Mars and Return to Mars follow the struggle of settling on Mars, and Moonrise and Moonwar follow the events of colonizing the Moon – all struggling against the limitations Earth would set on these bold innovators. Mars: A team of astronauts face many challenges on a mission to Mars—including subzero temperatures, violent meteor showers, and a deadly virus. Native American geologist Jamie Waterman must navigate political intrigue at home, team conflict on the base, and a harsh and unforgiving environment to protect his own life and those of his crewmembers.Moonrise: A private company has established the first permanent human settlement on the Moon. But all is not as it seems there. Facing internal conflict and external protest, the company threatens closure—and former astronaut Doug Stavenger must protect the base and its inhabitants from the Moon’s harsh environment and the threat of murder.Moonwar: The second of Ben Bova’s Moonbase Saga, Moonwar picks up seven years after the events of Moonrise—when Doug Stavenger succeeded in protecting his beloved lunar colony. But the nanotechnology that keeps the colony functioning is now illegal on Earth—and the settlers must defend themselves against new threats from Earth.Return to Mars: Six years after the first manned expedition to Mars, a second is being planned, and Native American geologist Jamie Waterman is assigned as commander. He must face deadly internal rivalries, dangerous "accidents" that look like sabotage, and an intense new attraction to one of the crew members—and keep his crew safe while exploring the secrets of the Red Planet.

    Each volume helps the reader to encounter the original more fully by placing it in historical context, focusing on the important aspects of the text and posing key questions.

    But his reason for choosing this career was even less common, perhaps even unique. This story was first published in BEDLAM'S EDGE, Aug 2005.

    As in life, there are no happy endings, and no matter how high one flies, theres always gravity.

    Total word count -71,296Sweet Little Lies by Liz Schulte - Author of Dark Corners and The Guardian Trilogy The day Femi caught her first bounty she knew this was it; she found her place in the Abyss. However, one mistake, one act of kindness, one beautifully whispered lie could cost her everything--even her life.Autumn's Call by Lisa Rayns - Author of The Curse of the Egyptian GoddessWhen Autumn realizes death is chasing her, she runs only to be stalled by an unresolved ghost. Is he there to help her? Or does he want retribution for his murder?Tell a Soul by Olivia Hardin - Author of Witch Way BendsHe’s the dependable one. The strong and steadfast one. Still, there’s one woman who has always turned his firm resolve on end. Langston is surprised beyond belief to find Kristana again, and this time without a husband. Has fate finally given them the chance to be together? Kristana can’t escape her intense attraction for the strange giant Langston, but the murmuring voices in her head are threatening to drive her mad. Can she find a way to trade one torment for another and thereby find true love?The Siren Sarina by C.G. Powell - Author of Spell CheckedBeing a siren is not all that it is cracked up to be, especially when you play with the gods. Sarina, like all good sirens, has a penance for sex and not with just anyone. This time her prey is Ares the god of war and lover to Aphrodite. Not that Sarina minds stepping on the goddess of loves toes, but when Ares gifts her with the powers of a god, Zeus can’t help but to intervene.Fool Moon by Cait Lavender - Author of Cowboy MoonAll Jack saw when he looked at Carlie was perfection until she ripped out a man's throat. Confused by the pull she had on his heart, he is left with the choice to chase after the love of his life or to be left howling at the Fool Moon.When Opportunity Haunts by Stephanie Nelson - Author of The Gwen Sparks SeriesWith an eternity as the Angel of Death before him, not much could get under Dorian Hade's skin--that was until he met Gwen Sparks. She shuts down all of his advances and insists they are just friends. Dorian takes matters into his own hands and tricks Gwen into a romantic weekend away from her ex-boyfriend at a haunted bed and breakfast.

    Each Playaway comes with the digital content already pre-loaded on it and a battery to make it play. Simply plug in earbuds and enjoy. Each ultra-portable Playaway weighs only two ounces and comes packaged with earbuds and a standard AAA battery to allow for immediate listening. Every Playaway comes ready to shelve in drop-box friendly packaging, complete with title inserts and instructions. Playaway is being circulated in over 11,000 public, academic, military and government libraries with a 99% library customer satisfaction rate. With 70 respected publishing partners, a growing collection of over 1,500 titles across 30 genres is available. No Cassettes. No CD's. No downloads. Just Play.

    As the novel opens, Jack's twin brother, a Denver homicide detective, has just killed himself. Or so it seems. But when Jack begins to investigate the phenomenon of police suicides, a disturbing pattern emerges, and soon suspects that a serial murderer is at work - a devious cop killer who's left a coast-to-coast trail of "suicide notes" drawn from the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. It's the story of a lifetime - except that "the Poet" already seems to know that Jack is trailing him. . . Here is definitive proof that Michael Connelly is among the best suspense novelists working today. Blood Work: Thanks to a heart transplant, former FBI agent Terrell McCaleb is enjoying a quiet retirement, renovating the fishing boat he lives on in Los Angeles Harbor. But McCaleb's calm seas turn choppy when a story in the "What Happened To?" column of the LA Times brings him face-to-face with the sister of the woman whose heart now beats in his chest. From her, McCaleb learns a terrible truth: that the donor of his heart was not killed in an accident, as he'd been told, but was murdered. Wracked with guilt over the fact that he's alive because another human being was killed, McCaleb embarks on a private investigation of his donor's murder - a crime as horrific as anything he ever encountered as a serial killer investigator for the FBI.

    . . Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories' Guardian 'A supreme writer . . . unforgettable vividness' Independent

    Every word tells, & the number of unusually stirring incidents is legion, while the plot is phenomenal in its strength, merit & ingeniousness.

    John Whitehead, critic and biographer who himself served with the Indian Army in Burma, has provided this in full measure in his entertaining and scholarly Introduction and comprehensive textual Notes. This Centenary Edition of the ballads is unlikely ever to be superseded.

    Featuring Newford fiddler Geordie Riddell, it's a gentle story of love, loss and the bonds of friendship.First published in Post Mortem edited by Paul F.Olson and David B. Silva, 1989; also appears in Dreams Underfoot and The Very Best of Charles de Lint.Timeskip is where Newford began: "Newford was not planned out in advance. It started (unbeknownst to me) with“Timeskip,” a short story that I wrote for an anthology. I wanted to set the story somewhere other than the Ottawa area where most of my stories had taken place, but I didn’t feel comfortable writing about a city that I couldn’t physically visit. So I decided to use various aspects of large urban centers that I had visited, and create a fictitious setting."–Charles de Lint, from an interview with FairyRoom.com"I can never recapture the feeling of first arriving in Newford and meeting the people and seeing the sights as a newcomer. However, part of the beauty of Newford is the sense that it has always been there, that de Lint is a reporter who occasionally files stories from a reality stranger and more beautiful than ours. De Lint also manages to keep each new Newford story fresh and captivating because he is so generous and loving in his depiction of the characters. Yes, there are a group of core characters whose stories recur most often, but a city like Newford has so many intriguing people in it, so many diverse stories to tell, so much pain and triumph to chronicle."— Challenging DestinyCharles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.— Alice HoffmanCharles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best.— Holly BlackDe Lint is probably the finest contemporary author of fantasy– Booklist, American Library AssociationUnlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it’s just damned fine writing.– Quill QuireDe Lint’s evocative images, both ordinary and fantastic, jolt the imagination.– Publishers WeeklyIt is hard to imagine urban fantasy done with greater skill– Booklist, American Library Association

    Every one of George Eliot's classic novels is now available in one edition! Each with a fully functioning table of contents, this collection includes:Adam Bede, 1859The Mill on the Floss, 1860Silas Marner, 1861Romola, 1863Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866Middlemarch, 1871-72Daniel Deronda, 1876

    Then, Wolverine faces down Nanny and Orphan-Maker, and lets former New X-Men member Trance in on all his secrets.

    The Ironclads are 100-foot-long (30 m) machines with remote controlled guns and accommodation for 42 soldiers, including 7 officers.The story is one of those responsible for Wells' reputation as a "prophet of the future", as the eponymous machines seem to anticipate the tanks of World War I. His rather sketchy battle between countrymen and townsmen also carries echoes of the Boer War and his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, which also features a struggle between technologically uneven protagonists.***The story opens with a war correspondent and a young lieutenant surveying the calm of the battlefield and reflecting upon the war. The two opposing sides are dug into trenches, each waiting for the other to attack, and the men on the war correspondent's side are confident in their coming victory. They believe that they will win because they are all strong outdoor-types - men who know how to use a rifle and fight - while their enemies are towns people ... "a crowd of devitalized townsmen ... They're clerks, they're factory hands, they're students, they're civilized men. They can write, they can talk, they can make and do all sorts of things, but they're poor amateurs at war." The men agree that their "open air life" produces men better suited to war than their opponents' "decent civilization".In the end, however, it is shown that the "decent civilization", with its men of science and engineers, triumphs over the "better soldiers" who, instead of developing land ironclads of their own, had been practicing shooting their rifles from horseback, a tactic which became obsolete the second the land ironclads appeared on the battlefield. The story ends with the entire army captured by a dozen or so of the land ironclads, and the last scene is of the correspondent comparing his countrymen's "sturdy proportions with those of their lightly built captors", and thinking of the story he is going to write about the experience, noting both that the captured officers are thinking of ways they will defeat what they call the enemy's "ironmongery" with their already-existing weaponry, rather than developing their own land ironclads to counter the new threat, and also noting that the "half-dozen comparatively slender young men in blue pajamas who were standing about their victorious land ironclad, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, had also in their eyes and carriage something not altogether degraded below the level of a man."

    He wrote some of his books under the pseudonyms Dod Grile and J. Milton Sloluck. Bierce's lucid, unsentimental style has kept him popular when many of his contemporaries have been consigned to oblivion. His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, "Bitter Bierce. " Such was his reputation that it was said his judgment on any piece of prose or poetry could make or break a writer's career. His short stories are considered among the best of the 19th century, providing a popular following based on his roots. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Killed at Resaca, and Chickamauga. His works include: The Fiend's Delight (1873), Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874), Black Beetles in Amber (1892), Fantastic Fables (1899), Shapes of Clay (1903), A Son of the Gods, and A Horseman in the Sky (1907), Write It Right (1909) and A Cynic Looks at Life (1912).