With the  critically acclaimed novels The Gate To  Women's Country, Raising The Stones, and the  Hugo-nominated Grass, Sheri  Tepper has established herself as one of the major  science fiction writers of out Time. In  Beauty, she broadens her territory even  further, with a novel that evokes all the richness of  fairy tale and fable. Drawing on the wellspring  of tales such as "Sleeping Beauty,"  Beauty is a moving novel of love and loss, hope and  despair, magic and nature. Set against a backdrop  both enchanted and frightening, the story begins  with a wicked aunt's curse that will afflict a young  woman named Beauty on her sixteenth birthday.  Though Beauty is able to sidestep tragedy, she soon  finds herself embarked on an adventure of vast  consequences. For it becomes clear that the  enchanted places of this fantastic world--a place not  unlike our own--are in danger and must be saved before  it is too late. From the Paperback edition.

'In the first shop they bought a packet of dogseed, because Doreen had always wanted to grow her own dog...' Pixel Juice is the collected outpourings of an overactive mind. A selection of fifty stories from Jeff Noon's head, each one strange, telling, disturbing, or sometimes just plain wierd. From the breakdown zones of the mediasphere and the margins of music culture, Jeff Noon samples the image mix. Product recalls, adverts for mad gadjets, dubcut prose remixes, urban fairytales, instructions for lost machines, almost-true tales, dreamy one-pagers, word-dizzy roller coasters. With new stories from the Vurt cycle and other revelations, including the discovery of an 'off' switch for the human body this newly revised edition marks the first time that Pixel Juice has been made available digitally.

The powerful farseeker Elspeth Gordie is sent to Sutrium, seat of the totalitarian council that rules the Land, to seal an alliance between the secret Misfit community at Obernewtyn and rebel forces.

For years, underground street artist Ignatius has dodged surveillance cameras to spray-paint a dissident symbol: a dark visage with fiery eyes. Dissatisfied with his impact on the totalitarian country he calls home, Iggy sets his sights on tagging the most important government building in the nation. But will the soldiers of the Guard let him get away with it?For years, underground street artist Ignatius has dodged surveillance cameras to spray-paint a dissident symbol: a dark visage with fiery eyes. Dissatisfied with his impact on the totalitarian country he calls home, Iggy sets his sights on tagging the most important government building in the nation. But will the soldiers of the Guard let him get away with it?"Fire Eyes" takes place in a dystopia where the government conducts mass surveillance and keeps a Watched list of its own citizens. The Church has become as powerful as the State, and people who resist are called Heretics and face execution. As a short story set before the events of the novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall, "Fire Eyes" both makes a great entry point for new readers and provides new perspective to fans of Adam Bender's acclaimed books. Like his novels, this short story by Adam Bender exposes a current political issue in an exciting speculative fiction adventure, carrying on the tradition of dystopian classics 1984 by George Orwell and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, as well as more recent blockbuster novels like The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.This eBook includes a free sample of We, The Watched, the celebrated debut novel by Adam Bender.

The "New Sea" was teeming with a secret life. It was the greatest engineering feat -- the flooding of part of the Sahara Desert. But the new waters that covered up the land also threatened to destroy an ancient, secret civilization beneath the earth. When Mark Sunnet's plane crashed into the New Sea, he and his beautiful companion, Margaret Lawn, were taken prisoner by these secret people. They were taken deep beneath the earth into strange, dark caverns. Caverns that seemed to hold no hope for escape. But Mark and Margaret had to escape. For now, suddenly, they were faced with two terrors -- the secret people who were to be their executioners and the merciless New Sea that threatened to kill them all. . . .

A human diplomat kills his alien counterpart. Earth is on the verge of war with a vastly superior alien race. A lone man races against time and a host of enemies to find the one object that can save our planet and our people from alien enslavement... A sheep. That's right, a sheep. And if you think that's the most surprising thing about this book, wait until you read Chapter One. Welcome to The Android's Dream. For Harry Creek, it's quickly becoming a nightmare. All he wants is to do his uncomplicated mid-level diplomatic job with Earth's State Department. But his past training and skills get him tapped to save the planet--and to protect pet store owner Robin Baker, whose own past holds the key to the whereabouts of that lost sheep. Doing both will take him from lava-strewn battlefields to alien halls of power. All in a day's work. Maybe it's time for a raise. Throw in two-timing freelance mercenaries, political lobbyists with megalomaniac tendencies, aliens on a religious quest, and an artificial intelligence with unusual backstory, and you've got more than just your usual science fiction adventure story. You've got The Android's Dream.

How do you tell your part in the biggest tale in history? I ask because it's what I have to do. I'm Zoe Boutin Perry: A colonist stranded on a deadly pioneer world. Holy icon to a race of aliens. A player (and a pawn) in a interstellar chess match to save humanity, or to see it fall. Witness to history. Friend. Daughter. Human. Seventeen years old. Everyone on Earth knows the tale I am part of. But you don't know my tale: How I did what I did — how I did what I had to do — not just to stay alive but to keep you alive, too. All of you. I'm going to tell it to you now, the only way I know how: not straight but true, the whole thing, to try make you feel what I felt: the joy and terror and uncertainty, panic and wonder, despair and hope. Everything that happened, bringing us to Earth, and Earth out of its captivity. All through my eyes. It's a story you know. But you don't know it all.

Going well beyond the scope of his UK collection from several years ago, this is the definitive collection of Smith's shorter fiction, as well as his long overdue first US collection. MORE TOMORROW & OTHER STORIES features 30 of the author's best stories, plus an introduction by award-winning editor Stephen Jones and an afterword by Michael Marshall Smith. More Tomorrow Being Right Hell Hath Enlarged Herself Save As... The Handover What You Make It Maybe Next Time The Book of Irrational Numbers When God Lived in Kentish Town The Man Who Drew Cats A Place To Stay The Dark Land To See The Sea Two Shot Last Glance Back They Also Serve Dear Alison To Receive Is Better The Munchies Always Not Waving Everybody Goes Dying Charms Open Doors Later More Bitter Than Death A Long Walk, For The Last Time The Vaccinator Enough Pizza

The Doctor takes Clara to Edinburgh where he has to plug up a leaking energy well. Unfortunately, he is already too late and they have to pursue shadowy bird-like creatures through time to stop them consuming the raw energy of a child destined for great things...They were like birds. Large, black birds – shadowy descendants of pterodactyls – gathered in the shadows and out of sight. A movement from one of them could be dismissed as a trick of the light – the mind placing tricks with the shadows of the night. They were hungry. Ravenous. And they could feel their next meal getting close. A rip in time. Juicy energy waiting to be consumed. Gathered around one special person. A person with the potential to change the world. All they had to do was find a way through and then they could begin their feast.The Doctor takes Clara to Edinburgh where he has to plug up a leaking energy well. Unfortunately, he is already too late and they have to pursue the shadowy bird-like creatures through time to stop them consuming the raw energy of a child destined for great things...

A gripping psychological thriller on the inherent greed and evil of man, dooming the planet. Two hundred years of tender love between man and alien, political downfalls, wanton violence of unspeakable order tempered with laughter, family loyalty and hope is the thrilling vehicle by which Ms Accinni conveys her cautionary tale of the merciless disrespect man gives his planet and the vulnerable creatures entrusted to him. "Baby" introduces Netty, a naive teenage farm girl given in marriage to an older brutal opportunist disguised as a successful citizen during the years of Prohibition in Sussex County, New Jersey. After years of enslavement, Netty flees into the night from her rapist and bootlegger husband, traveling back to the farm worked by her parents, where she rescues an unfamiliar damaged creature she finds in a cave in the woods of her childhood, falling in love with the enigmatic alien she names Baby. Together they find happiness and fulfillment despite the changes to Netty's body wrought by the proximity of the unusual creature. Damaged by entry into our atmosphere while pregnant, the confused creature forgets the purpose of his mission, appearing unconcerned with the disappearance of his offspring and savoring the unexpected joy of the love he shares with young Netty. When a handsome Italian stranger comes into Netty's life, complications ensue as she falls in love while trying to hide the bizarre and wondrous changes to her farm and her body. Netty, Baby and Wil strive to conquer obstacles thrown in their path by life, succeeding wildly until the heart-rending and astonishingly brutal climax to their story. This charming, yet brutal story is the prologue to a series that will chill and surprise you as it foretells the selfishly destructive path man has followed since his species evolved. It pulls no punches while allowing Netty and Baby's influence to transcend mortal life as the world dances toward depraved indifference, introducing other characters along the ride that readers will laugh,shed tears with and learn to despise. What lengths will Baby and his offspring go to complete their mission? Will it spell Armageddon for the beleaguered planet with its vulnerable and exploited creatures or will man tip the scales himself, leaving those that love the creatures to salvage the pitiful ruins?

Scheming, extorting, menacing and general evilness are nothing new in the world of villainy - indeed it's expected. But there are codes of conduct. Until now. In an attempt to purge the Global League of Villainous Enterprises of its more destructive elements, Dr Nero has underestimated the cunning and resources of those who oppose him. Meanwhile, Otto and the rest of the Alpha stream have been sent to begin their most feared exercise: The Hunt, in the icy wastes of Siberia. But there is a traitor in their midst. The first strike against Nero will be a strike against the Alpha stream. Villain-kind is on the brink of CIVIL WAR.

Begin by entering “The Rift.” Answering a distress call from a colonized planet, a combat team finds themselves ambushed. They manage to scrabble their way to a remote research facility in the countryside, joining a group of schoolchildren that have holed up with the researchers -- three groups united in fear that their lives will last only as long as they can avoid discovery by the aliens that have come to their planet. When the aliens do come, it becomes clear that despite all the years of research, the humans’ understanding of the aliens is woefully incomplete. “Swords and Saddles” is one of several alternate history stories that Jack Campbell has written. When lightning strikes Captain Ulysses Benton and his US Cavalry Fifth Regiment, they recover to find an ancient structure in the desert that they’ve never seen before -- and writing in a language none of them recognize. When the next find themselves skirmishing with soldiers wearing armor more appropriate to Roman centurions than 1870s Kansas, it becomes clear that wherever it is they are, it isn’t Kansas. But where are they, then? And how do they make their way home? The Lost Fleet isn’t the only Jack Campbell series full of outer space intrigue. “Failure to Obey”is a novella in his Paul Sinclair series. When Lieutenant Jen Shen saves the day after a terrorist attack on a space station, she gets a medal, but Ivan Sharpe, a fellow officer and Paul’s former master-at-arms, gets a court martial. In a classic court martial scene that rivals the best in American literature, Paul has to work behind the scenes to save Ivan’s military career.

In the future the problem with overpopulation is solved by a gameshow that allows everyone to vote on the city where they'd like to see the population reduced. Then cameras follow the action as people are reduced to dry cubes. Even though people are in favor of a less crowded country nobody wants to work for the Department of Poulation Reduction except for the elderly who are bored and lonely.In the future the problem with overpopulation is solved by a gameshow that allows everyone to vote on the city where they'd like to see the population reduced. Then cameras follow the action as people are reduced to dry cubes. Even though people are in favor of a less crowded country nobody wants to work for the Department of Poulation Reduction except for the elderly who are bored and lonely. This story is dark comical science fiction.

A darkness is tearing through the universe, devouring everything in its path. A legendary device known as the Void Star may be the last hope to stop it, but its missing. An evil empire is willing to destroy worlds in order to find it as a ragtag crew rescues an alien that knows where it is. Time is running out to find the star as the darkness closes in to consume them all.A darkness is tearing through the universe, devouring everything in its path. A legendary device known as the Void Star may be the last hope to stop it, but its missing. An evil empire is willing to destroy worlds in order to find it as a ragtag crew, survivors of the destroyed world Earth, rescue an alien that knows where it is. Time is running out to find the star as the darkness closes in to consume them all.Vibrant characters and suspenseful action sequences are weaved together for those that enjoy a fast-paced sci-fi adventure.If you enjoy this book, check out my other work at jpyager.com.