Search Worlds Without End

Hugo, Nebula and Sturgeon award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2008. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, Best SF of the Year #16 (1987), edited by Terry Carr. The story is included in the collection Strange But Not a Stranger (2002).

2049. Earth's prisons are shut down and all inmates placed in massive hibernation tanks. In the ten years since then, no one has broken out…until now.

When prisoners check into Washington D.C.'s maximum security "sugar cube," they don't check out. Here lie suspended not just the planet's most dangerous criminals, but also half a million so-called "center inmates"—troublesome activists whose only offense is to challenge those in power.

Laurel Cole was one of those inmates—and now she's on the run. After pulling off a meticulously executed escape plan, she and her team must elude the police by descending into the tunnels that run like poisoned veins beneath the city. Pursued by a ruthless mercenary who knows these sewers better than anyone, Laurel seeks help from a group of renegades who live huddled in the fetid darkness. But if she ever hopes to see daylight again—and expose the government's lies—she'll have to go even deeper. . . and the clock is ticking.

THE PRISONER OF HEAVEN returns to the world of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop.

It begins just before Christmas in Barcelona in 1957, one year after Daniel and Bea from THE SHADOW OF THE WIND have married. They now have a son, Julian, and are living with Daniel's father at Sempere & Sons. Fermin still works with them and is busy preparing for his wedding to Bernarda in the New Year. However something appears to be bothering him.

Daniel is alone in the shop one morning when a mysterious figure with a pronounced limp enters. He spots one of their most precious volumes that is kept locked in a glass cabinet, a beautiful and unique illustrated edition of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. Despite the fact that the stranger seems to care little for books, he wants to buy this expensive edition. Then, to Daniel's surprise, the man inscribes the book with the words 'To Fermin Romero de Torres, who came back from the dead and who holds the key to the future'. This visit leads back to a story of imprisonment, betrayal and the return of a deadly rival...

An imprisoned prince. A vengeful queen. And a battle that will determine the future of Elfhame.

Prince Oak is paying for his betrayal. Imprisoned in the icy north and bound to the will of a monstrous new queen, he must rely on charm and calculation to survive. With High King Cardan and High Queen Jude willing to use any means necessary to retrieve their stolen heir, Oak will have to decide whether to attempt regaining the trust of the girl he's always loved or to remain loyal to Elfhame and hand over the means to end her reign - even if it means ending Wren, too?

With a new war looming on the horizon and treachery lurking in every corner, neither Oak's guile nor his wit will be enough to keep everyone he loves alive. It's just a question of whom he will doom.

Kethol is an adventurer with an easy smile, a man who is quick with a quip and quicker with a sword.

His partner, Pirojil, the ugly one, looks impressive and deceives people into thinking he's stupid to their sorrow-for his might and loyalty are worth a kingdom.

And the fledgling wizard Erenor, a man who tries to stay two steps ahead of his enemies, as well as one step ahead of his friends.

Loyal retainers they are, sworn to Jason Cullianane, a man who walked away from a crown, and who has been trying to convince all the almost-warring factions that he doesn't want the job back. Their lives aren't very easy, what with keeping Jason from getting killed by yet another conspiracy, rescuing some damsel or whatnot in distress, and squirreling away something for the ever-diminishing prospect of retirement.

And now it looks like our heroes might wind up succeeding in none of their schemes, for there are plots within plots, and Kethol has been forced into a disguise not of his own making. There is magic aplenty in the air (and on the ground), and in order to save a kingdom, they may have to pull off a complicated scheme that could kill them all--or land them in positions of supreme power.

But, hey, whoever said that a soldier's life was a cakewalk?

Set in Joel Rosenberg's bestselling Guardians of the Flame series, Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda is the third adventure of the journeymen soldiers of Castle Cullianane (and their sometimes ill-fated leader) in all their raucous glory. A fun, fast-paced read, it's a rollicking roller coaster of a book that will have fantasy fans reaching for more.

Cliffhanger!

Something was decidedly rotten in Orlando, deduced Harry Challenge, as his former flame Princess Alicia flung him unceremoniously from the royal palace. An evil plot was afoot!

And it was Harry to the rescue...

Aided by a masteful magician, a dandy playboy, and rich Americans... Abetted by a pretty reporter after the story, and the hero... Assaulted by a bloodthirsty baron, a bloodless doctor, a blood-sucking beauty, and a windup werewolf... Could Harry's dauntless daring and silver bullets save the princess?

For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort

Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."

Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

Things are changing in the Village--the charming holiday camp for the disappeared, the civilized prison for those who know too much. The authorities have found new ways of exploiting community spirit... using a lost pioneer of computer science to put their stamp on the coming Information Age. But then there's Number 18. She's a murderer... for the best of reasons. She's a bit of a collaborator, for reasons of her own. She's fiercely protective of herself. And she may be Number 6's best chance of out-thinking the authorities' newest attempt at control. But it all depends on what the Village's masters are really aiming for. Do they expect him to trust her... or destroy her?

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?

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....

"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 Prisoner of Zenda (1894), by Anthony Hope, is an adventure novel in which the King of Ruritania is drugged on the eve of his coronation and thus is unable to attend the ceremony. Political forces within the realm are such that, in order for the king to retain the crown, his coronation must proceed. Fortuitously, an English gentleman on holiday in Ruritania who resembles the monarch is persuaded to act as his political decoy in an effort to save the unstable political situation of the interregnum.

The name of the villain in The Prisoner of Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau, is the title of the sequel novel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898), published four years later and included in some editions of The Prisoner of Zenda. The popularity of the novels inspired the Ruritanian romance genre of literature, film, and theatre that features stories set in a fictional country, usually in Central Europe and Eastern Europe, such as Ruritania, the Central European realm that named the genre.

The novel has been adapted many times, mainly for film but also stage, musical, operetta, radio, and television. Probably the best-known version is the 1937 Hollywood movie. The dashingly villainous Rupert of Hentzau has been interpreted by such matinee idols as Ramon Novarro (1922), Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1937), and James Mason (1952).

In this sequel to Mira's Last Dance, Temple sorcerer Penric and the widow Nikys have reached safety in the duchy of Orbas when a secret letter from a friend brings frightening news: Nikys' mother has been taken hostage by her brother's enemies at the Cedonian imperial court, and confined in a precarious island sanctuary.

Their own romance still unresolved, Nikys, Penric, and of course Desdemona must infiltrate the hostile country once more, finding along the way that family relationships can be as unexpectedly challenging as any rescue scheme.

Percy Mjipa, diplomat-adventurer, and Alicia Dyckman, interplanetary runaway, both aliens on the alien world of Krishna, are swept up in wildly treacherous - and wildly funny - imperial intrigue....