Bread is a good start for sustenance.Don Eyr and Serana were survivors who came to Low Port – it gave them air, water, a place to stand and a place to make bread. The place to sleep meant they needed a certain amount of safety and to get that they founded a bakery at the corner of Crakle and Toom, brought in others seeking to survive in the midst of the poverty and ignorance, and built a tiny bastion of a self-sufficient community dedicated to raising competent, alert children who understood decency.Low Port toughs tried to break the bakery and a planet-shaking blast from the skies nearly did it in, but the bakery was hope, and people who have hope will fight to keep it.This chapbook collects four stories about sustenance, all about the bakery, its people, and its influence. ″Degrees of Separation,″ ″Fortune’s Favors,″ and "Block Party" are reprints. The novelette ″Our Lady of Benevolence″ appears here for the first time.

     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?

    Loved it!"★★★ A clever mash of X-files, Tombstone, and Dresden Files! ★★★In 1885, President Grover Cleveland commissioned a special group of agents to investigate paranormal activities plaguing the nation. Unwilling to accept failure, he granted each the authority to operate outside the law. His directive was simple. No rules. No excuses. Just get it done.Remy Kincaid and his cynical steed, Fable, head to the town of Wharton, Texas, to investigate the disappearance of several young children. As clues lead them from a decrepit old house to an abandoned silver mine, they soon learn that an ancient evil is trying to release itself upon the world.★★★ If you enjoyed The Survivalist Series, you'll love The Watchman! ★★★

    War is now a horror from the past—until aliens arrive with 14,000 ships. They’ve come to wipe humanity from the universe and repopulate the planets with their own life forms.Mankind must learn to fight once more. This time for its very survival.

    Albert Snowden just wanted to be there for his niece, Emily, after the loss of her father. Being abducted by aliens, and then rescued by a mysterious being known as Evaran, has made that difficult. Despite their situation, they try to make the best of it while traveling through space, time, and beyond with Evaran and V, Evaran's trusty mobile artificial intelligence. With the use of Evaran’s time-traveling ship, the Torvatta, they will try to maintain timeline integrity while dealing with the challenges that brings.This box set contains the first three books in the Evaran Chronicles. If you like science fiction, time travel, technology, and adventure with a space opera bent, then this series is for you.---The Awakening - Book 1 of the Evaran ChroniclesA heavily damaged alien research vessel in the Andromeda galaxy is hurtling toward a planet. The aliens should not be there. They have been traveling through space and time, abducting apex predators and sticking them in virtual simulations for research. The problem is the virtual simulations are powering down, unleashing the specimens on the ship.Dr. Albert Snowden and his niece, Emily, were abducted by the aliens. They are visited by a mysterious being named Evaran in the last minutes of the virtual simulation. He has decided to interfere in this timeline-changing event and rescue them.Stopping the ship from crashing into the planet before getting to Evaran's ship is one issue. Navigating the apex predators on the loose is another. To make matters worse, Jerzan Graduul, infamous leader of the Bloodbore mercenary pack, has boarded the ship in search of salvage opportunities, and has noticed Evaran's ship. The hunt begins.---The Fredorian Destiny - Book 2 of the Evaran ChroniclesThe timeline is wrong. This is discovered when Dr. Albert Snowden and his niece, Emily, travel with Evaran to a galactic cultural exhibition event on Kreagus, the capital home world of the Kreagan Star Empire and galactic superpower near Earth. The Fredorians should be presenting an ancient artifact, known as the Arkaron, to the Kreagan emperor. The problem is they aren’t. Evaran has decided to step in and help the Fredorians achieve their destiny while stabilizing the timeline.They must find the three lost Arkaron crystals in order to assemble the Arkaron. To make matters worse, Seeros, a powerful industrialist, has a bounty on their heads, causing bounty hunters to harass them each step of the way.As if that weren’t enough, an unknown faction is hiring freelance mercenaries to hunt them down as well. Evaran is joined by others, and together, they will have to navigate these perils to assemble the Arkaron and achieve the Fredorian destiny.---The Purification - Book 3 of the Evaran ChroniclesThe past has changed, and the timeline has been updated.Dr. Albert Snowden, and his niece, Emily, experience this while traveling on Evaran’s temporally shielded space-and-time traveling ship. What they discover is that humanity has taken a different path, one that has made Evaran decide to interfere and change human history.Discovering what caused the change is one issue. Dealing with the nonhuman factions in Earth’s past is another.To make things worse, Dr. Snowden has to deal with a personal issue. It does not help that Emily is on a prison planet where she must survive, alone

    In between attending make-up magic classes, dragon training lessons, and simply learning her way around the big city of Areth, Tesa can't help but try to uncover the secret behind the symbol-engraved stones Berick used to enslave her. With all her new dragon rider friends away from the city searching for the stolen egg and kidnapped guard, Tesa must find new friends and allies as she searches for the answer to the spellstones. What she finds may put her--and the dragons--in more danger than ever before.

    Something ancient, powerful, and malevolent. It lurks in the shadows, assembling its forces, and getting ready to set the universe in flames. This Box Set contains the first 5 books of the Universe in Flames saga + a bonus novella. When the Star Alliance is attacked, ace pilot Lieutenant Chase Athanatos and his friends attempt to survive the total annihilation of their kind. Their struggle for survival brings them to a world far far away, a little planet called Earth. Little do they know that in doing so, they’ll expose humanity to the biggest scourge the universe has ever faced. Nothing is ever as it seems in this thrilling, action-packed Science Fiction Space Opera series. Greek mythology and fantasy elements add a dab of mysticism and originality to the intense and suspenseful adventures of Chase: a man unaware of his past, a man who must learn to get a grasp with what destiny and the Gods of Olympus have in store for him. Unwilling to let evil unleash their minions upon every soul in the universe and armed with his courage, convictions, as well as the help of the gods themselves, Chase fights not only for his own survival but for everyone's, on Earth and throughout the galaxy.

    Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. This volume collects 8 classic stories:WITCH OF THE DEMON SEAS (1951)DUEL ON SYRTIS (1951)SECURITY (1953)SENTIMENT, INC. (1953)THE SENSITIVE MAN (1954)THE CHAPTER ENDS (1954)THE VALOR OF CAPPEN VARRA (1957)INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1963)And if you enjoy this volume, don't forget to search your favorite ebook store for "Wildside Press Megapack" to see the more than 170 entries in the MEGAPACK™ ebook series, covering science fiction, fantasy, horror, mysteries, westerns, classics -- and much, much more!

    After all, he's not one of the handful of lucky lottery winners scheduled for rescue. But he did luck into a NexGenVR capsule, which means Jack can risk a one-way trip to the virtual reality world of Viridan Gate Online, a completely immersive online multiplayer fantasy role-playing game, or RPG. The transition to Viridian Gate Online (V.G.O) is irreversible, and will kill Jack's corporeal form. And once players transition fully into the world of V.G.O., the risks aren't over—from cutthroat fellow players to greedy developers eager to replicate the wealth discrepancies of Earth in virtual reality, V.G.O. is just as dangerous as the 'real world' was. If Jack can’t game the system, he’s going to be trading in a quick death for a long, brutal one… LitRPG books combine tropes and themes from role-playing games with sci-fi and fantasy elements to tell a unique story that's exciting and super-relevant to today's world. Jack's adventures in a cutthroat virtual reality fantasy world will grip fans of Blackmirror, Ready Player One, and The Stormlight Archive alike. With over 200,000 copies sold, this is one series you don't want to miss! Included in this box set: Cataclysm (VGO Book 1)Crimson Alliance (VGO Book 2)The Jade Lord (VGO Book 3)

    But when the government bans professional fighting, his life spirals out of control. Convicted of murder, he's sentenced to life in prison. But all of the felons he's ever known have disappeared from Earth, never to return. He's about to find out firsthand what happened to them. He'll have to stay alive amongst Earth’s most ruthless felons if he wants to survive … and become the first man to escape from Oz.

    But when a terrified woman falls through his bathroom ceiling, he's forced back into a life of gunfights, double agents and paranormal research. The secret he's been keeping for nearly four decades might reunite him with his lost love, or kill millions.This new short story by John August falls into the genre of paranoid "spy-fi" popularized by writers like Jorge Luis Borges and shows like The Prisoner and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.== What Others Say =="I really dug the story. Gave it a glance just to see, got totally hooked, and blazed on through to the end."-- Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen's Union) "The Variant" is both a good, fun, smart story and an interesting experiment in indie self-publishing for fiction."-- John Gruber, daringfireball.net== About the Author ==An excerpt of The Variant is available at johnaugust.com/variant About the AuthorJohn August is the screenwriter of eight feature films, including Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride. He wrote and directed the 2007 movie The Nines.He can be found on Twitter, @johnaugust

    On the night he decides to strike, his life, and his world, are forever changed. Alien scientists from across the cosmos, abduct and place Kazaka in deep storage for centuries. When they revive him with the intent to subject him to extraterrestrial evisceration, the ninja escapes. The shadow warrior then begins to hunt his captors, one by one, leading up to a battle that will shake the galaxy.The Bear That Fell From the StarsA different kind of alien terror. NOTE: This is a Novella of approx. 20,000 words, or about 60 pages.Science Fiction Fantasy and not hard SciFi.Some scenes of graphic violence.

    A society in decline, however, can sometimes fare worse than a society under assault. Caught in the killing fields and forced to fight, these remarkable people will attempt the impossible: they’ll try to escape a world now backsliding into a nightmarish landscape more reminiscent of the stone ages than the once famed coastal state of California.

    Keener senses, heightened awareness and an enhanced physical strength that could be called upon by his sheer will. Erik becomes involved with a team of high profile investigators and local police trying to locate a girl who was kidnapped in the middle of a playground amongst dozens of adults and children. None of the adults saw anything and what the children claim to have seen is too far fetched to be believed. The search evolves into a full-scale manhunt into the dark and desolate woodlands of the Hopedale Mountain. After a lethal encounter and a fatality, Erik, the investigators and police realize that what they're dealing with isn't a man and possibly isn't of this world. What they're dealing with is a sentient evil that has an appetite for young children.

     Milton Frederick was originally abducted from his apartment to help defend one batch of pacifistic aliens called The Collective against another set of homicidal aliens called Heliothropes…but he never quite made it that far. Instead, during the process where his human consciousness was ripped from his body and inserted into a massive metal contraption called a Station Core, the ship that he was being transported on blew up and he was sent hurtling through space. Crash-landing on an unknown planet with just a foot-and-a-half tall, foul-mouthed, nanite-formed AI guide called ALANNA to tell him what happened, Milton has to come to terms with his new existence as a giant metal egg, defend his hazardously-in-need-of-repair outer shell from the dangerous local wildlife (including blood-thirsty squirrels), and manage the unique radiation spewing from his damaged internal reactor – all while figuring out how the heck to get off the planet. All of his work building a “dungeon” underground, defending it with makeshift traps, and filling it with small Combat Units may work well enough against the random beasts wandering around, but they’re next to useless when something else even more dangerous shows up knocking on his door: people. Not humans, of course, but the local equivalent – Proctans – who are similar enough to Milton’s original species…though with one major difference. They all have unique special abilities that looks suspiciously like “magic”. However, there is an even bigger threat that looms on the horizon not only for Milton, but all the Proctans as well… Contains LitRPG/GameLit elements such as level progression and experience, optional tables, no harems, and a heavy Dungeon Core emphasis. Note: The optional stat tables tend to skew the percentages toward the back of the eBook. The locations can be a tad deceptive; while this box set is 562,000 words, stat tables comprise less than 8% of that total word count.