A thrilling new Steampunk fantasy from a talented debut authorTWO GODS-ONE CHANCE FOR MANKINDIn Victorian London, the Whitechapel section is a mechanized, steam-driven hell, cut off and ruled by two mysterious, mechanical gods-Mama Engine and Grandfather Clock. Some years have passed since the Great Uprising, when humans rose up to fight against the machines, but a few brave veterans of the Uprising have formed their own Resistance-and are gathering for another attack. For now they have a secret weapon that may finally free them-or kill them all...Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.With a hiss of steam, mechanisms inside the walls shot a steel beam across the door as Aaron slammed it and leapt away. Something struck the door from the other side with a deafening impact, and the surface of the steel door bent into an impression of knuckles twice the size of a man's.Searching his coat pockets for a weapon, Aaron stumbled back into Joseph, who grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him."Lad," Joseph cried. "There's no way out!"Aaron threw off the older man's hand and shoved past him onto the walkway."There's always a way."But there wasn't. Barely visible through the currents of smog and falling ash, the walkway took a sharp, downward twist, ending in a tangle of rent braces. It was a gap of almost thirty feet to the other tower; in between, only hot, stinking wind and a hundred-story drop to the street below.Joseph moved up beside him and wrapped his white-knuckled ham-fists around the bent rail. "Tell me ye've got some flying machine in them pockets of yours, lad," he said between clenched teeth.Another impact cut the air as Aaron frantically dug through the many pockets of his greatcoat. His fingers closed over lenses, tools, dynamite, compasses, devices for measuring pressure and voltage, and a dozen other objects whose function he could not remember just then. Nothing that could provide a crossing. With a shock of realisation, he willed his hands still."It was here," he said. "I checked on it just an hour ago.""Bugger all." Joseph slammed one fist down on the rail and looked up into the muddy sky. "A damn dog deserves better," he said. Then he bent forward and began to pray quietly.Aaron struggled to control his suddenly rapid breath. "There's a way, Joseph. I just need to think.""Not every problem falls to thinkin'" was the reply.On the next impact, one of the bolt's fittings popped loose from the wall and the door fell open an entire inch."If it had been any other walkway..." Aaron looked to both sides, where similar walkways stretched between the two hulking buildings."Aye, but it isn't," Joseph said, drawing a heavy army revolver from his jacket pocket. "I think it's time ye made yer peace, lad. Let's make a fight of it.""One cannot fight the Boiler Men," said Aaron, suppressing the chill in his stomach and wishing he hadn't sounded so certain."We'll see" was Joseph's reply.Trembling, Aaron withdrew a tin box from one of his pockets. He unscrewed the lid and looked at the thin coiled strip of paper inside. Coded letters ran its length in small type.Think...A boot sheathed in iron slammed into the bottom corner of the door, folding it up like tin. Unblinking electric light spilled from the hole onto the walkway, mingling with the hazy glare from the towers above.Aaron quickly screwed the lid back onto the box and wished he'd had the time to decode it. He withdrew a stick of dynamite and a pack of matches, conscious that the walkway was too small to escape the explosion when it came.How many times had he been told that he must be ready to die for England?How many times had he told others the same thing?He readied a match and waited.There must be a way...The air shuddered as a blast of steam exploded through the hole in the door. It struck Joseph first and the Irishman's scream cut the night. As the white cloud crashed over him, Aaron threw his arms in front of his face. Too late: the steam swept over his hands and head, scorching every inch of exposed skin. The pain drove him to his knees. He crawled blindly towards the walk's edge, where he pitched his head over the end and took a laboured breath of the foul Whitechapel air, collapsing into a fit as the ashes and grit sanded his raw lungs.He heard the door pop loose from its hinges with one final strike and felt it clatter to the walkway, and he realised they would never escape.There's a way…Aaron's eyes quivered open. He spotted Joseph's twitching form through the dissipating steam and dragged himself towards his friend. His raw fingers tore on the walk, a sting even more painful than the fire all over his skin.Aaron grasped Joseph's sleeve. "There's a way!"Joseph's eyes streamed tears as he cried and screamed. Aaron shoved the tin box into Joseph's hands and forcibly closed the old man's fingers around it."Aaron!" Joseph said. "I can't get up! I can't…"Aaron shoved the tin closer to the man's chest."You can take it back," he choked out. "Find someone who can read it."Without waiting for an answer, he planted his foot on Joseph's chest and shoved. The other man let out a yelp before rolling backwards off the walk and into space. In seconds, the grey of Whitechapel's smog swallowed him, though his muted scream echoed from the towers for some moments longer.The pounding of iron-shod feet shook the air. Aaron stared down after his falling friend, crying freely.You'd probably want me to die on my feet. Aaron slung one arm over the bent railing and hauled himself up. He turned to the monstrous shapes silhouetted in the doorway's glow. The gaze of those cold, glass eyes made him shriveled and small, and he found he could not stop shaking.He wished he'd chosen a different walkway. He wished he hadn't lost the matches. He wished he'd done a thousand things differently.The Boiler Men reached for him with iron hands and he wished most of all that he wasn't about to die. Views: 37
Britain's first woman prime minister, friend of Ronald Reagan and the longest serving head of government in the 20th century (1979-90), but also the only one to be removed from office in peacetime by pressure from within her own party. Views: 37
Vanishing and Other Stories explores emotional and physical absences, the ways in which people leave, are left, and whether or not it's ever possible to move on. Readers will encounter a skinny ice-cream scooper named Nina Simone, a vanishing visionary of social utopia, a French teacher who collects fiancés, and a fortune-telling mother who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter. The characters in this collection will linger in the imagination, proving that nothing is ever truly forgotten. Views: 37
When Tania McCartney discovered she'd be moving her husband, self and two kids under the age of five to China for four years, she was 95 per cent horrified. What she never expected was to fall in love. Beijing seeped under her skin and grabbed hold of her heart ... a love affair that inspired 'Beijing Tai Tai', a collection of shrewdly observed, heartfelt and humorous insights into Beijing expatriate life. Intensely personal, at times a little controversial, 'Beijing Tai Tai' is a rollercoaster ride of honesty and openness as a wife ('tai tai') and mother juggles suburban family life in urban Beijing. Presented in a series of love/hate column-like snippets — on topics ranging from the consumption of bull testicles to the life-altering experience of walking the Great Wall — it exposes expatriate life in a country on the brink of great change. From tragic hair moments ... Views: 37
The author of Zero looks at the messy history of the struggle to harness fusion energy .
When weapons builders detonated the first hydrogen bomb in 1952, they tapped into the vastest source of energy in our solar system--the very same phenomenon that makes the sun shine. Nuclear fusion was a virtually unlimited source of power that became the center of a tragic and comic quest that has left scores of scientists battered and disgraced. For the past half-century, governments and research teams have tried to bottle the sun with lasers, magnets, sound waves, particle beams, and chunks of meta. (The latest venture, a giant, multi-billion-dollar, international fusion project called ITER, is just now getting underway.) Again and again, they have failed, disgracing generations of scientists. Throughout this fascinating journey Charles Seife introduces us to the daring geniuses, villains, and victims of fusion science: the brilliant and tortured Andrei Sakharov; the monomaniacal and Strangelovean Edward Teller; Ronald Richter, the secretive physicist whose lies embarrassed an entire country; and Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, the two chemists behind the greatest scientific fiasco of the past hundred years. Sun in a Bottle is the first major book to trace the story of fusion from its beginnings into the 21st century, of how scientists have gotten burned by trying to harness the power of the sun. Views: 37
SUMMARY:From the author ofThe Necropolis RailwayandThe Blackpool Highflyercomes another ingenious thriller featuring Jim Stringer. It is winter 1906 and Jim has been promoted from sleuth to official railway detective for York station. His first day on the job, the mysterious Lost Luggage Porter, "a human directory to everything in York" tips him off to a group of railway thieves. Jim is instructed by his Inspector to infiltrate their gang and is drawn along into their plot to carry out a robbery and make their getaway across the Channel. Soon Jim finds himself swept off to Paris with the thieves, his plight made even worse when threats are made against his wife. Can Jim get to get to her before the villains do? UK Praise for THE LOST LUGGAGE PORTER: "Page-turning, confidently written..." Guardian "The atmosphere of neglected streets...dingy saloon bars, supper of boiled bacon and pickles, and dismal, unceasing rain are splendidly evoked." Telegraph Views: 37
One boy's journey to save his village becomes a quest to save the Kingdom.Tom and Elenna must journey on to face the last of the Beasts enslaved by the evil wizard Malvel: the Winged Flame, a phoenix of terrible power. It has been been slowly awakening a long-dead volcano. If Tom and Elenna cannot stop the Beast in time, it could mean a deadly eruption. Views: 37
In the century from the death of Captain James Cook in 1779 to the rise of the sugar plantations in the 1870s, thousands of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) men left Hawai'i to work on ships at sea and in na 'aina 'e (foreign lands)—on the Arctic Ocean and throughout the Pacific Ocean, and in the equatorial islands and California. Beyond Hawai'i tells the stories of these forgotten indigenous workers and how their labor shaped the Pacific World, the global economy, and the environment. Whether harvesting sandalwood or bird guano, hunting whales, or mining gold, these migrant workers were essential to the expansion of transnational capitalism and global ecological change. Bridging American, Chinese, and Pacific historiographies, Beyond Hawai'i is the first book to argue that indigenous labor—more than the movement of ships and spread of diseases—unified the Pacific World. Views: 37
AUTUMN WINIFRED OLIVER prides herself on doing things her way. But she meets her match when she, her mama, and her pin-curled older sis, Katie, move in with her cantankerous Gramps. The Oliver gals were supposed to join Pop in Knoxville for some big-city living, but Gramps's recent sick spell convinced Mama to stay put in Cades Cove, a place of swishy meadows and shady hollers that lies on the crest of the Great Smoky Mountains.And it's not like there's nothing going on in the Cove. Folks are all aflutter about turning their land into a national park, and Autumn's not sure what to think. Loggers like Pop need jobs, but if things keep going at the current rate, the forests will soon be chopped to bits. And Gramps seems to think there's some serious tourist money to be made. Looks like something different is definitely in order. . . .From the Hardcover edition. Views: 37
This is the follow on book to Welcome To New Haven. It can be read as a stand alone, but reading the previous one first, helps with the background story.Emily Edwards has moved to Seattle, WA, to start a new life.After a disastrous relationship, and finishing her degree, she's looking forward to a fresh start.Swearing off men, she can't help but think about a certain somebody that got her riled up a few months before.She finds work for an investment company and is really happy with her job, until she meets the boss...Nick has spent the past year taking each day as it comes. After the night that he can't forget, he buries himself in his work.He takes on a new assistant, that his secretary interviews on his behalf, and he looks forward to seeing how they react to him.Will she agree to stay and work for him? Or will she punch him in the face and walk away?Excerpt:It was less than ten minutes before somebody got off on their floor and Emily heard them approaching Diane's desk."Good... Views: 37
Dermot Milligan loves donuts. His nickname at school is Donut. But he knows he needs to lose some weight, so now he's made a promise to stop eating them. And to make sure he keeps that promise, his mum is sending him to the dreaded Camp Fatso during the summer holidays. When he arrives, Dermot realises the camp is even more horrible than he had imagined. Fed on a diet of gruel and carrots under the strict control of evil Boss Skinner and his paintball-gun-yielding guards, Dermot and his friends are desperate to escape. So together, they hatch a cunning plan . . . Views: 37
