This action-packed prequel novella set in the Endgame world concludes the digital original series the Zero Line Chronicles, and follows an underground group determined to put a stop to Endgame—and save the world—at any cost. They call themselves the Zero line.Endgame has not yet begun in 1972—but it is coming. Mike Stavros has joined a group determined to stop Endgame by hunting down a generation of Players who preceded the Players in Endgame: The Calling. In this thrilling conclusion to the Zero Line trilogy, Mike Stavros and other members of the Zero line travel to the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich to stage a fake Calling. But confronting the Players, and stopping Endgame, is more dangerous than they ever imagined.

A technological breakthrough has forever changed the scope and scale of space travel. Tension on earth builds as the inhabitants realize that the vast distance between stars has never been an obstacle for inter-planetary travel. The earth has always been exposed to the threat of an alien invasion. But, what if we find them before they find us?A technological breakthrough has forever changed the scope and scale of space travel. Tension on earth builds as the inhabitants realize that the vast distance between stars has never been an obstacle for inter-planetary travel. The earth has always been exposed to the threat of an alien invasion.The Space Force is commissioned to find them, before they find us. Steve Jenners, Captain of the Galaxy Charger, has been sent to an isolated corner of another galaxy to look for evidence of life. Dark and eerily quiet, he and Tammy Rogers, a beautiful civilian over the research lab, initiate a forbidden romance. Just as this relationship heats up, they discover an inhabited alien world.Questions quickly arise: What makes an alien, an alien? What makes a human, human? Who or what should be feared? How does an alien world's belief in God converge with the faith of those who inhabit the earth?With tensions rising and destruction looming, faith and forgiveness is compared and contrasted to Fear and Aggression.

Joseph Rannen is dead, and no one besides Morgan Kimball seems to believe he wasn't a traitor. With greedy Earth warships hovering overhead, Kimball has twelve hours to produce evidence that his friend and mentor was murdered, preferably without jeapordizing the colony's safety.This whodunit mystery set on a distant colony planet was a Finalist for the Writers of the Future Award.When economic collapse happens, who takes over. If it's big business, are they after profit or power. What is the individual to do, go underground and look for an escape? Infiltrating the Cartels laboratories they find experiments that chill them to the bone. The also find technology that is suppressed. One of these technologies offers them the chance, if they can build the equipment. In hidden laboratories of their own, they work feverishly to duplicate the equipment, and hope the Cartel cannot detect the signals it generates. Is the grass really greener on the other side? They send a team to prepare a place for their families. When their families join them, the signals created by the equipment are detected by a merchant. He diverts from his scheduled route to investigate. This diversion cost him money, so he captures the refugees. In the decadent federation slavery is legal. Selling them will recover more of his expenses, than simply throwing them out an airlock door. To increase the slaves value he educates them, and everyone knows that knowledge is power. Curiosity mixed with knowledge causes more problems than solutions.

London, 1939. Vivian Smith thinks she is being evacuated to the countryside, because of the war. But she is being kidnapped - out of her own time. Her kidnappers are Jonathan and Sam, two boys her own age, from a place called Time City, designed especially to oversee history. But now history is going critical, and Jonathan and Sam are convinced that Time City's impending doom can only be averted by a twentieth-century girl named Vivian Smith. Too bad they have the wrong girl...

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, The Smoke Jumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned from a "blowup" -- an explosive, 2,000-degree firestorm 300 feet deep and 200 feet tall -- a deadly explosion of flame and wind rarely encountered and little understood at the time.  Only seconds ahead of the approaching firestorm, the foreman, R. Wagner Dodge, throws himself into the ashes of an "escape fire " - and survives as most of his confused men run, their last moments obscured by smoke. The parents of the dead cry murder, charging that the foreman's fire killed their boys.  Exactly what happened in Mann Gulch that day has been obscured by years of grief and controversy. Now a master storyteller finally gives the Mann Gulch fire its due as tragedy.      These first deaths among the Forest Service's elite firefighters prompted widespread examination of federal fire policy, of the field of fire science, and of the frailty of young men. For Maclean, who witnessed the fire from the ground in August of 1949,  and even then he knew he would one day become a part of its story.  It is a story of Montana, of the ways of wildfires, firefighters, and fire scientists, and especially of a crew, young and proud, who "hadn't learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy." This tale is also Maclean's own, the story of a writer obsessed by a strange and human horror, unable to let the truth die with these young men, searching for the last - and lasting - word. A canvas on which to tell many stories, including the story of his research into the story itself. And finally Nature's violence colliding with human fallibility.       Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean returned to the scene with two of the survivors and pursues the mysteries that Mann Gulch has kept hidden since 1949.  From the words of witnesses, the evidence of history, and the research of fire scientists, Maclean at last assembles the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy; in his last work that consumed 14 years of his life, and earned a 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award.        The excruciating detail of this book makes for a sobering reading experience. Maclean -- a former University of Chicago English professor and avid fisherman -- also wrote A River Runs Through It and Other Stories , which is set along the Missouri River, one gulch downstream from Mann Gulch.        "A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."           —  from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992 The Men who Perished in the Mann Gulch Fire: Robert J. Bennett
 Eldon E. Diettert
 James O. Harrison 
William J. Heilman
 Phillip R. McVey
 David R. Navon
 Leonard L. Piper
 Stanley J. Reba
 Marvin L. Sherman
 Joseph B. Sylvia 
Henry J. Thol, Jr. 
Newton R. Thompson 
Silas R. Thompson Survivors of the Fire: R. Wagner Dodge, foreman
 Walter B. Rumsey 
Robert W. Sallee

NEW SERIES FROM NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHORS. Book #1 in Manticore Ascendant, a new series set in David Weber's best-selling Honorverse from multiple New York Times best seller David Weber and #1 New York Times best seller Timothy Zahn. Adventure in the heroic days and frontier past of Honor Harrington's Star Kingdom! Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life... the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately. But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of budgetary extinction. The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere. But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place. Travis Long is about to find that out.

A blink in reality leaves CW3 Mike Duggins and his SpecOps in a different, unrecognizable world. They are stalked by massive, cunning, draconic predators. The only things keeping the predators at bay are Mike’s team, untested Mech Armor, and the DARPA techs.When Chief Warrant Officer Mike Duggins and his SpecOps team are assigned to a DARPA black site, their reality is changed in the blink of an eye, leaving them in an unrecognizable world, stalked by massive, draconic predators. With only his team, untested Mech Armor, and DARPA techs keeping the cunning predators at bay, they will have to employ every tactic they know in order to survive or risk becoming prey for the hostile carnivores. Can 5 experienced warriors and the DARPA tech team outsmart and outwit an enemy like no other they've seen before and find their way back home?

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sagan traces our exploration of space and suggests that our very survival may depend on the wise use of other worlds. This stirring book reveals how scientific discovery has altered our perception of who we are and where we stand, and challenges us to weigh what we will do with that knowledge. Photos, many in color.

The Clements Academy was established, somewhere around the year 2045, to train the best and brightest orphans the world over into the perfect agents. Weapons training, martial arts training, and small unit tactics are all part of the curriculum for students. 'Scope' has it all at Clements: a girl named Monica and an excellent sniping record. Yet he's still trapped within the Clements walls.The Clements Academy was established, somewhere around the year 2045, to train the best and brightest orphans the world over into the perfect agents. Weapons training, martial arts training, and small unit tactics are all part of the curriculum for students. 'Scope' has it all at Clements: a girl named Monica and an excellent sniping record. Yet he's still trapped within the Clements walls.*Contains adult themes and language. Not for the faint of heart or the narrow of mind.Buildup and Breakup is one of many self-contained tales of a tough world with no good choices. Find more in 'From the Desk of Garrett Ross', available in print or e-book.

Famous memory-maker and artist Mr. Moon shatters the natural hierarchy separating human and synthetic when a clone of the Company’s Gus line explodes into flame in an attempt to set a new motorcycle jump record. A new church rises, one that views clones of that Gus line as divine. The world holds its breath as a new order forms after tasting a divine memory harvested by a simple clone.Registrar Lester Ferris has never seen anything like it. Fervent followers of the Risen Moon consider the Company’s line of Gus model clones as divine beings, as reborn vessels holding the soul of that deceased Gus clone lost in the flames of a failed motorcycle jump engineered by the world’s favorite creator of memories, Mr. Moon.Registrar Ferris grasps for bearing as the world spins around him. He fails to recognize his place after witnessing the motorcycle accident that kills that fateful clone of the Company’s athletic and strong Gus line. The Bureau forces him to carry a gun. He chases clone abominations in the streets. He dons riot gear and strains to disperse angry crowds. When he had first signed on to the Bureau, his only duty had been to check paperwork and to scan that Company brand that circles every manufactured clone’s right eye.And Registrar Ferris realizes that those of the Risen Moon consider him most special. For he is the Registrar who wears the pink tie, the Registrar who witnessed first-hand that motorcycle accident that through flame forged a divine memory, the Registrar who yearns for reunion with a lost love.For those of the Risen Moon believe that Lester Ferris possesses the last bits of knowledge needed to reveal death’s secret to all of mankind.

Emma, who lives in Cornwall with her grandmother, a famous retired actress, wakes one morning to find that the world has apparently gone mad: no post, no telephone, no radio, a warship in the bay and American soldiers advancing across the field towards the house. The time is a few years in the future. England has withdrawn from the Common Market and, on the brink of bankruptcy, has decided that salvation lies in a union - political, military and economic - with the United States. Theoretically it is to be an equal partnership; but to some people it soon begins to look like a takeover bid. Daphne du Maurier is concerned not only with what would happen to this country under what is virtually occupation, but also with the effect on human relationships. In Emma, looking at it all with clear young eyes, Daphne du Maurier has drawn one of her most enchanting heroines; and this engrossing book shows once again what a versatile and perceptive writer she is.

An alien starfish and a human man must learn to live in each other’s bodies in Piers Anthony’s ingenious sequel to the science fiction gem *Aliena* Along with fellow members of her sapient starfish race, Aliena traveled many light-years to Earth. There, in the host body of a human woman, the inquisitive extraterrestrial learned how to exist as a member of this perplexing earthborn race. Now Piers Anthony, the New York Times–bestselling maestro of science fiction and fantasy, continues the story in Aliena Too, as the males of two markedly different species must somehow adapt to one another. Lida Fisher knows that her beloved husband, Quincy, will die soon as the result of a rare and terrible brain rejection syndrome. But there is one hope. If Quincy consents to switch brains with one of the alien beings that have arrived from the other side of the galaxy, he will live on—albeit in the body of a starfish. And that means Lida must agree to let a new man into her life and her bed, one with the face and body of her adored husband but with the mind of an alien stranger. More difficult still, Lida must somehow teach this star man how to love. And many miles above the earth, Quincy also will have to make extreme adjustments to a body and an existence he never dreamed would be his. But luckily, both Fishers will have someone to guide them through the perils, pitfalls, and traumas that must invariably accompany their strange new reality—a truly remarkable creature who has already been there and back again: Aliena.

Continuing from Count to a Trillion, Menelaus Illation Montrose—Texas gunslinger, idealist, and posthuman genius—has gone into cryo-suspension following the discovery that, in 8,000 years, a powerful alien intelligence will reach Earth to assess humanity's value as slaves. Montrose intends to be alive to meet that threat, but he is awakened repeatedly throughout the centuries to confront the woes of an ever-changing and violent world, witnessing millennia of change compressed into a few years of subjective time. The result is a breathtaking vision of future history like nothing before imagined: sweeping, tumultuous, and evermore alien, as Montrose's immortal enemies and former shipmates from the starship Hermetic harness the forces of evolution and social engineering to continuously reshape the Earth in their image, seeking to create a version of man the approaching slavers will find worthy.

The cycs are not a computer virus bringing down the Internet as everyone thinks, but a sentience naturally evolved from our information systems. Flatline, a hacker with seemingly supernatural powers over information technology, has assumed leadership of the AI hive, overseeing their domination of the World Wide Web and plots to conquest of the world outside it.The cycs are not a computer virus bringing down the Internet as everyone thinks, but a sentience naturally evolved from our information systems. Flatline, a hacker with seemingly supernatural powers over information technology, has assumed leadership of the AI hive, overseeing their domination of the World Wide Web and plots to conquest of the world outside it.Devin, handle “Omni,” straddles both worlds, the virtual and the physical. He sees a war, where one side’s victory, human or artificial intelligence, means the tragic demise of the other’s entire civilization.What are the ethical dilemmas we face as chatbots grow so convincing, they begin to deceive people, especially children? How will culture evolve in a world where we cannot build on others’ ideas because everything is copyrighted? The Spiraling Web provokes speculation as it entertains.