A handsome prince. A battle to the deathWater is scarce. Deserts have taken over the land. Nuclear war has devastated humanity. Humans live in walled super cities to keep out the irradiated. The land that was formerly known as America is divided into kingdoms ruled by royal elites.Born into the lowest Echelon of the Kingdom of Phangloria, sixteen-year-old Zea Calico faces a life of hunger, thirst, and toil. The only way out of this drudgery is revolution, and Zea is desperate to help the cause. When the palace calls for candidates to compete to marry Prince Kevon, Zea joins the Princess Trials to search the palace for weaknesses. The trials should be a fairytale of sumptuous meals, ballgowns, and romance, but one misplaced word causes Zea to attract the Prince's attention. When Zea uncovers the man beneath Prince Kevon's public facade, she is at risk of falling in love and losing sight of her mission. But the televised beauty pageant turns deadly, and Zea must fight for survival.Perfect for fans of The Hunger Games and The Selection, this exciting tale of courage, intrigue, and betrayal will have you turning pages.

    No, not since Treasure Island... Actually, not since Jonah and the Whale has there been a sea saga to rival The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, featuring the greatest sea-faring hero of all time, the immortal Pirate Captain, who, although he lives for months at a time at sea, somehow manages to keep his beard silky and in good condition. Worried that his pirates are growing bored with a life of winking at pretty native ladies and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle, the Pirate Captain decides it's high time to spearhead an adventure. While searching for some major pirate booty, he mistakenly attacks the young Charles Darwin's Beagle and then leads his ragtag crew from the exotic Galapagos Islands to the fog-filled streets of Victorian London. There they encounter grisly murder, vanishing ladies, radioactive elephants, and the Holy Ghost himself. And that's not even the half of it.

    She makes her meager living faking salvage legends and selling them to the highest bidder, but this time she might have stumbled on something real–the story of the Harrow, a famous warship, capable of untold destruction.Nilah Brio is the top driver in the Pan Galactic Racing Federation and the darling of the racing world–until she witnesses the murder of a fellow racer. Framed for the murder and on the hunt to clear her name, Nilah only has one lead: the killer also hunts a woman named Boots.On the wrong side of the law, the two women board a smuggler’s ship that will take them on a quest for fame, for riches, and for justice.

    and a shocking discovery...will change humanity forever.In the near future, a new ice age has begun.Humanity stands on the brink of extinction.Desperate for answers, scientists send probes into the solar system to take readings. Near Mars, a probe spots a mysterious object drifting toward the Sun. Is it the cause of the ice age? Or could it be our only hope of survival?With time running out, NASA launches an international mission to make contact with the object. But it isn’t what anyone thought. In the dark of space, alone, the team makes a shocking discovery that will change the course of human history—and possibly end it.

    The 'Yankee' vows brashly to "boss the whole country inside of three weeks" and embarks on an ambitious plan to modernize Camelot with 19th c. industrial inventions like electricity and gunfire. It isn't long before all hell breaks loose!Written in 1889, Mark 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court' is one of literature's first genre mash-ups and one of the first works to feature time travel. It is one of the best known Twain stories, and also one of his most unique. Twain uses the work to launch a social commentary on contemporary society, a thinly veiled critique of the contemporary times despite the Old World setting.While the dark pessimism that would fully blossom in Twain's later works can be discerned in 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, ' the novel will nevertheless be remembered primarily for its wild leaps of imagination, brilliant wit, and entertaining storytelling.

    Neil Gaiman meets Kurt Vonnegut in this darkly whimsical, hilariously profound, and wildly imaginative comedy of the secrets of life and love. Transporting us from ancient India to outer space to Renaissance Italy to the present day, is a journey through time, space, and the human heart.

    It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Every now and then, Munroe would get emails asking him to arbitrate a science debate. 'My friend and I were arguing about what would happen if a bullet got struck by lightning, and we agreed that you should resolve it . . . ' He liked these questions so much that he started up What If. If your cells suddenly lost the power to divide, how long would you survive? How dangerous is it, really, to be in a swimming pool in a thunderstorm? If we hooked turbines to people exercising in gyms, how much power could we produce? What if everyone only had one soulmate?When (if ever) did the sun go down on the British empire? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live?What would happen if the moon went away?In pursuit of answers, Munroe runs computer simulations, pores over stacks of declassified military research memos, solves differential equations, and consults with nuclear reactor operators. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. They often predict the complete annihilation of humankind, or at least a really big explosion. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read.

    He got Brentford. He wanted Spielberg. He got Fudgepacker. He got who?Fudgepacker. Ernest Fudgepacker. Directed all those weird B-movies back in the Fifties. Whatever happened to him? He retired. Opened Fudgepacker's Emporium, a prop house catering to the more bizarre needs of the film industry. Amazing place. There you could hire anything from shrunken heads to a pickled homunculus. Trouble is, they just don't make that kind of movie any more. Ernie's going bust. In fact, if he can't come up with some big bucks pretty damn quick, he's going to lose the business. It will take a miracle to save him now.Young Master Robert believes in miracles. He has a dream. He wants to star in movies alongside The Greats. The Golden Greats. The dead Golden Greats. He's a boy boffin with computers and he's invented this system that could put the stars of yesteryear right back up there on the screen. Next to him. He's written a script and he's got piles of money (his dad owns the brewery), but Hollywood isn't keen. And Mr Spielberg didn't ring back. The lad needs a director and Ernie needs the dosh, and Ernie only lives up the road. Could this be the perfect partnership?Well, it could be...but then this is Brentford and when you make movies in this neck of the woods, you can be sure of a BIG surprise. And when Brentford takes on Hollywood, then Hollywood had better pack up and head for the hills.

    Perhaps there's some truth in both view points...or none at all. Imagine there was a politician whose only ambition was to corrupt and manipulate the very people who elected him, without them even knowing it. This was Byron T Casey’s ambition. It helped that he was the Prime Minister and had just acquired Emorfed, a substance that had the ability to alter a person’s soul. Sandy Logan was the only person capable of stopping him. But there was one problem. Sandy was dead. It complicated matters that his death had been aided by the mysterious Limpet Syndrome, which meant he wasn't dead dead. Very few people understood why Sandy’s soul had lingered on Earth, least of all Sandy. This presented a far more serious problem. A soul wandering aimlessly around the globe threatened the stability of the Universe itself. Sandy’s soul had to be recovered and the powers that be had decided there was only one man for the job, the recently deceased John Hewson. Obviously he’s not dead dead you understand. John would have to travel to Hell and back if he was going to work out the secrets of the Limpet Syndrome, locate Sandy’s soul and bring down a government. In his pursuit to discover the truth of his own death, John is about to find out that death isn't the end; it's just the beginning of the end.

    Told in the same fanciful, irreverent style as the Hitchhiker trilogy, with scraps of scripts, letters and comments from Adams, Don't Panic is the perfect companion to one of the most successful series in publishing history.

    And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar, wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria, to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn't even be fighting the Ruhar, they aren't our enemy, our allies are. I'd better start at the beginning....

    Unfortunately, that "normal" includes collapsing skyscrapers, bands of bloodthirsty maniacs, and a dwindling cache of survival supplies. After watching his family, friends, and most of the non-sadistic elements of society crumble around him, Patrick decides it's time to cross one last item off his bucket list. He’s going to Disney World. This hilarious, heartfelt, gut-wrenching odyssey through post-apocalyptic America is a pilgrimage peppered with peril, as fellow survivors Patrick and Ben encounter a slew of odd characters, from zombie politicians and deranged survivalists to a milky-eyed oracle who doesn't have a lot of good news. Plus, it looks like Patrick may be hiding the real reason for their mission to the Magic Kingdom...

    Unlike every other investigation of Joe's career, the facts make no sense. Each new piece of information only makes the accident more mysterious, and more baffling.Why would a person receive an age-old letter and suddenly disappear into the thick of night...paying to be flown out of a closed airport in the worst possible weather conditions, by a pilot who hadn't had his hand on the stick in years?With the only surviving relative insisting her grandfather would never have climbed into a small airplane in the first place, even in perfect weather.A bizarre string of events culminating in a horrible accident unlike anything Rickards has experienced. Leaving his only hope at understanding it in the hands of the victim's sole remaining relative. Beginning with how a mysterious letter could turn up after being lost in the system for sixty years. Sent by someone who should have already been long dead.A single letter, Joe Rickards is about to discover, with a secret that will change the entire world.

    With no family or connections to find a ship, he is forced to service on an interstellar freighter known to be hunted by pirates. When he takes drastic action to save the "Blue Jay" from their pursuers, he sets in motion a sequence of events beyond his control - and attracts enemies on both sides of the law! Starship's Mage was originally released as five separate episodes.

    He can con humans, aliens and any number of robots time after time. Jim is so slippery that all the inter-galactic cops can do is make him one of their own