High comedy, low pratfalls, and thrilling derring-do combine in a magical and fantastic epic about the Ancient and Honorable Kingdom of the Hydrangeans; the mighty, though rather stupid, warrior Gudge; and the mysterious Black Weasel. "Confusion reigns in this often funny, frequently precious fantasy about usurped thrones and lost heirs. After the Gorgorian barbarians conquer the civilized kingdom of Hydrangea, their leader Gudge makes himself king, marries Hydrangean Princess Artemisia and settles down to a highly satisfactory life of drinking and debauchery. Royal triplets, separated at birth because of a Gorgorian superstition that multiple births suggest the mother's infidelity, receive very different upbringings. The only girl, Avena, is brought up in the palace as Prince Arbol, heir to the throne and a fearsome swordsman. One brother, Wulfrith, is raised by a shepherd; although a young ewe is his favorite companion, his size makes him a fearsome battler. The other brother, Dunwin, reared by the outlawed wizard Clootie, develops into a talented magician. To this basic brew Watt-Evans (the Ethshar series) and Freisner (Gnome Man's Land ) have added a couple of dragons, some attempted seductions, mistaken identities and misguided spells to produce a lighthearted fantasy." -- Publishers Weekly "If Robert Bechley and Dorothy Parker had teamed up to write epic fantasy, something like Split Heirs might have resulted."--John deChancie "An excruciatingly funny book."--Susan Shwartz

A move to the country introduces Steven and June Hood to the kitten Foudini and the largest dog anybody has ever seen, two talking animals who are preparing a return visit to the world from which they originally came and decide to take the children with them.

ICU Psychosis Something is very badly wrong in the Hospital ICU where Donna's father is supposedly convalescing. Nurses disappear and never return, necessary treatments are delayed without cause, and she can't get a straight answer out of anyone... except the dead guy who keeps talking to her post-op crazy father.

"I am Orpheus, the maker of songs. Great Apollo came to me often and instructed me in the art of melody so that what came from my lyre could touch the heart even of a stone, and when I went to my mother Calliope in her cave she taught me the secrets of making verses that would hold people entranced the way a magical spell might hold them. And so music has flowed from me all my life as though from an inextinguishable fountain, which is to say that there has been music in the world since the beginning of time and that music will endure to time's end, and beyond it to the moment of beginning again; and so it was that a shaggy-haired Thracian princeling entered into his role in the universe." Gifted with the golden lyre, Orpheus--rumored son of the god Apollo, and yet recognized as the heir of Oeagros, King of Thrace--tells us of the tale of his life as he writes songs throughout the known world. From his role as teacher and spiritual adviser to the Ciconian people, to the profound love and loss of his beloved Eurydice, to his quest with Jason and the Argonauts to claim the Golden Fleece, Orpheus' songs of his life experiences help him sculpt a world that, without his music, would be devoid of the passion and purpose only a muse of his power could provide. Aware of his own fate before he sets out, Orpheus nevertheless continues on the path pre-ordained for him, to discover if knowing your future prevents you from experiencing your present with a sense of wonder and immediacy that can allow Orpheus to connect with the lives around him in order to fulfill his destiny.

Through realms of oriental splender and superhuman conflict, a beautiful woman warrior and a fierce man-god journey to challenge a being more awesome than the gods for a magical sword that holds the power of death . . . and the key to enlightenment. "A sensuous, exotic odyssey through demon-haunted seas of swordplay, sorcery, conflict, and passion . . . " -Robert Silverberg "One of the most beautiful things I've ever read." -Theodore Sturgeon

CAN'T FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION TO A MYSTERY? CALL IN THE QUIET COUNCIL. The mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city - and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself. File Under : Steampunk [ Alternate History | Reptilian Royalty | Murder Most Foul | The World’s Fair ]

The hilarious Kinky Friedman puts a new twist on the holiday spirit in his inimitably Kinky way in The Christmas Pig. King Jonjo Mayo the First is in a bind. Every Christmas, he commissions an artist to paint a traditional nativity scene to be dramatically revealed after midnight mass. This year, though, the date is mere weeks away, and he still has not yet found his painter. The king decides to take a chance on a peculiar, mute boy whose artistic genius and clairvoyance are rumored throughout the kingdom. He sends three valiant, if begrudging, knights to seek out the boy in the remote countryside. Finally, they find Benjamin—and he is, indeed, peculiar. Nobody knows if the child is up to the task, but the king's Christmas tradition—and Benjamin himself—might just be saved by a Christmas miracle that comes in the form of a very special pig, who is rather peculiar herself.

Ghosts trail after us. They are our fears and the shape of our hates. We bring them into our lives and into our homes. Poltergeists and the spirits of drowned girls; malicious presences and portents; cat vampires and roaming bushrangers. These ghosts haunt Canberra - these ghosts can kill. Lil is elegant and troubled. Ann has just retired and is about to divorce: she sees vistas of nothingness in her future. Mabel is wedded to her garden. Kat is fifteen and has tried hard to drop out of life. It takes these four women, one cup of tea at a time, to face the ghosts and other supernatural beings in Canberra. But can they face down the darkness and keep Canberra's streets clear of danger?

Venture into this alarmingly convincing world, meet the horse whose stubbornness changed history, or the man damned to everlasting love, or the murderer who confessed... and confessed... and confessed. Learn, too the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile, or what really happened to Ambrose Bierce. And ponder, if you can, the case of Simple Simon, who lost the only important thing he had--and never even missed it. Lean back, relax, take a long look at the world of Kersh. You may never recover.

Children have begun traveling the Dreamfield with Alandra, they fall into a life threatening coma, Roan and Lumpy set off to find a cure. Roan's lost sister, Stowe may be the key, but Stowe is obsessed with her growing powers--powers that threaten to overwhelm her.

Miriam Beckstein is a young, hip, business journalist in Boston. She discovered in The Family Trade and The Hidden Family that her family came from an alternate reality, that she was very well-connected, and that her family was too much like the mafia for comfort. She found herself caught in a family trap in The Clan Corporate and betrothed to a brain-damaged prince, and then all hell broke loose. Now, in The Merchants' War , Miriam has escaped to yet another world and remains in hiding from both the Clan and their opponents. There is a nasty shooting war going on in the Gruinmarkt world of the Clan, and we know something that Miriam does not; something that she's really going to hate--if she lives long enough to find out.

A non-binary teenager may be from a small town but they remember at least a dozen past lives; a young trans woman auditions as an anime voice actor while the world is ending; in a future of constant change and transformation, one person is hesitant to undergo the next metamorphosis; a trans man comes back home to discover his parents have added to the household an android that has his deadface installed. Award-winning editor Bogi Takács has assembled a stellar line-up of stories that explore the frontiers of gender--using the imaginative tools of speculative fiction.

This stellar collection of Jewish science fiction and fantasy carries on in the tradition of its companion volume--the enduring classic Wandering Stars --breaking new ground with every story. Trouble with mothers; invading aliens and demons; the arrival of the long-awaited Messiah ... all these phenomena and more are tackled in these tales from a creative group of extraordinary writers. We go to the edges of the universe, finding humor, pain and humanity in the unlikeliest of places and situations. Filled with wit, vigor and sharp insight, this is a fantastic feast for the imagination that will intrigue and delight everyone who picks it up, Jew and non-Jew alike.

"This book brings together Vilém Flusser and intellectual Jewish history of the second half of the twentieth century. Flusser is viewed today by many scholars as the most original theoretician of media and photography in the second half of the twentieth century, and yet this is the first monograph about him in English. Combining elements of Flusser's biography with a rigorous study of his writing, this book shows that concepts of 'virtuality', 'medium', and 'embodiment' underpin not only Flusser's understanding of technological media, such as photography, but also his understanding of evolution and of real or imaginary biological organisms. This book argues that Flusser contended with Nazism in his writings on these biological and ecological themes. Two threads - and their relationship - are explored: the first bears on Nazism as undergirded by a biological perspective - an attempt to eradicate a population taken to be parasitic; in the second, Nazism is simply viewed as 'stupid'. Such a line of inquiry necessarily leads to and includes our dealing with the 'Nazi fantasy', because fantasy was fused into Nazism's own vision. This book will not only be an ideal resource for students and scholars of intellectual Jewish history but will interest anyone seeking an introduction to Flusser and the philosophy of science within the context of Nazism"--

A bold fantasy in the tradition of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, The Merchant Princes is a sweeping new series from the hottest new writer in science fiction! The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between their world and ours make them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious. Miriam, a hip tech journalist form Boston, discovered her alternate-world relatives with explosive results that shook three worlds. Now, as the prodigal Countess Helge Thorold-Hyorth, she finds herself ensnared in schemes and plots centuries in the making. She is surrounded by unlikely allies, lethal contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. With her modern American attitudes, she's not sure she can fit in, or if she even wants to, but to stay alive, she really has no choice. To avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam must build a power-base of her own. She started applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade heretofore dominated by medieval mercantilists-with unexpected consequences for three different timelines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family. Blending the creativity and humor of Roger Zelazny, the adventure of H. Beam Piper and Philip Jose Farmer, and the rigor and scope of a science-fiction writer on the grandest scale, Charles Stross has set a new standard for fantasy epics. Charles Stross is one of the big new SF writers of the 21st century, and the saga of The Merchant Princes is his most ambitious work yet.

In a trilogy of connected stories that revolve around an unfinished manuscript and a fallen angel's relationship with his half-mortal son in 1900 New York, three ordinary people are thrown into a series of extraordinary adventures.

As RJ and her crew are heading for a pivotal meeting with the Argy government, the Reliance catches up with them and they are forced to make a course change that shoves them out of known space. The Reliance immediately claims they’ve killed the charismatic rebel leader and her band of malcontents, but the truth won’t be known for nearly 100 years. Since her unsuccessful attempt to kill RJ and her subsequent murder of sector leader Jago, Jessica Kirk has been between a rock and a hard place. Forced to live as a slave on a cesspool of an Argy-held planet called Pete with no real hope for escape unless of course RJ really is gone

With a mighty twist, the Space Ship Garden lunges into overdrive and shoots out into space. Ahead lies Alpha C IV, eerie world of three suns. But the Garden arrives on Alpha C right in the thick of a revolution against Earth. Treason! Then young cadet Larry Stark finds himself caught up in the revolution...on both sides!

This is an omnibus of four novels by Robert Silverberg, issued by the Science Fiction Book Club (not to be confused with the 1973 anthology of stories by the same title, edited by Silverberg). With an introduction by the author, and these novels: The Man in the Maze (1969); Nightwings (1969); Up the Line (1969); Dying Inside (1972).

Ever thought of traveling to another frequency? Neither did Ignatius MacFarland. It just sort of happened. After being teased one too many times at school, Ignatius MacFarland decides to build a getaway rocket with the hope that extraterrestrials might be nicer than his classmates! But instead of landing in outer space, Ignatius finds himself stranded in another frequency filled with all sorts of weird creatures, which is shockingly run by former English teacher turned dictator, Mr. Arthur. It's up to Iggy and Karen, another trapped earthling, to expose Mr. Arthur for the fraud that he is-and hopefully to make it home alive.