A Murder Case in the Area (Aincrad 57th floor, April 2024) (SAO Side Story) Caliber (Alfheim, December 2025) (ALO Side Story) First Day (Aincrad 1st floor, November 2022) (SAO Side Story)

The great king, Meldryn Mawr, is dead, and his kingdom lies in ruins. Treachery and brutality rule the land, and Albion is the scene of an epic struggle for the throne. Lewis Gillies returns as Llew, seeking the true meaning behind a mysterious prophecy - the making of a true king and the revealing of a long awaited champion: Silver Hand. The ancient Celts admitted no spearation between this world and the Otherworld: the two were delicately interwoven, each dependent on the other. The Silver Hand crosses the thin places between this world and that, as Lewis Gillies seeks to learn the secret of the prophecy of The Silver Hand - and to save Albion before it is too late.

 From the Amazon Bestselling Rocker Series, Sand & Clay... In this heart warming romantic comedy novella, rockstar Logan Clay is back with all his bandmates and friends as they travel to his parent's home in East Haven, Connecticut for Christmas. The snowy holiday is heavy with questions about the future and everybody is looking for different answers. Logan is debating the next steps in his relationship. Caroline needs to decide on a career and learn to stand on her own. Aralia is lost and looking for a purpose in her life. Dylan is hiding secrets behind a playboy facade. Over the course of the holiday, tears are shed, hearts are broken, laughter is at an all time high, and new relationships are formed. Everybody has questions, but only some will find their answers

THE STARTER is the sequel to THE ROOKIE, a hard-hitting, bone-crunching YA sports/scifi novel described as "The Blindside" meets "Star Wars" meets "The Godfather." THE STARTER is a star-spanning coming-of-age space opera combined with the gritty world of organized crime, all set against a backdrop of a far-future professional football league. In THE ROOKIE, 19-year-old rookie quarterback Quentin Barnes overcame his racism and unified his team. He led the Ionath Krakens to a lower-tier championship, a championship that earned them promotion into the meat grinder known as "Tier One." Now, he and his teammates have to compete against the greatest football teams ever assembled and do far more than just survive each game. As he rebuilds the team in his own image, Quentin's true quest for a Tier One championship begins. GALACTIC FOOTBALL LEAGUE SERIES: - THE ROOKIE - THE STARTER - THE ALL-PRO (published September 6, 2011) - THE MVP (published September 6, 2012) PRAISE FOR "THE ROOKIE" "THE ROOKIE is a futuristic ride that takes football to the next level. Set in a future day of corruption, bigger bodies and bigger stakes, it's Rollerball between the white lines and a fascinating read." -- John Clayton, ESPN PRAISE FOR SCOTT SIGLER Bestselling authors agree,Scott Sigler is: "One heck of a thriller writer." - Steve Berry "The Richard Matheson of the 21st Century." - Jonathan Maberry "Masterful at grabbing the reader by the throat and refusing to let go." - Lincoln Child "Part Stephen King, part Chuck Palahniuk." - James Rollins "Inventive, amped-up." - Entertainment Weekly "Leads the reader from one startling detail to the next." - Publisher's Weekly "One hell of an exhilarating ride and highly recommended." - Joe Landsdale "Sigler brings the folksy character detail of Stephen King, the conceptual panache of Clive Barker, and the oozing, shuddery pathologies of a David Cronenberg movie." - Jan Bonansinga

Romeo and Juliet had it easier. They came from warring families who clearly drew a line for them not to cross. It wasn’t the same with Easton and Georgia. They came from a town where family was precious and moments were cherished. Still, there were unspoken rules, such as not falling for your best friends kid sister—or testing troubled hearts. The losses Easton and Georgia endured at a young age tossed them down separate paths, far from the sleepy town they both had roots within. Now, broken roads and bad decisions were the demons in their pasts—choices that would either draw them together, or rip them apart when chance landed them face to face once more.

Milo has two great moms, but he's never known what it's like to have a dad. When Milo's doctor suggests asking his biological father to undergo genetic testing to shed some light on Milo's extreme allergies, he realizes this is a golden opportunity to find the man he's always wondered about. Hollis's mom Leigh hasn't been the same since her other mom, Pam, passed away seven years ago. But suddenly, Leigh seems happy—giddy, even—by the thought of reconnecting with Hollis's half-brother Milo. Hollis and Milo were conceived using the same sperm donor. They met once, years ago, before Pam died. Now Milo has reached out to Hollis to help him find their donor. Along the way, they locate three other donor siblings, and they discover the true meaning of the other F-word: family.

I wanted to jump. He made me fall. As a celebrity, I lived in the public eye, but somewhere along the way, I’d lost myself in the spotlight. Until he found me. Sam Rivers was a gorgeous, tattooed stranger who saved my life with nothing more than a simple conversation. But we were both standing on that bridge for a reason the night we met. The secrets of our pasts brought us together—and then tore us apart. Could we find a reason to hold on as life constantly pulled us down? Or maybe there’s only one direction to go when two people fall in love at rock bottom—up.

A triumph of the imagination and a masterpiece of modern storytelling, Cloudsplitter is narrated by the enigmatic Owen Brown, last surviving son of America's most famous and still controversial political terrorist and martyr, John Brown. Deeply researched, brilliantly plotted, and peopled with a cast of unforgettable characters both historical and wholly invented, Cloudsplitter is dazzling in its re-creation of the political and social landscape of our history during the years before the Civil War, when slavery was tearing the country apart. But within this broader scope, Russell Banks has given us a riveting, suspenseful, heartbreaking narrative filled with intimate scenes of domestic life, of violence and action in battle, of romance and familial life and death that make the reader feel in astonishing ways what it is like to be alive in that time.Amazon.com ReviewThe cover of Russell Banks's mountain-sized novel Cloudsplitter features an actual photo of Owen Brown, the son of John Brown--the hero of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" whose terrorist band murdered proponents of slavery in Kansas and attacked Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 on what he considered direct orders from God, helping spark the Civil War. A deeply researched but fictionalized Owen narrates this remarkably realistic and ambitious novel by the already distinguished author of The Sweet Hereafter. Owen is an atheist, but he is as haunted and dominated by his father, John Brown, as John was haunted by an angry God who demanded human sacrifice to stop the abomination of slavery. Cloudsplitter takes you along on John Brown's journey--as period-perfect as that of the Civil War deserter in Cold Mountain--from Brown's cabin facing the great Adirondack mountain (called "the Cloudsplitter" by the Indians) amid an abolitionist settlement the blacks there call "Timbuctoo," to the various perilous stops of the Underground Railroad spiriting slaves out of the South, and finally to the killings in Bloody Kansas and the Harpers Ferry revolt. We meet some great names--Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a (fictional) lover of Nathaniel Hawthorne--but the vast book keeps a tight focus on the aged Owen's obsessive recollections of his pa's crusade and the emotional shackles John clamped on his own family. Banks, a white author, has tackled the topic of race as impressively as Toni Morrison in novels such as Continental Drift. What makes Cloudsplitter a departure for him is its style and scope. He is noted as an exceptionally thorough chronicler of America today in rigorously detailed realist fiction (he championed Snow Falling on Cedars). Banks spent half a decade researching Cloudsplitter, and he renounces the conventional magic of his poetical prose style for a voice steeped in the King James Bible and the stately cadences of 19th-century political rhetoric. The tone is closer to Ken Burns's tragic, elegiac The Civil War than to the recent crazy-quilt modernist novel about John Brown, Raising Holy Hell. A fan of Banks's more cut-to-the-chase, Hollywood-hot modern style may get impatient, but such readers can turn to, say, Gore Vidal's recently reissued Lincoln, which peeks into the Great Emancipator's head with a modern's cynical wit. Banks's narrator is poetical and witty at times--Owen notes, "The outrage felt by whites [over slavery] was mostly spent on stoking their own righteousness and warming themselves before its fire." Yet in the main, Banks writes in the "elaborately plainspoken" manner of the Browns, restricting himself to a sober style dictated by the historical subject. Besides, John Brown's head resembles the stone tablets of Moses. You do not penetrate him, and you can't declare him mad or sane, good or evil. You read, struggling to locate the words emanating from some strange place between history, heaven, and hell. From Library JournalAt first glance, aside from the setting, this massive novelized life of Abolitionist John Brown, told from the viewpoint of one of his sons, has nothing in common with Banks's book of outlaw excess, Rule of the Bone (HarperCollins, 1995). Yet both deal with single-mindedness, rebellion, and codes?except that Brown's versions of these are more honorable (he would have agreed with Dylan that "to live outside the law you must be honest"). This book has all the stark beauty of the Adirondacks setting and of Brown's religion, and the elderly, reclusive narrator's coming to terms with himself and his father is an achievement in its own right. Besides, like the works of Thomas Mallon and Thomas Gifford, this is not just a fine novel (and a wonderfully structured one at that) but a way to participate in history. Recommended, without hyperbole, for all collections.-?Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Oswego, N.Y.Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"A fluent, intelligent history...give[s] the reader a feel for the human quirks and harsh demands of life at sea."—New York Times Book ReviewBefore the ink was dry on the U.S. Constitution, the establishment of a permanent military became the most divisive issue facing the new government. The founders—particularly Jefferson, Madison, and Adams—debated fiercely. Would a standing army be the thin end of dictatorship? Would a navy protect from pirates or drain the treasury and provoke hostility? Britain alone had hundreds of powerful warships.From the decision to build six heavy frigates, through the cliff-hanger campaign against Tripoli, to the war that shook the world in 1812, Ian W. Toll tells this grand tale with the political insight of Founding Brothers and the narrative flair of Patrick O'Brian.

One of Ngaio Marsh's most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations -- Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise.Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn finds he has no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court -- and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett who out-detects them all...

In the rare moments when Leigh Adelman has time to consider her chaotic life, it takes her breath away: there's her 14 year-old son Isaac, fierce and vulnerable; eight-year-old Jane, wise, tart-tongued and practical; baby Daisy, her joyful last child; and reasonable, patient Simon, a devoted husband and father. Leigh's suburban New York life is 14 years distant from her first love. It had been electric, an adventure that produced the divine gift of Isaac -- and taught her that even all-consuming passion doesn't mean happily ever after. But that intense, hopeful time had slowly receded to a distant corner of her heart...until the summer morning when Fowler popped back into her life. Cautiously, Leigh walks into a Manhattan hotel bar, unfinished business compelling her to see the brilliant, uncompromising Fowler. And as soon as she hears his voice she understands that she has always loved him. But this rendezvous turns out to be less about first love than it is about a last...

It's the end of the world as we know it...Someday soon, you might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our strength"--while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn't violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of polygamy. If you think this can't happen, you haven't been paying attention, as the hilarious, provocative, and brilliant Mark Steyn--the most popular conservative columnist in the English-speaking world--shows to devastating effect. The future, as Steyn shows, belongs to the fecund and the confident. And the Islamists are both, while the West is looking ever more like the ruins of a civilization. But America can survive, prosper, and defend its freedom only if it continues to believe in itself, in the sturdier virtues of self-reliance (not government), in the centrality of family, and in the conviction that our country really is the world's last best hope. Mark Steyn's America Alone is laugh-out-loud funny--but it will also change the way you look at the world.

TWO WORLDS, ONE ENEMYEarthAn overpopulated world is under the brutal, high-tech thumb of the Committee. Towering robot shepherds, pain-inducers, and reader guns maintain control over masses of zero-asset citizens, but for the elite this not enough. Twelve billion must human beings must die before the Earth can be stabilized, and the Argus satellite laser network is almost ready.Waking in a crate destined for an incinerator, Alan Saul remembers only pain and his torturer’s face. But he has company: Janus, a rogue AI inhabiting the forbidden hardware in his skull. Saul intends to stop Argus and get his revenge on the Committee–once he finds out who he used to be.Mars.Abandoned by the Committee, the Antares Base faces extinction. The colonists there will not be returning to Earth nor will they be receiving any additional supplies or support. Unless they are very ingenious, they will run out of resources and be dead within five years.As if that’s not dire enough, Varalia Delex finds herself caught in a violent power struggle with the base’s ruthless political officers–who see everyone else as expendable. As spilled blood turns the Red Planet even redder, Var discovers that Mars holds very new and interesting ways to dieAbout the AuthorNeal Asher was born in Billericay, Essex, and divides his time between here and Crete. His previous full-length novels are Gridlinked, The Skinner, The Line of Polity, Cowl, Brass Man, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, Polity Agent, Hilldiggers, Prador Moon, Line War, Shadow of the Scorpion, Orbus and The Technician.

From the New York Times bestselling author of the Fallen series and the Remy Chandler series, a new dark fantasy series filled with demons, exorcisms, and the fight against the worst that hell has to offer...   There is more to our world than meets the eye—darker things, crueler things. Exorcist John Fogg and his wife, psychic medium Theodora Knight, know what lurks in the shadows. But even they’re not prepared for the worst Hell has to offer... It was supposed to be a simple exorcism, a publicity stunt to firmly establish John and Theodora’s thriving paranormal investigation empire in the public eye. But something went wrong, leading to an on-air massacre that unleashed a malicious host of demons and left Theodora catatonic, possessed by countless spirits. John sets out on a desperate quest to find a cure for his wife, but his obsession brings him face-to-face with an even more terrifying problem: Theodora’s possession is only one piece of a deadly plot that is threatening the entire world. Because an ancient evil is about to make Earth its battlefield—and without John and Theodora’s intervention, there is no chance for salvation...**ReviewPraise for Thomas E. Sniegoski and His Works “Funny, unsettling, and heartbreaking.”—Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Tin Men “Tightly focused and deftly handled...A smart and playful story.”—Publishers Weekly   “Engaging [and] tightly written...You won’t find a dull moment.”—Sacramento Book Review   “At turns frightening, tender, heartrending, and full of twists and turns.”—News and Sentinel (Parkersburg, WV) “Fast-moving, well-written and wonderfully enchanting.”—Darque Reviews About the Author Thomas E. Sniegoski is a full-time writer of young adult novels, urban fantasy, and comics. His works include the New York Times bestselling Fallen series, the Remy Chandler novels, the graphic novel The Raven’s Child, as well as contributions to famous comics such as Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and B.P.R.D. 

For Napoleon's stepdaughter, nothing is simple - especially love.Paris, 1798. Hortense de Beauharnais is engrossed in her studies at a boarding school for aristocratic girls, most of whom have suffered tragic losses during the tumultuous days of the French Revolution. She loves to play and compose music, read and paint, and daydream about Christophe, her brother's dashing fellow officer. But Hortense is not an ordinary girl. Her beautiful, charming mother, Josephine, has married Napoleon Bonaparte, soon to become the most powerful man in France, but viewed by Hortense at the outset as a coarse, unworthy successor to her elegant father, who was guillotined during the Terror.Where will Hortense's future lie? it may not be in her power to decide.Inspired by Hortense's real-life autobiography with charming glimpses of life long ago, this is the story of a girl destined by fate to play a role she didn't choose.

RetailThe inspiring (and hilarious) memoir of a gloriously eccentric dad raising an equally eccentric son, by the bestselling author of *Look Me in the Eye*John Elder Robison wasn't a model child. He was awkward in school; he ran away from home; he threatened people with knives. As an adult, he learned he had Asperger's syndrome, which explained a lot, and his youthful shenanigans made for riotous stories. But it wasn't so funny when his son, Cubby, started having trouble in school and seemed like he might be headed the same way.Not that John was a model dad, either. When Cubby asked, "Where did I come from?" John said he'd bought him at the Kid Store-and that the salesman had cheated him by promising Cubby would do chores. He ditched Good Night, Moon for stories he made up about nuclear-powered horses. He taught Cubby to drive at age twelve. Cubby turned out to have his father's intelligence but also some of his resistance to authority. At seventeen, he was brilliant enough in chemistry to make military-grade explosives, which led to a raid by the ATF. That woke John up to another thing he and Cubby shared: Asperger's syndrome.This is an unforgettable memoir about a different boy being raised by a different father-and learning to cope with, even celebrate, the difference. JOHN ELDER ROBISON is the author of two previous books, Look Me in the Eye and Be Different, and he lectures widely on autism and neurological differences. An adjunct professor at Elms College, he also serves on committees and review boards for the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and Autism Speaks. A machinery enthusiast and avid photographer, John lives in Amherst with his family, animals, and machines.Author Residence: Amherst, Massachusetts "How does a man who lacks a sense of empathy and an ability to read nonverbal cues learn to be a father? And how does a man with Asperger's learn to recognize the same symptoms in his own child? (A key element in the book is Robison's son's own diagnosis, and Robison's reaction to his having missed seeing the signs for as long as he had.) In many ways, this is a traditional father-and-son memoir, but the added element of Asperger's gives the story a stronger emotional core: when Robison and his wife separated, for example, he realized he had been misreading a lot of what had been going on between them. It's a story of a man learning to be a parent, yes, but it's also-and perhaps more importantly-the story of a man discovering, as an adult, who he really is."-Booklist"John Elder Robison is one of my autism super heroes because he bravely brings humor and humility to the heart and soul of the taboo and unexpected corners of life lived with autism. His new book, Raising Cubby, is more than a memoir about a father and son bound by their Asperger syndrome. It's a story that reminds us how precious and precarious the parent child relationship is and how beautiful our lives can be when we are share that ride together. Raising Cubby is Robison's best work yet."-Liane Holliday-Willey, coauthor of Pretending To Be Normal: Living with Asperger Syndrome"John Robison's skill as a master storyteller is nowhere more evident than in his third book, Raising Cubby. This heartwarming memoir takes us on the colorful journey of John and his son, Jack (aka Cubby), as they learn about the world together. At turns funny and poignant, it is, above all, the story of the powerful love of a father for his son. Told in the immensely entertaining and engaging style of John Elder Robison, it should be on everyone's must-read list."-Lori S. Shery, President and Founder, ASPEN®"Funny and moving...A warmhearted, appealing account by a masterful storyteller."-Kirkus Reviews"Robison's third book starts with a bang-his description of the 'malicious explosion' created by his teenage Cubby that has the boy, who has Asperger's syndrome, looking at 60 years in prison, is as disconcerting as it is captivating....With the ensuing investigation and trial, Cubby and the author are drawn into a crazy world that threatens to tear apart their already delicate lives."-Publishers Weekly