Search Worlds Without End

From the the Shirley Jackson and International Horror Guild Award winning author of THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN, THE TWO SAMS, AMERICAN MORONS, and the Motherless Child Trilogy comes THE JANUS TREE, a collection of dazzling and haunting tales...

* A young girl, lying in the way-back of a station wagon during an all-night family road trip, becomes convinced that the people up front are no longer her parents.

* A dutiful Jewish nephew slowly comes to understand--and fear--his aging aunts' obsession with the exotic animals wandering loose on a nearby farm in suburban Baltimore.

* A Japanese immigrant, isolated in a California mountain town while caring for her dying husband, begins seeing Tall Things in the corners of her house. Whisperers. They tell her they are coming to live in her mouth.

* And in the Shirley Jackson Award-winning title novelette, a decaying mining town in Montana provides the backdrop for a desperate battle between a troubled, pugnacious pre-teen, the bully who has terrorized him, and the much more sinister force neither child realizes has come for them.

Welcome back to Glen Hirshberg country, where griefs are at least as dangerous as ghosts. Where terror and wonder become not just inextricable but often indistinguishable. Where the worlds of imagination and everyday reality color and corrode and sometimes overwhelm each other.

A country surprisingly like your own.

MASK OF THE DAMNED

The despotic Baron Mandrol demands that guests at his grand balls wear masks. Death masks - containing the images and magically trapped ghosts of murdered freedom fighters. Tonight, Mandrol wishes to relive the night when, ten years ago, he killed the heroic sorceror-warrior, Viktor Falsche.

But Viktor - a dead face alchemically grafted to a terrified peasant - somehow comes fully back to life, back to the hour of his failed rebellion. This time he succeeds in escaping the baron, and flees to a monster-hauntedwasteland. He is determined to have vengeance against the despot who killed his sister, kidnapped his lover, and enslaved and slaughtered his people.

He has no idea he's a rogue puppet, a necromantic parasite possessing an innoccent, a demonic mask that is fraying. Or that in only days, Viktor Falsche's reborn sould, memory, hope, and revenge will be mere rags in the gutter, tattered shreds scattered in the wind...

Two planets, Janus Prime and Menda, orbit a Red Giant on the edge of the galaxy. The planets lie diametrically opposite each other on either side of the huge sun -- but where Menda is rich and fertile in the light of the sun, Janus Prime's moon leaves the sun in a constant state of eclipse.

Humans are colonizing the area, and a rival group sets up on Janus Prime via a mysterious transmit system left behind by the planets' former inhabitants. But what is its true purpose?

When the Doctor and Sam arrive they must piece together a centuries-old puzzle. How can Janus Prime's moon weigh billions of tons more than it should? What is the secret purpose of the hyperspatial link? They discover a terrible weapon is hidden in the glowing sands of the planet, one that if it falls into the hands of the warring humans could destroy the galaxy.

THE TWO FACES OF NAILL RENFRO

Impoverished and without hope, Naill Renfro sells himself into indentured servitude, and is transported across the galaxy to the far-off jungle world of Janus. Naill hopes to work off his debt and begin his life again. But the harsh masters of Janus are destroying the priceless treasures of the planet's ancient culture--and when Naill, entranced by the beauty of an alien artifact, is caught trying to hide it, he is exiled and left to die in the jungle.

But Naill inexplicably begins to remember another life, in another time--a time when he was not human, but something else-, a native of this world, in the days before its civilization fell. And he is not the only one.... Embarking on a quest to find his alien heritage, Naill will discover the mysterious source of his strange new memory, and the fate of the others of his kind. And when he does, he will defend his newfound people against the human and alien invaders despoiling their world!

Naill Renfro and his mother were just two members of the flostom that had washed up in the Dipple, the vast refugee camp on Korwar that had taken in the dispossessed of the destroyed worlds, then forgotten about them.

In order to buy his mother the drugs she required end her days in oblivion, if not peace, Naill sold the last thing of worth he had left; himself. He knew the planet Janus would not be a pleasant world, else there would have been no need for indentured labour. But both the service and the planet are living hells, right up to the time Naill found a pretty tangled in the roots of a felled forest giant.

Then he found the true meaning of hell as a disease overwhelmed him, leaving the Garthmen to abandon him to a strange fate as he is transformed into a new form: green skinned Ayyar of Iftcan, a civilisation that had died more years ago than either Naill or Ayyar cared to think of.

The planet Janus was covered in tall jungles and those that were trying to remake the planet in their image found that they needed labourers to help make the world theirs. Unfortunately, there was little to attract those who had other options, so they had to resort to indentured labourers, slaves in all but name. Nor were the labourers treated well. Worked hard when well and abandoned when ill

But Janus had secrets from long dead civilisations and mankind should tred carefully on its new homeworld.

Evildoers beware! Retribution is at hand, thanks to Britain's best-kept secret agents!

Certainly no strangers to peculiar occurrences, agents Wellington Books and Eliza Braun are nonetheless stunned to observe a fellow passenger aboard Britain's latest hypersteam train suddenly vanish in a dazzling bolt of lightning. They soon discover this is not the only such disappearance . . . with each case going inexplicably unexamined by the Crown.

The fate of England is once again in the hands of an ingenious archivist paired with a beautiful, fearless lady of adventure. And though their foe be fiendishly clever, so then is Mr. Books . . . and Miss Braun still has a number of useful and unusual devices hidden beneath her petticoats.

Beam aboard for a bold new era in Star Trek storytelling! Beginning with this thrilling all new trilogy, the original five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise is reimagined via the many valiant crew members who served under legendary command if Capt. James T. Kirk. Who are these exceptional men and women often asked to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of interstellar peace and exploration? What are their stories? Their saga begins in THE JANUS GATE book one of three PRESENT TENSE

The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is exploring the seemingly peaceful and uninhabited world of M-3107 when a bizarre and inexplicable transporter accident causes both Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy to vanish completely. Transporter records suggest that the two men were transported somewhere, but their ultimate destination remains a mystery.

Now in command of the Enterprise, Spock dispatches a search-and -rescue team -- consisting of Security Chief Giotto, Transporter Technician John Kyle, and Chief Helmsman Hikaru Sulu -- on an urgent mission to recover the missing officers.

But then the rescue team disappears as well!

Capt. James T. Kirk's historic voyages have seldom been recorded fro, the vantage point of those who served "below deck" on the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701. This new trilogy reveals the courage and dedication of the men and women who constitute Kirk's crew, as well as the unearthly dangers faced by any who dare to explore the final frontier!

THE JANUS GATE book two of three FUTURE IMPERFECT

On a desperate rescue mission to recover their missing captain, the shuttle Copernicus and its crew have become lost in time and space, transported by a powerful subspace vortex to a hellish future time line where the brutal Gorn Hegemony has all but conquered the United Federation of Planets. Stranded on a transformed Federation colony, now a Gorn mining world worked by oppressed human slaves, Helmsman Hikaru Sulu meets an older version of a man he barely knows, Pavel Chekov, who now leads a ragtag band of freedom fighters against the Gorns.

Teamed together for the first time, Sulu and Chekov must struggle to survive in a future that should never have happened!

Thanks to the accidental triggering of an ancient alien technology, Captain Kirk has been banished to his own past. During a brutal massacre on Tarsus IV, Kodos the Executioner entered the history books as one of the most genocidal tyrants of the twenty-third century. As a boy, Kirk barely survived. Can he stand by now and let it happen again?

Lt. Kevin Riley is the only other survivor of Tarsus IV serving aboard the U.S.S Enterprise. His traumatic memories provide Spock's best hope of finding their time-lost captain - before Kirk alters their time line forever!

The fates of universes aren't the only things time travel can impact. Sometimes the effect is a lot more mundane and closer to home. And when that happens, it's up to the cops of Themis Division to make time turn out right.

It was supposed to be a routine trip for the members of the Gordian Division, both human and AI: fly out to Saturn, inspect the construction of their latest time machines, then fly back.

But when the division's top scientist and chief engineer are killed in the same freak accident, suspicions of foul play run deep. Detective Isaac Cho is sent in to investigate, but he has more on his mind than just a new case. His superiors have saddled him with an exchange officer from the neighboring Admin--Special Agent Susan Cantrell--whose notion of proper "law enforcement" involves blowing up criminals first and skipping questions entirely.

Despite his objections, Cho is stuck with an untested partner on a case that increasingly reeks of murder and conspiracy. The unlikely pair must work together to unravel this mystery, and soon they discover their unique combination of skills might just provide the edge they need.

But nothing is ever simple where the Gordian Division is involved.

Not even time itself.