When a light aircraft crashes into the Thames at Shepperton, the young pilot who struggles to the surface minutes later seems to have come back from the dead. Within hours everything in the dormitory suburb is transformed. Vultures invade rooftops, luxuriant tropical vegetation overruns the quiet avenues, and the local inhabitants are propelled by the young man’s urgent visions through ecstatic sexual celebrations toward an apocalyptic climax. In this characteristically inventive novel Ballard displays to devastating effect the extraordinary imagination that has established him as one of the twentieth century’s most visionary writers. Views: 823
From the author of such American epics as the Kent Family Chronicles and the North and South trilogy comes this special anthology of frontier fiction--featuring three brand new stories and a special introduction by the author. Views: 823
Short horror story. Pages: 6. Words: 1,910Evan awakens in a dark place where he must fight for his life from evil beings and twisted puzzles.A young man awakens in an unknown place, strapped to a bed, with shadows around, his whole world is turn upside down. He is in a race of time to escape the hell he has awoken in. As He dives deeper into the mysterious world around him, he starts to realize that not all is what it seems when people try to play God. Everything he once knew has been turned upset down and only gets worse as he starts to unravel the sicking truth around him with the help from another. Views: 823
In the thousand-sun network of humanity's expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.
In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.
New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity -- and of the Rocinante -- unexpectedly and forever... Views: 822
Greegs & Ladders is a wildly exciting tale of three oddball characters romping around space and time. Equal parts social satire and fun loving adventure, Greegs promises laughs, a few mildly intelligent and/or interesting observations, & several run-on sentences. You'll also get to find out what the hell Greegs are, and how life on Earth came to be, and the meaning of it all (at no extra charge.)Greetings Earth creatures. This book has been dropped off on your planet for the purpose of... well, for you to read it. I'm not sure if you'll like it, I might not if I was you. I'd wager many of you won't be big fans. The investment banking community will especially be... put off by some of what is contained here. An advanced copy was sent to your virtual place of worship 'Reddit' and met with mixed results. While spending nearly a full day on the front page, many Earthlings voiced their stern displeasure with the book. Many others found it lovely. I'm not sure who I'm more concerned for. Either way this is a book I only meant to help with. I know sometimes books, words and ideas can make you humans angry; but then again, pretty much everything seems to do that. In the end, just remember it's only words in a book. Can't we all just get along and go for a swim instead? Views: 821
Jester has arrived on Sasha’s world on the eve of the Bliss, a madness that is both overwhelming and necessary for the survival of her people. But Jester is ignorant of not only the Bliss, but also to the meaning of the one word that binds Sasha's people together. If Sasha can't make him understand, it could mean the end of her life.When Jester came to Sasha’s world, their lives changed forever.Jester belongs to one of the many colonies of humanity that spread across the galaxy eons ago. His people merely wish to reach out to Sasha’s people in friendship as fellow descendants of humanity.But Jester has arrived on Sasha’s world on the eve of the Bliss, a madness that is both overwhelming and necessary for the survival of her people. The changes she experiences, changes they experience every two years, draw her to Jester in ways that both excite and terrify her. For Jester is ignorant of not only the Bliss, but also to the meaning of the one word that binds Sasha's people together, a word they always thought was a part of humanity wherever they may be.As Sasha shows Jester how the descendants of humanity live on her world, she feels a gnawing in her soul. If she can teach him the meaning of the word, she’ll know a happiness she has not felt in years. If not, it could mean the end of her life.Season of Bliss is a science fiction romance short novel. Views: 821
Burton & Swinburne return in a new series! The Beast is coming. History will be remade. Since the assassination of Queen Victoria in 1840, a cabal of prominent men-including King George V, HRH Prince Albert, Benjamin Disraeli, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel-has received guidance from the Afterlife. The spirit of a dead mystic, Abdu El Yezdi, has helped them to steer the empire into a period of unprecedented peace and creativity. But on the eve of a groundbreaking alliance with the newly formed Greater German Confederation, scientists, surgeons, and engineers are being abducted-including Brunel! The government, in search of answers, turns to the Afterlife, only to find that Abdu El Yezdi is now refusing to speak with the living. Enter the newly-knighted Sir Richard Francis Burton, fresh from his discovery of the source of the Nile. Appointed the king's agent, he must trace the missing luminaries and solve the mystery of Abdu El Yezdi's silence. But the Beast has been summoned. How can the famous explorer fulfill his mission when his friends and loved ones are being picked off, one by one, by what appears to be a supernatural entity-by, perhaps, Abdu El Yezdi himself? Views: 821
Dr. Barnes grasped the microphone so tightly his knuckles whitened..."London, this is New York...It's hundreds of years since the last contact between London and New York!"
"I hear you, New York. Have you been to the surface yet?"
"Not yet. But we're going to go! We hope to visit you, London! To cross the Atlantic!"
For centuries, men had lived miles beneath the ground in order to survive the great Ice Block that had submerged the earth. In an attempt to resume human contact, Jim Barnes, his father and several other daring men emerge from a subterranean New York to cross the frozen Atlantic. Coping bravely with problems of food and shelter, the fury of snowstorm and the attacks of wild beasts, and the strange, savage men who roam the Earth's ice crust, they finally reach London, only to find an angry and distrustful mob. Jim's pivotal role in establishing trust and unity is revealed in a suspenseful and thrilling climax. Views: 820
Spanning the planting of the Circle of Seven to the day Dekker Knight meets Vesuvius Briggs, A Waxing Arbolean Moon is an origins/prequel that fills in all gaps in the fractured timeline of Dekker’s Dozen: The Last Watchmen and functions as either Prologue or Epilogue depending on how you choose to look at it. Say yes to steampunk time-travel, King Solomon vs Asmodeus, and aliens in Akkadia/Egypt.The demon Dione existed before the dawn of time. Surely she was created alongside the very Divine Machine she came to loathe so much. From Dione’s seduction by Asmodeus and imprisonment at the hands of King Solomon to her release by an unwitting archaeologist, the timeline is punctuated with the baal’s influence and its counters by the time-traveling Ezekiel who repels the Arbolean invasion during the infancy of the Akkadian Empire with the weapons of an ancient Greek tinkererSpanning the dawn of creation and the planting of the Circle of Seven to the day Dekker Knight meets Vesuvius Briggs, A Waxing Arbolean Moon fills in all gaps in the fractured timeline of Dekker’s Dozen: The Last Watchmen and functions as either Prologue or Epilogue depending on how you choose to look at it.Before the chaos of steampunk time-travel, cyborg ninjas, plant-spore-controlled unicorn zombies, ghost warships, and Hassidic superweapons of The Last Watchmen, A Waxing Arbolean Moon pulls back the curtain on the galactic and celestial backstories.A Waxing Arbolean Moon is best read in conjunction with The Last Watchmen as a companion piece and may be difficult to follow without familiarity with the full novel. Views: 820
Asegai, a star-faring mercenary of the more relaxed sort, discovers a massive, half-destroyed ship in the middle of deep space. Just before he goes in to scrounge for valuables, a mysterious com tag appears from inside the ship: a request for an assisted suicide. In only minutes, Asegai is thrust into an explosive warzone, the two combatants battling over more than just a single life.Deep space, an endless void, a darkened expanse of littered stars and limitless possibilities, ushers the mercenary Asegai to a derelict, drifting ship. His AI finds, evaluates, and links with the craft, promising vast wealth upon the ship’s recovery. As always, Asegai is cautious but perhaps blinded by the immensity of his discovery.Within the command center of the monstrous prize, the mercenary pilot encounters a ‘life-form’ like no other – Contrarian, an advanced AI with professed feelings and counterintuitive processing. Before long wits are tested and a battle rages, pitting the gifted warrior against an intelligence bent on the destruction of them all.In a stunning upheaval of rational thinking and the concept of artificial intelligence, writer Kell Inkston opens the door to possibilities that will make you rethink advanced evolution, life, and the true meaning of death. You won’t know until the very end who...or what, triumphs. Views: 820
Amy Boxer, the precocious daughter of London kidnap consultant Charles Boxer and Detective Inspector Mercy Danquah, has drifted from melancholy and frustration to drastic action: she’s leaving home. But Amy can’t just walk out, and goads the talents of her parents, with a challenge: YOU WILL NEVER FIND ME.
Amy’s destination: Madrid. Here, in the strobe-lights of bars and crowded dance clubs, she’s anonymous and untraceable. Except to a volatile, unpredictable leader in the Madrid drug trade, the man known only as El Osito.
Charles Boxer will use his very specific set of skills to retrace Amy’s quickly vanishing steps, while DI Danquah takes on her own case in London: a young boy, Sasha Bobkov, has gone missing. Is the disappearance connected to Sasha’s father, a retired agent of the Russian secret service, who is working to discover who poisoned his former fellow agent, Alexander Tereshchenko.
As Danquah begins her search for Sasha, a body is found in Madrid. Amy’s father may be the next target. Views: 820
The perennially best-selling series set in Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin universe continues with entry #14 including hard-hitting and thought-inducing tales from a host of talented contributors Hal Colebatch, Matthew Joseph Harrington, Alex Hernandez, Jessica Q. Fox, and more. The catlike alien Kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, must learn to compromise with humans if they wish to survive and prosper once again as a species.
Larry Niven’s bestselling Man-Kzin series continues! The kzin, formerly invincible conquerors of all they encountered, had a hard time dealing with their ignominious defeat by the leaf-eating humans. Some secretly hatched schemes for a rematch, others concentrated on gathering power within the kzin hierarchy, and some shamefully cooperated with the contemptible humans, though often for hidden motives. In war and in uneasy peace, kzin and humans continue their adventures with a masterful addition to the Man-Kzin Wars shared universe created by multiple New York Times best-seller, incomparable tale-spinner, and Nebula- and five-time Hugo-Award-winner, Larry Niven.
About the Man-Kzin War Series:
“[The Man-Kzin Wars series is] excellent …gripping …and expands well on Larry Niven’s universe… .” –Locus
About series creator Larry Niven:
“Niven’s masterly use of SF strategies hits every note…“–Los Angeles Time Views: 820
The winding and weaving tale of the most powerful magician in all the lands, from his final days to his first steps into magic and back again.In this book you'll find three different stories. The first one called Rhythmic Bond. This story relates the first trip of a person. This trip is coming to the world. The second story is called Our Date where a young girl is struggling the loss of her love one. The third one is called Děkuji, where a guy wakes up every morning with the same call telling him "I know what you did" and he has no clue what it is about. Views: 820
Former Special Ops Agent Brian Mitchell was living a quiet life as a Sheriff’s deputy with his wife and daughter, until the night he awakened to find himself kidnapped and his family held prisoner by a former enemy determined to settle an old vendetta.Former Special Ops Agent Brian Mitchell was living a quiet life as a Sheriff’s deputy with his wife and daughter, until the night he awakened to find himself kidnapped and his family held prisoner by a former enemy determined to settle an old vendetta. Trapped inside a remote castle in eastern Europe, Brian must use every bit of skill, experience, and animal instinct he possesses to survive a grim gauntlet of professional killers determined to make sure he doesn’t see the end of the longest night of the year alive! Views: 819
The story of Beauty and the Beast with a twist. What if the woman was the one turned into the creature? A witch's curse transformed a girl into a monster with the Kiss, the prince's first kiss as her only redemption. The Kiss wouldn't be an easy task since showing her face meant her death.The story of Beauty and the Beast with a twist. What if the woman was the one turned into the creature?On the planet Terra when recorded history began, Man coexisted with the Necroms. Necroms were intelligent catlike humanoids. The dawn of this period was known as the First Age of Magic. In the Second Age of Magic, a war broke out between Man and the Necroms and by the middle of the Second Age, Man was nearly wiped from creation. Those who survived fled Wellspring and journeyed across the sea into the unknown, finding new homes and creating fortified domains. In the Third and final Age of Magic, Man established five island kingdoms: Commery, Fletching, Morgog, Swelldom, and Hort.In the First Age of Metal, Man turned from the lost art of magic to the might of weapons as they discovered iron then steel. Large armies were created, and Man fought amongst themselves, forgetting the Necroms into myth. For generations the wars continued until an arranged marriage between the two strongest kingdoms of Commery and Morgog ceased the bloodshed, and so Man established the first Emperor and Empress and the tradition of Amalgamation. When both the Emperor and Empress of the Five Kingdoms died, the two strongest kingdoms' heirs married and crowned a new dynasty, and so began the Age of Amalgamation.During this age, a witch placed a curse on a girl named Pluck. The curse had been meant for a boy, Prince Edward of Fletching, for stealing the Mystic Rose. Pluck transformed into a Necrom with the Kiss, Edward's first kiss as her only redemption. The Kiss wouldn't be an easy task since showing her face meant her death.Beauty Of The Beast Series-1. Beauty of the Beast #1 The Mystic Rose- Part A- The Flower, The Sword, And The Kiss2. Beauty of the Beast #1 The Mystic Rose- Part B- A Vow Of Love And The Challenge3. Beauty of the Beast #1 The Mystic Rose- Part C- Hearts Betrayed And Blood Revealed Views: 819