His second wife has trouble fixing his special Bombay martini. A woman writes of her visit to the Head Hunters of BorneoA man wants a cell phone in his casket. He fears the undertaker may cremate him too soon.An alien civilization is in trouble. Their DNA is not stable. They buy humans to use their DNA to aid in saving their people.His second wife has trouble fixing his special Bombay martini. A classic spousal abuse tale. The splash of vermouth is never correct. The garnish is wrong and the gin is from Baltimore.A woman writes of her visit to the Head Hunters of BorneoA man wants a cell phone in his casket. He fears the undertaker may cremate him too soon.An alien civilization is in trouble. Their DNA is not stable. They buy humans to use their DNA to aid in saving their people.

How our online presence in the early 2000′s evolved into the government’s digital social tool of the 2130's to pigeonhole citizens into social classes and control their every activity, even where babies come from.Silicon Facades: How our online presence in the early 2000′s evolved into the government’s digital social tool of the 2130's to pigeonhole citizens into social classes and control their every activity, even where babies come from.In 2133, Darren and his pregnant wife, Amber, a smart, drop dead stunning brunette, desperately seek ingenious and mostly criminal methods to raise their status, having dropped to the lowest social class because of circumstances affecting their government issued Score. Take the roller coaster ride with the exploits of Darren and Amber and their shocking nonconformist ways of playing against the system’s outrageous rules.

Two untested military programmers are the last hope for the biggest offensive in a war fought by remote drones. Trouble is, these brave geeks are vastly outnumbered - and if their lead drone is captured, it'll fry their brains. But their greatest handicap may turn out to be a profound strength.Elra is trapped in her life. Caught between a dysfunctional family situation and the grim reality of inner-city living in recession-hit Britain, she spends her days longing for escape. But plans made with her friend Cali lead nowhere, and the prospect of going to University is just a distant dream.Soon her dreary world is torn apart in an explosive, surreal flash of violence, and she finds herself on the run with Kai Leto, a guy with electric hands and a taste for the dramatic. He introduces her to the secrets of the Marked, a clandestine worldwide community dedicated to the preservation of Knowledge, humanity's oldest, most powerful, most dangerous tradition. Through it, she discovers abilities beyond anything she could have imagined.But for Elra, this revelation is nothing compared to what awaits. Something powerful, alien and world-changing – bigger even than the wonders of Knowledge – is relentlessly hunting her. Soon she, Kai and Cali are involved in events beyond their comprehension. Universes alongside our own, a desert and a city beyond infinity, and the Red People that inhabit it...What happens when worlds collide? Take the Unmarked Journey to find out.

Four teenagers gain superhuman abilities in an abandoned laboratory in the woods. They think it's perfect, until they discover a dark entity named the Shadow. They have to defeat him before he defeats them, but can they defeat darkness?In the first book of the epic the Super 4 series, four teenagers, Harrison, Jake, Carly and Darryl, embark on an adventure of lifetime, when during a mountain walk, they find themselves lost and thirsty. That's when they stumble across a lab. It was a miracle. Vending machines lined up the wall. They drink as many sodas as they can.The left feeling powerful.Though they still faced life's natural problems; bullying, grades and fights, they felt confident and powerful.Then, havoc started wreaking in their lives. All hell broke loose. Family problems, personal problems, friend problems.They discover the person behind all this, one they nicknamed, the Shadow, and knew that problem had to be solved.With no knowledge of who the Shadow really was, the teenagers fight for their lives.But can they defeat darkness?

Chuck Wuebbles has lost much since his relocation into Old Town. All of the possessions Chuck earned as a younger man have been noted in the Administrators' black notebooks, to be liquidated to pay for the care Chuck's age will inevitably demand. Yet the Administrators have not taken all. Chuck still possesses his old skills; and with a knife and cleaver, Chuck vows to keep one final freedomThe sick and the old fuel the modern world's economy. Age and disease supply a final, and renewable, resource for a new world's commerce. Chuck Wuebbles has turned old, and so the Administrators have assigned him to a housing unit in the Old Town district, where the care which Chuck will, surely, one day soon need may be delivered quickly. Only that care, that supervision and concern comes with a cost which forces Chuck to watch the Administrators claim possession of his wealth in order to pay for all the doctor and hospital bills eventual sickness will demand. Yet when the pain visits, Chuck vows to keep his suffering a secret with a plan to keep the last possession of his pride through the end.

Nigel Hightower cannot sleep in a world built upon dreams. The machine has shunned Mr. Hightower, refusing to give him digital manifestations of his dreams. So Mr. Hightower finds solace in crafting replicas of the lost world's wildlife for the children too young for the computer, until a series of updates threatens Mr. Hightower's audience so that none remain to call him “replicant maker.”The world has retreated into the limitless landscapes the computer constructs out of zeros and ones. Every citizen of the machine realizes his or her dreams. Everyone is content. No one lacks for any kind of wealth or pleasure. Everyone except for Nigel Hightower. For the machine has shunned Mr. Hightower by replacing his dream with nightmare. Like a child, Mr. Hightower cannot thrive in the virtual landscape. And so he creates mechanical creatures to stir the imagination of the children, who like himself, find no solace in an electronic world. Now even the children threaten to leave Mr. Hightower as updates tempt their younger minds. Mr. Hightower promises to resist the machine with a final, incredible creation.

With more than 100 movies based on his writing, H.P. Lovecraft ranks among the most adapted authors in history--along with Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.  His unnervingly scary tales appeal to both diehard fans of horror and readers with mainstream tastes, and H.P. Lovecraft Goes to the Movies presents the very best of his filmed stories. Additionally, this unique collection provides an enlightening historical introduction, short headnotes for each story calling out interesting trivia, and an appendix with credits for each screen version. THE STORIES INCLUDE: "The Colour out of Space": filmed twice, once as a vehicle for Boris Karloff called Die, Monster, Die! "The Dunwich Horror," also filmed two times, once with Dean Stockwell "Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air": both for Rod Serling's Night Gallery TV program "The Call of Cthulhu," which laid the foundation for the Cthulhu Mythos

Milo must choose between risking his life to save both the human and magical universes or to live and save only his own in the explosive and fast-paced follow-up to the first novel in the Nightsiders series, which "Kirkus Reviews "called the perfect mix of science fiction and magic in a starred review. After joining forces with the magical Nightsiders and surviving a trip to the enemy Bugs Hive ship, Milo Silk still has a lot to fear. The Huntsman has pledged a revenge worse than death on Milo, a group of nefarious fairies are bent on taking back Earth, and zombie-like holo-men are trapping humans for the Bugs to take. Even more unsettling is that the Witch of the World has disappeared and a mysterious boy is haunting Milo s dreams in her stead. But none of these threats compare to what may happen to the world if the humans and the Nightsiders don t unite to fight for each other."

The classic book on the development of human language by the world’s leading expert on language and the mind. In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

Harlan Ellison has been compared to an annoying gnat, a no-see ’em buzzing in your peripheral vision till you try to swat him, and he’s gone. The great English writer Michael Moorcock—and if his name does not leave you dumbstruck with awe, you should move on—called Ellison a “fox in the sf hen-coop” whose presence will “produce a brighter, faster hen, with improved survival characteristics, laying a tastier, more nourishing egg” and went on to say Ellison was “a brave and lively little beast, who makes a great show of himself to the hounds, but remains too wary ever to lead them to his lair.” The brilliant novelist Joanna Russ, in admiring frustration, opined that Ellison’s stories “have an assault on you,” but complained that “they’re not like a piece of sculpture that you can stop and walk around and look at from all sides.” Ellison’s reply: “Absolutely not; I want them to grab you by the throat and tear off parts of your body.” Ellison’s a double agent who lures you into the bush, and when you blink, he’s gone; you don’t know whether to turn left or right, or just dig a hole. He crafts enigmas set to entrap you. When Ellison sees where a story is going, he figures—since he’s writing for the smartest readers alive—you do, too. So he stops and turns left. Or right. Or widdershins. Or digs a cave with 200 tunnels. Can & Can’tankerous gathers ten previously uncollected tales from the fifth and sixth decades of Harlan Ellison’s professional writing career: a written-in-the-window endeavor that invites re-reading from the start before you’ve even finished it; a second entry in his (now) ongoing abcedarian sequence; a “lost” pulp tale re-cast as a retro-fable; a melancholy meditation for departed friend and fellow legend, Ray Bradbury; a 2001 revision of a 1956 original; an absurdist ascent toward enlightenment (or its gluten-free substitute); a 200-word exercise in not following the directions as written (with a special introduction by Neil Gaiman that weighs in at four times the word count of its subject); a fantastical lament for a bottom-line world; the 2011 Nebula Award-winning short story; and Ellison’s most recent offering, a fusion of fact and fiction that calls to mind Russ’s frustration and Moorcock’s metaphor while offering a solution to the story’s enigma in plain view. Strokes be damned! Ellison’s still here! HE’s still writing! And with more new books published in the last ten years than any preceding decade of his career, his third act is proving to be the kind other living legends envy.

Continuing the series begun with his novel Anno Dracula, Newman recounts the bizarre events of yet another alternative vampire history and introduces a terrifying new anti-hero--the feared flying monster of the Great War, Baron Manfred von Richtofen.

Take a stripper, a crazy pilot, an ace accountant, an alcohol obsessed engineer, and a mysterious curmudgeon. Place in a small stolen ship and agitate with stalkers, assassins, and lots of espresso. The result is the Astoundingly True Tale of José Fabuloso!A poor choice of passengers leaves Jose, M'Elise and O'Riley stranded on a station in the midst of blowing up. Their efforts to steal a ship to escape the mess are somewhat hampered by Squirrel, a nearly naked stripper manacled to Jose's hand. But the fun doesn't stop there. Fate seems to have it in for them as they are relentlessly pursued by warring criminal factions seeking something they have. If only they knew what and where it was!

Four stories. Four people. One world. This collection of short stories focuses on the lives of those people caught within a conflict that spans a universe. With safety and refuge rapidly disappearing they will find that there is one place left where civilisation remains: Ascension.At the end of the world how far would you go to achieve perfection?Four stories. Four people. One world. This collection of short stories focuses on the lives of those people caught within a conflict that spans a universe. With safety and refuge rapidly disappearing they will find that there is one place left where civilisation remains: Ascension.At the end of the world how far would you go to achieve perfection?The Ascension Collection takes the story of An Obsidian Sky and retells it from the perspective of those who came to know perfection. Witness Holly’s strife as she tries desperately to create something that has the promise of saving humanity. Voyage with Salem throughout the stars as he discovers something that will change his life forever. Observe a mother coming to terms with the price of the perfect world. Understand the torment of one who is turned into a product to satisfy the insatiable consumer.

As the traffic lights changed to a pale cool blue, Cameron knew something was fundamentally wrong with the very fabric of the universe. He was no longer even sure who and what he was. When the true nature of the higher power controlling the lives of everyone is revealed, Cameron knows its not going to be a good day.Passion. Murder. Bloodlust.Among these nefarious stories, siblings strengthen their bond by plotting against their aggressor; an animal lover seeks revenge on devotees of the exotic skins trade; and a psychiatrist gets what's coming to him when he abuses the trust of a jaded client.These stories take readers straight to the scene of the crime, exploring just how and why people are driven over the edge--and driven to kill.The "Owned" Collection is approximately 14,000 words long. A couple of stories have a speculative element.Stories Include:1. Heart's Blood 2. Beloved Brother 3. My Chance Encounter4. Skins 5. Ms. Zeri ("Misery")6. Owned

Vincent Wagner is a soldier for the Panthera Corporation. His mind has been chemically and behaviorally altered to make him a more effective soldier. Soldiers for the Panthera Corporation have no memories of what transpired during their duty. For Vincent, his duty leaves him with the impression that he is a lion in a vast meadow, moving and fighting with perfect ferocity and no long-term memory.Vincent Wagner is a soldier for the Panthera Corporation. His mind has been chemically and behaviorally altered to make him a more effective soldier. Soldiers for the Panthera Corporation have no memories of what transpired during their duty. For Vincent, his duty leaves him with the impression that he is a lion in a vast meadow, moving and fighting with perfect ferocity and no long-term memory. But then he wakes up.