Abby's Darkness (A Short Story)

      D.L. Gabriel
     Abby's Darkness (A Short Story)

While on training to join the World Space Agency, Abby’s demons threaten to undermine her efforts. A saviour appears just when she’s about to collapse under the intensity of her fear, stirring emotions deep within. But can she keep relying on him to rescue her from herself? Or can she come through to save him when the tables turn?Abby’s demons threaten to unravel her mind and destroy her future. In 22nd century Argentina, there is nothing more desirable than joining the ranks of the World Space Agency (WSA), the international offshoot of NASA. While training for WSA, she’s faced with a test to overcome fear - a test that she nearly fails numerous times. But every time she endures these tests, a saviour appears. Is he a man or some celestial being? Either way, Abby’s dreams evolve as emotions stir within. That is, until the final battle when she must save her saviour… or risk descending into a pit of madness.Abby’s Darkness is a short story about one of the characters in the Dream Chamber series (to be released).

Read online

  • 1 315

    Earthlight (Arthur C. Clarke Collection)

      Arthur C. Clarke
     Earthlight (Arthur C. Clarke Collection)

A thrilling, suspense-filled space opera set in the near future and a forerunner of television hits like Star Trek and The Expanse. Two hundred years after landing on the Moon, mankind has moved further out into the solar system. With permanent settlements now established on the Moon, Venus, and Mars, the inhabitants of these colonies have formed a political alliance called the Federation. On the Moon, a government agent from Earth is tracking a suspected spy at a prominent observatory. His mission is complicated by the rise in tensions between Earth's government and the Federation over access to rare heavy metals. As the agent finds himself locked in a battle for life and death on the eerie, lunar landscape, the larger conflict explodes across space, leaving mankind’s future in doubt.

Read online

  • 1 315

    Trapped

      Ella James
     Trapped

Book Description: Contains mild spoilers if you haven’t read Here, the first book in the trilogy. When Milo Mitchell falls for the beautiful, tuxedo-clad guy she found wandering her family’s rural Colorado property, she never dreamed he was a scout from another galaxy, or that their relationship would leave him with an impossible choice: eradicating humankind, or initiating the end of his own people. Nick’s job is finding the elements his people need to power their elaborate interweb of minds. Being a scout means he is capable of traveling to other planets on his own. It also means that, unlike The Rest, he has access to primitive feelings and individual desires. For eons, he was part of the whole, but when he encountered Milo, his obsession with her changed everything. Nick’s partner, Vera, is capable of independent thought, but not compelled by it. She is satisfied with her existence as one of The Rest, and she won’t agree that humans are worth sparing; not when their planet has a precious cache of the gold her people need so badly. While Vera tries to force Nick into endorsing an Earth invasion, working behind the scenes to tie his hands, and the Department of Defense lays a trap for them with Milo’s mom as bait, Nick and Milo are waging their own war – against a primal desire that can only lead to one thing: heartbreak.

Read online

  • 1 315

    A Woman a Day

      Philip José Farmer
     A Woman a Day

(aka A Woman a Day or Day of the Timestop or Timestop) Operation Timestop: Post-holocaust Paris is a pretty seedy stand-in for the original, but what can you expect when the goverment's main function is Orgasm Prevention & when the national hero is wandering around in Nowhen. But things are changing! Rumor has it that the Timetraveler is coming back in a few months. At which point, Time itself will come to an end. This story, originally published in Startling Stories as Moth & Rust, is the sequel to The Lovers.

Read online

  • 1 315

    Grantville Gazette, Volume IX

      Eric Flint
     Grantville Gazette, Volume IX

This edition of the Grantville Gazette Volume 9 is derived directly from the online edition at http://www.grantvillegazette.com. Stories include: Young Love Lost by Jose J. Clavell Mail Stop by Virginia DeMarce Those Daring Young Men by Rick Boatright Those Daring Not So Young Men by Rick Boatright A Matter Of Taste by Kerryn Offord Those Not So Daring by Rick Boatright Anna the Baptist by Terry Howard Fly Like a Bird by Loren Jones Gearhead by Mark H. Huston Water Wings by Terry Howard Under the Tuscan Son by Iver P. Cooper Wings on the Mountain by Terry Howard Pocket Money by John and Patti Friend Moonraker by Karen Bergstralh The Minstrel Boy by John Zeek Ultralight by Sean Massey Tool or Die by Karen Bergstralh If at First You Don't Succeed . . . by Paula Goodlett Waves of Change by Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff Try, Try Again by Paula Goodlett Little Jammer Boys by Kim Mackey Safe at First Base by Mark H. Huston The Order of the Foot by Richard Evans Trip to Paris by Kim Mackey At the Cliff's Edge by Iver P. Cooper A 'Merican in Moscow by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett Radio in 1632, Part 3 by Rick Boatright The Sound of Mica by Iver P. Cooper A Tempest In a Baptistry by Terry Howard The Daily Beer Anette Pedersen White Gold* by Kerryn Offord

Read online

  • 1 315

    The Deadly Hunter

      Jude Watson
     The Deadly Hunter

Nobody knows her name. Nobody knows when she will strike. All they know is that she is a deadly bounty hunter--and her latest mission has taken her to Coruscant, home of the Jedi. Her target: an old friend of Qui-Gon Jinn's. Qui-Gon and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, make an attempt to catch her...and fail. Now they are her targets, too.

Read online

  • 1 314

    Into the Forest

      Jean Hegland
     Into the Forest

Set in the near-future, Into the Forest is a powerfully imagined novel that focuses on the relationship between two teenage sisters living alone in their Northern California forest home. Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other. Reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, Into the Forest is a mesmerizing and thought-provoking novel of hope and despair set in a frighteningly plausible near-future America.

Read online

  • 1 314

    How to Stop Time

      Matt Haig
     How to Stop Time

*"The first rule is that you don't fall in love, ' he said... 'There are other rules too, but that is the main one. No falling in love. No staying in love. No daydreaming of love. If you stick to this you will just about be okay.'"* A love story across the ages - and for the ages - about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history--performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life. So Tom moves back to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher--the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: never fall in love. As painful memories of his past and the erratic behavior of the Society's watchful leader threaten to derail his new life and romance, the one thing he can't have just happens to be the one thing that might save him. Tom will have to decide once and for all whether to remain stuck in the past, or finally begin living in the present. How to Stop Time is a bighearted, wildly original novel about losing and finding yourself, the inevitability of change, and how with enough time to learn, we just might find happiness.

Read online

  • 1 313

    From a Buick 8

      Stephen King
     From a Buick 8

The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just *wrong.* A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous -- and that it would be better if John Q. Public never found out about it. Curt's avid curiosity taking the lead, they investigated as best they could, as much as they dared. Over the years the troop absorbed the mystery as part of the background to their work, the Buick 8 sitting out there like a still life painting that breathes -- inhaling a little bit of this world, exhaling a little bit of whatever world it came from. In the fall of 2001, a few months after Curt Wilcox is killed in a gruesome auto accident, his 18-year-old boy Ned starts coming by the barracks, mowing the lawn, washing windows, shoveling snow. Sandy Dearborn, Sergeant Commanding, knows it's the boy's way of holding onto his father, and Ned is allowed to become part of the Troop D family. One day he looks in the window of Shed B and discovers the family secret. Like his father, Ned wants answers, and the secret begins to stir, not only in the minds and hearts of the veteran troopers who surround him, but in Shed B as well.... *From a Buick 8* is a novel about our fascination with deadly things, about our insistence on answers when there are none, about terror and courage in the face of the unknowable.

Read online

  • 1 312

    Cobra Outlaw

      Timothy Zahn
     Cobra Outlaw

ORIGINAL TRADE PAPERBACK. SEQUEL TO COBRA SLAVE. New York Times #1 best-selling author Timothy Zahn continues his Cobra SF adventure series with book #2 of a new Cobra saga, Cobra Rebellion. Cobra warriors: technologically enhanced and implanted with an arsenal of covert weaponry fight against alien foes and evil humans. Cobra warriors: technologically enhanced human warriors designed to combat an implacable alien menace. Now, and not for the first time, the Cobras are facing trouble from their own kind. The Broom clan of Cobra warriors finds itself pressed between two star empires headed for war. On the planet Aventine, the Broom's homeworld, pater familia Paul Broom has been taken prisoner by Commodore Santeros, an implacable operative of the Dominion of Man. Paul is due to have his memories sifted through by the dreaded and often destructive Dominion MindsEye in order to root out the location of legendary Qasamaa planet where huge advances in military hardware, particularly a svelte powered armor, might give the Dominion of Man an edge in a coming war with the alien Troft. Santeros hopes to strike a deal with Qasama and, if a deal cannot be struck, then Santores and the Dominion are prepared to take what they want. Elsewhere on Aventine and in the galaxy beyond, rebellion is brewing against Dominion atrocities and Dominion scheming, with outlaw Cobra warriors Lorne and Jody Broom in the vanguard. Meanwhile, Cobra Jason Broom poses as an escaped slave on a secret Troft prison planet where humans are sent to gladiatorial combat to the death for Troft amusement and wagering. He is seeking information on Troft factions, for not every Troft wants war with humankind, and if he can identify moderate elements, he may save the Cobra worlds, and head off a massive interstellar war in the bargain. The stage is set for adventure with one family of Cobra heroes once again fighting for freedom and peace in a galaxy on the edge of war. About Timothy Zahn: “Zahn keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, maintaining excitement.”—Publishers Weekly "[Y]ou can count on Timothy Zahn for three things: clean, sparse prose; good pacing; and great action scenes. The first book in the Cobra War series hits all those marks in admirable style and makes for a quick, entertaining sci-fi novel." —Blogcritics “[Conqueror’s Heritage] is another finely wrought space adventure . . . [with] social, political and emotional complications, all of which Zahn treats with his usual skill.”—Booklist “Zahn paints every detail [in Angelmass] with gleamy realism . . . scientific dialogue that streams with starship hardware and military trooper talk . . . immensely appealing.”—Kirkus Review

Read online

  • 1 312

    Phases of Gravity

      Dan Simmons
     Phases of Gravity

Richard Baedecker thinks his greatest challenge was walking on the moon, but then he meets a mysterious woman who shows him his past. passion for space exploration, his forgotten childhood and the loss he experienced during the death-flight of the Challenger. the moon, but the warm interior of his heart. love and loss that transports readers far beyond the confines of space and time.

Read online

  • 1 311

    The Four-Gated City

      Doris Lessing
     The Four-Gated City

Dorris Lessing's classic series of autobiographical novels is the fictional counterpart to Under My Skin. In these five novels, first published in the 1950's and 60s, Doris Lessing transformed her fascinating life into fiction, creating her most complex and compelling character, Martha Quest.

Read online

  • 1 311

    A World Out of Time

      Larry Niven
     A World Out of Time

Jaybee Corbell awoke after more than 200 years as a corpsicle -- in someone else's body, and under sentence of instant annihilation if he made a wrong move while they were training him for a one-way mission to the stars. But Corbell picked his time and made his own move. Once he was outbound, where the Society that ruled Earth could not reach him, he headed his starship toward the galactic core, where the unimaginable energies of the Universe wrenched the fabric of time and space and promised final escape from his captors. Then he returned to an Earth eons older than the one he'd left...a planet that had had 3,000,000 years to develop perils he had never dreamed of -- perils that became nightmares that he had to escape...somehow!

Read online

  • 1 311

    The Alex Crow

      Andrew Smith
     The Alex Crow

Once again blending multiple story strands that transcend time and place, Grasshopper Jungle author Andrew Smith tells the story of 15-year-old Ariel, a refugee from the Middle East who is the sole survivor of an attack on his small village. Now living with an adoptive family in Sunday, West Virginia, Ariel's story of his summer at a boys' camp for tech detox is juxtaposed against those of a schizophrenic bomber and the diaries of a failed arctic expedition from the late nineteenth century. Oh, and there’s also a depressed bionic reincarnated crow.

Read online

  • 1 311

    The Genome

      Sergei Lukyanenko
     The Genome

"The Genome" is a new science fiction thriller by the author of the bestselling Night Watch series.In the far-future world of Alexander Romanov, humankind is divided into "naturals" and "speshes"--those who have been genetically modified to serve a specific purpose. Alex is a master pilot capable of maneuvering the dangerous realm of space by communicating directly with his ship. He is about to take on the most mysterious and challenging mission of his life when he happens upon Kim, a teenage girl with a desperate secret. Out of a sense of friendship, he agrees to help her, but this decision will end in conflict and tragedy for dozens of worlds.

Read online

  • 1 310