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When Marianne’s parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America – and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . .

Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world – for there is magic in Marianne’s blood, and magic in her soul.

And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes.

Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods is the second volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

When Marianne’s parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America – and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . .

Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world – for there is magic in Marianne’s blood, and magic in her soul.

And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes.

Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore is the first volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

Donal Graeme set out to re-shape the galaxy, but first he must tear it apart.

Donal Graeme, Dorsai of the Dorsai, was the final link in a long genetic train, the ultimate soldier, whose breadth of vision made him a master of space war and strategy – and something even greater. He was the focus of centuries of evolution, the culmination of planned development, and through him a new force made itself felt.

Dorsai were renowned throughout the galaxy as the finest soldiers ever born, trained from birth to fight and win, no matter what the odds. With Donal at their head they embarked upon the final, impossible venture: they set out to unify the splintered worlds of Mankind.

MUST THE UNIVERSE DIE WITH THEM?

The Starfolk, arrogant masters of vast stretches of the cosmos beyond the Earth’s sphere of influence, were determined to complete the extermination of the mind-reading mutants of Regnier’s planet.

But to the mutants themselves, the terror of the Starfolk was nothing compared to the greater dread that gripped their spirits – the obsession that the universe itself was doomed. This obsession ripped into their minds, overwhelmed them, and plunged them into horrifying hysteria.

The message of room reached the ears of the Starfolk themselves, forcing the to a fateful decision. They would allow an Earthman, archeologist Philip Gascon, to visit Regnier in an attempt to unravel its secrets. What he found would either contain the key to the ultimate destiny of the universe – or the date of the doomsday.

As the war which consumes Dervelai drags on, Algarve’s reserves become more and more stretched. King Mezentio undertakes war on many fronts, and his main armies become sucked in to the huge landmass of Unkerlant, their main enemy. As conquered races are inducted into the Algarvian army, their fighting edge softens, and swift victory becomes ever more necessary, leading to the sacrifice of more and more Kaunians to allow Algervian mages to create ever stronger blood sorcery. Meanwhile, the mad King Swemmel of Unkerlant orders the death of thousands of his own subjects in an attempt to match the magecraft of Algarve. But the most deadly magic of all is taking place on a small island, where the ultimate weapon is coming slowly to fruition.

Vanessa Smith looked like any normal seventeen year old girl. But Vanessa wasn’t normal at all.

She possessed extraordinary telepathic powers – and in the 1990s telepathy was the ultimate weapon in psychological warfare. Vanessa, along with other gifted children, was virtually a prisoner at Random Hill Residential School, developing her abilities for Government exploitation.

So when she escaped, Vanessa became a political embarrassment. Questions were asked by the Opposition. It was vital for the Prime Minister, the ruthlessly dictatorial Sir Joseph Humbolt, that everything that marked Vanessa’s existence should be erased. And orders were given that she should be hunted down – using telepaths like herself – and destroyed.

Rhialto the Marvellous takes up the personal and political conflicts among a conclave of two dozen magicians of Ascolais and Almery in the 21st Aeon. The shocking appearance of the Llorio the Murtha, a powerful female force from an earlier aeon threatens to unbalance nature by “ensqualming” or feminizing the magicians. This triggers a tremendous struggle for power and the other mages turn against Rhialto. Hoping to reestablish his rightful place, Rhialto travels to other aeons to restore the missing Perciplex which projects the Mostrament, the constitution of the association. In his final adventure, Rhialto must, ultimately, travel to the very ends of time and space to confront an old adversary whom he had wronged and must commit further misdeeds to restore order.

His wild career as a space pirate ended, Grimes faced his toughest assignment – he was “punished” by being made governor of the anarchists’ own planet! John Grimes, living legend of the spaceways, had been in and out of some cosmic catastrophes but this threatened to reach his luck’s ultimate breaking point!

An influx of planetary refugees had made that world a paradise of cheap labor and the original anarchist colonists had become such masters of wealth that no mere outsider could hope to dictate “law and order” to them. They had their own ideas which included slavery, treachery, and utter villainy.

Grimes’ first task as governor would be simply to stay alive with a whole world plotting his murder!

Sequel to Rockets in Ursa Major

From a great distance the Yela’s recorded message crackled through on the micro-earpiece: ‘For the time being you have won. But I am not defeated so easily.’

That had been three years ago, after Dick Warboys had repulsed the invading Yela by firing a lithium bomb into the Sun. But now that threat seems near fulfilment as appalled scientists detect the rapid approach of a vast, engulfing cloud of hydrogen. Can humanity survive on Earth or must selected pioneers abandon it in search of a safer region of the Galaxy?

To find the answer Dick and his allies from Space suffer a perilous voyage into the realms that reach the ultimate in understanding the physical universe.

The Frames were only a realization of the ultimate form of escape. Books, films, sensors, complete total experience – and finally the Frames. The saviors of civilization had shown the way: move the tribes of Americans to Europe, the tribes of the Germans to Spain, the tribes of the English to Switzerland and permutate the combinations endlessly. Use trains, then aircraft, then spaceships.

The Frames of the Thirtieth Century were a logical extension of the Mechanical Age’s exploitation of the means of mass travel. Now, whole populations moved to new areas of experience. New worlds – new re-created worlds – were manufactured for them. And it had all begun on Talisker. But whatever had left the monstrous scenery on Talisker’s desert had not begun anywhere in our universe.

They dragged the screaming stranger into the asylum. His talk of Fire Gods and universal conquest seemed the ultimate in illusions. Next morning, the padded cell was burnt out…and there was no trace of the prisoner. The door was still locked, still barred.

Perhaps the arson that followed was just a coincidence?

The Brigade Chiefs called in a special investigator. No result. Finally the IPF took a hand and subsequently the investigations pointed to extra galactic interference.

When the psychiatrist, who had originally examined the mysterious ‘fire god’, was questioned the second time things began to add up. Those wild, strange words ha not been the ravings of a maniac but the diabolical threat of an alien entity. A thing with unbelievable power…that threatened the universe itself!

Mervyn, wizard and Fluxlord, leader of the Nine Who Guard, faces the ultimate threat of the opposing Seven Who Wait: the opening of the Hellgates to World. Closed more than two thousand years ago, they are portals to unknowable danger and, perhaps, great power.

Mervyn must gather the shattered forces of guardianship, dispersed and reeling after the battle with Coydt:

Cassie, once the powerful saint and crusader, now the brainwashed slave of an oppressive male dictatorship.

Spirit, her daughter, controlled by her mysterious Soul Raider.

Jeff, Spirit’s son

Matson: he will lead the entire force of the Stringers Guild to war, if need be.

But all of them are doomed to death unless they can become Masters of Flux and Anchor.

No human being had ever landed on the hidden planet of Arisia. A mysterious barrier, hanging unseen in space, turned back all ships. Then the word came to Earth, inexplicably but compellingly:

GO TO ARISIA!

Virgil Samms, founder of the Galactic Patrol, went – and came back with the Lens, the strange device that gave its wearer powers no man had ever possessed before. Samms knew that the price of this power would be high. But even he had no idea of the ultimate cost – nor of the strange destiny that awaited the First Lensman . . .

First Lensman is the second self-contained novel in E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s epic Lensman series, one of the all-time classics of adventurous, galaxy-spanning science fiction.

Leon Vardis’ whole life was keyed to revenge.

If it couldn’t be wreaked on the peasants who had burned his mother as a witch on the primitive planet of Rhome, then it could, most gloriously could, be let loose on the contemptuous sophisticates who rescued him from certain death, toyed with him for their own amusement and then, uncaring, cast him aside on the metropolitan planet of Joslen.

But first his apprenticeship – as peasant farmer on Pharos, as space mercenary on more planets then you’d care to name. Then independence, as a stellar trader. And at last an opportunity to act as Fate, slowly, and with ironically sophisticated enjoyment, For in the hypnotic jewels of far Shergol lay the seeds of a truly cosmic vengeance.

Leon’s saga was complete. The ultimate leveller had been unleashed on the galaxy.

The enormously wealthy Durie family occupies a gigantic baroque turn-of-the-century mansion on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The family, whose fortune was established in Colonial times, is traditionally shy of all public notice and proud that no scandal has ever touched its name.

Newly married Michael and Amy Lloyd, bright young teachers in a private school, suddenly find themselves unemployed and apparently unemployable. When all cash and credit are gone, Michael and Amy decide to take up positions on the Durie household staff. But as the Lloyds learn to cope with their positions as servants they slowly become aware that the seventy-year-old matriarch Margaret Durie is, for her own unexplained reasons, enlisting them as her helpless accomplices in a subtly designed series of events that will ultimately lead to a thunderous scandal … and a ghastly death.

James Flood, just released from a Florida prison, has a desperate scheme. He and his recruits, all hardened criminals, will move in upon a prominent upstate New York family, holding the Hayworth women as hostages while awaiting delivery of a four-million-dollar ransom. Marcus Hayworth, a leading member of the Quaker community, is convinced he can subvert Flood’s plan. Instead of going to the police, he asks the Quaker community to back him in non-violent opposition.

Subsequent events isolate both hostages and captors within the Hayworth house, waging a war of nerves that involves more than a clash between good and evil. For Flood has an urgent and specific need for revenge. And Hayworth’s principles have never been put to the ultimate test.

Josef Stalin is dead. In the aftermath, the Soviet Union is thrown into crisis, giving former secret police chief Laverentiy Beria exactly the opening he needs. Beria’s plan is to secretly place his country’s Variants-ordinary people mysteriously embued with strange, superhuman powers-into the very highest levels of leadership, where he can use them to stage a government coup and seize control of the USSR.

America’s response comes from its intelligence communities, including the American Variants recruited for the top-secret MAJESTIC-12 program, who are suddenly thrown into their most dangerous and important assignment yet. From the halls of the Kremlin to the battlefields of Korea, superpowered covert agents face off to determine the future of the planet-a future their very existence may ultimately threaten.

White-skinned, black-haired Sovaz is beautiful and wayward, yet seemingly soulless – as if vampirised by some unknown force. Wife of a very wealthy but older husband, she is the prize ornament of his treasure collection, yet she is toying with a naive young American lover. And while the faces of this doomed trio converge, somewhere outside the glowing casements a creature of darkness prepares to feed…

Here are a novel and twelve short stories encompassing all the richness and variety of Tanith Lee’s unique talent.

This fascinating and disturbing collection casts a new and chilling light on that ancient mythical creature, the mermaid… pinpoints the ultimate peril of mankind’s fascination with the domestic cat… sucks us into the pulsing horror of bricks and mortar with a life of their own… investigates the dark and marvellous legends of tree spirits, and the tantalising allure of other carnal obsessions.

Edward Cadence was a brilliant man, and a dedicated scientist. He had invented Sensitape, a means of recording the thoughts and emotions of great musicians, religious figures, etc. so that others could experience at first-hand just what it was like to play a magnificent concerto, or to slip peacefully toward an untroubled death with the sure expectation that Heaven lies waiting. And he had added Sexitape, whereby people whose sex lives weren’t completely satisfying could experience everything that the most compatible couple in the world felt together.

For all this he was given the Nobel Prize, became enormously wealthy and famous.

But finally he set to work on the ultimate application of his experiments: Synthajoy. And when the enormity of this dehumanising process became clear, he was murdered.

The Vorsters
Were the blue-robed worshippers of the atom, symbolised by the Cobalt-60 reactors that glowed blindingly on every alter in their fast-growing churches.

The Harmonists
Were the green-robed heretics, a breakaway faction condemned as icon-adorers, who believed that their creed was truer to the code of Vorst, the Founder.

At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth colonies were established on Mars and Venus. But the ultimate dream – to travel to the stars – was still an impossibility. A few enlightened men believed that the Vorsters and the Harmonists could solve this seemingly insurmountable problem, if they could only forget their differences and work together. But the hatred between the two factions was too deep to be reconciled – until a conflict on Venus between a Vorster priest and his Harmonist opponent resulted in some totally unexpected developments . . .

The Eurasian world of the 24th Century is in the grip of Rajak the Magnificent, one of the most efficiently ruthless totalitarian tyrants ever produced by history. The dreaded security guards are everywhere. The only escape is the time dimension. But what if the Time Vortex breaks down? To what unknown realms – of past, future or probability – will the travellers be transported?

Mike Grafton, on the run from the security forces, finds himself changing places with Benjamin Bathurst, the true life Missing Diplomat of the early 19th Century, who vanished and was never seen again.

What happens to these men, torn from their environments, into unknown realms? Will the Liberationist forces succeed in destroying Rajak the Magnificent? But perhaps the greatest question of all is the possibility of Time Travel: will man ultimately conquer time as he is even know conquering space?

Sweetly are the secrets told
wrapt in crystal,
limned in gold . . .

On a planet of barren beauty near the edge of the civilized galaxy, two religions are practiced. Both sects worship the same goddess – the Triumphantes in joy and splendour, the Fideles in solemnity and selflessness. As different as day and night, sun and shadow, joy and grief, the two sects are now bound together in death . . .

A serial killer is stalking the priestesses, killing first a Triumphante, then a Fidele, in turn. Six women are now dead, and the planetary authorities are at a loss. Enter Interfed Agent Cowen Drake. A cunning professional, he must immerse himself in an unfamiliar world of stark spirituality to catch the killer. A world that will trap him between opulence and sacrifice, between duty and desire and between two extraordinary women – one who could become the killer’s ultimate victim . . .

On the murky outskirts of our solar system, a lonely star has exploded, emitting monstrous doses of radiation . . .

The year is 1983. The exploding star Briareus Delta, 132 light years away, provokes only mild interest from planet Earth. Suddenly, appalling tornadoes and storms ravage the cities and countryside, leaving death and desolation in their wake. Then mankind realises another terrifying side-effect – every adult in the world has been rendered infertile.

Schoolteacher Calvin Johnson discovers he is one of the select few to have acquired strange psychic powers. Termed ‘Zetas’, these people experience mental flashes of the future – a future of freezing isolation, snow-swept landscapes and bleak, ice-bound cities.

A second ice-age is imminent as man faces the ultimate horror . . . extinction.

THE EARTH’S REAL LANDLORDS ARE SURFACING. HERE. NOW…From the darkly fantastic worlds of H P Lovecraft’s world-famous Cthulhu Mythos comes a grimly compelling novel of the Ultimate War, between men – and monsters spawned in Hell!For millennia, men have strutted in puny pride over the fragile surface of the Earth, arrogantly proclaiming themselves masters of creation. But now their feeble investigations have disturbed the planet’s original rulers far beneath the globe’s crust. And mankind’s placid dreams are about to be wrenched into shattering nightmare.’They were here before man evolved. They are older than our oldest legends, predating the very dinosaurs. They call to use in our dreams and make us… do things!’They are THE BURROWERS BENEATH. And they’re surfacing right now. Right here…