Adrian Tarn and R.J. Smith are persuaded to escort two scientists to a landing there to investigate. What they find has unexpected consequences for Earth and every person on it. Join Adrian Tarn, R.J. Smith, and Danica Donoro as they fight to close Pandora's box before Earth becomes a new asteroid belt.

    Twelve year-old Biddy has survived an intolerable life of indenture by remembering two things: adults can’t be trusted, and it’s best to be invisible. Due to an early trauma, she’s mute with no memory of her past. The man who holds her contract for indenture has evil plans for her, and he will stop at nothing to ensure his schemes come to fruition. Things look hopeless for Biddy until she meets two school teachers, Brenna and Emily. From that moment on, these three lives become intricately entwined. Biddy’s new champions take desperate measures to ensure her safety. Life and death choices are made and these accelerate into an unanticipated conclusion. As is often the case in life, what was wished for is granted in a most unexpected way. Victoria Murata has again embraced history to tell an enduring story of love and loss in our country’s not too distant past.

    His only hope for survival is to partner with an alien Artificial Intelligence named Alyssa. She is the brain of the most improbable star ship Gus has ever seen, part ancient sailing ship, part incredible star-faring vessel. But there is a catch. Alyssa’s first priority is to finish an epic yacht race that started twenty-eight thousand years ago. THE WORLD IS CAPTURED BY THE ALIEN DRAMA Every day Gus sends a video love letter to his wife via the lifeboat’s one-way subspace signal where it is automatically posted on YouTube. Few people care until another lifeboat crashes with two young women aboard, both of them celebrities. Their fame turns Gus into a worldwide phenomenon; everyone watches the three castaways fight to carve a life from the tiny island life even though they have little hope of rescue. When disaster threatens, Gus and the girls have no choice but to resurrect the crippled galleon. Their impossible task is to sail Alyssa across an alien sea and then fly her across unimaginable galactic reaches. WHEN ALYSSA FINALLY AGREES TO HELP, SPACE PIRATES STRIKE On live television, the public watches helplessly when a ship of vicious murderers attack the three survivors. The world grieves when the now-famous exiles go silent. At least until Earth's Space Navy reports they are under attack by a ship that is beyond imagination.

    Somebody has to support all the new galactic tech and Jack Buckston, President, CEO and sole employee of Xenotech Support Corporation, does his best to keep his clients happy, find true love and prevent interstellar war. Galactic technology has cured cancer, solved the energy crisis, and eliminated global warming--but what do the aliens want from us? They can't get enough Congressional subcommittee broadcasts--they consider them reality comedies! Xenotech Rising is a light-hearted romp and the first book in the Xenotech Support / Galactic Free Trade Association series.

    With The Phony Marine, Lehrer dives into a highly controversial topicâ��and delivers his most compelling character portrait to date.Hugo Marder is about as unremarkable as they come. On the floor of the Washington, D.C., branch of Nash Brothers, one of the countryâ��s most respected menâ��s stores, Hugo is a wise, reserved salesman. At home, he is a solitary, divorced fifty-year-old with few friends and an eBay addiction. But he has always wanted to make more of his life, dreaming of becoming an artist or a cartoonist. When he was younger, heâ��d always wanted to be a marine.Late one night, Hugo stumbles upon an online auction for a Silver Star, the medal awarded for bravery in battle. He bids and wins. But it is only after he places the lapel pin on his jacket that he realizes the enormity of his actions. Suddenly, ordinary people begin to treat him differently, with dignity and respect. Is he really going to pretend the honor is his own?As Hugo wrestles with his conscience, a transformation begins to take place. He studies the life of a marine, learns the military terminology, body-builds at the gym, even gets a crew cut. When he is reborn as a former marine, his life immediately changes. Is it possible that his deception has unlocked the man he always wanted to be? Through numerous challenges and more than one terrifying ordeal, Hugo Marder must prove his worth. And in the end, he must ask himself: What is a hero?Alive with detail, emotional depth, and unexpected twists of plot, The Phony Marine is a tense, revelatory work of fiction that will cause every reader to consider his or her own stance on what truly makes someone great.

    May of these stories are from the pages of Weird Tales and other classic magazines which brought the work of masters like H.P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, Robert E. Howard, and many others to the public. Includes an active table of contents.

    

    This book was brought to you by the one and only - THE CLOWN FACTORY.

    A thrilling tale filled with action, adventure, intrigue and a pleasant pinch of romance the story is set primarily in Antarctica, Tasmania and on the east coast of Australia. The book follows the lives of four different people in their struggles to survive after a huge tsunami, caused by the massive Ross Shelf icesheet sliding off Antarctica and into the Southern Ocean, sweeps across the Pacific. The tsunami leaves a trail of death and destruction after which the water levels of Earth's oceans begin to rise rapidly causing cataclysmic disaster as well as massive political and social upheaval. As cities and nations are flooded the fabric of civilisation is torn as groups and individuals struggle for survival in a terrifying new world. The three parallel story lines are exciting, predictive and thought provoking. The author has degrees archaeology and history with a particular interest in the effects of the end of the last Ice Age on the humans of 8,000 B.C. He has transposed known archaeological information on rapid sea level rises onto the modern world to create an exciting, informative and relevant novel that attempts to answer the question of what would really happen to you and I if the Earth's sea levels rose more than six meters. The stories. Katherine Brown is a climatologist based on Antarctica, when the Ross Iceshelf shatters and slides into the ocean she and her team must traverse the rapidly changing Antarctic terrain to reach the relative safety of a base camp at Cape Colbeck; only a few will survive the trek through ice and mud and snow. Peter Taylor and his family survived the first wave but not the second. Alone and homeless he is forced to scavenge in flooded supermarkets for food and avoid roving gangs of bandits that quickly establish themselves as social norms disintegrate to be replaced by anarchy. He meets a mysterious and alluring woman, who, like himself, finds herself thriving in the post apocalypse world. Jeremy Jones is an archaeologist with a particular interest in Paleo- climatology. He is fired from his prestigious position at the Queensland University for predicting massive sea level rises even as his predictions, and much worse, come true. Karen Whitaker had been partying with girlfriends when the first tsunami tore through Hobart. Trapped overnight in the remains of a collapsed building, she emerged to discover a ruined city strewn with the bodies of the dead, the dying and the injured. Living in a refugee camp she does what she must to make the best of the new world.

     If the American people understood what really happened, the U.S. government feared life would have irrevocably changed for the worse. In Space Chase, the premier installment of The Palmdale Files, former agent Harold Anderson reveals the true story behind a mysterious Lockheed U-2 "Dragon Lady" crash in the mountains of Nevada and the extreme efforts the U.S. government went through to hide what happened. Space Chase—also known as Event 21 Zeta—is the first in a series of forgotten and buried events the author once destroyed to protect the peace and security of the United States—events the government would rather hide forever. Never heard of Palmdale? The author isn't surprised, and believes you never will outside of these short stories. The Palmdale Files share highlights from Harold Anderson's U.S. Air Force career, where he worked to defend the nation and the world from paranoid hysteria about unexplained phenomena and threats from above.

    The indigenous creatures of Faust have never accepted any invaders--but today, new arrivals haunt their skies. The Black Ship is a predatory vessel. Built for stealth, she glides undetected among the stars, seeking colonies along the Faustian Chain that are ripe for raiding--or outright conquest. These three forces: the colonists, the alien life forms, and the cyborg crew of the Black Ship, are on a collision course in this thrilling military SF adventure. THE BLACK SHIP is a Novella of classic military science fiction by B. V. Larson. The stories in this series can be read in any order.

    

    But someone else also needs her help—the untamed blue-skinned alien who’s saved her twice. Rescued from vicious fight rings he’s fought in since he was a child, Vek is prone to losing control in aggressive fits of rage…and Mia discovers that she is the only who can calm himRogue: Rogue contains two action-packed novellas in the Galactic Gladiators series. In Information Rogue, arrogant information merchant Zhim doesn’t know what hits him when he collides with feisty human hacker Ryan. In Desert Rogue, prickly, independent human Neve doesn’t want or need any help…but a certain cocky desert rogue -- Corsair of the Corsair Desert Caravan -- isn’t taking no for an answer.Guardian: Former cop Dayna Caplan wakes to discover she’s host to a powerful alien symbiont, and the only man who can help her is the mysterious and dangerous casino owner, Rillian. Now that she’s no longer a captive at the desert arena of Zaabha, she desperately wants to help find the last of the other human women who were abducted by the Thraxians. But she has to deal with the intense hunger and powerful new abilities the alien living inside grants her…and the person forcing her to confront her new reality is the cool, enigmatic, and far-too-attractive Rillian.

    Races operating within their own planetary systems are to be left alone until they begin to develop the ability to travel at FTL (faster than light speeds). When the ability to travel at FTL becomes apparent, one of the members of the Federation is nominated to help ease the newcomer through the Galactic citizenship process. Unfortunately, not all the galaxies systems belong to the Federation, and some of those systems are much less than friendly. The last several decades have seen the development of war like societies that systematically loot developing planets. They take the water, and other precious resources, including slaves, leaving the remaining native inhabitants a barren planet. Without resources the population simply dies a slow death. The Egolari are here because we, meaning the people of Earth, happen to possess a skill set and an aptitude that is critical to the needs of the Federation. The major problem within the Federation is that virtually all the members have, for centuries been living in peace. They have developed a society that is not well suited to counter the growing violence presented by the nonaligned races. In short, they have no way to protect themselves, let alone protect the fledgling races just arriving on the galactic scene. Enter Earth. Of all the emerging races to become future galactic members, one has a superior potential to face the violence threatened by the nonaligned races. You guessed it, Humanity. The Federation realized that to continue to function as an organized galactic society, they would have to develop a military arm that could provide the Federation and emerging systems the protection of a fleet of space vessels and marines. Humanity was the race most capable of leading the development of that military organization because we had not progressed so far that our war like tendencies had begun to erode. Although we were not yet ready for galactic membership, we were a necessity that could fill the need, thus we were getting a crash course in how to travel the galaxy, protecting ourselves and the Federation with the full expectation that we would go where no human has gone before, and kick some alien ass.