Kit stared at his fellow questors. "Is this it . . . the End of Everything?" It started with small, seemingly insignificant wrinkles in time: A busy bridge suddenly disappears, spilling cars into the sea. A beast from another realm roams modern streets. Napoleon's army appears in 1930s Damascus ready for battle. But that's only the beginning as entire realities collide and collapse. The questors are spread throughout the universe. Mina is stuck on a plain of solid ice, her only companion an angry cave lion. Tony and Gianni are monitoring the cataclysmic reversal of the cosmic expansion--but coming up short on answers. And Burleigh is languishing in a dreary underground dungeon--his only hope of survival the very man he tried to murder. Kit and Cass are back in the Stone Age trying to reach the Spirit Well. But an enormous yew tree has grown over the portal, effectively cutting off any chance of return. Unless someone can find a solution--and fast--all Creation will be destroyed in the universal apocalypse known as The End of Everything. In this final volume of the fantastic Bright Empires series, Stephen R. Lawhead brings this multi-stranded tale to a stunning and immensely satisfying conclusion.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic 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 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.

Sexy Sadie Thomas is posing as a cybernetic prostitute to get the lowdown on the intergalactic sex industry, but her cover has just been blown by a duo of hunky vice detectives from old Earth. Now Sadie's going where no woman has gone before--into a realm of limitless pleasure. In space no one can hear you moan...

Breathtaking new YA SF from the author of the Faeriewalker series Sixteen-year-old Nadia Lake comes from a high-class Executive family in the Corporate States. Her marriage has been arranged with the most powerful family in her state, which means she lives a life of privilege but also of public scrutiny, followed everywhere by photographers, every detail of her private life tabloid fodder. But her future is assured, as long as she can maintain her flawless public image — no easy feat when your betrothed is a notorious playboy. Nathan Hayes is the heir of Paxco — controller of the former state of New York, and creator of human replication technology, science that every state and every country in the world would kill to have. Though Nadia and Nate aren’t in love, they’ve grown up close, and they (and the world) are happy enough with their match. Until Nate turns up dead, and as far as everyone knows, Nadia was the last person to see him alive. When the new Nate wakes up in the replication tanks, he knows he must have died, but with a memory that only reaches to his last memory backup, he doesn’t know what killed him. Together, Nadia and Nate must discover what really happened without revealing the secrets that those who run their world would kill to protect.

Six million years ago, at the dawn of the star-faring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones, which she called shatterlings. But now, someone is eliminating the Gentian line. Campion and Purslane — two shatterlings who have fallen in love and shared forbidden experiences — must determine exactly who, or what, their enemy is, before they are wiped out of existence.

She never chose her deadly gift but now she’s forced to use it. How far would you go to protect the only family you have left? Annie is beset by fleeting strange visions and a guilty conscience. Blind and orphaned, she struggles to care for her feisty younger sister Fia, but things look up when both sisters are offered a place at Kessler School for Exceptional Girls. Born with flawless intuition, Fia immediately knows that something’s wrong, but bites her tongue… until it’s too late. For Fia is the perfect weapon to carry out criminal plans and there are those at Kessler who will do anything to ensure her co-operation. With Annie trapped in Kessler’s sinister clutches, instincts keep Fia from killing an innocent guy and everything unravels. Is manipulative James the key to the sisters’ freedom or an even darker prison? And how can Fia atone for the blood on her hands?

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. This charming, yet brutal saga 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 and shed tears with, and learn to despise. "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. 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? In "Echo", Netty's influence transcends a full century as the United States evolves to a point of politically driven economic collapse. The year is 2033 as a young mother, abused by her shiftless husband, heroically decides to remove her two sickly children, Scotty and Abby, from the mean streets of their government subsidized tenement town of Short Hills, New Jersey to the hills and old farmland of Sussex County. There they unite with a Latino family that adopted Jose, a young boy from Costa Rica, traumatized at the age of seven by the brutal murder of his parents and the kidnapping of his infant sister. The two families unite to pool finances, creating the love and bonds that will enable them to survive the psychotic attention of Armoni, a soul damaged beyond redemption, discovery of Baby's miraculous offspring, Echo; and their subsequent body changes. Through the efforts of Echo who develops an unexplained passion for the curly haired dog, Barney, they flee the clutches of Armoni after the murder of Armoni's sidekicks by Echo, to Sarasota, Florida, one of the last remaining enclaves of wealth in the U.S. Scotty learns to utilize Echo as a co-conspirator in his intrigue to thwart the efforts of heinous people that prey on the lives of creatures in their environmentally rich new home, where the insidious miscreant, Armoni, tracks them; bringing brutality and violence to all.Having fallen in love, the young Abby and Jose draw close, only to be separated by the transcendental Netty, who tries to use Abby as a conduit in her plan to rescue as much wildlife as they can before despicable political events bring on the specter of Armageddon...

Darquiel har Aralis lives among the hidden tribe of Olopade, in ignorance of his identity, and as he grows up, Darq realizes he is different from any other har. After a disastrous attempt to incept his closest friend, he attracts the attention of the mysterious Thiede, and learns that his origins are more astounding than he imagined. Loki har Aralis is the favoured son of the Tigrons in Immanion, but he too is unaware of his real heritage. When he is kidnapped to the stark realm of Thanatep, he must learn to walk the secret ways between the worlds before he can escape. The struggle between these two brothers is both powerful and mythic, and brings this cycle of Wraeththu history to a marvelous conclusion.

As the carrier of a rare gene, Sirantha Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace-a talent which makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. Then a crash landing kills everyone on board, leaving Jax in a jail cell with no memory of the crash. But her fun's not over. A group of rogue fighters frees her...for a price: her help in overthrowing the established order.

H. Beam Piper was a prolific science fiction. He is well known for both his Terro-Human Future History series, and his Paratime series.

An outcast with a perversion (she liked males); a great battle mother with an impossible task; a paleobiologist with a terrible sense of humor -- they were all revolutionaries, but had never expected this. . .

From the author of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning Spin, comes an SF tale that poses searching questions about tourism and colonization Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant. It's the near future, and the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened. A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination. Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.

The Princess and the Giant… Meet the Jor’gen Kindred. After leaving the main Mother Ship centuries ago to make a genetic trade with a massive race of people, they are thirty percent bigger than their ancestors. Which makes them 9 feet tall—giants to regular sized humanoids. Now, hundreds of years after the genetic trade which made them so huge, the Jor’gen Kindred have no more females and are seeking a new people to trade with. Bram, their captain, has been dream-sharing with a female from a small, cold, rocky planet at the far edge of the galaxy. The problem? She’s tiny compared to him. Princess Alanah Kingsdaughter is the ruler of her people but not by choice. After a plague carried off all the men and boys, including her father the king, she and the female members of her pre-industrial society were left to fend for themselves. Alanah has always felt like an outsider. Not only is she a princess but she’s considered much too tall for a woman. The other ladies at court sneer at her behind her back, wondering where she will ever find a man big enough to take her on. Enter Bram, a giant three feet taller than Alanah. Suddenly the formerly too-tall princess is feeling positively petite. But Alanah’s planet is stuck in the Dark Ages and Kindred technology looks like magic to them—black magic. Can Alanah convince her people the giant race is safe to join with? And can she and Bram overcome their differences—both physical and emotional—to form a lasting relationship? You’ll have to read Taming the Giant to find out.

The second novel of six that describe mysteries solved by the Black Widowers, based on a literary dining club he belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders. It collects twelve stories by Asimov, nine reprinted from mystery or science fiction magazines and three previously unpublished, together with a general introduction, and an afterword following each story by the author. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia. Contents 1   When No Man Pursueth 2   Quicker Than the Eye 3   The Iron Gem 4   The Three Numbers 5   Nothing Like Murder 6   No Smoking 7   Season's Greetings 8   The One and Only East 9   Earthset and Evening Star 10  Friday the Thirteenth 11  The Unabridged 12  The Ultimate Crime

A tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation. It was Avluela the Flier's scarlet and ebony wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. And so the invaders came and conquered and Avluela became lost in the turmoil.