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Rachel thought she was facing the battle of her life when her son was diagnosed with leukemia. Then the Ancient Gods rose and brought the apocalypse with them. Some people accept their new deities, others wage war for the future of humanity.
Desperate to protect Adam from enemies both mythical and biological, they flee the city hoping to find shelter in the mountains. Instead, they discover mutations, grotesque plants and animals warped by the changing world. When Adam’s cancer cells begin to mutate as well, the Rachel is forced to choose between his life and their freedom.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he’s no longer a zombie, but after killing his brother Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie’s death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen-without Vitus, that is.

Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie’s mess, but tracking down his brother’s homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. A convicted killer safely behind bars may not be so safe after all when it appears he is still committing murder through his victim’s dreams. High on Atroxipine (the drug that once kept him functioning among the living) and lapsing into addiction, Vitus’s grip on reality takes a nasty turn when his own dreams start slipping sideways.

His problems multiply as he deals with his failed friendship with wheelchair-bound officer Geoff Lafferty, his wrecked romance with the town mortician Niko, government agents working for his father, sinister figures lurking in the shadows, and least of all, the complications of learning how to be human again.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Vitus is horrified to discover the photo of the couple’s missing son is a picture-perfect reproduction of his long dead son. This leads him to question the events of his tormented past; he must face the possibility that the wife and child he believed he murdered ten years ago in a zombie-fugue have somehow survived . . . or is it just wishful thinking designed to pull him into an elaborate trap?

Long before William Shakespeare, tales were told of the Dane Ameleth whose noble father was murdered by the uncle who swiftly weds new widow Gerutha. Must Ameleth repay this crime by killing his uncle? The White Abacus dares to reconfigure the best known version of the classic tale, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to create a futuristic revenge drama with an entirely different outcome. Telmah is an inventive genius. Ophelia is no sobbing suicide but rather the impressive Warrior Rose, who shockingly revises the fate of her lover.

In this exotic future history, the galaxy is open to anyone who passes through a hex gate, whether hu (augmented human) or ai (artificial mind). Telmah’s close friend is the ai Ratio, newly embodied to the Real. Like all members of his asteroid tribe, Telmah is forbidden to use the hex transport system, since that would doom his rebirth.

Out of this agonizing dilemma comes a feverish pursuit of truth and duty, love and near-madness, in an endlessly startling future where nothing turns out the way you expect.

An instant cult classic upon first publication, Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy has earned wide critical acclaim, shocking and captivating a loyal readership among science fiction and women’s literature audiences alike.

Sequel to the enormously popular Native Tongue, The Judas Rosecontinues Elgin’s gripping vision of a frightening, male-dominated world where the women of Earth are virtually enslaved. Once again, this group of women-and the nonviolent yet transformative power of language-is called upon to challenge Earth’s violent, patriarchal order. Their revolutionary tool is Laadan-a secret women’s language created to free them from men’s control and make resistance possible for all women.

In The Judas Rose, the time has come to take Laadan from underground and spread its revolutionary power to women everywhere-in part, through a group of nuns inside the Roman Catholic Church. But when a handful of horrified priests uncover the women’s sabotage they move to stamp it out with an undercover female agent of their own.

Since time began, twenty Gods have ruled the universe. Though each god possessed different abilities, each was all-powerful within his realm. Now one of the Gods has upset the balance of power, leaving the others scrambling for control in the new order…

Here is the epic tale of the Great War of the Gods – and the proud people upon whom the fate of the world depends. When the God of the desert, Akhran the Wanderer, declares that two clans must band together despite their centuries-old rivalry, their first response is outrage. But they are a devout people and so reluctantly bow to his bidding.

Enemies from birth, the headstrong Prince Khardan and impetuous Princess Zohra must unite in marriage to stop Quar, the God of Reality, Greed, and Law, from enslaving their people.

But can Khardan and Zohra keep from betraying each other? Can their two peoples maintain their fragile alliance until the long-awaited flowering of the legendary Rose of the Prophet?

Against the powerful legions of the evil Amir, Khardan and Zohra fight to save the desert people – a fight unexpectedly joined by an exiled wizard named Matthew and the mysterious powers of his alien land.

For the Rider Wen, peace in Gillengaria has only brought despair. Plagued by guilt for failing to protect her king, Wen has fled the royal city and given herself the penance of a life of wandering, helping strangers in need, making sure they remain that: just strangers.

Until the day she helps a terrified young woman abducted by an overeager suitor. The girl, she discovers, is the daughter of one of those who rose against the dead king, and is now heir to the great estate known as Fortune. Once she has delivered her safely home, Wen wants nothing further to do with the girl or her family. But fate has other plans. For behind the walls of Fortune, Wen will fine her future – and she will finally confront the ghosts of her past…

Little did Zarkon dream that on a tiny south sea paradise loomed an evil force that would challenge even his mighty powers and the courage and skills of the Omega men.

Then with shattering suddenness Zarkon and his team were thrown into the path of the hideous flaming figure that rose from the mouth of a living volcano to bring scorching death and boiling terror to mankind!

There was only one way for Zarkon to combat this satanic spectre from inner space. He had to descend into the monster’s lair, and in that fiery inferno deep in the bowels of the Earth, Zarkon and his followers plunged into their most hair-raising adventure!

A rose-red city, half as old as time. Once it had been king city of a mighty empire and the center of the ancient faith – Gateway to the Gods, the old epics name it. Now it was dead, empty, deserted, only a dim ghost of its vanished splendor. Such was Ilionis. Lost city of Mars. A somber ruin, cold and lonely. But Ilionis was not forgotten. The old city held a valuable treasure. A treasure that brought Earthmen Ivo Tengren and scientist Keresny on a strange and difficult journey to the city’s gates. A journey that was now ended. Ilionis had been found. The treasure was close by. And now an even stranger journey was about to begin.

There was a name, but the name was a myth. The myth rode the tongues of ten billion men – and ten times ten billion not-men – on ten thousand worlds, and wherever the name was spoken, it was with awe and respect.

Citadel!

The secret name for the masters of space, the creatures who ruled without office, who served without reward.

Citadel!

The deepest mystery and the greatest power of all the myriad stars. Wherever two creatures met in fear of oppression, a silent cry to the men of that code-named organization rose in the birth of a new hope. For the galaxy was Citadel… and the Citadel was the galaxy!

Man is established on Kliron XIV, a dark, bleak, barren little globe used solely as a base for spatial patrol ships. Life on Kliron is no bed of roses, but it is only when faced by perils that seem at first too incredible to believe that the best – and worst – is revealed in men. Here in Kliron XIV just such a peril materialises. For the first time in their lives men find themselves confronted by an enemy against which no weapon can prevail. Worse even than the Master Entity, the Gargantua are its slaves, evil Flowers of Darkness that bloom where no life can exist . . .

Earth, can you spare a city?

The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth! Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor. But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his days on the smallest-and the nuttiest-planet in the galaxy!

‘The gems in this impressive collection have the same power to disconcert as her best novels’ Martin Amis

‘Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . she moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness … South to discover Antarctica with nine South American women … West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death … and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

A space opera in which an interplanetary criminal reminiscent of Charteris’ character, The Saint, foils a plot to flood Earth with an addictive Venusian fruit.

When the Chester A. Arthur, the world’s first and only coal/steam/paddlewheel-propelled spaceship rose into the skies over Buffalo Falls, Pa., who would have expected what followed?

Will Professor Thintwhistle and his crew be able to return to earth? Will Miss Taphammer ever find them? Will Jefferson Jackson Clay’s foul plot succeed? And what of the King of the Cats?

Sorrow and trouble and bitterness will bound you and yours and the children of yours…

Some said the dying words of Nial Lynn, murdered by his own son, were a wicked curse. To others, it was a winter’s tale spun by firelight on cold, dark nights. But when Corbet Lynn came to rebuild his family estate, memories of his grandfather’s curse were rekindled by young and old – and rumours filled the heavy air of summer.

In the woods that border Lynn Hall, free-spirited Rois Melior roams wild and barefooted in search of healing herbs. She is as hopelessly unbridled – and unsuited for marriage – as her betrothed sister Laurel is domestic. In Corbet’s pale green eyes, Rois senses a desperate longing. In her restless dreams, mixed with the heady warmth of harvest wine, she hears him beckon. And as autumn gold fades, Rois is consumed with Corbet Lynn, obsessed with his secret past – until, across the frozen countryside and in flight from her own imagination, truth and dreams become inseparable…

A marvelous medley of Tiptree’s best, including:

“YOUR HAPLOID HEART” – When Ian Suitlov and Pax Patton landed on Esthaa to check for humans, the job wasn’t as easy as it appeared. Though the natives seemed human enough, only cross breeding would be conclusive proof. But how were they to prove anything, when sex was punishable by death?

“THE PSYCHOLOGIST WHO WOULDN’T DO AWFUL THINGS TO RATS” – Dr Tilly Lipsitz hated his name, loved his rats… and would be out of a job if he didn’t come up with a real zinger of an experiment soon. He didn’t have much in mind until he took a midnight trip to his lab and learned more than he would have thought possible.

“SHE WAITS FOR ALL MEN BORN” – She had eyes that could not see, but without sight she had powers that went far beyond those of all who came upon her.

Contents:
Your Haploid Heart (1969)
And So On, and So On (1971)
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)
A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)
The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats (1976)
She Waits for All Men Born (1976)

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to one of the unique voices of British science fiction, John Middleton Murry, Jr, who wrote his best work under the pen name Richard Cowper.

The son of the famous critic John Middleton Murry, Cowper announced himself to the science fiction world in 1967 with BREAKTHROUGH, which found favour for a subtlety and richness of characterisation not seen in most contemporary SF. The idea of a transformed future England became his signature leitmotif and it is this theme that informs the Corlay tales contained in this omnibus. This is the complete Corlay sequence, featuring introductory novella ‘PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN’ and novels THE ROAD TO CORLAY, A DREAM OF KINSHIP and A TAPESTRY OF TIME.

THE ROAD TO CORLAY:
On the Eve of the Fourth Millennium a slowly-building civilization, struggling out of the rubble of the Drowning, was crushed beneath the sceptre of a powerful and repressive Church. But on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the sound of a magical pipe was heard, and the air was filled with songs of freedom and enlightenment. And on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the Boy appeared, bringing the gift of sacrilege, a harbinger of the future, heralding the arrival of the White Bird of Dawning. It is the coming of a New Age. A glorious future bearing the presents of the past!

A DREAM OF KINSHIP:
They came to destroy! The treacherous Falcons, uniformed in the black leather tunics of the fanatic Secular Arm, descended on Corlay to burn and kill. Commanded by Lord Constant, ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, they were determined to crush the religious heresy of Kinship. But a new dream rose from the ashes… When four Kinsmen escaped the carnage of their beloved land, each helped to fulfill the miracle that had been foretold: the coming of the Child of the Bride of Time.

A TAPESTRY OF TIME:
Twenty years have passed since the martyrdom of the Boy-piper at York, twenty years in which his legacy, the movement of Kinship, has challenged the tyranny of the Church Militant in Britain’s seven island kingdoms. Now his namesake, Tom, bearing the Boy’s own pipes and perhaps himself imbued with the spirit of the White Bird, is wandering Europe in company with the girl, Witchet. But disaster overtakes them and Tom, in a furry of vengeance, breaks his vow of Kinship. A terrible path lies before him, one that transcends his own world. As he travels it, Tom must come to understand the true nature of the wild White Bird, of The Bride of Time and her Child, and of the Song the Star Born sang.

With the land of Everien in chaos as a voracious timeserpent wreaks havoc, Istar and her companions – Taratel, Jaya, and Tarquin the Free – embark on a perilous quest to the lost city of Jai Pendu in order to harness the power of the Sekk and the ancient sorcery of the elusive skyfalcon, in the epic conclusion of the Everien saga.

Morgan the Raider got his name from the famous pirate of old, as he stands convicted of stealing $40 million. He is good at getting himself out of jail, too; he has already escaped custody once.

Now he is offered the chance of a reduced sentence – but at risk of his life. For he must get into an escape-proof prison on a Caribbean island, a torture fortress known as the Rose Castle, in order to find and set free an important scientist. A CIA agent, Kim Stacy, is assigned the job of accompanying him – and keeping an eye on him at the same time.

But did Morgan really steal the money? And just who are the prisoners being held in the island fortress?

Nadia has been here before, at this seeping-away of hope. The other times curl behind her like the petals of a rose, all the memories, all her babies – false alarms, real pregnancies lasting only until her body rejected them.

Meanwhile her boyfriend Simon is underground caving. Nadia knows he risks his life, a decadent death among the limestone, his bones withering in the rock. Her work is to create, to mould leather-hard clay into something beautiful. But she has not the heart for it today.

‘Limestone and Clay shows a maturation and deepening of her considerable talents … Lesley Glaister has produced a portrait of human relationships both disconcerting and haunting in its unflinching clarity’ Sunday Telegraph

A suspicious personal ad conceals nefarious intent – and eventually lands in the lap of Perry Mason.

It appears that Marilyn Marlow inherited a small fortune from her mother, who got the sum from her wealthy employer. But now the old man’s relatives are contesting the will, putting Marilyn on shaky ground.
Whoever sways Rose Keeling, the key witness to the signing of the will, is sure to be the victor. Enter the personal ad. Marilyn intends to find Rose a Mr. Right in order to get the goods on her. But when Rose is murdered, Perry Mason sets out to find a gentleman caller who had a date with death …

Professor Alistair Dirke thought himself a reasonable man – he could scarcely acknowledge the suspicion that was beginning to grow in his mind every time he saw his wife Rose with Paul Eckleston . . . Paul seemed to be there very often these days.

Yet soon a more terrible suspicion was to grow and spread through the little community of Rollway, where the Dirkes had lived in peace with their neighbours. A valuable collection of coins goes missing and then a man is murdered.

It is no ordinary murder case that brings the famed French detective Monsieur Bencolin out of retirement, but one that involves a midnight rendezvous on a steamy Paris night, a broken love affair, and four different murder weapons found in the secret villa where the body is discovered.

Rose Klonec, whose corpse bears the mark of a particularly horrible wound, had connections – and old lovers – throughout Paris, and soon the number of suspects grows to match the number of possible weapons …