Nebula Award-winning author Walter Jon Williams serves up a glorious novelette-sized mashup of intrigue, cutting-edge biotech, Aymara Indian spies, a Chinese cruise ship, ninjas, Andean folk music, and a tetrahedal menace from beneath the sea. But the greatest threat to our heroes comes in the form of a water ballet company, whose director insists on Total Artistic Control. “...A rapid, imaginative, and at times hilarious story, packed with action and great characters...[Williams’] story is complete, rounded, and a great read.” --Patrick Samphire Views: 37
Award-winning author James Alan Gardner evokes a sense of wonder that is synonymous with great speculative fiction. Now, in his first short-story collection, he brings together the numerous tales that have made his reputation, ranging from the everyday experience to the cosmic, from peanut butter sandwiches to space drives. There are stories of wonder, imagination, humanity, and the unknown and tales that remind us of the importance of possibility. Some of the stories in this collection have won the Aurora Award and the grand prize in the prestigious Writers of the Future contest and been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, while others are completely new and undiscovered. Views: 37
There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry — and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it... . There is a life lived beneath the water — among rotted buildings and bloated corpses — by those so overburdened by the world's demands that they simply give up and go under... . In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction's most original... Views: 37
"In the first rank of American crime writers. . . . Next to Vachss, Chandler, Cain and Hammett look like choirboys." --Cleveland Plain Dealer
Burke--ex-con, mercenary, sometime killer--makes his living preying on New York's most vicious predators and avenging their innocent victims. But in Andrew Vachss's mercilessly suspenseful new novel, Burke finds himself working the other side of the street, where guilt and innocence are as disposable as the sheets in a Times Square hotel--and as dirty. Burke's new employer is Kite, a fanatical crusader who specializes in debunking "false allegations of child sexual abuse. Kite has a case that may be the real thing, but needs Burke to tell him if it is. And if mere money can't persuade Burke to cooperate, Kite has plenty of other incentives at his disposal--including a fanatical bodyguard with a taste for corsets and brass knuckles. A tour guide to hell written in icy prose, False Allegations is Vachss at his most unnerving. "Burke is the toughest talking first-person narrator since Mike Hammer." --Los Angeles Times "Vachss . . . writes hypnotically violent prose." --Chicago Sun-Times Views: 37
Erotica/Dark Fantasy. 10535 words long. Views: 37
A masterful new translation by Michael Hofmann of some of Kafka's most fantastical and visionary short fictionAnimals, strange beasts, bureaucrats, businessmen, and nightmares populate this collection of stories by Franz Kafka. These matchless short works, all unpublished during Kafka's lifetime, range from the gleeful dialogue between a cat and a mouse in "Little Fable" to the absurd humor of "Investigations of a Dog," from the elaborate waking nightmare of "Building the Great Wall of China" to the creeping unease of "The Burrow," where a nameless creature's labyrinthine hiding place turns into a trap of fear and paranoia. Views: 37
The Joy-Ride and After was A.L. Barker's third collection of shorter pieces, first published in 1963. It offers three novellas, linked by certain recurrent characters and by their variations on the themes of loneliness and insecurity.The first tells of what has led to a young garage-hand 'borrowing' his employer's car, and of the disastrous consequences that ensue. In the second, a betrayed wife loses her memory after an accident, and finds herself on a barge with an old reprobate. The third concerns the tribulations of a canteen manager who has an inscrutable boss and an extravagant wife. Whether they live in slum tenement or suburban semi-detached, these 'ordinary' people become alive and phenomenal to us through the force and sympathy of Barker's imagination. Views: 37
O. Henry's short stories are well known for their wit, wordplay, warm characterization and clever twist endings. Collected in this book (Golgotha Press, 2010) is a giant anthology of his work, including the stories, some early verses and a few letters. Views: 37
The classic World War II thriller from the acclaimed master of action and suspense. Now issued for the first time as an e-book.Twelve hundred British soldiers isolated on the small island of Kheros off the Turkish coast, waiting to die. Twelve hundred lives in jeopardy, lives that could be saved if only the guns could be silenced. The guns of Navarone, vigilant, savage and catastrophically accurate. Navarone itself, grim bastion of narrow straits manned by a mixed garrison of Germans and Italians, an apparently impregnable iron fortress. To Captain Keith Mallory, skllled saboteur, trained mountaineer, fell the task of leading the small party detailed to scale the vast, impossible precipice of Navarone and to blow up the guns. The Guns of Navarone is the story of that mission, the tale of a calculated risk taken in the time of war… Views: 37
