Review"Like a dive into the eye of a storm."--_The Washington Post Book World_ on When Gravity Fails "Fast, cool, clever, beautifully written, absolutely authoritative. A kind of cyberpunk Raymond Chandler book with dashes of Roger Zelazny, Ian Fleming, and Scheherezade--but altogether original."--Robert Silverberg on When Gravity Fails "Ingenious, layered, sophisticated, and consistently bloodcurdling, When Gravity Fails kept me awake long after I had finished reading it. --Spider Robinson "Great entertainment...Places Effinger in the company of writers like Gibson." --_Fantasy Review_ on When Gravity Fails "Superior science fiction . . . among the best I've come across."--_The Denver Post_ on When Gravity Fails "A brilliantly written, knife-edged futuristic detective story . . . destined to be the year's most intense and emotionally involving SF work."--_Houston__ Post_ on When Gravity Fails "Wry and black and savage... there's a knife behind every smile."-- George R. R. Martin on When Gravity Fails "Muscular, convincing, yet continuously surprising."--Richard A. Lupoff on When Gravity Fails "One of the best cyberpunk novels I've read . . . Effinger's prose is terse, direct, vivid and often laced with an enchanting sense of humor . . . this is only part of the book's delightful texture . . . gives you a real sense of what it's like to be an old-fashioned gumshoe in the seedy backreaches of a futuristic arab nation."--_The Providence Sunday Journal_ on When Gravity Fails "Wry, inventive, nearly hallucinatory . . . a well-written, baroque riff on the time-honored themes of Raymond Chandler."--_Publisher's Weekly_ on When Gravity Fails "This is the fourth or fifth time I've been asked to give a public comment on an Effinger book; and each time I've done it; and each time I've said you people are cheating yourselves if you don't forego food and rent to pick up on Effinger's work. Now, this time, will you for pete's sake listen to me and buy When Gravity Fails? It's as crazy as a spider on ice skates, plain old terrific; and if you don't pay attention I'll have to get tough with you! We have your childen and your dog. Buy, read and marvel...or else."-- Harlan Ellison on When Gravity Fails Product DescriptionIn a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hardway. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available...for a price. For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse. The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time. Wry, savage, and unignorable, When Gravity Fails was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian” novels it begins were the culmination of his career. Views: 35
Focusing on the zany, unbelievable, and mysterious happenings in the world of baseball, these stories come from the past and the present and feature both well-known and obscure baseball stars. A perfect book for the new baseball season. 16 black-and-white photos. Views: 35
It's only twelve miles long and two miles wide, but it has more money for its area, more history packed into its relatively brief settlement, and more emotional and intellectual energy coursing through its streets than any other place on earth. Manhattan is the setting for all of Louis Auchincloss's fiction, and it is the stage on which those New Yorkers whose roots go down to its bedrock play out the drama of their lives.From the turn of the century to our present urban follies, these stories follow the fortunes of the socially secure and powerful as they try to cope with the changes shaped by the momentous events and growing anxieties of recent decades. Taken together, the tales weave a larger pattern of human strengths and foibles that bemuses the mind and touches the heart.The elegant prose, crystalline dialogue, immense insight into the mores, preoccupations, and afflictions of the rich, and the connoisseur's sense of both art and life that are characteristic of Auchincloss—all are here, but with a depth of passion and irony exceeding anything he has accomplished in the past.From Publishers WeeklyOnce again, Louis Auchincloss has raided the till of his social register to depict the travails of Manhattan's upper class. In 12 stories proceeding chronologically from the 1870s to the present, his protagonists try to accommodate themselves to the roles seemingly assigned them at birth. Few succeed. The robber baron of the first story is no more or less rapacious than the corporate raider of the last: 100 years of "progress" have merely taught the gently bred to meet defeat with increased grace and alacrity. Some of the book's women seem better able to forge their own destinies: one perseveres in her passion for avant-garde art despite the derision of family and friends; another, a widow whose children consign her to a life of baby-sitting and basket-weaving, instead forms a friendship with an effeminate but life-giving companion. Others seem only too willing to share their male partners' glum acceptance of the status quo, even when their golden chains limit both creativity and sexuality. Still, few give way to total despair. Their author has imbued them with a stubborn but lasting resilience that augers well for their continuing survivaland his, as their most inspired chronicler. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 34
DEATH IS JUST THE BEGINNING . . .
Medical student Herbert West is brilliant, obsessed, and working on a secret project: a serum that will bring the dead to life. First it was cats, then parts of human bodies—now he’s in the morgue, preparing his ultimate subjects to rise from the cool grey slabs. But West’s plan is flawed: the bodies are moving, but they haven’t come back to life! They’re re-animated corpses, quivering with mindless, uncontrollable fury . . . and they’re coming after the guy who made them this way . . . Views: 34
Sald Harl would like nothing more than to soar on the wings of his noble eagle, but his youthful rides in the sky are cut short by an appointment to guard the prince. Sald watches his dreams of flight fade with his name and independence as he takes over his bodyguard duties. During a perilous journey to the edges of the kingdom a dark secret comes to life. Now the great Prince Shadow is accused of treason, and Sald must orchestrate a desperate plan of escape or he will lose the one thing he has been ordered to defend. His only option of freedom is a dangerous flight that no one has ever survived. Once again Sald hopes to feel the freedom of soaring though the air unshackled from servitude. Views: 34
Three novellas about private investigator Timothy Cone, whose business is other people’s business . . . and who believes that no crime should go unpunished Haldering & Co., a team of private investigators, goes into a tailspin when Ed Griffon, one of their own, dies at the Union Square subway station, crushed under the wheels of an oncoming train. Timothy Cone, one of the Haldering PIs, believes that Griffon was trailing a target when he plunged to his death. While Cone doesn’t fit in with his company’s Wall Street image—he’s shy, a sloppy dresser, and lives in a decrepit loft—he’s a dogged detective. Cone expects the worst of most people. The exception is Samantha Whatley, his tough-talking office manager and secret lover. Samantha helps him sift through the evidence, and Cone is suddenly up to his neck in bribery, corruption, drugs, and murder. Even though Cone didn’t know Griffon well, his strict sense of justice will lead him to risk his life to find his colleague’s killer.From Publishers WeeklyThese three detective tales may not have quite the panache of The Anderson Tapes or the Deadly Sin series, but each is suspenseful, well wrought and stamped with Sanders's special insight into the baser aspects of human nature. They feature Timothy Cone, "the Wall Street dick," who works for an investigative agency, has an affair going with his boss Samantha and, though unprepossessing in manner and appearance, feels driven to uncover the scams behind the glossy fronts of wealthy business; he can also smell a dummy corporation or a money-laundering operation a mile away. The files deal respectively with a murderous real-estate conglomerate, a fertility clinic devoted to considerably more than "original biotechnological research" and an investment house involved in drugsthough only detective work of the highest caliber can discover the seamy details. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. Views: 33
Tracking down a runaway wife is run of the mill. That's yesterday's blues. But finding the trombonist father of black, beautiful, reformed hooker Iris threatens to blow up into the case of a lifetime. The trail Amos Walker follows through Detroit's smoky music clubs leads him to dens of hard crime and harder drugs -- where Iris and Amos will be lucky to escape with their lives, much less the truth about a past packed with menacing secrets. And that's no jazz. From Publishers WeeklyHard-bitten private eye Amos Walker (last seen in Sugartown stalks the bleak, wintry streets and the smoke-filled nightclubs of Detroit in his latest, swiftly paced mystery, whose characters include tough, wisecracking women and cheap gangsters. When Walker is hired by a Jamaican ex-prostitute, Iris, to find her father, an obscure jazz musician, he has no trouble picking up the trail of the missing trombone player. What he does not bargain for are some harshly explicit warnings from the drug czar of Detroit, Iris's kidnapping, and the forming of an uneasy alliance between himself and the highest levels of organized crime. Walker pursues his case with dogged intensity, bringing to his investigation total cynicism and a casual disregard for scruples. As usual, Estleman's dark, moody narration and his evocation of the seamy, forlorn ambience of Detroit mark this series with a special stamp. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. About the AuthorEstleman has received fifteen national writing awards, including three Shamuses from the Private Eye Writers of America, two American Mystery Awards from Mystery Scene Magazine, and two Outstanding Mystery Writer of the Year awards from Popular Fiction Monthly. In 1987, the Michigan Foundation of the Arts presented him with its award for literature. In 1997, the Michigan Library Association named him the recipient of the Michigan Author's Award. Views: 33
After Russia takes control of the United States, handfuls of American patriots try to force the Soviets out and restore freedom Views: 33
Ostensibly a mystery novel complete with a murder and an array of suspects with plausible motives, Bimbos of the Death Sun won an Edgar Award in 1988 for Best Original Paperback Mystery. While we follow the plot eagerly, curious to know who killed famed novelist Appin Dungannon and why, the fact is that what happens in this novel is in some ways much less important than where it happens. Bimbos of the Death Sun is not a mystery that just so happens to also be science fiction and fantasy; it's a novel about a particular American subculture as well in which Trekkies and Dungeon Masters convene--complete with their hobbit costumes and the like--to buy and sell memorabilia. The novel is in fact a parody of that culture and as such, it has garnered ambivalent reviews from the science fiction and fantasy community that it caricatures. The perspective of the novel is decidedly that of an outsider, a protagonist named James Owen Mega, who--under the pseudonym Jay Omega--has published a science fiction novel named Bimbos Under the Death Sun. Omega, however, is no science fiction fanatic, nor does he frequent conventions. He and his girlfriend, Dr. Marion Farley, are both professors at a local university, and Omega wrote the novel in his spare time as a fictionalized account of his real-life scientific research. The reader then experiences the convention's peculiarities and surprises along with other bewildered and amazed professors. It could be said that the pair represent two different approaches to the pageantry and obsession that swirl around them. Omega, as guest author and conference V.I.P., tries to tread lightly around the customs and peculiarities of the sci-fi aficionados in an effort not to offend but also to avoid becoming too involved. Marion, the professor of comparative literature, casts a more critical eye on the proceedings, giving the touted big-shots and the aspiring authors little in the way of credibility. McCrumb tempers the satire with her choice of protagonists; by informing us that Marion actually teaches a course on science fiction and fantasy at the local university, McCrumb is sure to acknowledge that science fiction is a legitimate literary genre in her eyes. Like any other legitimate literary genre then, it has its noteworthy practitioners (Tolkein, Asimov) as well as its charlatans (Appin, Dungannon). Her target, McCrumb wants us to know, is not the works themselves but rather the obsessive culture that springs up around the works. By making the shy, bookish Jay Omega her sympathetic protagonist, McCrumb is also making it clear that her target is not simply the socially maladroit. The whole satire is directed at those who have made these escapist fantasies a true-to-life obsession. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Award-winning novelist Sharyn McCrumb is best known for her Ballad novels, a series of fictionalized accounts of the history and culture of the Appalachian region of the United States. The Ballad novels include the works The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter; If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O; She Walks These Hills; and most recently The Ballad of Frankie Silver. In 1997, McCrumb won the Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature award. The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, as was If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O. A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Virginia Tech, McCrumb taught journalism before turning her attention to writing fiction as a full time endeavor. McCrumb has won many awards for her mystery novels, including an Edgar for 1988's Bimbos of the Death Sun. In that work she satirized the science fiction and fantasy community as well as in the work's sequel, Zombies of the Mutant Gene Pool. Her novels have been translated into over ten languages. Views: 33
It is twenty years after the invasion of the Zentraedi was beaten off. Now the Robotech Masters of the Zentraedi have returned to Earth to finish the job. And only young Dana Sterling half-human, half-Zentraedi can save the Earth . . . or destroy it. Views: 32
The first time insurance claims investigator Peter Durham's friend Arne Rasmussen had a fire on one of his ships, Peter treated it as a routine accident. The second fire he called bad luck. But when the third fire broke out, Peter knew there was no jinx, but just a very clever arsonist.Every case has its angles, but Peter found them going in all directions this time: a man almost beaten to death, a beautiful femme fatale, a strong silent Oriental, a tough Beat Generation poet, and $600,000 in foreign currency.But all these mysterious elements were nothing compared to the puzzle of what to do with a beautiful young lady who turned into an international incident when she became The Corpse Without a Country. Views: 32
In these wonderfully funny and poignant stories, Willett's eccentric, complex characters think and do the unconventional. Soft, euphonic women gradually grow old; weak, unhappy men confront love and their own mortality; and abominable children desperately try to grow up with grace. With a unique voice and dry humor, Willett gives us a new insight into human existence, showing us those specific moments in relationships when life suddenly becomes visible.Critically acclaimed when it was first published in 1987, Jenny and the Jaws of Life is being brought back due to popular demand. It's a timeless collection filled with a certain freshness and wit that ring just as loudly today. Views: 31
