Pining away in a dead-end job for which she endlessly meters out a powerful energy substance known as plasm, Aiah discovers an unlimited plasm supply and arranges a daring plan with a mysterious rebel to overthrow the government.
Finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards: A lonely teenager hides in the forest concealing his own magic—until a battle for survival makes hiding impossible. Summer has come to Sauterelle Lake, a vacation community in the Oregon Cascades, and seventeen-year-old Nick Verrou would rather roam the woods than work in his father’s general store. His curiosity and connection with nature have him dodging his job at every opportunity. When he meets mysterious vacationer Willow and her family—and their unnerving pet wolf—Nick discovers that others share the powers he has tried to suppress. But Nick soon learns that nature’s magic can be more dangerous than he ever imagined. Now the real trick will be surviving until autumn . . . The Silent Strength of Stones is the second novel by the author of A Red Heart of Memories and other acclaimed works. “A startling new voice in contemporary fantasy” (Locus), Nina Kiriki Hoffman “writes about magic creatively and with great feeling” (Kirkus Reviews). The Silent Strength of Stones is the 2nd book in the Chapel Hollow Novels, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. This ebook includes the bonus story “Words of Farewell.”
In 1912 the world changes overnight. Europe and all its inhabitants disappear, replaced by a primeval continent which becomes known as Darwinia: a strange land in which evolution has followed a different path. To some this event is an act of divine retribution; to others it is an opportunity to carve out a new empire. Leaving a USA now ruled by religious fundamentalists, young photographer Guilford Law joins an expedition to Darwinia, a mission of discovery which uncovers extraordinary revelations about the whole nature of the universe.
From the acclaimed author of The Sparrow comes a new, extraordinarily imaginative SF novel which continues the powerful, moving story of Emilio Sandoz, the charismatic Jesuit priest who led the well-intentioned but catastrophic mission to the distant planet of Rakhat, and journeyed to the furthest reaches of the human soul. Now, in Children of God, Father Emilio Sanchoz returns and - against his will - is forced to continue his quest for the meaning, if any, of God's plan. Dazzlingly imaginative, philosophically provocative and immeasurably entertaining, Children of God is a must-read for fans of The Sparrow, and a startlingly fresh adventure for newcomers to Mary Doria Russell's special literary magic.
A MODERN SCIENCE FICTION CLASSIC FROM WIL MCCARTHY In the eighth decade of the Queendom of Sol, three commodities rule the day. The first is wellstone, a form of programmable matter capable of emulating almost any substance: natural, artificial, even hypothetical. The second is collapsium, a deadly crystal composed of miniature black holes, vital for the transmission of information and matter—including humans—throughout the solar system. The third is the bitter rivalry between Her Majesty's top scientists. Bruno de Towaji, famed lover and statesman, dreams of building an arc de fin, an almost mythical device capable of probing the farthest reaches of spacetime. Marlon Sykes, de Towaji's rival in both love and science, is meanwhile hard at work on a vast telecommunications project whose first step is the construction of a ring of collapsium around the sun. But when a ruthless saboteur attacks the Ring Collapsiter and sends it falling into the sun, the two scientists must put aside personal animosity and combine their prodigious intellects to prevent the destruction of the solar system . . . and every living thing within it. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About The Collapsium: “Ingenious and witty . . . as if Terry Pratchett at his zaniest and Larry Niven at his best had collaborated.”—Booklist "Fresh and imaginative. From a plausible yet startling invention, McCarthy follows the logical lines of sight, building in parallel the technological and societal innovations."—Science Fiction Weekly "The future as McCarthy sees it is a wondrous place." —Publishers Weekly "[McCarthy] studs his narrative with far-out scientific concepts. . . . He certainly has a sense of humor."—The New York Times “An ingenious yarn with challenging ideas, well-handled technical details, and plenty of twists and turns.”—Kirkus
In the Old Country, they called them the Gentry: ancient spirits of the land, magical, amoral, and dangerous. When the Irish emigrated to North America, some of the Gentry followed...only to find that the New World already had spirits of its own, called manitou and other such names by the Native tribes. Now generations have passed, and the Irish have made homes in the new land, but the Gentry still wander homeless on the city streets. Gathering in the city shadows, they bide their time and dream of power. As their dreams grow harder, darker, fiercer, so do the Gentry themselves--appearing, to those with the sight to see them, as hard and dangerous men, invariably dressed in black. Bettina can see the Gentry, and knows them for what they are. Part Indian, part Mexican, she was raised by her grandmother to understand the spirit world. Now she lives in Kellygnow, a massive old house run as an arts colony on the outskirts of Newford, a world away from the Southwestern desert of her youth. Outsider her nighttime window, she often spies the dark men, squatting in the snow, smoking, brooding, waiting. She calls them los lobos, the wolves, and stays clear of them--until the night one follows her to the woods, and takes her hand.... Ellie, an independent young sculptor, is another with magic in her blood, but she refuses to believe it, even though she, too, sees the dark men. A strange old woman has summoned Ellie to Kellygnow to create a mask for her based on an ancient Celtic artifact. It is the mask of the mythic Summer King--another thing Ellie does not believe in. Yet lack of belief won't dim the power of the mast, or its dreadful intent. Donal, Ellie's former lover, comes from an Irish family and knows the truth at the heart of the old myths. He thinks he can use the mask and the "hard men" for his own purposes. And Donal's sister, Miki, a punk accordion player, stands on the other side of the Gentry's battle with the Native spirits of the land. She knows that more than her brother's soul is at stake. All of Newford is threatened, human and mythic beings alike. Once again Charles de Lint weaves the mythic traditions of many cultures into a seamless cloth, bringing folklore, music, and unforgettable characters to life on modern city streets. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
During the wedding festivities of his king, Cyan Dag, a knight of Gloinmere, is sought out by a mysterious bard and told a terrifying tale: that the king has married a false queen - a lie cloaked in ancient and powerful sorcery. Spurred on by his steadfast honour and loyalty, Cyan departs on a dangerous quest to rescue the real queen from her tower prison - to prevent war, and to awaken magic in a land that has lost its way ...
Fourteen-year-old Harry Potter joins the Weasleys at the Quidditch World Cup, then enters his fourth year at Hogwarts Academy where he is mysteriously entered in an unusual contest that challenges his wizarding skills, friendships and character, amid signs that an old enemy is growing stronger.
2224. Hormis l'espèce belliqueuse qui peuple la planète Nok, à l'aube de son ère industrielle, les hommes n'ont trouvé durant leurs premières explorations stellaires que les ruines de civilisations extraterrestres disparues. Or voici qu'un bref signal radio se manifeste soudain, issu d'une source en orbite autour d'une étoile à neutrons. Indéchiffrable mais d'origine artificielle. Est-ce le dernier souvenir d'une civilisation elle aussi disparue ou le premier message d'une espèce vivante ? Un an après l'aventure de Deepsix, Priscilla Hutchins, " Hutch " pour les amis, pilote spatiale de l'Académie, repart en mission d'exploration, cette fois en compagnie d'une délégation de la Société du Contact - véritables précurseurs ou bande d'allumés ? D'étoile en étoile, de monde en monde, toujours en quête de la Rencontre tant espérée, Jack McDevitt nous entraîne au sein d'une petite communauté humaine vers des réponses qui amènent d'autres questions, avec un sens du mystère et du suspense qui n'appartient qu'à lui.
In a world where humans are enslaved by alien invaders called Hoots, Charlie, a human "mount", dreams of being a runner like his father, of seeing his long-lost parents again, and of the day when humans will rule the world again. Reprint.
Winner of the British Fantasy Award, The Scar by China Miéville is a colossal fantasy of incredible diversity and spellbinding imagination, set in the richly visualized world of Bas-Lag. A human cargo bound for servitude in exile . . . A pirate city hauled across the oceans . . . A hidden miracle about be revealed . . . These are the ingredients of an astonishing story. It is the story of a prisoner's journey. Of the search for the island of a forgotten people, for the most astonishing beast in the seas, and ultimately for a fabled place - a massive wound in reality, a source of unthinkable power and danger.
August 15th, 2047. Happy Hundredth Birthday, India ... On the eve of Mother India's hundredth birthday, ten people are doing ten very different things. In the next few weeks, all these people will be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. From gangsters to government advisors, from superstitious street-boys to scientists to computer-generated soap stars, River of Gods shows a civilization in flux - a river of gods. RIVER OF GODS is an epic SF novel as sprawling, vibrant and colourful as the sub-continent it describes. This is an SF novel that blew apart the narrow anglo and US-centric concerns of the genre and ushered in a new global consciousness for the genre.
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks • Now a major motion picture • Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Includes a new Afterword by David Mitchell A postmodern visionary and one of the leading voices in twenty-first-century fiction, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending, philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Umberto Eco, Haruki Murakami, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction as profound as it is playful. In this groundbreaking novel, an influential favorite among a new generation of writers, Mitchell explores with daring artistry fundamental questions of reality and identity. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. . . . Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, contrives his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. . . . From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles upon a web of corporate greed and murder that threatens to claim her life. . . . And onward, with dazzling virtuosity, to an inglorious present-day England; to a Korean superstate of the near future where neocapitalism has run amok; and, finally, to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. The narrative then boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. Along the way, Mitchell reveals how his disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky. As wild as a videogame, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. Praise for Cloud Atlas “[David] Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across this novel’s every page.”—The New York Times Book Review “One of those how-the-holy-hell-did-he-do-it? modern classics that no doubt is—and should be—read by any student of contemporary literature.”—Dave Eggers “Wildly entertaining . . . a head rush, both action-packed and chillingly ruminative.”—People “The novel as series of nested dolls or Chinese boxes, a puzzle-book, and yet—not just dazzling, amusing, or clever but heartbreaking and passionate, too. I’ve never read anything quite like it, and I’m grateful to have lived, for a while, in all its many worlds.”—Michael Chabon “Cloud Atlas ought to make [Mitchell] famous on both sides of the Atlantic as a writer whose fearlessness is matched by his talent.”—The Washington Post Book World
William "Dead" Kennedy has always been able to see dead people with unfinished business, but when a distant cousin asks him to deal with the ghost of a dead girl that is haunting his garage, the request soon takes on a life of its own.
Eight years after they overthrew Churchill and led Britain into a separate peace with Hitler, the upper-crust families of the “Farthing set” are gathered for a weekend retreat. Among them is estranged Farthing scion Lucy Kahn, who can't understand why her and her husband David's presence was so forcefully requested. Then the country-house idyll is interrupted when the eminent Sir James Thirkie is found murdered - with a yellow Star of David pinned to his chest. Lucy begins to realize that her Jewish husband is about to be framed for the crime - an outcome that would be convenient for altogether too many of the various political machinations underway in Parliament in the coming week. But whoever's behind the murder, and the frame-up, didn't reckon on the principal investigator from Scotland Yard being a man with very private reasons for sympathizing with outcasts and underdogs - and prone to look beyond the obvious as a result. As the trap slowly shuts on Lucy and David, they begin to see a way out - a way fraught with peril in a darkening world.
Grad-school dropout Matt Fuller is toiling as a lowly research assistant at MIT when, while measuring quantum relationships between gravity and light, his calibrator disappears - and reappears, one second later. In fact, every time Matt hits the reset button, the machine goes missing twelve times longer. After tinkering with the calibrator, Matt is convinced that what he has in his possession is a time machine. And by simply attaching a metal box to it, he learns to send things through time - including a pet-store turtle, which comes back no worse for wear. With a dead-end job and a girlfriend who left him for another man, Matt has nothing to lose by taking a time machine trip for himself. So he borrows an old car, stocks it with food and water, and ends up in the near future - under arrest for the murder of the car's original owner, who dropped dead after seeing Matt disappear before his eyes. The only way to beat the rap is to continue time travelling until he finds a place in time safe enough to stop for good. But such a place may not exist...
The incredible conclusion to the Inheritance Trilogy, from one of fantasy's most acclaimed stars. For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri's ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war. Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family's interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for. As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom -- which even gods fear -- is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens? Includes a never before seen story set in the world of the Inheritance Trilogy.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER in hardcover. With new cover treatment for trade paperback. A new installment in the award-winning Vorkosigan science fiction adventure series. Captain Ivan Vorpatril sometimes thinks that if not for his family, he might have no troubles at all. But he has the dubious fortune of the hyperactive Miles Vorkosigan as a cousin, which has too-often led to his getting dragged into one of Miles’ schemes, with risk to life and limb—and military career—that Ivan doesn’t consider entirely fair. Although much practice has made Ivan more adept at fending off his mother’s less-than-subtle reminders that he should be getting married and continuing the Vorpatril lineage. Fortunately, his current duty is on the planet Komarr as staff officer to Admiral Desplains, far from both his cousin and his mother back on their homeworld of Barrayar. It’s an easy assignment and nobody is shooting at him. What could go wrong? Plenty, it turns out, when Byerly Vorrutyer, an undercover agent for Imperial Security, shows up on his doorstep and asks him to make the acquaintance of a young woman, recently arrived on Komarr, who seems to be in danger. That Byerly is characteristically vague about the nature of the danger, not to mention the lady’s name, should have been Ivan’s first clue, but Ivan is no more able to turn aside from aiding a damsel in distress than he could resist trying to rescue a kitten from a tree. It is but a short step down the road of good intentions to the tangle of Ivan’s life, in trouble with the Komarran authorities, with his superiors, and with the lethal figures hunting the mysterious but lovely Tej and her exotic blue companion Rish—a tangle to test the lengths to which Ivan will go as an inspired protector. But though his predicament is complicated, at least Ivan doesn’t have to worry about hassle from family. Or so he believes. About Captain Vorpatril's Alliance: “. . .this may be one of the most anticipated and long-awaited entries to Bujold’s acclaimed Vorkosigan saga. For years fans have clamored for Ivan Vorpatril’s story, and at last Bujold delivers something that will both thrill the devoted audience and entrance new readers. . .Longtime readers will love seeing a new side of Ivan as well as hearing his views on many of the series characters. New readers can enjoy Ivan’s story on its own. . . Essential for all SF collections and a must-read for Bujold and Vorkosigan fans.”—Booklist About Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga: “Fans have been clamoring for Hugo-winner Bujold to pen a new Vorkosigan Saga novel. . . her deft and absorbing writing easily corrals the complex plot.”—Publishers Weeklyon Cryoburn “Bujold mixes quirky humor with action [and] superb character development…[E]normously satisfying.”—Publishers Weekly. “One of sf’s outstanding talents . . . an outstanding series.”—Booklist “. . . an intelligent, well-crafted and thoroughly satisfying blend of adventure, sociopolitical commentary, scientific experiments, and occasional perils . . . with that extra spicing of romance. . . .”—Locus About Vorkosigan series entry Diplomatic Immunity: “Bujold is adept at world-building and provides a witty, character-centered plot, full of exquisite grace notes. . . fans will be thoroughly gripped and likely to finish the book in a single sitting.”—Publishers Weekly
Jane and David Vincent, both glamourists of some repute, are enjoying a blissful honeymoon on the continent when their romantic getaway goes horribly awry. They are in Belgium when they learn that Napoleon Bonaparte, the deposed emperor, has fled from exile throwing Europe into turmoil. Suddenly Jane and David find themselves in great danger, with no easy way back home to England, no possibility of rescue from abroad, and no real way to tell friend from foe. When David is taken prisoner, Jane determines to put herself at risk, using her most cunning, strongest magic to save her beloved, herself, and their unborn child from harm. . .
Neptune's Brood is a brand new space opera from science fiction legend Charles Stross. Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel and the Hugo Award for Best Novel. She was looking for her sister. She found Atlantis. Krina Alizond is a metahuman in a universe where the last natural humans became extinct five thousand years ago. When her sister goes missing, she embarks on a daring voyage across the star systems to find her, travelling to her last known location - the mysterious water-world of Shin-Tethys. In a universe with no faster-than-light travel that's a dangerous journey, made all the more perilous by the arrival of an assassin on Krina's tail, by the 'privateers' chasing her sister's life insurance policy and by growing signs that the disappearance is linked to one of the biggest financial scams in the known universe.