Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing.Bardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help. Lincoln retired from leading the country after an attempt on his life, but is quite interested in Bardsley's immense data-processing capacities, confident that if people have the facts, they'll see reason and urge the government to end the war. Lincoln must keep Bardsley safe until he can finish his research, so he calls on his old private security staff to protect Gideon and his data.Maria "Belle" Boyd was a retired Confederate spy, until she got a life-changing job offer from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Pinkerton respects her work, despite reservations about her lingering Southern loyalties. But it's precisely those loyalties that let her go into Confederate territory to figure out who might be targeting Bardsley. Maria is a good detective, but with spies from both camps gunning for her, can even the notorious Belle Boyd hold the greedy warhawks at bay?Another rollicking alternate history from Cherie Priest―Fiddlehead is the fifth book in the Clockwork Century steampunk series that started with Boneshaker.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic, timeless works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.

Paul Frederick Ernst (born between 1899 and 1902 - died between 1983 and 1985) was an American pulp fiction writer. He is best known as the author of the original 24 "Avenger" novels, published by Street & Smith under the house name Kenneth Robeson.

Billionaire adventurer Stan Owens has everything, success, fame, all the luxury money can buy... until a plane crash leaves him stranded in the desert. Alone in a hostile environment, he makes a horrifying discovery in the desert wastes. This is a frightening new short story by Robert Williams, the acclaimed author of "Peculiar, MO."A young man dies, and a grim reaper offers to revive him in exchange for servitude. Responsibilities include saving other people’s lives and occasionally fighting unspeakable horrors. But this particular young man already has a few problems of his own, such as crippling shyness. No, seriously. He can barely even speak to people. It's really bad.Takes place in the modern fantasy world of Eleg. This book includes the first three story arcs of the ongoing serial novel.

As the dominant force in the galaxy, they were used to bringing new worlds under their control, but were blinded by their own success...After coming into contact with a highly developed alien race, mankind was left with little option but to accept an offer that was impossible to refuse. Unable to meet a threat from an alien star system, it decided to cooperate with the alien race, not realizing that the Solar System was just one of the steps in a grand plan as old as mankind itself...

Raised in a little fishing town, Cairo Goodridge instead opts for a bigger brighter future in the concrete jungle, New York City. Success surrounds him, but all good things have to come to an end. After the cruel hand of mother nature brings destruction and desolation to his new home. He is forced to survive in the new untamed twisted city, were being human just doesn't cut it any more!CUBBIEPHRENIA, is about a boy’s journey from the baseball sandlots on the cliffs of San Pedro to the vine covered park of Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Mickey O’Really fears his life is just a fantasy camp made up of stuff that will never be real. His bleacher bum uncle, St. Sligo, is his wizard/mentor on the superstition addled path that leads to the big leagues. Teacher-turned-lunatic Mr. Shane stalks Mickey and aims to put an end to his hardball dreams. In his quest to win the World Series Mickey finds out that you can be hurt the most by those that are supposed to help.

“Roll out that chicken wire, Frank.” Science would never have thought of the chicken wire.John Beach's sixth collection of poetry. The 35 terzanelle poems in this collection are about memory, what information we choose to store about the present (soon to become the past), and how we alter it each time that we think about it in the present. We do this consciously and subconsciously. It helps us to learn and to make better choices… or we can get completely lost in it.The terzanelle is a French/Italian adaptation of the terza rima to the villanelle form. Each terzanelle is meant to be 19 lines long (ten syllables each), composed of five triplets with a concluding quatrain, and are written in iambic pentamater. I don't pay much attention to where my metrical feet are stepping, but I enjoy the puzzle-like nature of this form and the subtlety of the repeating lines, the variations in meaning. I also enjoy breaking the lines and changing punctuation.

He's back and he is nicer than ever. The Nigerian lizard super hero who lives in North Yorkshire returns for four more short stories. Witness Super Lizard and his new side kick get their costumes, solve crimes, save hostages and defeat villians.He's back and he is nicer than ever. The Nigerian lizard super hero who lives in North Yorkshire returns for four more short stories. Witness Super Lizard and his new side kick get their costumes, solve crimes, save hostages and defeat villians. Well bumble along a bit and annoy the North Yorkshire Police department whilst attempting to help. You will laugh, you will cry but most of all you will ask, what is he doing now?

Set in the visionary future of Atwood’s acclaimed *Oryx and Crake*, *The Year of the Flood* is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction. In this second book of the MaddAddam trilogy, the long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced life forms, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move, but they can't stay locked away. *From the Trade Paperback edition.*

"Makes the shark from "Jaws" look like a pet goldfish . . ." USA Weekend Straight from the cutting edge of science and the logs of ancient mariners comes an immense horror -- a creature that rises up from the well of an ocean gone mad with an insatiable hunger and an endless lust to kill. One man leads a harrowing struggle to defeat the beast amid a threatened Bermuda paradise. His name is Whip Darling, a down-and-out sea dog who doesn't know where he'll get his next meal -- or whether it will get him first.

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first and most primitive. Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically-linked individuals. A controversial part of the book depicts humans, in the far-off future, escaping the dying Earth and settling on Venus - in the process totally exterminating its native inhabitants, an intelligent marine species. Stapledon's book has been interpreted by some as condoning such interplanetary genocide as a justified act if necessary for racial survival, though a number of Stapledon's partisans denied that such was his intention, arguing instead that Stapledon was merely showing that although mankind had advanced in a number of ways in the future, at bottom it still possessed the same capacity for savagery as it has always had.

At the end of the first book, A Princess of Mars, John Carter is unwillingly transported back to Earth. The Gods of Mars begins with his arrival back on Barsoom (Mars) after a 10-year separation from his wife, Dejah Thoris; his unborn child; and the Red Martian people of the nation of Helium, whom he has adopted as his own. Unfortunately Carter materializes in the one place on Barsoom from which nobody is allowed to depart: the Valley Dor, which is the Barsoomian afterlife.

Fear cut through the unconscious mind of Wilbur Hawkes. With almost physical violence, it tightened his throat and knifed at his heart. It darted into his numbed brain, screaming at him. He was a soft egg in a vast globe of elastic gelatine. Two creatures swam menacingly through the resisting globe toward him. The gelatine fought against them, but they came on. One was near, and made a mystic pass. He screamed at it, and the gelatine grew stronger, throwing them back and away. Suddenly, the creatures drew back. A door opened, and they were gone. But he couldn't let them go. If they escaped.... Hawkes jerked upright in his bed, gasping out a hoarse cry, and the sound of his own voice completed the awakening. He opened his eyes to a murky darkness that was barely relieved by the little night-light. For a second, the nightmare was so strong on his mind that he seemed to see two shadows beyond the door, rushing down the steps. He fought off the illusion, and with straining senses jerked his head around the room. There was nothing there. Sweat was beading his forehead, and he could feel his pulse racing. He had to get out—had to leave—at once! He forced the idea aside. There was something cloudy in his mind, but he made reason take over and shove away some of the heavy fear. His fingers found a cigarette and lighted it automatically. The first familiar breath of smoke in his lungs helped. He drew in deeply again, while the tiny sounds in the room became meaningful. There was the insistent ticking of a clock and the soft shushing sound of a tape recorder. He stared at the machine, running on fast rewind, and reversed it to play. But the tape seemed to be blank, or erased. He crushed the cigarette out on a table-top where other butts lay in disorder. It looked wrong, and his mind leaped up in sudden frantic fear, before he could calm it again. This time, reason echoed his emotional unease. Hawkes had never smoked before! But his fingers were already lighting another by old habit. His thoughts lurched, seeking for an answer. There was only a vague sense of something missing—a period of time seemed to have passed. It felt like a long period, but he had no memory of it. There had been the final fight with Irma, when he'd gone stalking out of the house, telling her to get a divorce any way she wanted. He'd opened the mail-box and taken out a letter—a letter from a Professor.... His mind refused to go further. There was only a complete blank after that. But it had been in midwinter, and now he could make out the faint outlines of full-leafed trees against the sky through the window! Months had gone by—and there was no faintest trace of them in his mind. They'll get you! You can't escape! Hurry, go, GO!... The cigarette fell from his shaking hands, and he was half out of the bed before the rational part of his mind could cut off the fear thoughts. He flipped on the lights, afraid of the dimness. It didn't help. The room was dusty, as if unused for months, and there was a cobweb in one corner by the mirror. His own face shocked him. It was the same lean, sharp-featured face as ever, under the shock of nondescript, sandy hair. His ears still stuck out too much, and his lips were a trifle too thin. It looked no more than his thirty years; but it was a strained face, now—painted with weeks of fatigue, and grayish with fear, sweat-streaked and with nervous tension in every corded tendon of his throat. His somewhat bony, average-height figure shook visibly as he climbed from the bed. Hawkes stood fighting himself, trying to get back in the bed, but it was a losing battle. Something seemed to swing up in the corner of the room, as if a shadow moved. He jerked his head toward it, but there was nothing there. He heard his breath gasping harshly, and his knuckles whitened. There was the taste of blood in the corner of his mouth where he was biting his lips. Get out! They'll be here at once! Leave—GO!

Calvin, an intelligence operative, is sent to eliminate a dangerous traitor. But as he chases his prey across the stars, he realizes they are both pawns in a shadowy chess game that threatens humankind everywhere. If he is to uncover the conspiracy he must confront, and embrace, the darkest elements of the galaxy. And throw himself, his career, and everyone he loves into the line of fire.On the surface, the galaxy seems peaceful. Humankind prospers from the Capital World to the far reaches of The Corridor. But to those who can see the signs, it's clear something is wrong. Long, dark fingers are pulling strings inside the military, making clandestine deals with enemy states, and fulfilling some dark design.Calvin is an intelligence agent working for the Imperial government. He's young, his methods are unorthodox, but he gets results. So when a former military hero steals a warship and goes rogue--threatening to start a war, Calvin is sent to eliminate him.But as he chases his prey across the stars, he realizes they are both pawns in a shadowy chess game that shakes kingdoms, divides empires, and threatens civilization everywhere. And if he is to uncover the mystery and expose the conspiracy he must confront--and embrace--the darkest elements of the galaxy and throw himself, his career, and everyone he loves into the line of fire.

It is the third year after the Landing on Pangaea, and Brynna Olivier has lost her daughter, her sister, her brother, and her first love. Hoarded onto the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship, she must survive amongst the worst of Pangaea's criminals while also contending with her new arranged marriage to Adam. Meanwhile, Alice, Quinn, and Violet try to escape the clutches of the Old Spirits.It is the third year after the Landing on Pangaea, and Brynna Olivier has lost her daughter, her sister, her brother, her friends, and her first love. Hoarded onto the Lapsarian Maximum Security Prison Ship, she must survive amongst the worst of Pangaea's criminals while also contending with her new arranged marriage to Adam. Meanwhile, Alice, Quinn, and Violet try to escape the clutches of the Old Spirits, with Quinn and Alice using their evolution to slaughter every enemy in their path, and with Violet using her wits to outsmart Caspar, who has traitorously changed his allegiance.Twenty-five years later, Brynna is both Adam's Queen and the Queen of the Lapsarian. Fighting for her life every day has inevitably resulted in her taking many lives, and now, she is unrecognizable, to both herself and to all those who love her. Quinn and Alice battle against the Old Spirits, all to avenge their second family that they lost. But as Alice's rage and dedication to the cause only grow more violent over the years, Quinn begins to long more and more for the log cabin of which they dreamed in their youth. Violet is kept imprisoned in the city of Blancstizia, with Dr. Miletus and her wife, Macie. Together, their combined medical knowledge is much needed as a new, brutal plague begins to wipe out Old Spirit families left and right.Three new voices begin to tell their stories after the Fall of the Red Anarchy: Grace, a teenaged Old Spirit child imprisoned after trying to escape her arranged marriage to Caspar; Lara, Tyre's most favorite imprisoned woman; and James, Brynna's lost love. Each is connected to Brynna deeply, in a number of profound, mysterious, and sometimes devastating ways.Their world is lost. Their family is broken, perhaps irreparably. Their lives have faced a reckoning that can never be undone, and yet there is a larger, more utterly shattering reckoning to be had. Despite it all, Brynna, Quinn, and Violet continue to fight for their lives, their family, and their freedom in this third installment of the bestselling Eternity series.