He soon learns that every aspect of his life so far, including the staged deaths of his parents, has been arranged by the Senate Tribunal in an attempt to mold him into the perfect leader. Now there are only thirty candidates, including Caius, left competing to be the Emperor's heir. Success in a series of Trials will reunite him with his family and make him the most powerful man in the world, but failure will lead to a life of isolation and imprisonment hidden in the eaves of the palace. As Caius enters the trials, it becomes apparent that the tests themselves are not the problem: it is the twenty nine other candidates willing to do whatever it takes to win, including maim or kill their top competitors. Can Caius navigate the pitfalls of imperial politics and cutthroat competition, all while performing well enough to succeed in the trials fair and square?

    She's not about to let her dream of marriage go as well.But keeping it alive will require extraordinary measures. Yesterday's world is gone. All Deni and her family have left is each other and their neighbors. Their little community will either stand or fall together. But they're only beginning to realize it - and trust doesn't come easily.Particularly when one of them is a killer.Best-selling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts - and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world.

    But despite the panic attacks tormenting her, nothing ever happens, and Sky’s beginning to think she’s crazy. Then she meets a mysterious, otherworldly boy named Win and discovers the shocking truth her premonitions have tapped into: our world no longer belongs to us. For thousands of years, Earth has been at the mercy of alien scientists who care nothing for its inhabitants and are using us as the unwitting subjects of their time-manipulating experiments. Win belongs to a rebel faction seeking to put a stop to it, and he needs Skylar’s help--but with each shift in the past, the very fabric of reality is unraveling, and soon there may be no Earth left to save.

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    Truly alone in the world, Brett agrees to help colonize the newly discovered planet, Verita. Now Brett's on a strange new world. She quickly makes friends and starts her assigned job. Verita begins to feel like home, but it's far from perfect. Brett has an overwhelming attraction to Brody, despite the fact that he's entirely not her type. Her colleague, Ryan, utterly hates her for reasons out of her control. And there are creatures in the forest that would like nothing more than to devour everyone for dinner.Brett's heart and mind are at odds each other. She's constantly fighting with Ryan. So, concentrating on her job is becoming more and more difficult. Plus it's hard to ignore some of the strange things that have been happening around her. But, when Brett finds herself stranded in the wilderness, the only thing that matters is survival.

    Ten years after the apocalypse destroyed the world that she knew, a survivor returns to her home town, hoping to piece together the bits of her past that have troubled her so much ever since.Sometimes the past is best left behind us, but sometimes we all need to say goodbye."At last, goodbye" is a short story set in the world of the Diary of the Displaced novel series.

    until his parents are found murdered. Left with only a mirror and notes from his father's last case, Nathan goes into hiding at the remote country home of Tony, his father's college buddy, and Tony's teenage daughter, Kelly. The mysterious mirror must be a clue to what happened to his parents, and when images appear in it---people and things that don't exist---Nathan and Kelly painstakingly gather evidence. But the killers want the mirror too, and danger threatens the teens at every turn. As it becomes evident that Nathan's father had stumbled upon dark forces at work in the world, several questions arise. Could it be that the mirror is a portal to a parallel world? Could this technology be used for evil purposes? And could his parents still be alive, trapped in another dimension? Nathan and Kelly struggle to solve the mystery before they too become victims. This chilling, hair-raising adventure is jam-packed with action in a fantastical world where nothing is as it seems, and even mirrors tell lies.

    Five futures. Two worlds. One ending. One year from now, Dylan develops a sixth sense that allows him to glimpse another world. Ten years from now, Brixney must get more hits on her social media feed or risk being stuck in a debtors' colony. Thirty years from now, Epony scrubs her entire online profile from the web and goes “High Concept.” Sixty years from now, Reef struggles to survive in a city turned virtual gameboard. And more than a hundred years from now, Quinn uncovers the alarming secret that links them all. Five people, divided by time, will determine the fate of us all. These are stories of a world bent on destroying itself, and of the alternate world that might be its savior--unless it's too late.

    A soldier and a pilot are tasked to deliver a package. A messenger and a refugee decide to work together on a dying alien planet. A love letter is lost that could be the key to a new future. A dark comedy about the messages we carry in our bones.

    The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house—unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.Andy Weir’s Randomize is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

     A lonely girl plots revenge in the shadow of a mountain. A stolen princess fumbles a century backward. A dwarfish man crafts brilliant automatons. A Polish Jew strikes matches against the Nazis. A dead girl haunts a crystal lake. A terrified princess searches a labyrinth. A rich collection of six historically inspired retellings, Once is a new generation of fairytales for those who thought they'd heard the tales in all their forms. Featuring the novellas of Elisabeth Grace Foley, Rachel Heffington, J Grace Pennington, Emily Ann Putzke, Suzannah Rowntree, and Hayden Wand.Titles in this book set:The Mountain of the Wolf by Elisabeth Grace FoleyShe But Sleepeth by Rachel HeffingtonRumpled by J. Grace PenningtonSweet Remembrance by Emily Ann PutzkeDeath Be Not Proud by Suzannah RowntreeWith Blossoms Gold by Hayden Wand

    Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.When Sam’s wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a “leg up” in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.Amor Towles’s You Have Arrived at Your Destination is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

    In a bid for freedom a lone spaceship hurtled through space before crashing in the hills outside a small village in Spain. On Christmas Day a strong, silent man with blank eyes entered Bar Noche Azul. Only a 13-year-old boy could have guessed that there was any connection between the two.

    Gran was the heart of Christmas and Eden hasn’t embraced the spirit of the season ever since losing her. In fact, she’s lived a fairly reclusive life other than her job as a vet’s assistant at The Country Vet practice. When a stranger shows up at on Eden’s doorstep one stormy evening, she is shocked to discover the handsome man is none other than her childhood friend, Brady Shepard. He’s all grown up now and gorgeous. Now a veterinarian, Brady is taking over the practice for his ailing grandmother, Vicky Shepard, who happens to be Eden’s boss. As Eden and Brady begin to work together, Eden’s heart begins to open up to the spirit of the season…and to Brady.

    Intelligent, well-educated, perfectly isolated in his lofty rank, responsibilities, and privilege of the divine Imperial Dynasty. He's the most powerful boy on Atlantis and he's going into the real world for the very first time. . . .Now just another student in Fleet Cadet School, Aeson must learn everything normal people take for granted—including the basics of how to look after himself, how to interact with others his age, how to laugh, and how to make friends.As if that wasn't enough to boggle the mind of a confident but shy boy who's never had a real conversation with anyone but his mother, Aeson has one more lesson ahead . . . what it's like to fall in love.Get inside Aeson's mind and learn his story from the inside out as he forms the bonds that will change him forever—with Elikara, Xelio, Oalla, Keruvat, Erita, and other favorite Atlantean characters, long before they took to the stars as astra daimon! AESON: BLUE is the first in The Atlantis Grail Novella Series.