The bet pays off, resulting in a story that will be popular with book clubs and fun to discuss.” —Associated Press New York City, New Year’s weekend, 2001. Jillian Guthrie, a troubled young journalist, stumbles onto a tantalizing mystery: the same man, unaged, stands alongside Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, and Gandhi in three different photographs spanning eighty-five years of history.In another part of town, Will—an enigmatic thirty-three-year-old of immense charm, wit, and intelligence—looks forward to the new year with hope and trepidation. Haunted by his secret past and shadowed by a dangerous stranger, he finds himself the object of an intense manhunt spearheaded by an ambitious Vatican emissary and an elderly former UN envoy named Hanna.During the next forty-eight hours, a catastrophic event unites Will, Jillian, and Hanna—and puts them in the crosshairs of a centuries-old international conspiracy. Together, the three must unravel an ancient curse that stretches back two millennia and beyond, and face a primal evil that threatens their lives and thousands more.Award-winning science-fiction mastermind Kenneth Johnson blends epic adventure, romance, and evocative drama into an intense supernatural thriller rooted in one of the great untold legends of human history.

    He has one weekend to dive into an untested world full of intrigue, violence, and corruption to prove that Viridian Gate Online works, but the AIs running the game have their own plans for his soul. Set a year before the events of “Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm,” The Illusionist: Nomad Soul takes you back to when VGO was just a game, or so it seemed. From James A. Hunter—author of Viridian Gate Online, Rogue Dungeon, and War God's Mantle—and D.J. Bodden, author of The Black Year Series, comes an epic new entry into the Expanded Universe of Viridian Gate Online that you won't want to put down!

    No longer relegated to the fringes of literature, this explosive collection of the world’s best apocalyptic writers brings the inventors of alien invasions, devastating meteors, doomsday scenarios, and all-out nuclear war back to the bookstores with a bang.The best writers of the early 1900s were the first to flood New York with tidal waves, destroy Illinois with alien invaders, paralyze Washington with meteors, and lay waste to the Midwest with nuclear fallout. Now collected for the first time ever in one apocalyptic volume are those early doomsday writers and their contemporaries, including Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Lucius Shepard, Robert Sheckley, Norman Spinrad, Arthur C. Clarke, William F. Nolan, Poul Anderson, Fredric Brown, Lester del Rey, and more. Relive these childhood classics or discover them here for the first time. Each story details the eerie political, social, and environmental destruction of our world.

    They have created the Domains and there they plan to reside forever. Except, the nightmares of reality have followed them into their new quantum dimension and those nightmares threaten to destroy it all! Now it is up to one of them to help navigate the quantum platform known as EverRealm, a fantasy MMORPG of epic proportions, in order to complete a quest he neither wants to complete nor knows how. With the help of his friends, and a lot of luck, he will have to face trials and tribulations like he's never faced as a player! Because now it is no longer a matter of Game Over, but of life or death! Can he survive it all and come out a winner? The only way he'll know is if he plays the game to the bitter end!

    Seeking to atone, she joins the House of Reclamation, an organisation dedicated to rescuing ships in distress.But, stripped of her weaponry and emptied of her officers, she struggles in the new role she’s chosen for herself. When a ship goes missing in a disputed system, Trouble Dog and her new crew of misfits and loners, captained by Sal Konstanz, an ex-captain of a medical frigate who once fought against Trouble Dog, are assigned to investigate and save whoever they can.Meanwhile, light years away, intelligence officer Ashton Childe is tasked with locating and saving the poet, Ona Sudak, who was aboard the missing ship, whatever the cost. In order to do this, he must reach out to the only person he considers a friend, even if he’s not sure she can be trusted. What Childe doesn’t know is that Sudak is not the person she appears to be.Quickly, what appears to be a straightforward rescue mission turns into something far more dangerous, as Trouble Dog, Konstanz and Childe, find themselves at the centre of a potential new conflict that could engulf not just mankind but the entire galaxy.If she is to survive and save her crew, Trouble Dog is going to have to remember how to fight.

    Now, he’s being pursued by a homicidal interstellar tourist board, and calculating insurance dividends is as outdated as making stone axes. Sci-fi-hating technophobe Colin embarks on a desperate struggle to find a cure for his illness, as well as a place for himself in this strange new galaxy where toilets talk back, and door handles are a long-forgotten relic. Only by teaming up with his rescuer, hard-boiled, space-traveling archaeologist Tyresa Jak (that’s Doctor Jak to you), can Colin hope to succeed before time runs out. Along the way, this galactic odd-couple must evade the Erd Tourist Board - a powerful mega-corporation which will do anything to ensure the mythical Earth stays mythical - and deal with a crackpot religious cult who not only possess a cure for Colin’s illness, but who also believe there is more to this caveman from Earth than meets the eye.... Don't miss the start of this side-splitting intergalactic adventure that will keep you laughing into the night. It's perfect for fans of Guardians of the Galaxy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Space Team. Also available on Audible, narrated by Steve West.

    When the starship is attacked in hyperspace, Jacob is gifted power from interdimensional beings.  Jacob soon finds himself stranded on an alien planet with only one task: find the Revenge’s missing crew members. To do that, he’ll need to survive a world filled with hostile aliens.  Luckily he’s the most powerful human the universe has ever seen. This novel features cursing, rampant violence, and sex scenes between the main character and multiple women. Not for the kiddies.

     The gods should have agreed to fight the giants and let Ragnarök run its course and bring about the end of time. For a new world could only rise from the ashes of the old. But because the gods prophesied to die refused to take part, Yggdrasil—the World Tree—was forced to act before the stalemate led to the annihilation of the nine worlds and its very existence. And so I was born. One of the many seeds dispersed by the mighty World Tree, I was teleported through different planes and universes to find a new home where to settle. Eventually, I landed in a strange forest known as the Feverwood. However, this place is nothing like my home world. Here, there are no mighty Vikings or Valkyries, but humans, elves, orcs, and other strange creatures. If I want to flourish and carry on the World Tree’s legacy, I will have to grow my roots and expand my branches towards the sky. But if, at first, I rely on the ambient magic to power my growth, as my Mother did before me, I quickly learn that there’s a far more efficient way… This is the story of how I find how to attract adventurers into my mouth and absorb their raw essence as they succumb to the challenges I pit them against. This is the story of how I make the acquaintance of many a friend and foe, both mortals and gods. This is the story of how a stranger in a strange land must face many a peril to ensure its own survival. This is the story of the Tree Dungeon.

     The aging cyborg had never really recovered from being betrayed and enslaved by his superiors in the Army, and the final insult of being permanently classified as “defunct military ordnance” had been a bitter pill to swallow. Now, he spent most of his time drinking beer and working as a fixer for the crime families in 25th-century Boston. It was easy money if you were the kind of guy who was bullet-proof and could pick up a house. But then Lucia Ribiero stumbled into his favorite watering hole dragging a squad of bounty hunters behind her. Shadows from his own dark past, and old debts still unpaid conspired to drive the old war-horse out for one more mission. Like any good soldier, the mission is all that matters for Roland. Linked by a shared connection to her kidnapped father, the duo will face veritable armies of criminals, mutants, cyborgs, and corporate executives as they search for the missing man. The secrets of the Ribiero family are exposed as they approach the center of the labyrinth, and Lucia’s mental and physical issues present an even deeper mystery than her father’s disappearance. Roland will have to face the horror of his past one more time, and Lucia will need to get a grip on her future if they expect to survive a running battle with an entire galaxy’s worth of mad science gone awry; and ultimately prevent a terrible history from repeating itself.

    Billed as the first true alternate reality, Nova Terra runs parallel to the real world and promises to fulfill the fantasies and desires of those who dare plunge into its mysterious depths. In order to adjust to his new life of quests, skill mastery, and magic, Xavier will have to forget everything he knows. As he struggles to make the most of his new-found freedom, Xavier will have to learn to deal with a new body, new friends, and a new world that is much more than it seems. Nova Terra, your dreams, your world.

    He is flung into the future, where everything is different. Now, he has to make a name for himself, carve his own path in life. He decides to play a game, the biggest one in the world. A strategy game, focused on tactics, used to select the top managers of the largest international corporation. Now, he has to prove his mettle and earn a place for himself in the future... Watch as he enters the competition, chooses his class, creates an army, and shows everyone in this new, future world the spirit of a player from the 2010s. Will he be the champion in the end?

    The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game, with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy. They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

    Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she’s been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away—told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world’s population.Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she’s determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests…a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she’s successful, Zoey has no idea what she’ll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility’s walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning—but Zoey is ready for war.

    Standard MMO fare—or so Cerys Collins thought.As a long-time gamer and guild leader, Cerys has always wondered what it would be like to live in virtual reality. When her guild members convince her to try a new VRMMO, she discovers reality is far more complex than she knew.Chosen by the gods of another world, Cerys finds herself trapped between warring factions: a tyrannical human empire and an oppressed kingdom of demons. When she discovers her best friend has been dragged into this new world as well, Cerys is forced to choose between saving her friend or looking at the bigger picture.If Cerys is to be anything more than a pawn in the gods' game, she'll have to leverage everything she's learned on her home world and in past games, before it's too late.With a cocky incubus king vying for more than her loyalty, her quest won’t be an easy one.The Deck of Souls series contains some dark themes, profanity, violence, and adult relationships.

    Unlike the current line of MMORPGs and PVRMMORPG games on the market, FIVRMMORPG introduces a new gaming technology unlike anything experienced before. Choosing a Nightmare start to get ahead of the wave of new players starting the game, Jason finds himself alone in the wilds tasked with saving a group of refugees from goblin invaders. Although he manages to save the survivors that is just the beginning of his trials as he desperately fights to bring them back from the edge of annihilation. Jason is quickly swept up in the adventure as he struggles to build a home for his guildmates and the NPCs that he’s saved. As the trouble heats up, he quickly discovers that marauding goblins are the least of his concerns. Warning: This story contains adult situations, foul language, MMORPG-style violence and other fun things. Read at your own risk.