But perhaps one of the most bizarre of these was death by snow...On a cold day in December, two young boys, tired of sweeping snow from the workhouse yard, decide to build a snowman – and are confronted with a strange and grisly mystery. In horrified fascination, they watch as their snowman begins to bleed...The search for answers to this impossible event will plunge Harry into the most hazardous – and exhilarating – adventure of his life. He will encounter a hideous troll. He will dine with a mysterious parlour maid. And he will help the Great Detective, Madame Vastra, save the world from the terrifying Devil in the Smoke.

    Clarke, Nancy Kress, Lawrence Watt-Evans, George Zebrowski, Philip K. Dick, and many more! Included are:OUT OF ALL THEM BRIGHT STARS, by Nancy KressTHE HANGING STRANGER, by Philip K. DickWALKING JOHN AND BIRD, by Neal AsherTHE SYMPHONIC ABDUCTION, by Hannes BokTHE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD, by Arthur C. ClarkeHILLARY ORBITS VENUS, by Pamela SargentMAYBE JUST A LITTLE ONE, by Reginald BretnorTHE ULTROOM ERROR, by Jerry SohlREMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME, by Lawrence Watt-EvansTHE ASTRONAUT FROM WYOMING, by Adam-Troy Castro & Jerry OltionPRIDE, by Mary A. TurzilloCAT AND MOUSE, by Ralph WilliamsTHE RECORD, by Forrest J Ackerman and Ray BradburyTHE NEW REALITY, by Reginald BretnorWHAT HATH ME? by Henry KuttnerBRIDGE OF SILENCE, by George ZebrowskiSUN’S UP, by A.A. Jackson IV and Howard WaldropCONSIGNMENT, by Alan E. NourseTHE SYNDIC, by C.M. KornbluthAFTER BONESTELL, by Jay LakeTHE JEWELS OF APTOR, by Samuel R. DelanyTHE MISSISSIPPI SAUCER, by Frank Belknap LongMEMBERSHIP DRIVE, by Murray F. YacoCANCER WORLD, by Harry Warner, Jr.EGOCENTRIC ORBIT, by John CoryAnd don't forget to search this ebook store for more entries in the Megapack series, covering everything from science fiction and fantasy to horror, westerns, pulp fiction, adventure, ghost stories, and much, much more!

    The challenge was to write about a famous urban legend in our characters’ voices, and my urban legend was The Hook.This story features Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth and Constable Newberry from The Iron Duke.

    Two hours. One tragic moment of violence that changes everything. In this electrifying short story by New York Times bestselling suspense master Jeffery Deaver, the destinies of seven strangers intersect in ways no one sees coming. It looks like just another gray March morning in the tough urban district nicknamed Nowhere when seven lives converge: a young man intent on buying a gun; the gangbanger who cuts him a deal; a by-the-book police officer on a last patrol; an advertising executive keeping secrets from her husband; a veteran haunted by a combat death; a single dad in a bitter custody battle; and a sharp-looking businessman en route to a new job he desperately needs. Any one of them could have a dark motive. Any one of them could be walking into a trap. When the fog lifts, it will all be much clearer—that a single, shattering act of violence has marked each of them forever.

    Sometimes the stories everyone knows by heart are lies. Sometimes lies are all we have left. Two thousand years ago, thirty Tyrian shekels were paid to secure the most infamous betrayal of all time. Melted down by the grandsons of Judas Iscariot, Menahem and Eleazar ben Jair, in the dark heart of the Sicarii fortress, Masada, the silver was re-forged as a dagger. When Sicarii zealots committed mass suicide in AD73, the dagger of Iscariot and the truth of his sacrifice were lost. Until now. A religious cult calling itself the Disciples of Judas has risen in the Middle East. Its influence is pernicious, its reach long. In thirteen cities across Europe, thirteen people martyr themselves in the name of Judas, promising forty days and forty nights of terror. Day by day the West wakes to increasingly more harrowing acts of terror. Sir Charles Wyndham's team of combat specialists, codename Ogmios, tracks a labyrinthine course through truth, shades of truth and outright lies that take them from the backstreets of London to the shadow of Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin all the way into the heart of the Holy See itself.Forty days and forty nights of fear. And today is day one.

    

    But now, it seems to describe the real world of cell phones, Blackberries and iPods, and its prediction of terrible things to come isn't so easy to shrug off. Leiber sets the tale in a future when "missiles are on the prowl," and most people live underground. George Gusterson is a writer with crazy ideas -- one being, he still lives on the surface. For another, he imagines a gizmo that would remind him of things like when to turn on the TV. George's mere whim inspires an actual gadget called the Tickler, just a "wire recorder and clock" at first, but then . . . it whispers constantly through an earphone. It instills positive thinking. It injects drugs. It makes decisions. It weights 28 pounds. And it won't get off. Only Gusterson understands what "the little fellow perched on your shoulder" is really saying, one word: Obey! And only Gusterson knows what to say back, if it's not too late.

    Drawing on former military training, Piper must prove herself worthy of the sheriff's badge, and that won't be easy. Chief Deputy Oren Rosenberg, Piper's opponent in the recent election, doesn't like her and wants her to fail. She doesn't like him either, but she needs Oren to help catch the killer before another victim is discovered. Too late!As Piper leads the manhunt, another crisis hits close to home. Her father, the previous sheriff, is fighting for his life, and she is torn between family and duty. Facing personal and professional threats, Piper has to weather a raging storm, keep the sheriff's department from crumbling around her, and reel in a killer during the most brutal winter sleepy Spencer County, Indiana, has experienced.

    The truth of these tales was lost millennia ago, but the myths and legends themselves are timeless.These are the most enduring of those tales. From the princess Manussa and her giant snake Mara, to the Vardon Horse of Xeriphin, these stories shed light on the universe around us and the beings from other worlds that we meet. Myths hold up a mirror to our past, present and future, explaining our culture, our history, our hopes and fears.A collection of epic adventures from the Time Lords’ mist-covered past, Myths and Legends is an unforgettable gallery of heroes and villains, gods and monsters.

    Inside that box is a door. Beyond that door is a house. In some rooms forests grow. In some, prisoners wait. At the top of the house, a prisoner sits behind a locked door waiting for a key to turn. The day that happens, the world will end...

    Now it's time for her to take her father's place in the world - and pay for his sins. Seth is a doctor as good with a gun as he is with a scalpel. He knows a lot about the preternatural, but he's not saying why. And he's the new Voice of God's only chance of survival. This collection contains the first three books of The Mage Craft Series, amounting to over 210,000 words. About Cast in Angelfire As a half-angel, half-human mage, Marion Garin is the most powerful witch in the world. She’s been embroiled in preternatural politics since childhood and navigates the factions with ease. Or so she’s been told. Unfortunately, she’s lost her memory, and now Marion doesn’t know much of anything. Casting magic? Forget about it. It’s not an accident, either. Someone powerful wanted to take Marion out of preternatural politics, and they succeeded. She’s told that a man named Seth Wilder could help, but she’ll have to find him first. He’s been missing for years. Marion needs to track Seth down and fix her memory before her unknown enemy finishes the job… * * * About Cast in Hellfire Marion Garin is the teenage daughter of Metaraon, the former Voice of God. Now she's also the steward of the Winter Court, which has been in anarchy since a revolution five years earlier. Problem: Marion still doesn't remember anything that happened before two weeks ago. Seth Wilder has a lead on her memories. Whoever stole them and sold Marion's essence to a demon lord in Sheol. Marion wants to help steal them back, even though that means abandoning the Winter Court to war. And Seth can't seem to tell Marion no. He wants Marion nearby. Very nearby. Possibly in his teeth. See, Seth has this little problem where he's developing a killing urge, and it seems to be centered primarily on the half-angel girl who adores him. It conflicts with everything Seth believes himself to be: a moral man, a doctor who heals instead of hurts. Yet he's obsessed with Marion. She wants her memories, and he wants her to have them as much as he wants her blood. They'll work together to make Marion whole, come hell or high water. Even if it means war. Even if it means Seth might hurt Marion. And damned be the consequences... * * * About Cast in Faefire Marion Garin, the Voice of God, is due to marry the Prince of the Autumn Court by the end of the week - assuming that the world's preternatural leadership doesn't have anything to say about it. They plan to strip Prince ErlKonig of his title, ensuring that Marion can't form a god-forbidden treaty with the angels. Still injured from his final fight in Sheol, Seth Wilder is seeking a way to stay alive. If he dies, he'll lose more than his life - he'll be slave to the gods' whims for all eternity. He's ready to take drastic steps. Maybe even make a bargain with the vampires. But what the gods want, they get. And they don't appreciate being defied.

     An elusive woman arrives at Criminy’s doorstep with a steamer trunk, begging for a position in the caravan to perform her unique new act. She opens her trunk to reveal a menagerie of brilliantly colored butterflies. The woman, who calls herself Madam Morpho, is on the run from a dark past in London, where she was forced to leave her equipment behind and abscond with only her tiny performers. Playing a hunch, Criminy hires Madam Morpho on the spot. Taking her down to meet Mr. Murdoch, the reclusive talented engineer who keeps the carnival’s clockworks running, Criminy instructs them to work together to design and build a groundbreaking new circus for the butterflies. Amid the magical ambiance of the circus and the hint of danger from Madam Morpho’s pursuers, she and Mr. Murdoch soon find that their scientific collaboration has produced chemistry of a more romantic kind.

    There are relatively few crimes in the city state and those that are committed are usually solved quickly. But that all changes when Inspector Zhang is called to a top Singapore hotel where a guest has been found murdered in a locked room.

    This collection brings together alien encounters, classic fantasy creatures, strange magic, historical milieus; stories with heart, of people making their ways in the world the best they can, however strange and hostile those worlds might be; rare, hard-to-find stories that haven't been available in years. All this, now brought together in the first widely-available retrospective collection of Vaughn's work, including her Hugo-nominated, WSFA Small Press Award winning story "Amaryllis," about a post-catastrophe future in which a community struggles to live in balance with the environment and each other."Amaryllis" was also published in Lightspeed Magazine.ContentsTHE BEST WE CANSTRIFE LINGERS IN MEMORYA HUNTER'S ODE TO HIS BAITSUN, STONE, SPEARCROWSSALVAGEDRAW THY BREATH IN PAINTHE GIRL WITH THE PRE-RAPHAELITE HAIRGAME OF CHANCEROARING TWENTIESA RIDDLE IN NINE SYLLABLES1977DANAE AT SEAFOR FEAR OF DRAGONSTHE ART OF HOMECOMINGASTROPHILIABANNERLESSAMARYLLIS

    The first Barsoom tale was serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in 1912, and published as a novel as A Princess of Mars in 1917. Ten sequels followed over the next three decades, further extending his vision of Barsoom and adding other characters. The first five novels are in the public domain in U.S., and the entire series is free around the world on Project Gutenberg Australia, but the books are still under copyright laws in most of the rest of the world. The world of Barsoom is a romantic vision of a dying Mars. Writers and science popularizers like Camille Flammarion were convinced that Mars was at a later stage of evolution than Earth and therefore much drier,took the ideas farther and published books like Les Terres du Ciel (1884), which contained illustrations of a planet covered with canals.Burroughs gives credits to him in his writings, and goes as far as to say that he based his vision of Mars on that of Flammarion.[3] John Carter is transported to Mars in a way described by Flammarion in Urania (1889), where a man from earth is transported to Mars as an astral body where he wakes up to a lower gravity, two moons, strange plants and animals and several races of advanced humans. In The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds and Lumen, he further speculates about plant people and other creatures on far away planets, elements that would later appear in the Barsoom stories. The Barsoom series, where John Carter in the late 1800s is mysteriously transported from Earth to a Mars suffering from dwindling resources, has been cited by many well known science fiction writers as having inspired and motivated them in their youth, as well as by key scientists involved in both space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life.Elements of the books have been adapted by many writers, in novels, short stories, comics, television and film this collection includes all of the books in the series: • A PRINCESS OF MARS • THE GODS OF MARS • Warlord of Mars • Thuvia, Maid of Mars • THE CHESSMEN OF MARS • The Master Mind of Mars • A Fighting Man Of Mars • Swords of Mars • Synthetic Men of Mars • Llana of Gathol • John Carter and the Giant of Mars All in one book,elegantly formatted for ease of use and enjoyment on your Kindle device.