a world of beauty in the eyes of many, but to a bleeding-edge writer like Mr. Ellis, it's a world filled with evil, sin, decay, and filth. It's a Bad World, indeed. With the skilled assistance of illustrator Jacen Burrows, Ellis explores the far edges of humanity, the people who are hanging onto reality by the thinnest of threads, and those who are completely off their rockers.

    But nothing prepared her for the surprises of learning Mandarin, China's most common language, or the intensity of living in Shanghai and Beijing. Over time, she realized that her struggles and triumphs in studying the language of her adopted home provided small clues to deciphering the behavior and habits of its people,and its culture's conundrums. As her skill with Mandarin increased, bits of the language—a word, a phrase, an oddity of grammar—became windows into understanding romance, humor, protocol, relationships, and the overflowing humanity of modern China. Fallows learned, for example, that the abrupt, blunt way of speaking that Chinese people sometimes use isn't rudeness, but is, in fact, a way to acknowledge and honor the closeness between two friends. She learned that English speakers' trouble with hearing or saying tones—the variations in inflection that can change a word's meaning—is matched by Chinese speakers' inability not to hear tones, or to even take a guess at understanding what might have been meant when foreigners misuse them. In sharing what she discovered about Mandarin, and how those discoveries helped her understand a culture that had at first seemed impenetrable, Deborah Fallows's Dreaming in Chinese opens up China to Westerners more completely, perhaps, than it has ever been before.

    

    A group of generals not from one nation taking control in a palace coup, but from most nations taking control of most of the world in a coordinated lightning stroke. What's to stop them? In THE AQUITAINE PROGRESSION, one man...Joel Converse, a battle scarred veteran of Vietnam who in the course of business stumbles onto the plot. "This is Ludlum at his best...a thrilling international novel and love story." (Publishers Weekly)

    As the country battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, the three Soong sisters from Shanghai were at the center of power, and each of them left an indelible mark on history.Red Sister, Ching-ling, married the 'Father of China', Sun Yat-sen, and rose to be Mao's vice-chair.Little Sister, May-ling, became Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right.Big Sister, Ei-ling, became Chiang's unofficial main adviser - and made herself one of China's richest women.All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. They remained close emotionally, even when they embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters' worlds.Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, intrigue, bravery, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a sweeping journey from Canton to Hawaii to New York, from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. In a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape twentieth-century China.

    

     Fresh from Duck Soup (1933), Julius, Leonard, Arthur and Herbert Marx - or as the world knows them, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo - are transported by a freak electrical storm to Nacogdoches, Texas in the year 1826. Landing in the midst of the Fredonian Rebellion (the first attempt by settlers in Texas to secede from Mexico) and into the company of the only other Jewish person in town, they are in deep dreck. Falling in with Stephen F. Austin and inadvertently filling his head with knowledge of what is to come, our heroes risk tampering with the future of Texas, and perhaps the entire U.S.A., in their quest to return to their own time. Will they find their way back? Or will they be doomed to live out their lives without indoor plumbing?

    Whether you like them large and in charge or sleek and sexy, you'll find the right story to spice up your night in these pages. Featuring:A.J. Bennett — MasqueradeBecca Vincenza — ContractedBlaire Edens — FrenziedCarolyn Spear — Taming the PumaDara Fraser — Lion's Pretend GirlfriendDesiree Holt — Shadow of the WolfDominique Eastwick — Bearing the HungerErin Hayes — I Found My RhinoEver Coming — The MismatchmakerH.D. Gordon — Blood SportHazel Boyer — Accidentally MatedKate Richards — An Evening in the SuperstitionsLila Felix — Wolf ProtectorLisbeth Frost — Encounter on a MountainLouisa Bacio — The Luna TwinsMargo Bond Collins — Laugh Out LoveMarissa Farrar — Wolf TornMerryn Dexter — Bear Faced LiesM.J. Haag — Escaping the LuthaRachael Slate — Untamed Lord of Thessaly

    Just how much will the aide tell his master about what really happened?ABOUT THE BOOKA short story by Sandy Mitchell. Ties into the Ciaphas Cain series. Previously printed in the Black Library Weekender Anthology (Saturday) 2012.

    Inquisitor Eisenhorn investigates, and finds that the trail laid by this unassuming servant of the Imperium leads to unexpected places and a dangerous showdown.

    

     It was supposed to be a place where every child’s favorite characters came to life. And, it was, until those characters went nuts and started killing everyone. Then it wasn’t so happy. Ten years later Jake and his team of robot reclamation specialists are heading to the island theme park to confront the evil machines, discover Kat’s connection to the disaster and boost the flagging ratings on their reality show, Scrappers. Fearless Monkeynauts, overly friendly Bearberry Bears, feuding Presidents, Dinosty Warriors, fairy tale legends and more populate the abandoned park and only the Junkers are brave enough, or dumb enough, to go for a visit. Join Jake, Hailey, Kat, Savant, Mason and, of course, Glitch as they try to uncover the mystery of what they call The Tragic Kingdom.

    And a secret objective leads to more than the lead character, tech-priest Magos Caul, could ever have bargained for.THE STORYOn the world of Phaedra, a force of skitarii - the front-line soldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus - embark upon a dangerous mission: to assault a stronghold of the xenos tau and recover a priority asset for their tech-priest master, Magos Caul. As they face the diminutive drones and hulking battlesuits of their alien foes in the jungles of the Dolorosa Coil, their target draws nearer. But just what is Objective Skysight, and why is it so important to the tech-priest?

    Titles include #2 Rodrick Rules and #3 The Last Straw.

    A stirring saga of two Amish sisters on the fringe of the church, and their journeys toward reconciliation with the modern men they love.