, a Scion, has gone missing at the front. He should have been protected by his Ironclad--the lethal battle suits that make the Scions masters of war--but something has gone catastrophically wrong.
Now Regan and his men, ill equipped and demoralised, must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover how his suit failed. Is there a new Ironclad-killer out there? And how are common soldiers lacking the protection afforded the rich supposed to survive the battlefield of tomorrow?
The Academy: Book 6
When a young physicist unveils an efficient star drive capable of reaching the core of the galaxy, veteran star pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins finds herself back in the deepest reaches of space, and on the verge of discovering the origins of the deadly omega clouds that continue to haunt her.
The Aleutian Trilogy: Book 1
In the year 2038, the earth has been ravaged by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Retroviruses run rampant through humanity. Economic disaster has destabilised the world, the US has undergone a socialist revolution, and the balance of power has changed.
Then the aliens arrive.
With no clear understanding of the visitors' intent, factions form, including the anti-alien group White Queen, working to turn humans against these extra-terrestrial tourists. Caught in the middle is Johnny Guglio, an American exile whose only fault was living near the landing site, and Braemar Wilson, a cutthroat reporter who will do whatever she needs to get ahead of the story. And for better or for worse, it seems being caught in the middle is the best place for them to uncover the truth.
The Apocalypse Triptych: Book 1
Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.
But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild.
The Apocalypse Triptych will tell their stories.
Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, The Apocalypse Triptych is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. The End Is Nigh focuses on life before the apocalypse. The End Is Now turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And The End Has Come explores life after the apocalypse.
Volume one of The Apocalypse Triptych, The End Is Nigh, features all-new, never-before-published works by Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jamie Ford, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Sigler, Robin Wasserman, Nancy Kress, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, and many others.
Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning. The End Is Nigh is about the match.
Table of Contents:
The Apocalypse Triptych: Book 2
Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.
But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild.
The Apocalypse Triptych will tell their stories.
Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, The Apocalypse Triptych is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. The End Is Nigh focuses on life before the apocalypse. The End Is Now turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And The End Has Come explores life after the apocalypse.
The End Is Nigh is about the match. The End Has Come is about what will rise from the ashes. The End Is Now is about the conflagration.
Table of Contents:
The Blue Ant Trilogy: Book 1
Cayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client. But when her borrowed apartment is burgled and her computer hacked, she realizes there's more to this project than she had expected.
Still, Cayce is her father's daughter, and the danger makes her stubborn. Win Pollard, ex-security expert, probably ex-CIA, took a taxi in the direction of the World Trade Center on September 11 one year ago, and is presumed dead. Win taught Cayce a bit about the way agents work. She is still numb at his loss, and, as much for him as for any other reason, she refuses to give up this newly weird job, which will take her to Tokyo and on to Russia. With help and betrayal from equally unlikely quarters, Cayce will follow the trail of the mysterious film to its source, and in the process will learn something about her father's life and death.
The Blue Ant Trilogy: Book 2
Hollis Henry is a journalist on investigative assignment for a magazine called Node, which doesnt exist yet. Bobby Chombo is a producer working on cutting-edge art installations. In his day job, Bobby is a trouble-shooter for military navigation equipment. He refuses to sleep in the same place twice. He meets no one.
Hollis Henry has been told to find him.
The Blue Ant Trilogy: Book 3
The new novel from William Gibson, "one of the most visionary, original, and quietly influential writers currently working." (The Boston Globe)
Hollis Henry worked for the global marketing magnate Hubertus Bigend once before. She never meant to repeat the experience. But she's broke, and Bigend never feels it's beneath him to use whatever power comes his way -- in this case, the power of money to bring Hollis onto his team again. Not that she knows what the "team" is up to, not at first.
Milgrim is even more thoroughly owned by Bigend. He's worth owning for his useful gift of seeming to disappear in almost any setting, and his Russian is perfectly idiomatic - so much so that he spoke Russian with his therapist, in the secret Swiss clinic where Bigend paid for him to be cured of the addiction that would have killed him.
Garreth has a passion for extreme sports. Most recently he jumped off the highest building in the world, opening his chute at the last moment, and he has a new thighbone made of rattan baked into bone, entirely experimental, to show for it. Garreth isn't owned by Bigend at all. Garreth has friends from whom he can call in the kinds of favors that a man like Bigend will find he needs, when things go unexpectedly sideways, in a world a man like Bigend is accustomed to controlling.
As when a Department of Defense contract for combat-wear turns out to be the gateway drug for arms dealers so shadowy that even Bigend, whose subtlety and power in the private sector would be hard to overstate, finds himself outmaneuvered and adrift in a seriously dangerous world.
The Bridge Trilogy: Book 1
2005: Welcome to NoCal and SoCal, the uneasy sister-states of what used to be California. Here the millenium has come and gone, leaving in its wake only stunned survivors. In Los Angeles, Berry Rydell is a former armed-response rentacop now working for a bounty hunter. Chevette Washington is a bicycle messenger turned pickpocket who impulsively snatches a pair of innocent-looking sunglasses. But these are no ordinary shades. What you can see through these high-tech specs can make you rich--or get you killed. Now Berry and Chevette are on the run, zeroing in on the digitalized heart of DatAmerica, where pure information is the greatest high. And a mind can be a terrible thing to crash...
The Bridge Trilogy: Book 3
Rydell is on his way back to near-future San Francisco. A stint as a security man in an all-night Los Angeles convenience store has convinced him his career is going nowhere, but his friend Laney, phoning from Tokyo, says there's more interesting work for him in Northern California. And there is, although it will eventually involve his former girlfriend, a Taoist assassin, the secrets Laney has been hacking out of the depths of DatAmerica, the CEO of the PR firm that secretly runs the world and the apocalyptic technological transformation of, well, everything. William Gibson's new novel, set in the soon-to-be-fact world of "Virtual Light" and "Idoru", completes a stunning, brilliantly imagined trilogy about the post-Net world.
GREEN EARTH takes the stories first told in FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN, FIFTY DEGREES BELOW and SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING and combines them in a fully updated, compressed and compelling single volume.
Catastrophe is in the air. Increasingly strange weather events are pummelling the Earth. When the Gulf Stream shuts down and the Antarctic ice sheet starts melting, climate extremes multiply, and some winters hit like an ice age. New US President Phil Chase is on a mission: he's determined to solve climate change. His science advisor, Frank Vanderwal, is a bit more messed up. When massive floods hit Washington, Frank finds himself living in a treehouse and in love with a woman who's definitely not what she seems, one who will draw him into the shadowy world of Homeland Security, and other, blacker agencies. Only science can save the day. Frank knows he has to find a way to save the world so that science can proceed.
The Capital Code: Book 1
The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation’s capital—and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.
When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year.
It’s an increasingly steamy summer in the nation’s capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it’s too late—and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain.
While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming—if it can be recognized in time. But when a race to control the budding technology begins, the stakes only get higher. As these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of modern science, they are unaware that fate is about to put an unusual twist on their work—one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.
With style, wit, and rare insight into our past, present, and possible future, this captivating novel propels us into a world on the verge of unprecedented change—in a time quite like our own. Here is Kim Stanley Robinson at his visionary best, offering a gripping cautionary tale of progress—and its price—as only he can tell it.
The Capital Code: Book 2
When the storm got bad, scientist Frank Vanderwal was at work, formalizing his return to the National Science Foundation for another year. He'd left the building just in time to help sandbag at Arlington Cemetery. Now that the torrent was over, large chunks of San Diego had eroded into the sea, and D.C. was underwater.
Shallow lakes occupied the most famous parts of the city. Reagan Airport was awash and the Potomac had spilled beyond its banks. Rescue boats dotted the saturated cityscape. Everything Frank and his colleagues in the halls of science and politics feared had culminated in this massive disaster. And now the world looked to them to fix it.
Whatever Frank can do, now that he is homeless, he'll have to do from his car. He's not averse to sleeping outdoors. Years of research have made him hyperaware of his status as just another primate. That plus his encounter with a Tibetan Buddhist has left him resolved to live a more authentic life.
Hopefully, this will prepare him for whatever is to come.
For even as D.C. bails out from the flood, a more extreme climate change looms. With the melting of the polar ice caps shutting down the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, another Ice Age could be imminent. The last time it happened, eleven thousand years ago, it took just three years to start.
The Capital Code: Book 3
By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world’s climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next.
But the president-elect remains optimistic and doesn’t intend to give up without a fight. A maverick in every sense of the word, Chase starts organizing the most ambitious plan to save the world from disaster since FDR–and assembling a team of top scientists and advisers to implement it.
For Charlie Quibler, this means reentering the political fray full-time and giving up full-time care of his young son, Joe. For Frank Vanderwal, hampered by a brain injury, it means trying to protect the woman he loves from a vengeful ex and a rogue “black ops” agency not even the president can control–a task for which neither Frank’s work at the National Science Foundation nor his study of Tibetan Buddhism can prepare him.
In a world where time is running out as quickly as its natural resources, where surveillance is almost total and freedom nearly nonexistent, the forecast for the Chase administration looks darker each passing day. For as the last–and most terrible–of natural disasters looms on the horizon, it will take a miracle to stop the clock . . . the kind of miracle that only dedicated men and women can bring about.
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
The Carls: Book 1
A sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she's part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined...
The Carls just appeared.
Roaming through New York City at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship--like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor--April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world--from Beijing to Buenos Aires--and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight.
Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
The Dark Knight: Book 1
Writer/artist Frank Miller completely reinvents the legend of Batman in this saga of a near-future Gotham City gone to rot, 10 years after the Dark Knight's retirement. Forced to take action, the Dark Knight returns in a blaze of fury, taking on a whole new generation of criminals and matching their level of violence. He is soon joined by a new Robin--a girl named Carrie Kelley, who proves to be just as invaluable as her predecessors.
But can Batman and Robin deal with the threat posed by their deadliest enemies, after years of incarceration have turned them into perfect psychopaths? And more important, can anyone survive the coming fallout from an undeclared war between the superpowers--or the clash of what were once the world's greatest heroes?
Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again
The Dark Knight: Book 2
In this sequel to Frank Miller's seminal graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns , it's three years later and the DC Universe is at peace. At least on the surface. And Batman must return once again to save the world from themselves.
Still, the world looks fine: a perfectly choreographed, pretty little world where everything that's ugly, or even potentially disturbing, is all nicely wrapped up with neat little ribbons and swept under the carpet. Only Batman knows better. He's watched it fester to near-breaking point, and it's time for the only free man left who can effect any real change to bring it all down around their ears once and for all.
The Dark Knight returns once again with a vitality unseen since the first years of his war on crime. Together with his army of Bat-soldiers, including Carrie Kelley--formerly Robin, and now the new Catgirl--the Dark Knight wages a new war on a diseased world that's become completely lost.
Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again features appearances by such DC icons as Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, the Atom, the Question and more. But are they still the World's Greatest Heroes or part of the conspiracy?
Batman: The Dark Knight: Master Race
The Dark Knight: Book 3
In 1986, Frank Miller introduced his iconic take on Batman and changed the face of comics forever. Now, three decades after BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, Miller himself has returned with a third chapter to his groundbreaking saga.
It's been three years since the Batman defeated Lex Luthor and saved the world from tyranny. Three years since anyone has seen Gotham City's guardian alive. Wonder Woman, Queen of the Amazons... Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern... Superman, the Man of Steel... all of the Dark Knight's allies have retreated from the front lines of the war against injustice.
But now a new war is beginning. An army of unimaginable power led by Superman's own daughter is preparing to claim Earth as their new world.
The only force that can stop this master race--Batman--is dead.
Long live the new Batman...
The Detainee: Book 1
When the fog comes down and the drums start to beat, the inhabitants of the island tremble: for the punishment satellites - which keep the tyrannical Wastelords at bay - are blind in the darkness, and the islanders become prey.
The inhabitants are the old, the sick, the poor: the detritus of Society, dumped on the island with the rest of Society's waste. There is no point trying to escape, for the satellites - the invisible eyes of the law - mete out instant judgement from the sky.
The island is the end of all hope - until 'Big Guy' Clancy finds a blind woman living in a secret underground warren, and discovers a reason to fight.
The Dingilliad: Book 1
A trip to the Moon? Sounds like the perfect family vacation. Only for 13-year-old Charles "Chigger" Dingillian his family is anything but perfect. His parents fight so much they put the 'dis' into dysfunctional. So when he and his brothers find themselves halfway to the Moon Chigger hits on a plan: if his parents can't find a way to work things out, why not just divorce them? Sound crazy? Until it works.
Charles and his brothers are on their own. But their bid for freedom hits a roadblock when Chigger suspects they are targets of an interstellar manhunt. What do these Big Corporations want? And why?
Their only hope is to jump off the planet...
Jason M. Hough goes back to the beginning with this eBook exclusive novella, the prequel to the New York Times bestseller The Darwin Elevator. An indispensable introduction to a trilogy wrought with action, imagination, and mystery, The Dire Earth is sure to thrill new readers and diehard fans alike.
In the middle of the twenty-third century, an inexplicable disease engulfs the globe, leaving a trail of madness and savagery in its wake. Dutch air force pilot Skyler Luiken discovers he is immune to the disease when he returns from a mission to find the world in chaos, but he soon realizes that he's not the only one to have endured the apocalypse. Elsewhere, the roguish Skadz, the cunning Nigel, and the tough-as-nails Samantha each make their way toward the last remaining bastion of sanity: Darwin, Australia, home to a mysterious alien artifact that may hold the key to the survival of the human race.
This novella also appears in full as an "extra" in the novel Zero World.
Dispatched to Africa to combat an unknown disease, Lieutenant Skyler Luiken instead becomes an eyewitness, and sole survivor, of the outbreak of a deadly global plague. As the world falls apart, Skyler races to find his family, in the hopes that something of the life he knew can survive this devastating infection.
This novelette constitutes approximately the first third of the novella The Dire Earth.
Read the full story for free at Tor.com.
The Dispatcher: Book 1
One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone -- 999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.
Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher -- a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death's crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death, and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge what they see as a wrong.
It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late... before not even a Dispatcher can save him.
The Dispatcher: Book 2
Welcome to the new world, in which murder is all but a thing of the past. Because when someone kills you, 999 times out of 1,000, you instantly come back to life. In this world, there are dispatchers - licensed killers who step in when you're at risk of a natural or unintentional death. They kill you - so you can live.
Tony Valdez is used to working his job as a dispatcher within the rules of the law and the state. But times are tough, and more and more Tony finds himself riding the line between what's legal and what will pay his bills. After one of these shady gigs and after being a witness to a crime gone horribly wrong, Tony discovers that people around him are dying, for reasons that make no sense... and which just may implicate him.
Tony is running out of time: to solve the mystery of these deaths, to keep others from dying, and to keep himself from being a victim of what looks like murder, by other means.
The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 2
In the 21st century, fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the ide-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age.
This early novel by the author of CRASH and EMPIRE OF THE SUN is at once a fast paced narrative, a stunning evocation of a flooded, tropical London of the near future and a speculative foray into the workings of the unconscious mind.
The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 4
J. G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants.
The Engines of Light Trilogy: Book 1
Matt Cairns is a 21st-century outlaw Programmer who takes on the shady jobs no one else will touch. Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.
Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.
Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe.
The Extinction Files: Book 1
A hundred miles north of Alaska, a US Coast Guard vessel discovers a sunken submarine at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. It has no national identification and doesn't match the records of any known vessel. Deep within, researchers find evidence of a scientific experiment that will rewrite our basic understanding of the human race.
In Atlanta, Dr. Peyton Shaw is awakened by the phone call she has dreaded for years. As the CDC's leading epidemiologist, she's among the first responders to outbreaks around the world. It's a lonely and dangerous job, but it's her life--and she's good at it. This time, she may have met her match.
In Kenya, an Ebola-like pathogen has infected two Americans. One lies at death's door. With the clock ticking, Peyton assembles her team and joins personnel from the Kenyan Ministry of Health and the WHO. What they find in the remote village is beyond their worst fears. As she traces the origin of the pathogen, Peyton begins to believe that there is more to this outbreak--that it may be merely the opening act in a conspiracy with far reaching consequences.
In Berlin, Desmond Hughes awakens in a hotel room with no memory of how he got there or who he is. On the floor, he finds a dead security guard from an international pharmaceutical company. His only clue leads him to Peyton Shaw--a woman who seems to know him, but refuses to tell him how. With the police searching the city for him, Desmond desperately tries to piece together what happened to him. To his shock and horror, he learns that he may be involved in causing the outbreak--and could hold the only key to stopping it.
As the pathogen spreads around the world, Peyton and Desmond race to unravel the conspiracy behind the pandemic--and uncover secrets some want to keep buried. With time running out, they face an unimaginable decision.
The Extinction Files: Book 2
In 2003, the first human genome was sequenced. It was a breakthrough of historic proportions, but only one scientist knows the full truth of what lies buried in our DNA. That secret will change everything we thought we knew about our past. And our future.
Dr. Paul Kraus has spent his career searching for what he calls humanity's lost tribes--human ancestors who have gone extinct. When Kraus compares the DNA samples of the lost tribes with our own, he discovers a pattern of changes. A code. He believes he knows what the code is, but the technology doesn't exist to fully decode it. To protect the secret, Kraus hides his work and disappears.
For years, the secret remains buried. When Kraus dies mysteriously, his work is lost forever.
Now the technology exists to finally unravel the code buried in the human genome. The race to find Kraus's research has begun, and one group will do anything to find it.
Dr. Peyton Shaw and her mother have obtained part of Kraus's research--and a cryptic message that could lead to the remaining pieces. They soon learn that finding those pieces may be more dangerous than anyone imagined. But there's no choice. His work is the key to stopping a global conspiracy--and an event that will change humanity forever.
The ultimate secret, buried in the human genome, will change our very understanding of what it means to be human. For Peyton, finding it may come at an incredible price. She must weigh the lives of strangers against those she loves: Desmond Hughes and her mother. With time running out, Peyton makes a fateful choice--one that can never be undone.
The Fractured Europe Sequence: Book 1
Rudi is a cook in a Kraków restaurant, but when his boss asks Rudi to help a cousin escape from the country he's trapped in, a new career - part spy, part people-smuggler - begins. Following multiple economic crises and a devastating flu pandemic, Europe has fractured into countless tiny nations, duchies, polities and republics. Recruited by the shadowy organisation Les Coureurs des Bois, Rudi is schooled in espionage, but when a training mission to The Line, a sovereign nation consisting of a trans-Europe railway line, goes wrong, he is arrested and beaten, and Coureur Central must attempt a rescue.
With so many nations to work in, and identities to assume, Rudi is kept busy travelling across Europe. But when he is sent to smuggle someone out of Berlin and finds a severed head inside a locker instead, a conspiracy begins to wind itself around him. With kidnapping, double-crosses and a map that constantly re-draws itself, Europe in Autumn is a science fiction thriller like no other.
The Fractured Europe Sequence: Book 3
Union has come. The Community is now the largest nation in Europe; trains run there from as far afield as London and Prague. It is an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. So what is the reason for a huge terrorist outrage? Why do the Community and Europe meet in secret, exchanging hostages? And who are Les Coureurs des Bois? Along with a motley crew of strays and mafiosi and sleeper agents, Rudi sets out to answer these questions -- only to discover that the truth lies both closer to home and farther away than anyone could possibly imagine.
The Grand Illusion: Book 1
Industrialization. Social unrest. Underground movements. Government corruption and surveillance.
Something is about to give.
Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage of people who are immune to the projections of empaths. As an isolate, he has been trained as a security specialist and he and his security partner Avraal Ysella, a highly trained empath are employed by Axel Obreduur, a senior Craft Minister and the de facto political strategist of his party.
When a respected Landor Councilor dies of "heart failure" at a social event, because of his political friendship with Obreduur, Dekkard and Ysella find that not only is their employer a target, but so are they, in a covert and deadly struggle for control of the government and economy.
Steffan is about to understand that everything he believed is an illusion.
The Grand Tour: Book 1
Two hundred thousand feet up, things go horribly wrong. An experimental low-orbit spaceplane breaks up on reentry, falling to earth over a trail hundreds of miles long. And it its wake is the beginning of the most important mission in the history of space.
America needs energy, and Dan Randolph is determined to give it to them. He dreams of an array of geosynchronous powersats, satellites which gather solar energy and beam it to generators on Earth, freeing America from its addiction to fossil fuels and breaking the power of the oil cartels forever. But the wreck of the spaceplane has left his company, Astro Manufacturing, on the edge of bankruptcy.
Worse, Dan discovers that the plane worked perfectly right up until the moment that saboteurs knocked it out of the sky. And whoever brought it down is willing and able to kill again to keep Astro grounded.
Now Dan has to thread a dangerous maze. The visible threats are bad enough: Rival firms want to buy him out and take control of his dreams. His former lover wants to co-opt his unlimited-energy idea as a campaign plank for the candidate she's grooming for the presidency. NASA and the FAA want to shut down his maverick firm. And his creditors are breathing down his neck.
Making matters even more dangerous, an international organization of terrorists sees the powersat as a threat to their own oil-based power. And they've figured out how to use it as a weapon in their war against the West.
A sweeping mix of space, murder, romance, politics, secrets, and betrayal, Powersat will take you to the edge of space and the dawning of a new world.
The Grand Tour: Book 17
The surface of Venus is the most hellish place in the solar system. The ground is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is so high it has crushed spacecraft landers as though they were tin cans. The sky is perpetually covered with clouds of sulfuric acid. The atmosphere is a choking mixture of carbon dioxide and poisonous gases.
This is where Van Humphries must go. Or die trying.
His older brother perished in the first attempt to land a man on Venus, years before, and his father had always hated Van for surviving when his brother died. Now his father is offering a ten billion dollar prize to the first person to land on Venus and return his oldest son's remains.
To everyone's surprise, Van takes up the offer. But what Van Humphries will find on Venus will change everything--our understanding of Venus, of global warming on Earth, and his knowledge of who he is.
The House of the Scorpion: Book 1
Matteo Alacrán was not born; he was harvested.
His DNA came from El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium--a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt's first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster--except for El Patrón. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.
As Matt struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patrón's power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacrán Estate is no guarantee of freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn't even suspect.
The Hunger Games: Book 1
Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated.
As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games." The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat's sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place.
The Hunger Games: Book 2
Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.
The Lightspeed Trilogy: Book 1
When a brilliant scientist gets a letter from herself about faster-than-light travel, she doesn't know what to believe. The equations work, but her paper is discredited - and soon the criticism is more than scientific. Exiled by the establishment, she gets an offer to build her starship from an unlikely source. But in the heights of Venus and on a planet of another star, a secret is already being uncovered that will shake humanity to its foundations.
The Lightspeed Trilogy: Book 2
THE FERMI ARE AWAKE...
The invention of faster-than-light technology has brought great opportunity, but also great danger.
The Black Horizon conspiracy is broken up, but it still has deadly assets beyond the reach of Earth. As the great powers jostle for advantage, the alien minds known as the Fermi have their own ways of dealing with humans meddling in plans vaster and more ancient than anyone can suspect.
After the Venus catastrophe, John Grant's starship Fighting Chance and the Space Station have reached Apis--but not for long. They barely have time to mourn the dead before they're chased out of the system. The Station begins exploring the systems Black Horizon warned them against--with good reason, as they soon discover.
On Apis, Alliance agent Marcus Owen has a new mission: to communicate with the alien intelligences in the rocks, and to stop anyone else from getting to them first. Everyone knows he's a spy, but he's not going to let that cramp his style. But the scientists investigating the rock find that the Fermi may not be the only alien intelligence on Apis...
The Lightspeed Trilogy: Book 3
Humanity has taken to the stars, using faster-than-light travel to reach distant planets and new worlds. But in the far reaches of the galaxy, John Grant will discover a planet of humans who believe he has travelled not only through space to find them, but time.
On Apis, the mysterious Fermi appear to have vanished, taking with them knowledge of the universe that humanity desires. But Marcus Owen, the robot AI now plagued with sentience, knows that the Fermi would not easily abandon the native life of Apis, and that they won't take kindly to mankind asserting dominance on a world that does not belong to them.
The Long Earth: Book 1
NORMALLY, WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO, HE LISTENED TO THE SILENCE.
The Silence was very faint here. Almost drowned out by the sounds of the mundane world. Did people in this polished building understand how noisy it was? The roar of air conditioners and computer fans, the susurration of many voices heard but not decipherable.... This was the office of the transEarth Institute, an arm of the Black Corporation. The faceless office, all plasterboard and chrome, was dominated by a huge logo, a chesspiece knight. This wasn't Joshua's world. None of it was his world. In fact, when you got right down to it, he didn't have a world; he had all of them.
ALL OF THE LONG EARTH.
The Neanderthal Parallax: Book 1
Hominids is a strong, stand-alone SF novel, but it's also the first book of The Neanderthal Parallax, a trilogy that will examine two unique species of people. They are alien to each other, yet bound together by the never-ending quest for knowledge and, beneath their differences, a common humanity. We are one of those species, the other is the Neanderthals of a parallel world where they, not Homo sapiens, became the dominant intelligence. In that world, Neanderthal civilization has reached heights of culture and science comparable to our own, but is very different in history, society, and philosophy.
During a risky experiment deep in a mine in Canada, Ponter Boddit, a Neanderthal physicist, accidentally pierces the barrier between worlds and is transferred to our universe, where in the same mine another experiment is taking place. Hurt, but alive, he is almost immediately recognized as a Neanderthal, but only much later as a scientist. He is captured and studied, alone and bewildered, a stranger in a strange land. But Ponter is also befriended-by a doctor and a physicist who share his questing intelligence and boundless enthusiasm for the world's strangeness, and especially by geneticist Mary Vaughan, a lonely woman with whom he develops a special rapport.
Meanwhile, Ponter's partner, Adikor Huld, finds himself with a messy lab, a missing body, suspicious people all around, and an explosive murder trial that he can't possibly win because he has no idea what actually happened. Talk about a scientific challenge!
Contact between humans and Neanderthals creates a relationship fraught with conflict, philosophical challenge, and threat to the existence of one species or the other-or both-but equally rich in boundless possibilities for cooperation and growth on many levels, from the practical to the esthetic to the scientific to the spiritual. In short, Robert J. Sawyner has done it again.
The Origin Mystery: Book 1
The greatest mystery of all time... the history of human origins... will be revealed.
Seventy thousand years ago, the human race almost went extinct. We survived, but no one knows how.
Until now.
The countdown to the next stage of human evolution is about to begin, and humanity might not survive this time.
The Immari are good at keeping secrets. For 2,000 years, they've hidden the truth about human evolution. They've also searched for an ancient enemy - a threat that could wipe out the human race. Now the search is over.
Off the coast of Antarctica, a research vessel discovers a mysterious structure buried deep in an iceberg. It has been there for thousands of years, and something is guarding it. As the Immari rush to execute their plan, a brilliant geneticist makes a discovery that could change everything.
Dr. Kate Warner moved to Jakarta, Indonesia to escape her past. She hasn't recovered from what happened to her, but she has made an incredible breakthrough: a cure for autism. Or so she thinks. What she has found is far more dangerous - for her and the entire human race. Her work could be the key to the next stage of human evolution. In the hands of the Immari, it would mean the end of humanity as we know it.
Agent David Vale has spent 10 years trying to stop the Immari. Now he's out of time. His informant is dead. His organization has been infiltrated. His enemy is hunting him. But when David receives a coded message related to the Immari attack, he risks everything to save the one person that can help him solve it: Dr. Kate Warner.
Together, Kate and David must race to unravel a global conspiracy and learn the truth about the Atlantis Gene...and human origins. Their journey takes them to the far corners of the globe and into the secrets of their pasts. The Immari are close on their heels and will stop at nothing to obtain Kate's research and force the next stage of human evolution - even if it means killing 99.9% of the world's population. David and Kate can stop them... if they can trust each other. And stay alive.
The Parable Series: Book 1
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren's father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren's family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
The Parable Series: Book 2
As America rebuilds itself, bigotry threatens a peaceful haven.
Lauren Olamina was only eighteen when her family was killed, and anarchy encroached on her Southern California home. She fled the war zone for the hope of quiet and safety in the north. There she founded Acorn, a peaceful community based on a religion of her creation, called Earthseed, whose central tenet is that God is change. Five years later, Lauren has married a doctor and given birth to a daughter. Acorn is beginning to thrive. But outside the tranquil group's walls, America is changing for the worse.
Presidential candidate Andrew Steele Jarret wins national fame by preaching a return to the values of the American golden age. To his marauding followers, who are identified by their crosses and black robes, this is a call to arms to end religious tolerance and racial equality-a brutal doctrine they enforce by machine gun. And as this band of violent extremists sets its deadly sights on Earthseed, Acorn is plunged into a harrowing fight for its very survival.
The Patternist: Book 3
In a frightening near future, an alien disease is poised to become a devastating global epidemic - unless someone can stop it.
Blake Maslin and his two daughters are driving to Flagstaff when bandits swarm their car. At gunpoint, the marauders kidnap one of Blake's children, promising to keep her safe in return for medical care. Warily, the doctor goes with them, not realizing that he has just taken the first step down a terrifying path that will consume his life.
The gunmen take him deep into the desert, to a colony of people infected with a gruesome alien disease. It causes weakness, sallow skin, and birth defects so horrible that the children who suffer them cannot rightly be called human. The victims have quarantined themselves in the desert lest their illness spread and doom mankind. But as their willingness to accept isolation falters, Blake becomes the last hope for the survival of an uncontaminated Earth.
The Persona Sequence: Book 1
In a world where diplomacy has become celebrity, a young ambassador survives an assassination attempt and must join with an undercover paparazzo in a race to save her life, spin the story, and secure the future of her young country in this near-future political thriller from the acclaimed author of Mechanique and The Girls at Kingfisher Club.
When Suyana, Face of the United Amazonia Rainforest Confederation, is secretly meeting Ethan of the United States for a date that can solidify a relationship for the struggling UARC, the last thing she expected was an assassination attempt. Daniel, a teen runaway turned paparazzi out for his big break, witnesses the first shot hit Suyana, and before he can think about it, he jumps into the fray, telling himself it's not altruism, it's the scoop. Now Suyana and Daniel are on the run--and if they don't keep one step ahead, they'll lose it all.
Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Stellar #2 (1976) edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:
The story is included in the collections:
The story was later expanded into the novel The Positronic Man (1992), written in collaboration with Robert Silverberg. It has been turned into a movie starring Robin Williams.
The Positronic Robot Stories: Book 4
From the writer whose name is synonymous with the science of robotics comes five decades of robot visions-36 landmark stories and essays, plus three rare tales-gathered together in one volume .
The Prisoner: Book 1
He's a top-level agent, highly skilled and ultra-secret. But he wants out, and they won't let him quit. He quits anyway. Then suddenly comes the dawn when he wakes up in captivity, in a pleasant, old-style seaside town - one packed solid with electronic surveillance hardware.
This is The Village. And he is The Prisoner. If he was good enough, sharp enough to be a top-flight cloak-and-dagger man, is he good enough to escape the men who've chained his life to the wall?
The Prisoner: Book 2
Home Sweet Home -- is the village?
The man known as "Number 6" had been a top-level secret agent-until he had suddenly and mysterious resigned from his post. Then, just as inexplicably, he had been kidnapped and help prisoner in a bizzare old-fashioned Village where electronic eyes monitored his every move.
Time after time he had escaped, but each time he had been brought back. Yet he still persisted in his attempts to be a free man, for he had a force of will and an ingenuity that his captors had never seen before. How long could they hold him there?
Unless... unless, somehow, The Prisoner might come to enjoy life in his prison....
The Prisoner #3: A Day in the Life
The Prisoner: Book 3
"Number 6" had a chance to destroy the Village... if that was really possible...
In the Village there is:
A beach, a theater, a tennis court and an underground chamber from which mysterious men monitor every move.
Each day is like another in the Village:
A trip to the grocer's, a conversation with a Number, an escape attempt...
The Village -- a sinister Disneyland for people who know too much about critical government projects and so can never be set free.
And YOU are there.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
The Road to Nowhere: Book 1
The apocalypse will be asymmetrical.
In the aftermath of a plague that has decimated the world population, the unnamed midwife confronts a new reality in which there may be no place for her. Indeed, there may be no place for any woman except at the end of a chain. A radical rearrangement is underway. With one woman left for every ten men, the landscape that the midwife travels is fraught with danger. She must reach safety -- but is it safer to go it alone or take a chance on humanity? The friends she makes along the way will force her to choose what's more important. Civilization stirs from the ruins, taking new and experimental forms. The midwife must help a new world come into being, but birth is always dangerous... and what comes of it is beyond anyone's control.
The Road to Nowhere: Book 3
In this Philip K. Dick Award-winning series, one woman's unknowable destiny depends on a bold new step in human evolution.
In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy.
Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world. They seek refuge aboard a ship where gender is fluid, where the dynamic is uneasy, and where rumors flow of a bold new reproductive strategy.
When the promise of a miraculous hope for humanity's future tears Flora's makeshift family asunder, she must choose: protect the safe haven she's built or risk everything to defy oppression, whatever its provenance.
The Sleepless: Book 1
Born in 2008, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent... and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep.
Once she and "her kind" were considered interesting anomalies. Now they are outcasts - victims of blind hatred, political repression and shocking mob violence meant to drive the "Sleepless" from human society... and, ultimately, from the Earth itself.M
But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her "gift" - a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom... and revenge.
The Spin Sequence: Book 1
One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.
The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.
Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.
Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun--and report back on what they find.
Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.
Nebula- and Locus-winning Novella
"Born With the Dead" by Robert Silverberg tells the story of a man whose wife is among the rekindled dead now. He's heard that she is on a plane to Zanzibar with five other rekindled dead. As a "warm", he is not really allowed to make contact with her. The dead like to stay in their cold-cities. But he'd loved her so much when she was alive, he just has to try! This novella was nominated for every major science fiction award when it was originally published in 1974, winning the Nebula and Locus awards.
"Quicken", a novella by Australian author Damien Broderick, uses Robert Silverberg's original novella as a starting point for a brilliant leap into the far future, widening the scope and tenor of the original story by revisiting some of its subtler implications.
The Stellar Guild: Book 5
Nebula-nominated Novella
"Annabel Lee" by Nancy Kress:
Set in the near future, this story gives us a world increasingly hostile to new ideas as religious fundamentalism dictates social agenda, and where the primary use of science is to bolster these very same uncompromising attitudes.
This is a world we can imagine very easily, since the author takes us down the sliding slope very gently. Years pass, and attitudes change a little bit here... and a little bit there... until the cumulative impact of these cultural changes becomes a thought-controlling nightmare.
Annabel Lee is a child of this society, but unique. She has been infected by a long-dormant alien parasite. But this "infection" may be the only hope for the world - if she can survive long enough.
The companion novelette "Strange Attraction" by Therese Pieczynski predates Kress' world and takes us to back to 1980s Nicaragua, where a strange demon lurks.
The Stellar Guild: Book 7
Loosely based on Larry Niven's 1973 novella "Flash Crowd," Red Tide continues to examine the social consequences of the impact of having instantaneous teleportation, where humans can instantly travel long distances in milliseconds.
"Red Tide", by Larry Niven, is an updated version of his 1973 novella "Flash Crowd", about the social consequences of inventing an instant, practically free transfer booth that can take one anywhere on Earth in milliseconds.
One consequence not foreseen by the builders of the system was that with the almost immediate reporting of newsworthy events, tens of thousands of people worldwide - along with criminals - would teleport to the scene of anything interesting, thus creating disorder and confusion. The plot centers around a television journalist who, after being fired for his inadvertent role in inciting a post-robbery riot in Los Angeles, decides to independently investigate the teleportation system for the flaws in its design allowing for such spontaneous riots to occur.
"Dial at Random", a companion novelette also by Niven, steps back in time to when the new, experimental long-distance teleportation system is being tested by its inventor. Something goes terribly awry, and a teenage girl is subjected to a bizarre journey.
"Sparky the Dog" a novelette by Brad R. Torgersen, ties the lives of the journalist and inventor together with a flashback to the early days of the teleportation experiments, when the inventor and his dog went on a wild adventure.
"Displacement Activity" a novelette by Matthew J. Harrington, relates the story of a man accidentally teleported far across the galaxy, where he must adapt into a distant future society where humans are not much better than slaves.
Teleportation is a theme that has fascinated Niven throughout his career and even appears in his seminal work Ringworld, where the central character celebrates his birthday by instantly teleporting himself to different time zones, extending his birthday. Niven also discusses the impact of such instantaneous transportation in an included essay, "Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation."
The Themis Files: Book 1
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
Seventeen years later, the mystery of the bizarre artifact remains unsolved--its origins, architects, and purpose unknown. Its carbon dating defies belief; military reports are redacted; theories are floated, then rejected.
But some can never stop searching for answers.
Rose Franklin is now a highly trained physicist leading a top secret team to crack the hand's code. And along with her colleagues, she is being interviewed by a nameless interrogator whose power and purview are as enigmatic as the provenance of the relic. What's clear is that Rose and her compatriots are on the edge of unraveling history's most perplexing discovery--and figuring out what it portends for humanity. But once the pieces of the puzzle are in place, will the result prove to be an instrument of lasting peace or a weapon of mass destruction?
The Themis Files: Book 2
As a child, Rose Franklin made an astonishing discovery: a giant metallic hand, buried deep within the earth. As an adult, she's dedicated her brilliant scientific career to solving the mystery that began that fateful day: Why was a titanic robot of unknown origin buried in pieces around the world? Years of investigation have produced intriguing answers -- and even more perplexing questions. But the truth is closer now than ever before when a second robot, more massive than the first, materializes and lashes out with deadly force.
Now humankind faces a nightmare invasion scenario made real, as more colossal machines touch down across the globe. But Rose and her team at the Earth Defense Corps refuse to surrender. They can turn the tide if they can unlock the last secrets of an advanced alien technology. The greatest weapon humanity wields is knowledge in a do-or-die battle to inherit the Earth... and maybe even the stars.
Sturgeon Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2005. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois, Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 (2006) edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (2007), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. It is included in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories (2008) and is included as an extra in some editions of the novel The Windup Girl (2009).
What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.
Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 2006. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One (2007), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories (2008) and as an extra in some editions of the novel The Windup Girl (2009).
The WWW Trilogy: Book 1
Caitlin Decter is young, pretty, feisty, a genius at math-and blind. Still, she can surf the net with the best of them, following its complex paths clearly in her mind. But Caitlin's brain long ago co-opted her primary visual cortex to help her navigate online. So when she receives an implant to restore her sight, instead of seeing reality, the landscape of the World Wide Web explodes into her consciousness, spreading out all around her in a riot of colors and shapes. While exploring this amazing realm, she discovers something-some other-lurking in the background. And it's getting more and more intelligent with each passing day...
The WWW Trilogy: Book 3
"A writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation" (New York Times) concludes his mindbending trilogy.
Webmind-the vast consciousness that spontaneously emerged from the infrastructure of the World Wide Web-has proven its worth to humanity by aiding in everything from curing cancer to easing international tensions. But the brass at the Pentagon see Webmind as a threat that needs to be eliminated.
Caitlin Decter-the once-blind sixteen-year-old math genius who discovered, and bonded with, Webmind-wants desperately to protect her friend. And if she doesn't act, everything-Webmind included-may come crashing down.
Three Californias: Book 1
2047: For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet be--and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.
Three Californias: Book 2
2027: Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad, an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent in to the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.
The Gold Coast is the second novel in Robinson's Three Californias trilogy.
Three Californias: Book 3
2065: In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.
Thunder and Lightning: Book 1
In the highly anticipated new novel by John Varley, "one of the genre's most accomplished storytellers" (Publishers Weekly), a manned mission to Mars becomes a personal mission for an unlikely bunch of astronauts: seven suburban misfits who have constructed a spaceship built out of old tanker cars and held together with all-American ambition. They call her Red Thunder. They plan to be the first people on the Red Planet...despite China's big head start. If it didn't sound so crazy, it would be history in the making...
Time and Again: Book 2
The New York Times Bestseller -- Jack Finney's long-awaited sequel to his classic illustrated novel Time and Again.
Simon Morley, whose logic-defying trip to the New York City of the 1880s in Time and Again has enchanted readers for twenty-five years, embarks on another trip across the borders of time. This time Reuben Prien at the secret, government-sponsored Project wants Si to leave his home in the 1880s and visit New York in 1912. Si's mission: to protect a man who is traveling across the Atlantic with vital documents that could avert World War I. So one fateful day in 1912, Si finds himself aboard the world's most famous ship... the Titanic.
To the Stars (Leinster): Book 1
Space Platform tells the story of Joe Kenmore, who dreamed of Man's conquest of space and played a small but essential role in making this dream a reality. Joe helped make the gyros in his father's factory for the Space Platform that was to orbit around the Earth.
Space Platform is available to read free from Project Gutenberg.
To the Stars (Leinster): Book 2
Space Tug is one of those many sci-fi novels from the 1950s which tried to give a practical, realistic rendering of the problems of concerns of rocket flight into space - dealing with the physical strains of the G-force during lift-off, overcoming the disorientating effects of weightlessness (the astronauts wear magnetic-soked shoes like in 2001: A Space Odyssey), growing vegetables in a hydroponic farm on a space station, etc.
Space Tug is available to read free from Project Gutenberg
Tomorrow: Book 1
Seventeen-year-old Ellie Linton wants one final adventure with her friends before the school holidays are over. Packed in Ellie's parents' land rover they drive to the famously isolated rock pool Eden dubbed 'Hell' by the locals. Returning to their home town of Wirrawee, the seven teenagers realize that something is seriously wrong. Power to the houses has been cut, pets and livestock have been left dead or dying, and most alarmingly of all, everyone's family has vanished. When the hostile armed forces discover that the teenagers are lying low in the vicinity, Ellie and her friends must band together to escape, outwit and strike back against the mysterious enemy that has seized control of their town and imprisoned their friends and loved ones...
Tomorrow: Book 2
Seventeen-year-old Ellie and her friends have survived the invasion, but two of their band are captured: Kevin is imprisoned and Corrie is alive, but in a coma. Homer and Ellie are determined to get them back and to continue their campaign against the enemy. They discover that there are other rebels out there, fighting the invaders - but who are they and can they be trusted? As the pressure grows, can Ellie work out her conflicted feelings for the brilliant, arrogant Homer and the strong, gentle Lee? As war rages, and the enemy closes in, Ellie and her friends must once again fight for their lives... but how many of their band will be left?
A truly involving story about teenagers facing the incredible challenges of warfare, amid the intensity of first love. Would you sacrifice everything to save your country and your family?
Tomorrow: Book 3
Ellie and her friends, an unarmed bunch of amateur teen fighters, have achieved more than they ever thought possible. But it's not enough. The war wages on, their families are in captivity and their country is on its knees. Hiding back in Hell, the friends face a big question: what to do next?
The gang have another success when they manage to rescue Kevin. He returns to them equipped with a new knowledge of explosives. Suddenly the question of what to do next becomes clear - launch an attack on the major enemy target of Cobblers' Bay.
Can Ellie, Homer, Fi, Robin, Lee and Kevin really stage a major military attack on the enemy? And in their attempt to pull it off, what will they have to sacrifice? They have already lost Corrie and Chris; who else will the group have to lose in their desperation to defend their country?
The Third Day, The Frost, draws the reader deeper into the struggle of these ordinary teens attempting to survive in extraordinary times. It is a tense and moving read that will stay with you forever.
Tomorrow: Book 4
Darkness is the friend and enemy of those who hunt by night.
Ellie and her friends have found safety after months of fighting. But the New Zealand Defence Force needs their help to infiltrate occupied Australian territory.
And so the friends must fight on.
Tomorrow: Book 5
If only our country hadn't been invaded. If only we could have carried on the way we used to, watching other people wars on television.
Book 5 of The Tomorrow Series. Ellie and her friends are more determined than ever to make an impact on the enemy. But the constant fighting is beginning to take its toll on the group. Kevin is suffering an emotional breakdown, and the friendship that has kept the gang together for so long is under strain. And while there is no time for love in a time of war, Ellie can't forget her feelings for Lee...
A tale of relentless action and gripping intensity from one of the world's best storytellers.
Tomorrow: Book 6
A year of war. A year of terror. And a year of loss.
Twelve months have passed since the invasion. Ellie has lost friends, she has taken many lives and she is still as disgusted by violence as she is determined to stand up to the invaders.
Now the friends find themselves back in their sanctuary of Hell, caring for a band of feral children whose lives have been destroyed by the war. Meanwhile, the conflict intensifies and the enemy draws closer...
Tomorrow: Book 7
The war is at a turning point. The enemy is growing weaker, and more desperate. And so is Ellie.
As the conflict intensifies around her, she is captured and separated from her friends.
Overwhelmed by all she has lost, Ellie wonders if she has the strength to survive the final conflict - and if she can live with the consequences of everything she has done.
An action-packed adventure and an unforgettable exploration of the emotional impact of war.
Travis Chase Trilogy: Book 1
Thirty years ago, in a facility buried beneath a vast Wyoming emptiness, an experiment gone awry accidentally opened a door.
It is the world's best-kept secret—and its most terrifying.
Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the President of the United States. Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact.
Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for—a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope—as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest.
Because something is loose in the world.
Ty Merrick: Book 2
When three members of a secret sect called the Opalite are found murdered, Ty Merrick, a female detective and lycanthrope, must venture into the dark fringes of a corrupt society, a place where the normal and the supernatural collide, to uncover the truth.
Ty Merrick: Book 5
Medical miracle, alien murder, or ultimate mind game? Those are the questions District Marshal Ty Merrick wants to answer when an abandoned uranium mine becomes the scene of miraculous healing, eerie hallucinations, and homicide.
UFO: Book 1
Code name SHADO. The most secret, sophisticated -- and important -- group on Earth. Only they know that mankind is under attack by a hostile intelligence from outer space.
A silent, invisible invasion by deadly aliens, bent on conquest and extermination. And SHADO's mission is to seek, find, and destroy the un-humans.
Why are the aliens kidnapping humans? SHADO has to know fast. They think they've scored when they capture an alien alive. But when he dies, the mission of the un-human invaders becomes horrifyingly clear...
UFO: Book 2
Code name SHADO. The most secret, sophisticated -- and important -- group on Earth. Only they know that mankind is under attack by a hostile intelligence from outer space.
A silent, invisible invasion by deadly aliens, bent on conquest and extermination. And SHADO's mission is to seek, find, and destroy the un-humans.
Are the aliens un-human invaders, or new friends? Should humanity make welcome or war? SHADO can't afford to guess wrong -- the stakes are the survival of the human race.
Unwind Dystology: Book 1
The first twisted and futuristic novel in the perennially popular New York Times bestselling Unwind dystology by Neal Shusterman.
In America after the Second Civil War, the Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies came to an agreement: The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, a parent may choose to retroactively get rid of a child through a process called "unwinding." Unwinding ensures that the child's life doesn't "technically" end by transplanting all the organs in the child's body to various recipients. Now a common and accepted practice in society, troublesome or unwanted teens are able to easily be unwound.
With breathtaking suspense, this book follows three teens who all become runaway Unwinds: Connor, a rebel whose parents have ordered his unwinding; Risa, a ward of the state who is to be unwound due to cost-cutting; and Lev, his parents' tenth child whose unwinding has been planned since birth as a religious tithing. As their paths intersect and lives hang in the balance, Shusterman examines complex moral issues that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.
Unwind Dystology: Book 2
Rife with action and suspense, this riveting companion to the perennially popular Unwind challenges assumptions about where life begins and ends--and what it means to live.
Thanks to Connor, Lev, and Risa--and their high-profile revolt at Happy Jack Harvest Camp--people can no longer turn a blind eye to unwinding. Ridding society of troublesome teens while simltaneously providing much-needed organs for transplanting might be convenient, but its morality has finally been brought into question. However, unwinding has become big business, and there are powerful political and corporate interests that want to see it not only continue, but also expand to the unwinding of prisoners and the impoverished.
Cam is made entirely out of the parts of other unwinds; he is a teen who does not technically exist. A futuristic Frankenstein, Cam struggles to find identity and meaning and wonders if a rewound being can have a soul. And when the actions of a sadistic bounty hunter cause Cam's fate to become inextricably bound with the fates of Connor, Risa, and Lev, he'll have to question humanity itself.
Varcolac: Book 1
Jacob Kelley's family is turned upside down when an old friend turns up, waving a gun and babbling about an alien quantum intelligence. The mystery deepens when the friend is found dead in an underground bunker... apparently murdered the night he appeared at Jacob's house. Jacob is arrested for the murder and put on trial.
As the details of the crime slowly come to light, the weave of reality becomes ever more tangled, twisted by a miraculous new technology and a quantum creature unconstrained by the normal limits of space and matter. With the help of his daughter, Alessandra, Jacob must find the true murderer before the creature destroys his family and everything he loves.
Varcolac: Book 2
Ryan Oronzi is a paranoid, neurotic, and brilliant physicist who has developed a quantum military technology that could make soldiers nearly invincible in the field. The technology, however, gives power to the quantum creature known as the varcolac, which slowly begins to manipulate Dr. Oronzi and take over his mind. Oronzi eventually becomes the unwilling pawn of the varcolac in its bid to control the world.
The creature immediately starts attacking those responsible for defeating it fifteen years earlier, including Sandra and Alex Kelley--the two versions of Alessandra Kelley who are still living as separate people. The two young women must fight the varcolac, despite the fact that defeating it may mean resolving once again into a single person.
Warcross: Book 1
For the millions who log in every day, Warcross isn't just a game--it's a way of life. The obsession started ten years ago and its fan base now spans the globe, some eager to escape from reality and others hoping to make a profit. Struggling to make ends meet, teenage hacker Emika Chen works as a bounty hunter, tracking down Warcross players who bet on the game illegally. But the bounty-hunting world is a competitive one, and survival has not been easy. To make some quick cash, Emika takes a risk and hacks into the opening game of the international Warcross Championships--only to accidentally glitch herself into the action and become an overnight sensation.
Convinced she's going to be arrested, Emika is shocked when instead she gets a call from the game's creator, the elusive young billionaire Hideo Tanaka, with an irresistible offer. He needs a spy on the inside of this year's tournament in order to uncover a security problem... and he wants Emika for the job. With no time to lose, Emika's whisked off to Tokyo and thrust into a world of fame and fortune that she's only dreamed of. But soon her investigation uncovers a sinister plot, with major consequences for the entire Warcross empire.
In this sci-fi thriller, #1 New York Times bestselling author Marie Lu conjures an immersive, exhilarating world where choosing who to trust may be the biggest gamble of all.
Warcross: Book 2
Emika Chen barely made it out of the Warcross Championships alive. Now that she knows the truth behind Hideo's new NeuroLink algorithm, she can no longer trust the one person she's always looked up to, who she once thought was on her side.
Determined to put a stop to Hideo's grim plans, Emika and the Phoenix Riders band together, only to find a new threat lurking on the neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Someone's put a bounty on Emika's head, and her sole chance for survival lies with Zero and the Blackcoats, his ruthless crew. But Emika soon learns that Zero isn't all that he seems--and his protection comes at a price.
Caught in a web of betrayal, with the future of free will at risk, just how far will Emika go to take down the man she loves?
Wayward Pines: Book 1
Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels...off.
As the days pass, Ethan's investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can't he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn't anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?
Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact--he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.
White Horse: Book 1
White Horse is the first book in an absolutely unique debut trilogy--a post-apocalyptic thriller chronicling one woman's quest to nurture those she holds dear against the backdrop of a shocking, new world.
The world has ended, but her journey has just begun.
Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals when the president of the United States announces that human beings are no longer a viable species. When Zoe realizes that everyone she loves is disappearing, she starts running. Scared and alone in a shockingly changed world, she embarks on a remarkable journey of survival and redemption. Along the way, Zoe comes to see that humans are defined not by their genetic code, but rather by their actions and choices. White Horse offers hope for a broken world, where love can lead to the most unexpected places.
Worlds: Book 1
At the end of the 21st century, many people believe the only real hope for humanity lies in the Worlds: 41 orbiting satellites housing half a million people. Though the creation of cheap fusion has undermined the Worlds as a source of solar energy, they still welcome many tourists and offer plenty of raw materials for export. For example, New New York is almost pure steel.
And, from that city comes Marianne O'Hara, a brilliant political-science student who has elected to spend a postgraduate year on Earth - where she unwittingly finds herself caught up in a group of fanatics looking to start another revolution in America. Even if it means the destruction of the planet.
Wormwood Trilogy: Book 2
The year is 2067. The city of Rosewater is chaotic, vibrant and full of life - some of it extra-terrestrial.
The charismatic mayor, Jack Jacques, has declared Rosewater a free state, independent to Nigeria. But the city's alien dome is dying. Government forces await its demise, ready to destroy Rosewater's independence before it has even begun.
And in the city's quiet suburbs, a woman wakes with no memory of who she is - with memories belonging to something much older and much more alien.
Wormwood Trilogy: Book 3
Life in the newly independent city state of Rosewater isn't everything its citizens were expecting...
Mayor Jacques finds that debts incurred during the insurrection are coming back to haunt him. Nigeria isn't willing to let Rosewater go without a fight. And among the city's alien inhabitants, a group has emerged who murder humans to provide bodies for their takeover.
Operating across spacetime, the xenosphere and international borders, it is up to a small group of hackers and criminals to prevent the extraterrestrial advance. The fugitive known as Bicycle Girl, Kaaro and his old handler Femi, may be humanity's last line of defence.
Y: The Last Man: Book 1
Y: THE LAST MAN, winner of three Eisner Awards and one of the most critically acclaimed, best-selling comic books series of the last decade, is that rare example of a page-turner that is at once humorous, socially relevant and endlessly surprising.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan (LOST, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, EX MACHINA) and with art by Pia Guerra, this is the saga of Yorick Brown--the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. Accompanied by a mysterious government agent, a brilliant young geneticist and his pet monkey, Ampersand, Yorick travels the world in search of his lost love and the answer to why he's the last man on earth.
Zer0es: Book 1
An exhilarating thrill-ride through the underbelly of cyber espionage in the vein of David Ignatius's The Director and the television series Leverage, CSI: Cyber, and Person of Interest, which follows five iconoclastic hackers who are coerced into serving the U.S. government.
An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab spring hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an online troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains and skills to work for the government for one year.
But being a white-hat doesn't always mean you work for the good guys. The would-be cyberspies discover that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA program, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an evolution both dangerous and disturbing. And if it's not brought down, will soon be uncontrollable.
Can the hackers escape their federal watchers and confront Typhon and its mysterious creator? And what does the government really want them to do? If they decide to turn the tables, will their own secrets be exposed--and their lives erased like lines of bad code?
Combining the scientific-based, propulsive narrative style of Michael Crichton with the eerie atmosphere and conspiracy themes of The X-Files and the imaginative, speculative edge of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, Zer0es explores our deep-seated fears about government surveillance and hacking in an inventive fast-paced novel sure to earn Chuck Wendig the widespread acclaim he deserves.