The quest of the Seven Swords kills anyone foolish enough to seek its secret.Ridmark Arban is the Shield Knight, but he is the only Swordbearer in the realm of Owyllain.That means he is the only warrior capable of defending Owyllain from the forces of dark magic.But the powers of darkness have servants in Owyllain, servants who are more than willing to put a dagger in Ridmark's back... Views: 66
After the success of Grain (shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize, poetry's most prestigious international award) John Glenday returns with The Golden Mean.Glenday's poetry - once something of a closely guarded secret - now has many devotees, and this new book shows why: Glenday's mastery of the short translucent lyric and his unashamed and direct concern with matters of the spirit, of love, of human nature and natural law - means he can often read as a Spanish or East European poet in immaculate translation. But for all its apparently weightless and aerodynamic grace, Glenday's poetry can be playful, experimental and occasionally even surreal, and his voice local and intimate.The Golden Mean shows Glenday's full range, and a poet at the height of his imaginative powers. Views: 66
In 1924 Harry, an adventurous archeologist, uncovers his greatest discovery-the tomb of the daughter of Shah Azhi "the devil king", containing the magical stone of Azhi. Legend tells of the stone's power to grant wishes. When Harry lays his hands on the prize, he's sucked into a bottle and stays there for over eighty years. In the twenty-first century, lonely museum worker Edie Ragsdale has been tasked with cataloguing the contents of a sarcophagus. Among the mummified remains of a long-dead princess, Edie finds a bottle. When she brushes away the dust of thousands of years, a naked Harry appears. Because she was the one to wake Harry from his long sleep, Edie is able to wish for anything her heart desires and Harry has to grant it. But when her wishes land her on the set of a porn film and the deck of a pirate ship with a hundred sex-starved pirates ready to teach her a few lessons on sex, Edie has to rely on handsome Harry to bail her out. Come along for a sexy, rollicking romp and learn why you should be careful what you wish for! Views: 66
Terrain, by Genevieve Valentine, is a steampunk western about six diverse people living and working together on a farm outside a small town in Wyoming. The encroaching Union Pacific railroad wants the land, threatening their home and their livelihood, running a unique message service with mechanical "dogs" (actually looking more insectile) that can climb up mountains where the Pony Express cannot.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied. Views: 66
Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed -- street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged -- was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time.Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. Views: 66
Love doesn't matter. Romance doesn't exist. (Part 8 of 12 in The Future of Sex series) In the year 2060, sex is a game of extremes. No desire is unexplored and even the unimaginable is possible. Alexa Mathis, head of the monolithic O Corporation, has found a prodigy she believes will drive her sex empire to rapturous new limits: Chloe Shaw, a common girl with uncanny gifts that make her a powerful escort. Chloe doesn't believe in love. She believes in ecstasy, and her employer's newest tool to usher "the future of sex": an intelligent network known as The Beam. And so it is until she meets Andrew ... and the whole world changes. The Future of Sex is a 12-part serial that is being published in installments. As such, episodes are short and sometimes end on cliffhangers. Views: 66
Warning: Although this the action of this book is set on Mars, it could just as easily have taken place in one of the desert communities around Los Angeles. The real action takes place inside the minds of the characters. If you're looking for all the external trappings of interplanetary Sci-Fi, you will be deeply disappointed. Approach it with an open mind, and you will be richly rewarded. What happens when one of the most powerful men on the planet Mars finds that real-estate speculators are intent on gobbling up the remote and seemingly worthless Franklin D Roosevelt mountains? Naturally he wants to find out why. A casual conversation with a psychologist followed by a chance encounter with a master repairman leads to one of those Dickian leaps: Since (1) autistic children do not respond to others because they are living in the future, (2) just build a machine to slow down time and (3) maybe even use it to go back in time and retroactively post a claim on the land before the speculators do. Well, the mechanism works, in a way. The speculators were proposing to build giant apartment blocks to help relieve overcrowding on polluted Earth. The autistic boy, Manfred Steiner, sees much further, however, to the time the apartment block would become a warehouse for the sick and dying, a "tomb world," of which he himself is a denizen. Manfred's visions have a way of bending the reality of those around him; he persistently retreats to a vision of reality as "gubble" -- entropy seen as large wormlike constructs that underlie reality, leading to pure "gubbish." MARTIAN TIME-SLIP is one of my favorite Philip K Dicks. (The problem is that I like all 15 or so I've read more or less equally.) Reading Philip K Dick tends to bend your sense of reality much as Manfred Steiner does. And one can't help looking over one's shoulder for a few hours after reading him. I see Dick as not so much a science fiction writer as a creator of disturbing and eerily plausible futures. Views: 66
Sequel to Jennie In a Bottle. The last thing Jewel Dublin wants is to be stranded on a deserted island with her former flame. But when she wakes up one morning to find a strange bottle on her dresser, she discovers she has no choice. Whisked away to Carnal Island by a genie, she's forced to face demons of both the erotic and painful kind. But luckily, Jewel holds one trump card. Due to a horrible disfiguring auto accident years ago, her ex-boyfriend doesn't recognize her-at first. Vince Santiago's life is just fine the way it is, women at his beck and call, a posh condo in Denver and a fat bank account. At least that's what he thinks… Then a sexy genie dumps him on a deserted tropical island with a woman who seems vaguely familiar to him. Forced to drag up a long-buried past, "Tarzan" comes face-to-face with "Jane", who's hell-bent on driving him mad with lust. He's beginning to think he's got a terrible case of jungle fever-and it could be a permanent condition! Views: 66
In the spring of 1453, the Ottoman Turks advanced on Constantinople in pursuit of an ancient Islamic dream: capturing the thousand-year-old capital of Christian Byzantium.During the siege that followed, a small band of badly organised defenders, outnumbered ten to one, confronted the might of the Ottoman army in a bitter contest fought on land, sea and underground, and directed by two remarkable men - Sultan Mehmet II and the Emperor Constantine XI. In the fevered religious atmosphere, heightened by the first massed use of artillery bombardment, both sides feared that the end of the world was nigh.The outcome of the siege, decided in a few short hours on 29 May 1453, is one of the great set-piece moments of world history. Views: 66
