Gambler's World

      Keith Laumer
     Gambler's World

Once again it is up to Jamie Retief to save another diplomatic mission. Terra has recently signed a treaty with the planet Petreac. But revolution threatens and the Terrans must save the Nenni cast or their mission will end in abject failure.

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    Jonathan Rush and the Star Academy

      Gregory Blackman
     Jonathan Rush and the Star Academy

In the first installment of the Star Master Trilogy, we meet young Jonathan Rush. At night when he sleeps, ghoulish creatures and fearsome knights from a terrifying universe that is far too similar to our own, come to him. At first, he passes them off as nothing more than a result of his vivid imagination, but Johnny soon learns that his visions are closer to reality than he would like.The Star Master Trilogy:The Dark Prince has emerged from the shadows, ready to wage war on the Star Academy. Portals in space have opened, spreading chaos throughout the galaxy. The monsters from beyond call themselves the Void Empire, and they will not stop until they’ve destroyed everything in their path. War is about to begin and the galaxy’s only hope for salvation rests with an anxious fourteen year old named Johnny; whom unknowingly is both the reason and the solution to the galaxy’s problem.Jonathan Rush and the Star Academy:In the first installment of the Star Master Trilogy, we meet young Jonathan Rush. At night when he sleeps, ghoulish creatures and fearsome knights from a terrifying universe that is far too similar to our own, come to him. At first, he passes them off as nothing more than a result of his vivid imagination, but Johnny soon learns that his visions are closer to reality than he would like.At fourteen, Johnny thinks his biggest hurdle is attending high school for the first time, but a world of adventure and excitement await him when a mysterious stranger visits him in his home. The Star Academy is his destination, and there he will learn to harness the abilities that have been recognized within him. Will the burden be too much for the young teen to bear, or will he manage to overcome the adversity and save the day before it’s too late?Jonathan Rush and the Star Academy is the coming of age story about a cautious young teen who may be the only person able to close these portals and save everyone in time. What Johnny soon finds out, though, is that the hardest thing he’s going to have to do is believe in himself.This book is intended for all ages and has a word count of 18, 003.

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    The Collapsing Empire

      John Scalzi
     The Collapsing Empire

The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Redshirts and Old Man's War. Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars. Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire. The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it’s discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

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    Forbidden Area

      Pat Frank
     Forbidden Area

Forbidden Area is a tingling novel which deals with the near future: the atomic age pushed to its limits of insanity. Major Jesse Price is a flyer whose loss of an eye during the Korean War has grounded him. Too valuable to be released, he is made the Air Force representative to The Intentions of the Enemy Group, a top-secret high-level organization which is trying to keep a step ahead of enemy thinking. Major Price's adventures combine with those of the beautiful Katharine Hume of AEC. The secret data they share would raise goose-pimples on a polar bear. But together they find they must battle the terrifying indifference of the American public to news of its own impending destruction. The reader can see both sides of this struggle for world dominance and will have to catch his breath as Forbidden Area speeds to its terribly intense climax.

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    Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2

      Frederik Pohl
     Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2

Contents Introduction (Star Science Fiction Stories No. 2) • (1953) • essay by Frederik Pohl Disappearing Act • (1953) • short story by Alfred Bester It's a Good Life • (1953) • short story by Jerome Bixby The Clinic • (1953) • short story by Theodore Sturgeon The Happiest Creature • [Quarantine] • (1953) • short story by Jack Williamson The Odor of Thought • (1953) • short story by Robert Sheckley F Y I • (1953) • short story by James Blish Critical Factor • (1953) • short story by Hal Clement The Remorseful • (1953) • short story by C.M. Kornbluth A Pound of Cure • (1953) • short story by Lester del Rey Friend of the Family • (1953) • short story by Richard Wilson Hormones • (1953) • short story by Fletcher Pratt Conquest • (1953) • short story by Anthony Boucher The Purple Fields • (1953) • short story by Robert Crane The Congruent People • (1953) • short story by Algis Budrys

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    The Forever Man

      Eoin Colfer
     The Forever Man

Riley, an orphan boy living in Victorian London, has achieved his dream of becoming a renowned magician, the Great Savano. He owes much of his success to Chevie, a seventeen-year-old FBI agent who traveled from the future in a time pod and helped him defeat his murderous master, Albert Garrick. But it is difficult for Riley to enjoy his new life, for he has always believed in his heart of hearts that Garrick will someday, somehow, return. Chevie has assured Riley that Garrick was sucked into a temporal wormhole, never to emerge. The full nature of the wormhole has never been understood, however, and just as a human body will reject an unsuitable transplant, the wormhole eventually spits Garrick out. By the time Garrick makes it back to Victorian London, he has been planning his revenge on Riley for centuries. But even the best-laid plans can go awry, as the three discover when they are tossed once more into the wormhole and spill out in a Puritan village. Featuring remarkable heroes, an epic villain, and monstrous mutations, The Forever Man is another high-octane adventure from the impressive imagination behind the internationally best-selling Artemis Fowl series.

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    The Other Wind

      Ursula K. Le Guin
     The Other Wind

*A wizard, a mender of pots, a king, a dragon, and a burnt girl face the power of the dead. * The sorcerer Alder fears sleep. He dreams of the land of death, of his wife who died young and longs to return to him so much that she kissed him across the low stone wall that separates our world from the Dry Land--where the grass is withered, the stars never move, and lovers pass without knowing each other. The dead are pulling Alder to them at night. Through him they may free themselves and invade Earthsea. Alder seeks advice from Ged, once Archmage, Ged tells him to go to Tenar, Tehanu, and the young king at Havnor. They are joined by amber-eyed Irian, a fierce dragon able to assume the shape of a woman. This group can confront the threat only in the Immanent Grove on Roke. Joining them, Alder, a mender of pots, may be the only one who can mend the world.

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    Until the Beginning

      Amy Plum
     Until the Beginning

When Juneau's clan disappeared, she lost so much more than her friends and family. She soon discovered everything she thought she knew about her life was a lie. Her people's gifts were actually secret abilities that others wanted, desperately enough to kidnap an entire village. Juneau and her new companion Miles's cross-country journey to find her clan has led them to a game preserve in New Mexico. Now Juneau's people are finally within reach, and she will stop at nothing to save them. But she has a target on her back too, because unbeknownst to her she is the key to unlocking everything. To rescue her people - and herself - Juneau must discover what she, and her abilities, are truly capable of.

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    The Beating of His Wings

      Paul Hoffman
     The Beating of His Wings

Following the bestselling novels The Left Hand of God and The Last Four Things comes the final installment of Paul Hoffman’s stark, epic trilogy. Thomas Cale has been running from the truth... Since discovering that his brutal military training has been for one purpose—to destroy God’s greatest mistake, mankind itself—Cale has been hunted by the very man who made him into the Angel of Death: Pope Redeemer Bosco. Cale is a paradox: arrogant and innocent, generous and pitiless. Feared and revered by those who created him, he has already used his breathtaking talent for violence and destruction to bring down the most powerful civilization in the world. But Thomas Cale’s soul is dying. As his body is racked with convulsions, he knows that the final judgment will not wait. As the day of reckoning draws close, Cale’s sense of vengeance leads him back to the heart of darkness—the Sanctuary—and to confront the person he hates most in the world….

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    The World Swappers

      John Brunner
     The World Swappers

The Galaxy was caught in the crushing vice of a struggle for power. The political titans of the human planets were making their bids for supremacy. The contestants: Counce, man of strange powers, authority in the spheres of intellect. Bassett, man of money-powers, financial & business wizard. As the association of human worlds drew near the teetering edge of revolution, one of those men would be in a position to triumph. The only thing that neither side could foresee was that there were OTHERS hovering among the stars, looking for new worlds to conquer!

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    The Antipope

      Robert Rankin
     The Antipope

'Outside the sun shines. Buses rumble towards Ealing Broadway and I'm expected to do battle with the powers of darkness. It all seems a little unfair...' You could say it all started with the red-eyed tramp with the slimy fingers who put the wind up Neville, the part-time barman, something rotten. Or when Archroy's wife swapped his trusty Morris Minor for five magic beans while he was out at the rubber factory. On the other hand, you could say it all started a lot earlier. Like 450 years ago, when Borgias walked the earth. Pooley and Omally, stars of the Brentford Laboiur Exchange and the Flying Swan, want nothing to do with it, especially if there's a Yankee and a pint of Large in the offing. Pope Alexander VI, last of the Borgias, has other ideas...

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    Sandkings

      George R. R. Martin
     Sandkings

When Simon Kress returned to his home planet of Baldur from an offworld business trip, he was amused to find that his tank of Earth piranhas had cannibalized themselves into extinction, and of the two exotic animals that roamed his estate, only one remained. Now, in search of some new pets to satisfy his cruel pursuit of amusement, Simon finds a new shop in the city where he is intrigued by a new lifeform he has never heard of before... a collection of multi-colored sandkings. The curator explains that the insect-like animals, no larger than Simon's fingernails, are not insects, but animals with a highly-evolved hive intelligence capable of staging wars between the different colors, and even religion - in the form of worship of their owner. The curator's warning to Simon about the regularity of their feeding, unfortunately, was not taken seriously... Contents: - The Way of Cross and Dragon - Bitterblooms - In the House of the Worm - Fast-Friend - The Stone City - Starlady - Sandkings

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    The Metal Monster

      Abraham Merritt
     The Metal Monster

In the wilds of the Trans-Himalayan region, a quartet of adventurers led by Dr. Walter T. Goodwin stumbles upon a tribe of human primitives forgotten since the age of Alexander the Great, and an awesome being of living metal commanded by the exiled Norhala. As Norhala's guests, Goodwin and his team witness the mind-boggling marvels that are the Metal Monster's way of life, and the unspeakable horrors it commits when Norhala takes it to war against her persecutors.

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    This Must Be the Place

      John Scalzi
     This Must Be the Place

Colonial Union diplomat Hart Schmidt is back home for Harvest Day celebrations to a family whose members wonder whether its youngest son isn't wasting his life clinging to the lowest rung of the CUs diplomatic ladder. When his father, a legendarily powerful politician, presents him with a compelling offer, Schmidt has to take stock of his life and career.

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