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In "The Bamboozling of Bazalob", Derry and Jude are carried in a giant travelling pot to rescue their cousin Katie, from Bazalob, a gross mix of beast, bird and fish.In "The Flying Shoes" Sissy and Sam find two giant shoes in a field, in which they fly to the horrible home of Slobsky, a child-eating giant. Will they be able to rescue Milly and Moll, the giant's daughters and prisoner, Wendy?In “The Bamboozling of Bazalob", Derry and Jude are carried in a giant travelling pot to rescue their cousin Katie, from Bazalob, a gross concoction of beast, bird and fish. The children are guided by Mikono, the spirit of the pot and en route they enlist the help of bouncing Blodder, weird Gingali and reluctant Sydney, before finding Katie, who luckily was not to Bazalob’s taste!In “The Flying Shoes” Sissy and Sam find two giant shoes in a field and when they climb in, fly to the horrible home of Slobsky, a child-eating giant. There they find Milly and Moll, his unhappy daughters and Wendy, trapped in a wheel. Will they escape with the girls before Slobsky seizes them for supper? Views: 577
Heed the call of the wild...discover the second book in this action-packed animal fantasy series from the #1 bestselling author of Warriors!
*★* "Deep characters, a complex plot, rich mythology, and a stunning setting. Wild and wonderful." --Kirkus Reviews
Set in the African savannah and told from three different animals' points of view, Bravelands will thrill readers who love Spirit Animals and Wings of Fire, as well as the legion of dedicated fans who've made Erin Hunter a bestselling phenomenon.
A baboon who has uncovered an act of treachery.
An elephant uncertain of her fate.
A lion poised to strike.
The code of the wild has been broken. The elephant leader known as Great Mother has been murdered. And Bravelands is on the edge of chaos. Now a young baboon, elephant, and lion must come together to discover the truth--before the fragile balance of Bravelands is destroyed forever. Views: 577
The hot-as-Hel series with the “Sookie Stackhouse type of vibe” (Paranormal Horizon) is back—but this time the paranormal Midwestern town of Pemkowet is feeling a frost in the air and the residents are frozen in fear...
The Pemkowet Visitors Bureau has always promoted paranormal tourism—even if it has downplayed the risks (hobgoblins are unpredictable). It helps that the town is presided over by Daisy Johanssen, who as Hel’s liaison is authorized by the Norse goddess of the dead to keep Pemkowet under control. Normally, that’s easier to do in the winter, when bracing temperatures keep folks indoors.
But a new predator is on the prowl, and this one thrives on nightmares. Daisy is on her trail and working intimately with her partner and sometime lover from the Pemkowet PD, sexy yet unavailable werewolf Cody Fairfax. But even as the creature is racking up innocent victims, a greater danger looms on Pewkowet’s horizon.
As a result of a recent ghost uprising, an unknown adversary—represented by a hell-spawn lawyer with fiery powers of persuasion—has instigated a lawsuit against the town. If Pemkowet loses, Hel’s sovereignty will be jeopardized, and the fate of the eldritch community will be at stake. The only one who can prevent it is Daisy—but she’s going to have to confront her own worst nightmare to do it. Views: 577
He was hoping, while his fingers drummed in unison with the beat of his verse, that this last play at least would rouse enthusiasm in the pit. The welcome given its immediate predecessors had undeniably been tepid. A memorandum at his elbow of the receipts at the Globe for the last quarter showed this with disastrous bluntness; and, after all, in 1609 a shareholder in a theater, when writing dramas for production there, was ordinarily subject to more claims than those of his ideals. Views: 577
Unique visions and astonishments--new stories by:Tobias S. Buckell and Karl SchroederCory DoctorowNeil GaimanKathleen Ann GoonanAlastair Reynolds Michael Swanwick Last year's best short-form SF--selected by acclaimed, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer--offers stunning new extrapolations on what awaits humankind beyond the next dawn. The art of the story is explored boldly and provocatively in this powerful new collection of Year's Best speculative fiction. Views: 577
Here in #17 you get eight stories including short stories, vignettes, and even a TV pilot script written and released in 2012 and collected as SUSHI WRITING WITH CROWD EDITING 2012. 30,000 words normally for $1.00usd but here you get it for free.Here in #17 you get eight stories including short stories, vignettes, and even a TV pilot script written and released in 2012 and collected as SUSHI WRITING WITH CROWD EDITING 2012. 30,000 words in one collection that’s normally on sale for $1.00usd but here you get it for free. A trip across other realities connected to the Tin Universe as a begging sorry for missing the deadline with the story I meant for this month. Views: 576
The Dark Between the Stars is space opera on a grand scale. Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness, and the human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy. Praise for THE SAGA OF THE SEVEN SUNS:'Sure-footed, suspenseful and tragic ... an exhilarating experience' Locus'Space opera at its most entertaining' Starlog'THE SAGA OF THE SEVEN SUNS is worthy of mention in the same breath as Asimov's Foundation series and Hamilton's Nightdawn trilogy. This is science fiction on the grandest of scales, a modern classic' The Alien Online 'A realm of wondrous possibilities ... A fascinating series' Brian Herbert'A space opera to rival the best the field has ever seen' SF ChronicleAbout the AuthorKevin J. Anderson has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Reader's Choice Award. He set the Guiness-certified world record for the largest single-author book signing. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.CHAPTER1GARRISON REEVESHe had to run, and he fled with the boy out into the dark spaces between the stars.Garrison Reeves stole a ship from the Iswander Industries lava-processing operations on Sheol. Though he’d planned his escape for days, he gathered only a few supplies and keepsakes before departing, careful not to give his wife any hint of what he intended to do. None of his possessions mattered more than getting safely away with his son.He knew the disaster could come soon—any day now. Lee Iswander, the Roamer industrialist, dismissed Garrison’s concerns about third-order tidal shifts in the broken planet; Garrison’s own wife, Elisa, didn’t believe him. The lava miners paid little attention to his warnings, not because they disputed his geological calculations, but because they didn’t want to believe. Their priorities were clear. Adding “unnecessary” and expensive levels of redundant shielding and “paranoid” safety measures was irresponsible, both to Iswander Industries and to the employees, who participated in profit-sharing.Lee Iswander had commissioned follow-up reports, biased reports, that painted a far rosier picture. Garrison didn’t accept them.So he made his choice, the only possible choice. He stole one of the company ships, and when she found out about it, Elisa would claim that he stole their son.He flew out of the Sheol system, running far from any Roamer settlement or Confederation outpost. Elisa was not only an ambitious woman, she was abusive, tenacious, and dangerous—and she would come after them. He needed a head start if he had any hope of getting away.The ship was a standard Iswander cargo transport, a workhorse, fully fueled with ekti, run by an efficient Ildiran stardrive. Garrison could fly the vessel without special training, as he could fly most standard spacecraft.Ten-year-old Seth rode in the cockpit next to him. Garrison made a game of familiarizing the boy with cockpit systems and engine diagnostics, giving him simple navigation problems to solve—as any good Roamer father would, even though Garrison had chafed under how his stern father had raised him. He would not make the same mistakes with Seth.Roamers were free spirits, sometimes deprecatingly called space gypsies, whose clans filled niches too rugged and dangerous for more pampered people—places such as the Sheol lava-processing operations. He had followed Elisa there because of her promotion in Iswander Industries.“You should stay away from That Woman,” Olaf Reeves had warned him, not once but dozens of times. “If you defy me, if you marry her, you will regret it. You are spitting on your heritage.”Now, Garrison hated to admit that his father had been right.He closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them. He studied the markers on the ship’s copilot control panels, then turned to his son. “Go ahead and set the next course, Seth.”“But where are we going?”“You pick, so long as we’re heading away from Sheol.” He tapped the starscreen, which showed infinite possibilities. “On this trip, we’re truly roaming. I just need some time away from everybody so I can rethink things.”Though anxious, the boy was glad to be with his father. Seth respected his mother, even feared her, but he loved his father. Elisa never let down her walls—not with any business associate, not with Garrison, not even with her own son.“Will I be able to go to Academ now?” Seth asked. The Roamer school inside a hollowed-out comet had always fascinated the boy. He wanted to be with the children of other clans, to have friends. Garrison knew his son would be happier at Academ, but Elisa had refused to consider sending their son there.“Maybe we’ll arrange that before long. For now, you can learn from me.”Unlike other Roamer children, Seth hadn’t grown up in a pleasant domed greenhouse asteroid or on the open gas-giant skies of an ekti-harvesting skymine. Rather, his daily view was a blaze of scarlet magma erupting in a smoke-filled sky. All the personnel of the lava-mining facility lived in reinforced habitat towers mounted on pilings sunk down to solid rock. More than two thousand employees, specialists of various ranks—engineers like Garrison himself, metallurgists, geologists, shipping personnel, and just plain grunt workers—filled shifts aboard the smelter barges or control towers, surrounded by fires that could have inspired Hell itself.No other parents kept their children here. Sheol was no place for a family, no home for a boy, regardless of the career advancement opportunities for Elisa.As the two closely orbiting halves of the binary planet adjusted their dance of celestial mechanics, Garrison had analyzed the orbital pirouette, uncovering fourth-order resonances that he suspected would make the fragments dip fractionally closer to each other, increasing stresses. He studied the melting points, annealing strengths, and ceramic-lattice structure of the habitat and factory towers.And he realized the danger to the Iswander operations.Alarmed, he had presented his results to Lee Iswander, only to be rebuffed when neither the industrialist nor his deputy—Garrison’s own wife—took his warnings seriously. Iswander impatiently told Garrison to go back to work and reassured him that the lava-processing outpost was perfectly safe. The material strength of the structural elements was rated to withstand the environment of Sheol, although with little margin for error.When Garrison insisted, Iswander grudgingly brought in a team of contract geologists and engineers who found a way to rerun the calculations, to reaffirm that nothing could go wrong. The specialists had departed with surprising haste—worried about their own safety?Garrison still trusted his own calculations, though. Next, he felt it was his responsibility to warn the Sheol employees, which infuriated Elisa, who was sure that his whistle-blowing would cost her a promotion.Honestly, Garrison hoped he was wrong. He knew he wasn’t. Convinced he had no alternative, he decided to take Seth away from Sheol before disaster struck.…After scanning the star catalog, the boy chose coordinates that qualified as little other than “the middle of nowhere.” The stardrive engines hummed and changed tone as they adjusted course, and the vessel streaked off again.Seth looked up at him with a sparkle in his eyes. “If we had our own compy, Dad, he could fly the ship, and you and I could play games.”Garrison smiled. “We’re on autopilot. We can still play games.”Because there were no other children on Sheol, Seth had longed for a competent computerized companion, probably a Friendly model who could keep him company and amuse him. At the lava-mining facility, Lee Iswander used only a handful of Worker compies, none of which were the more sociable types, not even a Teacher compy.“Your mother didn’t see the point in owning a compy,” Garrison said. “But maybe we can revisit that.” After we see what happens.In his head, Garrison heard his father’s gruff voice again. “You never should have married That Woman. You’re a Roamer, and you belong with other Roamers!”“Elisa’s not a Roamer, but Lee Iswander comes from a good clan,” he had responded, though the words sounded flat in his own ears.“That man has more of the Hansa about him than the clans. He’s forgotten who he is.” The bearded clan patriarch had waved a finger in front of his son’s face. “And if you stay with him, you will forget who you are. Too many Roamer clans have forgotten. A knife loses its edge unless it is sharpened.”But Garrison had refused to listen and married Elisa Enturi anyway. He’d given up so much for her … or had he done it just to act out against his father? He had wanted a family, a fulfilled life, and Elisa wanted something else.“If we find a place and settle down, will Mother come to live with us again?” Seth asked.Garrison didn’t want to lie. He stared out at the forest of stars ahead and the great emptiness in which they had lost themselves. “She wants to take her chances at Sheol for now.”The boy looked sad but stoic. “Maybe someday.”Garrison could not envision any other answer but Maybe someday.Still running, they crossed the expansive emptiness for days, and then they encountered an amazing anomaly: a cluster of gas bags far outside of any star system. Each bloated globule was twice the size of their ship.Garrison ran a quick diagnostic. “Never seen anything like these.”The membranous bubbles drifted along in a loose gathering with nothing but light-years all around them. In the dim light of faraway stars, the spherical structures appeared greenish brown, and each filmy membrane enclosed a blurry nucleus. Hundreds of thousands of them formed an island in a sea of stars.Seth studied both the sensor screens and the unfiltered view through the windowport. “Are they alive?”Garrison shut down the engines so their ship could drift toward them. “No idea.” The strange objects seemed majestic—silent, yet powerful. Organic? They filled him with a sense of wonder. “They remind me of … space plankton.”“They’re bloated and floating,” Seth said. “We should call them bloaters.”A random glimmer of light brightened one of the nodules, an internal flash that faded. Then another bloater flickered and quickly faded.Close together at one of th... Views: 576
There's a dark secret in fifteen-year-old Roberta Ritter's past. Her mother was murdered years ago by an unknown killer. Now, Roberta must separate the real from the virtual as she begins her own crusade to discover the cause of a new rash of hate crimes and the truth behind her mother's death. Views: 576
Short story from the Unicorn Witch tales of Refuge.‘IN THE BEGINNING’ Is The First In A Collection Of Short Stories, ‘UNICORN WITCH’S CAULDRON’ Due For Release In The Summer Of 2013 And Featuring The Worlds And Characters You Will Know From The ‘UNICORN WITCH TRILOGY’.The short stories, including this one, whilst complete in themselves, would be better read after reading ‘Unicorn Witch’ Views: 576
Weeks after boarding a train to Paris in pursuit of her writing dreams, aspiring novelist Maisie Clark is right back where she started: on the idyllic shores of Port Hewer in Cornwall, luggage in hand and heart filled with anticipation for what lies ahead. Except that nothing seems the same as Maisie left it, from her place among the staff at the hotel Penmarrow to her budding romance with groundskeeper Sidney Daniels, who isn't quite ready to overlook the painful consequences of her sudden departure.Losing Sidney would be unbearable, but Maisie can't help fearing it might be true if the rift between them proves too deep to heal. She knows her feelings for him are unchanged, but whether he feels the same remains to be seen—particularly since she stopped him from expressing them in the first place. And to make matters worse, her position at the Penmarrow has been filled by another, there's nowhere for her to live in the village, and her savings are finally dwindling... Views: 576
On his own.
Thomas Bellweather hasn’t been in town long. Just long enough for his newlywed mother to be murdered, and for his new stepdad’s cop colleagues to decide Thomas is the primary suspect.
Not that there’s any evidence. But before Thomas got to Garretts Mill there had just been one other murder in twenty years.
The only person who believes him is Charlotte Rooker, little sister to three cops and, with her soft hands and sweet curves, straight-up dangerous to Thomas. Her best friend was the other murder vic. And she’d like a couple answers.
Answers that could get them both killed, and reveal a truth Thomas would die to keep hidden… Views: 576
