But time is running short: the mark knows that he’s coming, and he’s not the only contractor on the job …

    It was 2095 and Freighter Captain Dixon Cragg, (Craggy to his friends) was unhappy at having to take early retirement at only eighty four. But times were changing and he had to play his part, helping the youngsters take his place. Earth was dying, ravished by war and disease. Moon was a busy place and was the trading post between Earth and Mars. Convinced he was about to be sent off to Earth, his only alternative seemed to be to work as a toilet cleaner on Moon. But events were unfolding that would change the course of history for ever.

    to ensure America's enemies don't get there first.

    Here in these remote areas, thriving cities, and secret worlds, a strange technological revolution reigns. Inside these pages inventors, dreamers, and revolutionist rule in worlds of steam driven machines, cog powered humanoids, clockwork miracles, and paranormal magic. Dressed in corsets, top hats, and cog lined finery the heroes and heroines face down immense obstacles as they take to the skies in airships, use incredible technology that is a mix between ancient and futuristic, and discover love. Fifteen talented authors, artists and poets have come together in the must read anthology of 2014. The product of this collaboration is an incredible journey through a blend of sci-fi, fantasy, action, adventure, history, paranormal, and romance that embraces the roots of Steampunk while pushing the genre to new, bolder limits. Stories by Catherine Stovall, Amanda Gatton (Illustrator), Robert Craven, Samantha Ketteman, Cindy J. Smith, Emma Michaels, Faith Marlow, Nina Stevens , Wayne Carey, Zoe Adams, MJ Baerman, Eada Janes, Andrea Staum, Deborah Dalton, SJ Davis, and Cecilia Clark.

    And what's going on is plotting the revolution, pure and simple.There's lots more. Events in England, shown in "Letters of Trade," happenings in the Caribbean—with pirates, not less. Russia and Czar Mikhail are having their own problems, while certain folks in Grantville are just ticked off. The USE capitol in Magdeburg is a hopping town and we'll be happy to share the news with you. Gustav Adolph may have won the Baltic War, but what happened to the individual soldiers They didn't all come out on top, did they Just how hard is it to navigate the troubled waters of the 1632 Universe No picnic, for sure.Chocolate, steam, railroads and tennis. Revolution, mayhem, ships and planes. What have they got in common It's all happening in seventeenth century Europe.

    The new capital of the legitimate government of Russia, once a trading post in the far east, is now a fast-growing boom town. Into this maelstrom come peddlers and exotic dancers, criminals and craftsmen, nobles and assassins. Crime is running rampant and the city guards that passes for policemen don't have a clue how to handle it—and wouldn’t know a clue if they stumbled right over it. They can manage to walk a beat, at least in broad daylight. But solve a crime?         Not a chance. And Czar Michael Romanov and his officials aren’t any help, since they’re pre-occupied with building a nation out of spit and bailing wire.          But the bargirl who was murdered had friends who cared. And thosefriends call in Vasilii Lyapuno, an engineer working at the newly-founded Dacha in Ufa and loves up-timer murder mysteries.          Can Vasilii track down the killer? Luckily for him, he has the assistance of another bargirl named Miroslava, who has a unique way of seeing the world. Together they might figure out who did what to whom and who was responsible for the crime.         Crimes, rather. Murder starts adding up.

    A rare and hazardous gift, it is one she would rather not possess, as its price is great suffering. There is a word used to describe her kind: Martyr.Wandering the wastelands of a ruined Earth plagued by gangs and Cling—an affliction which shortens the human lifespan to a mere few decades—Sadie’s hope to find a slice of utopia fades.When an act of desperation in a reckless moment sets her on the run from a vicious warlord, her flight leads to a mysterious boy who seems to hold the answers to Sadie’s salvation. If she will use her gift to help his community, he vows to share the location of a tunnel deep beneath the ground—a tunnel revealed to Sadie in a fever dream as the key to defeating her pursuers.But when Sadie enters the tunnel, what she discovers plunges the boy’s community into unimaginable peril. Despite Sadie’s commitment to self-preservation, she cannot bring herself to abandon him and his people. Fortunately, Sadie has a few tricks up her sleeve—and an old acquaintance with a notorious set of skills who just may agree to join the fray.

    A sci-fi writer finds a set of quatrains that foretell a horrible catastrophe, a mass murder that will change the course of history. He races against time to decipher the quatrains and stop the slaughter. The next prophecy has begun, and there’s only one man who can stop The First Face of Janus.

    Edward VIII still reigns and mourns the death of his mistress, Wallis Simpson. Left with almost no troops, guns or tanks, Britain stands alone against the might of a German Wehrmacht armed with assault rifles, main battle tanks, aircraft carriers and a pair of 'superguns' firing seven tonne shells across the English Channel.Day after day, Squadron Leader Alec Trumbull and a fast-dwindling number of broken veterans and inexperienced new-recruits take to the skies against the seemingly endless streams of German aircraft. His Spitfire damaged in the heat of battle and pursued by enemy fighters he can’t outrun, Trumbull is saved at the last moment by a strange jet aircraft that can land and take off vertically. He discovered that the advanced aircraft belongs to the Hindsight Unit: a UN task force from the 21st Century sent to combat a group of Neo-Nazis also returned from the future to aid Nazi Germany wins the Second World War. As technology accelerates and events begin to spiral out of control, Trumbull finds himself drawn into Hindsight’s desperate struggle to prevent a seemingly inevitable invasion of Great Britain and return history to its true course.

    What if the nukes had flown that day over Cuba? What if Caesar had survived? Imagine the Tunguska meteor with a different outcome. What if there was a true story behind HG Wells' most famous tale? See the world as it might have been if China discovered the New World first. And what if all of this was never meant to be and dinosaurs ruled the Earth?Authors Jessica Holmes, Daniel M. Bensen, Terri Pray, Rob Edwards, Maria Haskins, Cathbad Maponus, Leo McBride, and collaborators Brent A. Harris and Ricardo Victoria show us the world that might have been - if the butterfly's wings had fluttered a different way, if the world changed between heartbeats, if a moment of decision saw another choice.This is the fourth anthology from Inklings Press, aiming to provide a platform for new and upcoming authors and to open the door onto different worlds.

    Now Anders must decide quickly—stay and fight or cut cables and run.Either way, it’s too late. Someone has other plans for them. The trap has been set, they’ve rescued the woman and taken the bait, and before long Anders and what’s left of his dwindling crew must navigate with caution through the grips of the military and an especially vile outlaw.But Anders doesn’t captain just another team flying the black. With a genius mechanic who uses his ragtag high-tech machine shop to aid them in getting in and out of trouble, they’ve earned a reputation as the best of the best. With Anders’s careful planning, this motley crew must band together and flip the military to use them on a monster heist and dig themselves out from the heat pressing in from both sides of the law.Fly with them. They are clever, they are fierce, they are Lockheed Elite.

    

    The biggest game in town centers on a massive, deadly roller coaster that winds its way through the Strip’s most famous attractions. On the first Saturday of every month, twenty-four desperate passengers get strapped into the notorious ride and gamble with their lives in a twisted game of chance, to the thrill of webcast audiences worldwide. One of them will win, and one will die, but the other twenty-two will escape with nothing but their lives. Bets are placed as the ride begins, but in Vegas, the house always wins.The Ride by acclaimed author Aric Davis is a terrifying near-future vision of bloodlust-as-entertainment taken to a horrific extreme.

    Heine does a great job of building a world replete with rules and history and uses both to construct a mystery with an awful lot of intrigue and surprise." - Nerds on EarthSamurai vs. robots. In 1901, the Meiji Restoration has abolished the old ways and ushered in a cybernetic revolution. Androids integrate into society at all levels, following their programming for the betterment of every citizen, as servants, bodyguards, and bureaucrats. Jinzou are the future. Japan is at the threshold of a new tomorrow!As a ronin steeped in the old ways, Itaru wants nothing more to do with the artificial creations posing as human. But when a jinzou is suspected of murder, he's pulled into a mystery that could tear the nation apart.​Malfunction or free will? When is a machine more than just a machine?IZANAMI'S CHOICE is an alternate history sci-fi novella set in Meiji Era Japan. It's samurai vs. robots as the author explores how Japan might grapple with the rise of artificial intelligence.

    Always Faithful. The motto of the United States Marine Corps. Words to live by. On the ragged edges of civilization, Corporal Michael Collins has lived those words, taking on riots and evacuations, rebels and terrorists. Asteroid belt patrol is just another deployment. Ninety nine percent boredom, one percent terror. But soon the platoon of Marines find themselves entangled in the threads of a conspiracy of corporate greed, government corruption, piracy, and a band of war criminals. As the fire team leader struggles with tensions in the close knit unit, Collins and his fellow Marines find themselves outnumbered in a pitched battle to stop a corrupt land grab that seems right out of the Old West, but on a new, wider, more unforgiving frontier. And now he must confront the harsh demands of being “always faithful.” Semper Fi. Words to live by. Words to die by. Time to earn that combat pay, Marines. Welcome to the Suck. And remember, you volunteered for this. Patrick LeClerc has crafted a tense, military action adventure on the edge of civilization: Earth’s mining colonies in the asteroid belt. “In Every Clime and Place” combines the spirit of classic s/f of Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” or David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” with the isolated, small unit grunt’s eye view intimacy of George MacDonald Fraser’s “Quartered Safe Out Here.” "In Every Clime and Place” is a frontier land grab; a tale of government corruption and corporate piracy, and a near future Marine science fiction story, told with gritty authenticity, gallows humor and raw emotion, evoking the closeness and isolation of a small unit deployed to the distant edge of a bleak and dangerous frontier. BOOK REVIEW Set some 60 years in the future, this impressive, fast-paced novel is as much ‘Semper fi’ as it is sci-fi. The convincing story centers on the hard-hitting law and order role of the USMC in dealing with organized commercial pirates causing mayhem on planet Mars. The plot’s development is cleverly stage-managed by the author (a former US Marine) From the very first page, authenticity is the dominant hallmark of this exciting and very readable book. Don’t expect to read this novel a chapter at a time, last thing at night and then drop off to sleep. I found it impossible to put down. This book demanded and held my attention. The very believable characters live off the pages. They, their gritty Service dialogues and the battle scenes are all USMC through and through. Long before that iconic US Marine legend, Chesty Puller, was mentioned in the story, I was sold on this book’s authenticity and the author’s credibility. I thoroughly recommend it as an absorbing, exciting read. It has, too, the makings of a great film. -Mike Williams, Royal Marine, SBS, Author of The Tremayne Trilogy