Hard-core military science fiction at its very best, John Scalzi's The Last Colony is the third in The Old Man's War series. They must save themselves – or die trying. John Perry was living peacefully on one of humanity's colonies – until he and his wife were offered an opportunity these ex-supersoldiers couldn't resist. To come out of retirement and lead a new frontier world. However, once on the planet, they discover they've been betrayed. For this colony is a pawn in an interstellar game of war and diplomacy. Humanity's Colonial Union has pitched itself against a new, seemingly unstoppable alien alliance, dedicated to ending all human colonization. As this contest rages above, Perry struggles to keep his terrified colonists alive on the surface below – despite dangerous interstellar politics, violence and treachery. And the planet has yet to reveal its own fatal secrets. Continue the gripping space war series with Zoe's Tale.
The multiple award-winning fantasy author of The Fionavar Tapestry brings his extraordinary imagination to a tale of mythic figures in contemporary times... Ned Marriner is in France with his father, a celebrated photographer shooting the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence. While exploring the cathedral, Ned meets Kate, an American exchange student with a deep knowledge of the area’s history. But even Kate is at a loss when she and Ned surprise a scar-faced stranger, wearing a leather jacket and carrying a knife. “I think you ought to go now,” he tells them. “You have blundered into a corner of a very old story...” In this ancient place, where the borders between the living and the long-dead are thin, Ned and his family are about to be drawn into a haunted story, as mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into the present, changing—and claiming—lives.
Chosen as One of the Five Best SF Novels of the Year by Library Journal. When a young physicist unveils an efficient star drive capable of reaching the core of the galaxy, veteran star pilot Priscilla ?Hutch? Hutchins finds herself back in the deepest reaches of space, and on the verge of discovering the origins of the deadly omega clouds that continue to haunt her.
A party in a college flat in May 2001. A case of dodgy home-brewed beer. A violent storm. Next day: the mother of all hangovers. What would you do if you the morning after the night before brought a banging head, a raging thirst... Oh, and your very own superpower? Meet the All-Stars: Harriet, Charlie, Caroline, Mary-Beth and Jack. Harriet can make herself invisible, Charlie can read your mind, Caroline can fly, and Jack, well, Jack can run faster than a speeding bullet. Determined to become costumed crime-fighters, but baffled by the lack of super-villains to tackle, the quintet soon finds that the ramifications of their new powers are more complicated than they anticipated, and that humans (even themselves) are much more fragile than they'd realised.
From Robert Charles Wilson, the Hugo Award-winning author of Spin, comes Julian Comstock, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America. In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation's spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again. Then out of Labrador come tales of the war hero "Captain Commongold." The masses follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is...troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the President's late brother Bryce—a popular general who challenged the President's power, and paid the ultimate price. As Julian ascends to the pinnacle of power, his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients sets him at fatal odds with the Dominion. Treachery and intrigue will dog him as he closes in on the accomplishment of his lifelong ambition: to make a film about the life of Charles Darwin. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
From acclaimed bestselling author Laura Anne Gilman comes a unique and enthralling new story of fantasy and adventure, wine and magic, danger and hope.... Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power. But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within -- magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed. In Flesh and Fire, first in a spellbinding new trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman conjures a story as powerful as magic itself, as intoxicating as the finest of wines, and as timeless as the greatest legends ever told.
In the CHAGA novels Ian McDonald brought an Africa in the grip of a bizarre alien invasion to life, in RIVER OF GODS he painted a rich portrait of India in 2047, in BRASYL he looked at different Brazils, past present and future. Ian McDonald has found renown at the cutting edge of a movement to take SF away from its British and American white roots and out into the rich cultures of the world. THE DERVISH HOUSE continues that journey and centres on Istanbul in 2025. Turkey is part of Europe but sited on the edge, it is an Islamic country that looks to the West. THE DERVISH HOUSE is the story of the families that live in and around its titular house, it is at once a rich mosaic of Islamic life in the new century and a telling novel of future possibilities.
Award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China in an masterful story of honor and power. It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses. You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already...
In the tradition of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, this brilliant first novel fuses history, fantasy, and romance. Prepare to be enchanted by M. K. Hobson’s captivating take on the Wild, Wild West. The year is 1876. In the small Sierra Nevada settlement of Lost Pine, the town witch, Emily Edwards, is being run out of business by an influx of mail-order patent magics. Attempting to solve her problem with a love spell, Emily only makes things worse. But before she can undo the damage, an enchanted artifact falls into her possession—and suddenly Emily must flee for her life, pursued by evil warlocks who want the object for themselves. Dreadnought Stanton, a warlock from New York City whose personality is as pompous and abrasive as his name, has been exiled to Lost Pine for mysterious reasons. Now he finds himself involuntarily allied with Emily in a race against time—and across the United States by horse, train, and biomechanical flying machine—in quest of the great Professor Mirabilis, who alone can unlock the secret of the coveted artifact. But along the way, Emily and Stanton will be forced to contend with the most powerful and unpredictable magic of all—the magic of the human heart.
In Regency England, Jane Ellsworth of Dorchester is a woman ahead of her time. Not only is she highly skilled in the manipulation of glamour - plucking strands from the Ether to create genteel magical illusions - she's also ambitious for her art, and dreams of being recognised as a glamourist of note in her own right, as men are permitted to. First and foremost, however, a lady of quality must marry well, and alas Jane's ambitions do not extend to her romantic prospects. Compared to her beautiful sister Melody, Jane feels invisible to suitors, and is resigned to a life of spinsterhood. But when her beloved family comes under threat, Jane uses her magical skills to put things right, which attracts the attention of professional glamourist Mr Vincent . . . and unwittingly wanders in to a love story of her own.
After 8000 years of star travel, humanity has found only one alien species. Alex Benedict may be on the path to finding another one, but an assassin has other ideas.
ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, THREE SHOTS RANG OUT IN DALLAS, PRESIDENT KENNEDY DIED, AND THE WORLD CHANGED. WHAT IF YOU COULD CHANGE IT BACK? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King—who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer—takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it. It begins with Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away—a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life—like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963—turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession—to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.
The first instalment of the action-packed Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy - perfect for fans of Becky Chambers and N. K. Jemisin Nyx is a bel dame, a bounty hunter paid to collect the heads of deserters – by almost any means necessary. ‘Almost’ proved to be the problem. Cast out and imprisoned for breaking one rule too many, Nyx and her crew of mercenaries are all about the money. But when a dubious government deal with an alien emissary goes awry, her name is at the top of the list for a covert recovery. While the centuries-long war rages on only one thing is certain: the world’s best chance for peace rests in the hands of its most ruthless killers. . . ***** Make sure you've read the rest of the series: 1. God's War 2. Infidel 3. Rapture
Come inside and take a seat; the show is about to begin . . . Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic. That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape. But even a careful ringmaster can make mistakes. Two of Tresaulti's performers are trapped in a secret standoff that threatens to tear the Circus apart, just as the war lands on their doorstep. Now they must fight a war on two fronts: one from the outside, and a more dangerous one from within . . .
We all wear battle scars. Some run deeper than others. Jane's are impossible to hide. Jane Eliot wears an iron mask. It's the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain – The Ironskin. When a post is advertised for a governess to assist with a fey-cursed child, Jane grabs the opportunity and leaves for a new life at Silver Birch Hall. Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is a challenge in itself. But Jane’s also battling with burgeoning feelings for the little girl's father – the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. Deep down Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things are true? As Jane unlocks the secrets of a new life – she discovers just how far she’s prepared to go to become whole again.
*PRE-ORDER KAREN JOY FOWLER'S NEW NOVEL, BOOTH, TODAY* 'Wise, provocative and wildly endearing' Guardian 'Readably juicy and surreptitiously smart' Barbara Kingsolver THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER Rosemary doesn't talk much, and about certain things she's silent. She had a sister, Fern, her whirlwind other half, who vanished from her life in circumstances she wishes she could forget. And it's been ten years since she last saw her beloved older brother Lowell. Now at college, Rosemary starts to see she can't go forward without going back to the time when aged five, she was sent away from home to her grandparents and returned to find Fern gone. It was Rosemary's parents who began all of the trouble - isn't it always? But, dear reader, exactly how they did it is a twist you'll have to discover for yourself.
COMPTON CROOK AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL. NEBULA AWARD FINALIST. New Science Fiction Adventure Series! National Bestseller in trade paperback. An agent for a spy organization uncovers an alien alliance in nearby interstellar space—an alliance that will soon involve humanity in politics and war on a galactic scale. 2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth’s Moon—a history-changing clandestine project—and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan’s mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient—enough so to have built a lost civilization. However, arriving on site in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he’s been given is anything but secret or safe. With assassins and saboteurs dogging his every step, it's clear that someone doesn't want his mission to succeed. In the end, it takes the broad-based insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe. Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being irresistibly dragged. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to survive as a free species is to face the perils directly—and to fight fire with fire. WINNER OF THE COMPTON CROOK AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL About Fire with Fire: “Chuck Gannon is one of those marvelous finds—someone as comfortable with characters as he is with technology, and equally adept at providing those characters with problems to solve. Imaginative, fun, and not afraid to step on the occasional toe or gore the occasional sacred cow, his stories do not disappoint.”—David Weber "If we meet strong aliens out there, will we suffer the fate of the Aztecs and Incas, or find the agility to survive? Gannon fizzes with ideas about the dangerous politics of first contact.”—David Brin "The plot is intriguing and then some. Well-developed and self-consistent; intelligent readers are going to like it."—Jerry Pournelle "[T]he intersecting plot threads, action and well-conceived science kept those pages turning."—SF Crowsnest About Starfire series hit, Extremis, coauthored by Charles E. Gannon: “Vivid. . . Battle sequences mingle with thought-provoking exegesis . . .”–Publishers Weekly "It’s a grand, fun series of battles and campaigns, worthy of anything Dale Brown or Larry Bond ever wrote." –Analog About Charles E. Gannon: "[A] strong [writer of]. . .military SF. . .[much] action going on in his work, with a lot of physics behind it. There is a real sense of the urgency of war and the sacrifices it demands." –Locus
'Truly, truly remarkable' Karen Joy Fowler 'Extraordinary...resonates to many of the same chords as Beowulf, the legends of King Arthur, The Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones' Neal Stephenson 'You are a prophet and seer with the brightest mind in an age. Your blood is that of the man who should have been king ...That's what the king and his lords see. And they will kill you, one day' In seventh century Britain, a new religion is coming ashore while small kingdoms are merging, frequently and violently. Hild is the king's youngest niece, with a glittering mind and natural authority, She is destined to become one of the pivotal figures of the early Middle Ages: Saint Hilda of Whitby. But for now she has only the powerful curiosity of a child and the precarious advantage of a plotting uncle, Edwin of Northumbria, who will stop at nothing to beome king of the Angles. Hild establishes herself at her uncle's side as the king's seer, and becomes indispensable - as long as all goes well for Edwin. The stakes are high - life and death - for Hild, her family and for all those who seek the protection of this strange girl who seems to see the future. In this vivid, utterly compelling novel, Nicola Griffith has brought the Early Middle Ages to life in an extraordinary act of alchemy, transporting the reader into a mesmerising, unforgettable world.
In The Golem and the Jinni, a chance meeting between mythical beings takes readers on a dazzling journey through cultures in turn-of-the-century New York. Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life to by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899. Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection. Marvelous and compulsively readable, Helene Wecker's debut novel The Golem and the Jinni weaves strands of Yiddish and Middle Eastern literature, historical fiction and magical fable, into a wondrously inventive and unforgettable tale.