Search Worlds Without End

Plucky young Jenny Benet, a recently orphaned American girl who was raised on the Wild West frontier and educated at a Boston finishing school, has come to Egypt in company with her uncle Neville Hawthorne, a prominent British archaeologist. They're part of a team investigating the legendary Buried Pyramid, the tomb of the pharaoh Neferankhotep -- who may also have been Moses the Lawgiver.

But they're not the only ones interested in the site. Another party, led by the opulent and treacherous Lady Audrey Cheshire, is shadowing theirs. Someone who signs himself "The Sphinx" has been sending threatening letters -- written entirely in hieroglyphics. In Egypt, an ancient and shadowy organization seems determined to keep the tomb from being discovered.

But mortals may not be all that stands in their way.

It's bad enough being new on the job, but Teppic hasn't a clue as to what a pharaoh is supposed to do. After all, he's been trained at Ankh-Morpork's famed assassins' school, across the sea from the Kingdom of the Sun.First, there's the monumental task of building a suitable resting place for Dad -- a pyramid to end all pyramids. Then there are the myriad administrative duties, such as dealing with mad priests, sacred crocodiles, and marching mummies. And to top it all off, the adolescent pharaoh discovers deceit, betrayal -- not to mention aheadstrong handmaiden -- at the heart of his realm.

The Illuminati, an inside joke? The lunatic fringe? Or a vast conspiracy hidden for centuries, unleashing it's power on a naive, defenseless world? It was the lousy luck of Saul Goodman, a tough, streetwise New York detective, to smell the trail in a bombed-out office - the heavy case he'd always dreaded. In a breakneck race against an awesome deadline, Goodman plunges down the trail of the ultimate conspiracy as the days fall away toward Apocalypse.

Filled with sex, violence, and rock-and-roll, in and out of time and space, Illuminatus! is only partly a work of the imagination. The trilogy tackles all the cover-ups of our time, from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on the one-dollar bill, and suggests a mind-blowing truth.

When college student Tom Scheffler agrees to care for the luxury Chicago apartment of his great-uncle Montgomery Chapel, he soon realizes that traveler Chapel's apartment contains more than a priceless collection of exquisite Egyptian artifacts. An alternate Egyptian world awaits Tom, a world of ancient gods, uncountable treasure, and danger. A world where revenge will be had. A world very much of interest to a dangerous fugitive and time-traveler named Pilgrim.

An alien pyramid has appeared on Earth, squatting in the middle of Chicago. It is growing, destroying the city as it does--and nothing seems able to stop it, not even the might of the US military. Somehow, the alien device is snatching people and--for unknown reasons--transporting them into worlds of mythology. Dr Lukacs is one of the victims. Granted, he's an expert on mythology. But myths are not something he'd thought to encounter personally. Or wanted to! Sure, he has a couple of tough paratroopers along with him, as well as a blonde Amazon biologist and a very capable maintenance mechanic. Unfortunately, modern weapons don't work, and the Greek gods are out to kill the heroes.

Well, yes, they've got Medea and Arachne and the Sphinx on their side (both Sphinxes, actually--the Greek version as well as the Egyptian). And at least some of the Egyptian gods seem friendly.

But that can be a very mixed blessing, to say the least. Oh, and whatever you do--don't mention dwarf-tossing.

The Pyramid is baacckk! Well, actually, it never went away--but it had seemed to be inactive, still sitting in the middle of Chicago but no longer growing and wiping out buildings as it grew. The Krin device would have been thwarted, if things had been left as they were--but a V.I.P., who knows too many state secrets to be allowed to be missing, was left behind in the world of Greek mythology. So a power-mad Washington bureaucrat has press-ganged several of the survivors of the first excursion into the pyramid's worlds and sent them, along with a team trained in "surgical strikes," to either bring back the V.I.P. or, if that's impossible, terminate him with extreme prejudice.

Unfortunately, instead of returning to mythological Greece, they find themselves in the world of the Norse gods. Even if they manage to survive the enmity of Odin and his warriors, can manage to free Loki (a potential ally) and can keep the hard-drinking thunder-god Thor off the sauce long enough to help them, Ragnarok is coming, with the end of the world. And even a hard-headed maintenance man with his trusty toolkit may have trouble fixing that problem!

Gnat the Devourer is becoming a more prominent figure in grand space politics. Sure, he may not be totally independent yet, but he has enough leeway to be able to differentiate Earth's interests from those of its Geckho suzerains and act exclusively for the good of his own kind.

Gnat must balance obligations to his almighty suzerains against a desire to advance humanity's position in space, and his home planet's search for ever more allies. Although Earth's masters are not big fans of his independent ways, the great war has shifted the historic balance of forces, and the Geckho are no longer as powerful as they once were, leaving them with no choice but to abide the Kung of Earth's antics.

So, will Earth be able to take this chance and free itself from alien control completely? And if so, is it even a good idea?

And that means one of the human leaders will have to back down.

Since their mother's death, Carter and Sadie have become near strangers. While Sadie has lived with her grandparents in London, her brother has traveled the world with their father, the brilliant Egyptologist, Dr Julius Kane.

One night, Dr Kane brings the siblings together for a "research experiment" at the British Museum, where he hopes to set things right for his family. Instead, he unleashes the Egyptian god Set, who banishes him to oblivion and forces the children to flee for their lives.

Soon, Sadie and Carter discover that the gods of Egypt are waking, and the worst of them, Set, has his sights on the Kanes. To stop him, the siblings embark on a dangerous journey across the globe - a quest that brings them ever closer to the truth about their family, and their links to a secret order that has existed since the time of the pharaohs.

The Wizard has swallowed more and more of Europe--and inside his shuttered realm are magic and mass death. The Pyramid of Krakow is the sixth of Michael Swanwick's "Mongolian Wizard" tales.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In a world where lightning sustained the Roman Empire, and Egypt's vampiric god-kings spread their influence through medicine and good weather, tiny Prytennia's fortunes are rising with the ships that have made her undisputed ruler of the air.

But the peace of recent decades is under threat. Rome's automaton-driven wealth is waning along with the New Republic's supply of power crystals, while Sweden uses fear of Rome to add to her Protectorates. And Prytennia is under attack from the wind itself. Relentless daily blasts destroy crops, buildings, and lives, and neither the weather vampires nor Prytennia's Trifold Goddess have been able to find a way to stop them.

With events so grand scouring the horizon, the deaths of Eiliff and Aedric Tenning raise little interest. The official verdict is accident: two careless automaton makers, killed by their own construct.

The Tenning children and Aedric's sister, Arianne, know this cannot be true. Nothing will stop their search for what really happened.

Not even if, to follow the first clue, Aunt Arianne must sell herself to a vampire.