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Sometimes, the enlightened thing to do is… FIGHT LIKE A DEMON
A younger son, Gerin the Fox has been raised not to lead but to read and study magic. But Fate stepped in, leaving him ruler at a young age. Quaintly, he intends to rule for the welfare and betterment of his people. But many forces combine to make his rule a lively, as well as enlightened, one:
His son is kidnapped…
Wildmen raid his lands and threaten his boarders…
A neighbouring baron with almost as much land as Gerin wants more…

And, most menacing of all: Gerin is having prophetic dreams of monsters rampaging over the northlands, with Gerin and his men in desperate, losing struggle to drive them back…

As Gerin and his liegemen fight to keep some semblance of civilization in the Northlands, the forces of Chaos conspire to tumble Gerin’s world into a very dark age indeed.

As their armies watch, Marcus, a Roman centurion, and Viridovix, a Celt, begin a duel to the death until a strange spell transports them and a group of Roman legionaires to the mysterious world of Videssos, a land ruled by magic and dark sorcery.

In this sequel to the bestselling INTO THE DARKNESS, the country of Algarve is successful in its blitzkrieg tactics, but becomes bogged down in the desolate winter of Unkerlant, its main enemy.

Algarve’s king decides to undertake blood magic, which amounts to genocide, in order to break the deadlock; when it is seen to work, its use elsewhere cannot be long coming. On a small island, a theoretical sorcerer may hold the only answer to this horror . . .

Harry Turtledove has taken events similar to those from Earth’s wars and transplanted them to a wonderfully imagined fantasy world.

In his previous ‘Darkness’ books – Into the Darkness, Darkness Descending, and Through the Darkness – bestselling author Harry Turtledove has been telling an epic tale of a world at war; a dark mirror of the terrible wars of our own twentieth century, set in a world where battles are fought with magic rather than technology.

Imagine the drama and terror of the Second World War in such a place. The death, the destruction, the sheer scale of the horror is the same – but the bullets are beams of eldritch fire, the tanks are great horned and taloned beasts, and fighters and bombers are dragons raining fire upon their targets. This is the world of the Derlavaian continent, a world that is slowly but surely being conquered, mile after bloody mile, by the forces of the Algarvian Empire… forces whose most terrible battle magics are powered by the slaughter of innocent people.

In this, the forth volume of the series, following on from Through the Darkness, the war for the future of Derlavai builds towards its crescendo as the mages of Kuusamo, aided by their former rivals from Lagoas, work desperately to create a newer form of magic. Magic of unprecedented destructive power. Magic that will change the course of the future.

The grand conflict for control of the continent of Derlavai rages on, in a battle with all the drama and terror of the Second World War-only the bullets are beams of magical fire, the tanks and submarines are great lumbering beasts, and the fighters and bombers are dragons raining fire upon their targets.

Yet hope may be dawning at last. The terrible onslaught of the conquering forces of Algarve-who power their battle magics with the life energy of their murdered victims-begins to founder as it runs into Habbakuk: a sorcerous ship of ice used by embattled nations of Lagoas and Kuusamo to ferry their deadly dragons across the seas to strike at the very heart of Algarvian power.

But though the tide has begun to turn, the conflict is far from over. The widely disdained Kaunians still struggle desperately to escape as the Algarvians kill them by the thousands-for life energy, but also simply for the crime of being Kaunian. And as the deaths of innocent civilians on both sides continue to feed the flames of war, those who have struggled to survive and preserve their freedom have only their passions to see them through. . . .

As the Derlavaian War rages into its last and greatest battles, allied nations manoeuvre for positions against each other in a postwar world. But before that time can come, the forces of Algarve, Unkerlant and their allies must clash a final time, countering army with army and battle magic with ever-more-powerful battle magic. In the midst of it all, the people the war has battered and reshaped must struggle to face their greatest individual challenges, as loves are shattered and found, terrible crimes avenged…and some journeys end forever.

And the end of the war may not bring peace…

Rhavas is a good, holy, and pious man, as befits a member of the clergy. He is also the cousin of the Avtokrator, ruler of the Empire. Hoping someday to become ecumenical patriarch of Videssos, he was reluctantly willing to bide his time in one of the smaller cities on the outskirts of the Empire.

Then civil war broke out, and the Avtokrator had to pull back the troops guarding the borders as he struggled for control of the Empire. Rhavas had to flee for his life as the fierce Khamorth nomads took advantage of the chaos and sacked the city he had come to love. He only survived because he accidentally discovered that he had an unsuspected power: Men often cursed each other – but Rhavas’s curse had the power to kill!

Rhavas had always followed Phos, the god of light and goodness, Videssos’ own god, just as he had always despised Phos’ evil rival Skotos. Those who fall off the Bridge of the Separator during judgment in the afterlife are doomed to dwell in Skotos’ ice and darkness forevermore. But Rhavas has reverenced logic as well as goodness, and knows the power to kill with a curse cannot be an attribute of Phos. As evil swallows up the world, Rhavas, ever the logician, decided that Skotos is actually the more powerful god, and becomes determind to change the official religion of Videssos. But in the end, it is he who will be changed, and neither the world nor he will ever be the same again…

Four hundred years ago the kingdom of Avornis lost the Scepter of Mercy, long the property of its kings – and the key to its destiny. All attempts to retrieve it have failed horribly. But without it, how long can Avornis keep resisting powers greater than its own?

While young King Lanius dreams of being more than a mere figurehead, his fellow sovereign, the usurper King Grus, is defending Avornis against the shadowy plots of the Banished One – the dark god cast from heaven who seeks now to dominate the mortal world.

With the barbarous, nomadic Menteshe holding the Scepter of Mercy – and civil war raging among the Chernagor city-states in the north – Avornis finds itself threatened on two fronts and prevented from regaining the Scepter. But the longer the kings go without acting on their dream of retaking the Scepter of Mercy, the greater the chance the Banished One will triumph…

For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man’s spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory – the secret of ZI.

Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew ZI’s secret.

Out of body, out of time…

Though basically a skeptic, William Reynolds had known out-of-body experiences in the past. But never before had he floated past the boundaries of Baltimore . . . and across the borders of time. And now, with the fires of Civil War looming on the horizon, the astonished graduate student was hobnobbing with none other than the dark poet Edgar Allan Poe. But their meeting of minds was to have chilling consequences. For a desperate Confederacy planned to use them both to remold the world – and to change history…for the worse.

In the late twentieth century, Admiral Julian 3rd can get no rest, for he knows his future. He will be reborn as his grandson in the next century to journey through space and make an ominous discovery inside the moon; he will live again in the dark years of the twenty-second century as Julian 9th, who refuses to bow down to the victorious Moon Men; and as Julian 20th, the fierce Red Hawk, he will lead humanity’s final battle against the alien invaders in the twenty-fifth century. The Moon Maid is Edgar Rice Burroughs’s stunning epic of a world conquered by alien invaders from the moon and of the hero Julian, who champions the earth’s struggle for freedom, peace, and dignity.

Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of World War II but on the failure or success of a future “Tibetan Renaissance” to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic empires that threaten it.

Orthe – half-civilized, half-barbaric, home to human-like beings who live and die by the code of the sword. Earth envoy Lynne Christie has been sent here to establish contact and to determine whether this is a world worth developing. But first Christie must come to understand that human-like is not and never can be human, and that not even Orthe’s leaders can stop the spread of rumors about her, dark whisperings that could cost Christie her life.And on a goodwill tour to the outlying provinces, these evil rumors turn to deadly accusations. Christie is no offworlder, Church officials charge: she is a treacherous and cunning descendant of Orthe’s legendary Golden Witchbreed – the cruel, ruthless race that once enslaved the whole planet. Suddenly, Christie finds herself a hunted fugitive on an alien world, where friend and foe alike may prove her executioners. And her only chance of survival lies in saving Orthe from a menace older than time…

World War II veteran Edward Bond’s recuperation from a disastrous fighter plane crash takes a distinct turn for the weird when he encounters a giant wolf, a red witch, and the undeniable power of the need-fire, a portal to a world of magic and swordplay at once terribly new and hauntingly familiar. In the Dark World, Bond opposes the machinations of the dread lord Ganelon and his terrible retinue of werewolves, wizards, and witches, but all is not as it seems in this shadowy mirror of the real world, and Bond discovers that a part of him feels more at home here than he ever has on Earth.

For the people in this novel, the concerns of everyday life are beginning to transmute into the extraordinary and to reveal the forces, dark and light, that truly govern their lives. So it is for Pierce Moffett, would-be historian and author, who has moved from New York to the Faraway Hills, where he seems to discover – or rediscover – a path into magic, past and present. And so it is for Rosie Rasmussen, a single mother grappling with her mysterious uncle’s legacy and her young daughter Samantha’s inexplicable seizures. For Pierce’s lover Rose Ryder, another path unfolds: she’s drawn into a cult that promises to exorcise her demons – the same cult that Samantha’s father has joined. It is the dark of the year, between Halloween and the winter solstice, and the gateway is open between the worlds of the living and the dead. A great cycle of time is ending, and Pierce and Rosie, Samantha and Rose Ryder must take sides in an age-old war that is approaching the final battle…Or is it?

CALL ME KETAN!



Like all my companions in Kronweld I emerged full-grown from the Temple of Birth. My needs, my wishes, my passions were coldly filed in the perforated transparencies that constitute the integrated will of Kronweld.



But I alone harbour curiosity about our past. I alone know the Bors of Dark Land and how they are born. I alone have discovered the hidden secret of our birth… and have heard the groaning fertility prisoners of the other world. Here is their message:



“If any of you live, come through to us. Save us. Bring weapons!”



I am going to them now. I do not know whether I will ever return from the great Edge…

The ultimate maquiladora. Montezuma Strip: First World tech and Third World wages, sprawling from L.A. to East Elpaso Juarez, Guyamas to Phoenix; a thousand gangs, a million locos; and a few wealthy beyond the dreams of gods…


And Federale Angel Cardenas, a living lie detector, is a top cop on the blistering streets of virtual reality scams and cryogenic kidnaps, where talking animals are programmed to kill, computer screens can spit murder, and even the Holy Blessed Virgin’s ghost runs extortion rackets.


Once Angel Cardenas was blind. But now he sees…straight into the heart of darkness that rules…


MONTEZUMA STRIP

It advanced not in the manner of a living creature but in the manner of sand. It had no arms and then a hundred, no feet but one as wide as the base of the advancing dune itself.
Everywhere and all of it was dark red, like all the rust that had ever afflicted the metals of the world squeezed into a swiftly shifting pyramid rage.
The dune howled and moaned and bellowed like some sky-scraping banshee unwillingly fastened to the Earth.
And in the midst of all that geologic fury, two thirds up the face of the oncoming mountain were two eyes…

Aejole Ehomba has led his companions through jungle, veldt, and desert. Now to reach the fabled port of Hamacassar, the simple herdsman must trek through deadly “civilized” lands where flowers wage war, dogs herd lightning, demons govern the darkness, and Time itself can be held captive.

In this new world, the tribesman must rely upon his friends, wondrous weapons, and the magic of memories so potent they can raise the dead or bring the sea to dry land. But no matter where he goes, every seer and sage Ehomba mets offes the same prophecy: his quest will end in failure …and death.

When his wallet is lifted from a one-night stand with an exotic young woman, who may be either the girl of his dreams or just a common third-world grifter and thief, this world-weary traveller decides to go against his own better judgement and that of the local authorities and pursue this alluring thief up-country into the darkest jungles of Papua New Guinea.

Here is a land where headhunters still roam, and where the natural obstacles of poisonous insects and reptiles, savage and deadly beasts, and the mortally demanding jungle itself are the least of his worries. The forces of good and evil and law and anarchy play by entire different rules in this shadowed world.

Driven by delusions of romance and the need to restore his honour, Bohannon moves in hot pursuit farther and farther up-country, into a heart of darkness almost untouched by modern civilization. And once he attains his immediate goal, he is drawn into the darkness of his own soul, as a hunt for gold proves that greed, more than love or lust, is the primal instinct. For men or women, black or white, civilized or savage, in the darkness of the jungle all shadows are primal.

For three decades science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster has captivated readers around the world, from his debut classic The Tar-Aiym Krang and his inspired scenario for the first Star Trek movie to a host of New York Times bestsellers, including Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Flinx in Flux.
In this collection of twenty brilliant odysseys of the imagination, Foster once again soars beyond the limits of reality – where the real thrills begin…
NASA Sending Addicts to Mars!: It was the most insane idea in the annals of space travel – and the only one that would work.
Diesel Dream: Sometimes on dark, lonely highways dreams do come true, and this trucker’s hope was the best one of all.
Sideshow: Flinx hadn’t a clue about the alien dancer, but Pip knew trouble when she saw it.
Empowered: A magnificent male discovers the not-so-super part about being a superhero.
The Question: A bold adventurer determines to solve one of life’s profound mysteries.
…and fourteen other amazing stories!

Susan Galina and her friend Pat have escaped their normal lives into the elegant, isolated world of the Odyssey, a luxury cruise ship heading from New York to Europe via Bermuda. Pat is working on her doctoral thesis in quantum physics, and Susan is recovering from a recent and unhappy divorce.

To Susan’s delight, she discovers that her favourite author, Max Merriwell, is also aboard ship, teaching a writers’ workshop. Susan’s life becomes even more interesting when she meets Tom Clayton, the handsome chief of security. This cruise looks very promising indeed.

But the pleasant shipboard vacation turns dark as the Odyssey passes into the Bermuda Triangle. Each year, Max Merriwell writes three novels: a science fiction novel under his own name, a fantasy novel under the pseudonym Mary Maxwell, and a mystery novel under the pseudonym Weldon Merrimax. The trouble begins when Max receives a threatening note that appears to come from Weldon Merrimax, Max’s own pseudonym. Susan hears wolves howling in the night, the ship’s passengers are seized with a dancing mania, and monsters lurk in the ship’s corridors. An eyewitness reports a murder – but the victim of the crime is not on the passenger list and the body is nowhere to be found. While others struggle to understand these strange events, Pat seeks the explanation in quantum theory.

Mercury Shell, Venus Shell, Earth, Mars, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn. Each shell concentric, studded with artificial planets, each planet embedded in its shell, spinning like a ball-bearing. The whole Zeus-created in the service of Man but now beyond his control.
Now mathematics and space physics, converging, suggested another shell, its existence hidden from Man. A shell of utter darkness, cold and silence where only extreme mutants could survive.
To find that shell, the three were journeying again: Maq Ancor, Master Assassin, Magician Cherry and Sine Anura, Mistress of the Erotic. Together, daring the all-seeing, all-sensing hostility of Zeus.

FAILWAY- the organisation whose process could break through into an inferior energy level, transporting the people into other dimensions, bringing them pleasures simple, exciting, exotic or erotic…
FAILWAY- a police state, which tolerated no opposition. It was ruthless, thorough, and invariably fatal to its opponents…
FAILWAY- against whose other-world power stood one man…
DALROI