He needs to go into hiding until he can afford the surgery to get a new face. All the cash he had left, he invested to buy a hacked virtual reality collar off the black market. For a wanted man such as himself, this is the only way to make any kind of money without further jeopardizing his location and identity. There’s a problem though. When he first logs into Eternal War Online and chooses his faction, the network detects his unauthorized device and generates a bunch of critical errors. Immediately, there’s a hotfix that is applied and which erases all his selections. John is sent into the Eternal Battlefield, the highest level PvP area of the game—obviously, with no chance of survival. Limited to one character by collar, John finds himself in a dire situation. With no faction to back him up, he’s a free target for everyone. And with no fighting skills and no gear (except for a pair of cotton briefs), he’s no match for any of the players. John will keep dying and respawning in that impossible location. But as he tries to keep to the shadows and stay alive, he will soon find that his strange predicament is not without benefits. For one, his lack of ties to any faction allows him to loot every corpse—which will lead him to unlock secret classes, like: Salvager and Smuggler. Secondly, while every faction has its own language that prevents players from different groups from talking to each other, he’s not restricted by that constraint and can understand everyone. Unable to join the fight, as every blow sustained results in his instadeath, John will discover that his only chance to start earning some cash will be to partner up with the criminal underworld in the game and set up a salvaging operation. For a fee, he will loot you and return your soul-bound items—allowing you to skip the 6 hour waiting period before they materialize back in your inventory. Also, he will experiment with crafting and creating weapons and enchantments that will start to shake things up in the game. Obviously, not everyone will take kindly to his bold moves and John will attract the wrath of a few powerful players. But then, you can’t expect to please everyone when you’re making a name for yourself as a Merchant of Death!

    But when a stranger offers him an unusual coin, he begins to understand alchemy a little better, and suddenly thinks that it could be a way to make a living after all.Marco’s problem is that fate doesn’t plan for his life to fit that plan, at least not at Algornia’s shop in the Lion City. An evil force is rising, and sending its destructive energy out to scour kingdoms and cities for some unknown purpose. Marco becomes an inadvertent pawn in the machinations of the evil, when he is caught up in the violence and drama of a Corsair raid, and taken away from everything – the Lion City, Algornia’s shop, even Constance the model.There are undreamt of allies and friends and opportunities though, and escape is possible. Starting over a new life is not quite as easy however, as Fate starts to hunt Marco down, demanding that he live up to the challenges that are thrown his way, as a champion begins to emerge to face the brunt force of evil.The Gorgon’s Blood Solution is the first volume in Alchemy’s Apprentice, a new fantasy series by Jeffrey Quyle.

    In lushly evocative language, Smart recounts her love affair with the poet George Barker with an operatic grandeur that takes in the tragedy of her passion; the suffering of Barker's wife;the children the lovers conceived. Accompanied in this edition by The Assumption of the Rogues and Rascals, a short novel that may be read as its sequel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept has been hailed by critics worldwide as a work of sheer genius.

    In the chaos following World War III, the Patriarch of the Church of the Resurrection rebuilt Earth's society into a collection of over 500 independent city-states. With alien technology that gave him complete control over the Earth's orbital space, the Patriarch outlawed war, and introduced the Constructed Reality MMORPG Primacy Online. He only allowed the city-states to engage in military conflicts with one another inside of the game. City-state leaders that attempted to ignore Church Canon were destroyed, along with their armies, by the Church's orbital particle cannons. For more than a thousand years, there have been no wars fought on the Earth's soil. The release of Primacy Online VI: Legacy of Balor signals the beginning of World War IX. Each city-state will lock 50,000 draftees into cryogenic capsules and upload their minds into a character sheathe in the game. Until the armistice conditions have been reached, they will play Primacy Online in War Mode, with the death of the character sheathes meaning their real deaths, but this time there is a twist to the World War. Every still living perma-banned cheater from Primacy Online will be a special draftee for World War IX. They will be organized into a special contingent in the service of the Church of the Resurrection. Patrick Armagh is terminally ill. Like a large number of other Primacy Online players, he is afflicted with an incurable nervous system disorder. He has less than five years to live and should be exempted from the draft, but five years ago, he was given a permanent ban from Primacy Online for cheating. Along with the other perma-banned cheaters, he will be forced to play Primacy Online VI: Legacy of Balor in War Mode, but Patrick's actual method of cheating was never discovered. Morgan Danan, Speaker of the City of Mann, and the acknowledged number one player of Primacy Online has deal for Patrick. With her help and his undiscovered cheat, he has the chance to become a virtual God within Primacy Online. When you are already as good as dead, there is nothing better than the chance to spend your last days as a living god. What could possibly go wrong?

    

    Complete, actual love letters of great men like Lord Byron, John Keats and Voltaire. Leaders like Henry VIII, George Washington, and Napoleon, who wrote to his beloved Josephine, "I awake consumed with thoughts of you..." Artists like van Gogh, Mozart, and Beethoven, who famously penned, "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved..." Dozens of intimate letters, coupled with over a score of period illustrations. Plus fascinating biographies, and insights into the couples' relationships-how they got there, the obstacles they faced, and what happened next. Poet warriors, from the first through the twentieth century, including: Ovid, Sir Walter Raleigh, Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Shelley, Robert Browning, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Pierre Curie, George Bernard Shaw, Jack London, Admiral Peary, Woodrow Wilson, and many more.

    Young Harry Monster has waited all year And now Halloween is almost here He knows just what he wants to be A pirate – the terror of the high sea!

    With his messages going beyond the centuries, Mawlana is a guide and a leader who, ages ago, told the unchanging rules of all times. Rumi is primarily an intellectual, scientist and lawyer speaking Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Greek and Hebrew languages, secondly the greatest poet of all times with his poems on love, justice and freedom accompanied by mystical passion and pain, and above all a universal wise man and a philosopher. He interprets people, humanity, life and permanent values in a holistic approach and brings forward recipes for the problems and dilemmas of all people.In this book, readers will find a pearl of inspiration from the source of eternal wisdom for each day of year.

    Goodman & Robert A. Spicer from an original story by George S. Clason ; illustrated by Joseph Feher.-WorldCat

    The anthology - the 22nd of its kind - is introduced by Jeannette Winterson. If you buy only one poetry book this year, this deserves to be it.

    In a cruel twist of Fate, Susie discovers she is carrying Danny's child and, shunned by his parents, she turns to her mother for support. Louise Ingram, widowed during the First World War, knows how hard it is to bring up a family alone, but with the help of her eldest daughter, Martha, who lives next door, they manage to survive. When little Rosie is born there is no doubt that she is Danny's daughter, but it is destined to take many more years of heartache before the two families are united again...

    104 pages of gossiping, loving and pestering of the British upper class, accompanied by illustrations, will definitely not disappoint.

    Who are they? They are him and her. They are you and me. They are rowing to salvage what remains of themselves. They are rowing to remember the fun we’ve had."Michael Seidlinger is a homegrown Calvino, a humanist, and wise and darkly whimsical. His invisible cities are the spires of the sea where we all sail our coffins in search of our stories."--Steve Erickson, author of Zeroville“Melding the static, high-concept premise of two humans floating alone on a coffin in a sea devoid of all else with stark and meditative prose, The Fun We've Had evokes a highly unexpected experience, somewhere between Beckett's most hopeless solipsists and the mysterious energy of a child's Choose Your Own Adventure-era dream.”--Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year and Three Hundred Million“It is obvious that Michael J Seidlinger had a great deal of fun writing The Fun We've Had. What more could a reader ask for?”--Michael Kimball, author of Big Ray“The best poets are writing poetry no matter what they are writing, creating entirely new and weird spaces. There is no doubt Seidlinger has made one of the weirdest spaces we will ever inhabit. In The Fun We’ve Had, every visible thing is a love of disturbing tremors, keeping ahead of our ever-curious eyes, hoping to savor every line. What a magnificent book.”--CAConrad, author of The Book of Frank"Seidlinger’s imagination is a sea unto itself, the reader riding these rollicking waves. This book will have you clutching pages as though they’re life vests. Fans of Calvino and Shelley Jackson will dig the slow submerge into this crazy romp."--Joshua Mohr, author of Damascus"Michael J Seidlinger writes with the kind of weird, wonderful, joyful abandon that reminds the reader that world is still the great unknown. In The Fun We’ve Had, he examines the long blank space between life and death, fills it with love and loss and boats made of coffins, with people clinging to life and using the weight of the past as ballast. This is a fun read, true; but it's also a true read, and that's what makes it so beautifully sad."--Amber Sparks, author of The Desert Places and May We Shed These Human Bodies“Ready for an analogy? Here goes: When you need to give a dog a pill, you don’t just jam it down his throat, you wrap that pill in something yummy, like, say, ham. Michael J Seidlinger understands that this principle extends to people and books. So he’s got this pill he wants you to swallow, right? That pill is the truth about love and death and strife and, more generally, the messy mysterious business of being human, and also of being nothingness. Pretty heavy, right? Big old horse pill. But then Seidlinger, no fool, wraps it in the yummy slow-smoked maple goodness of his humor. He obviously had a fine time writing this book, which is precisely the reason you’ll have a fine time reading it.”–Ron Currie Jr., author of Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles

    How does the antique taxidermy in a natural science museum relate to the living birds outside the window? How do the opals found by campers, stored in mineral oil to conserve the water trapped inside, relate to the water table? “My practice is observation. How do relationships illuminate?” Using such models as Joseph Cornell’s box constructions, crazy quilts, and specimen displays, Tevis places fragments in relationship to each other in order to puzzle out lost histories, particularly those of women. Throughout The Wet Collection, the narrator navigates the peril and excitement of an outward journey complicated by an inward longing for home.

    Poetry never goes out of style. An ancient writing form found in civilizations across the world, poetry continues to inform the way we write now, whether we realize it or not—especially in social media—with its focus on brevity and creating the greatest possible impact with the fewest words. Poetry 101 is your companion to the wonderful world of meter and rhyme, and walks you through the basics of poetry. From Shakespeare and Chaucer, to Maya Angelou and Rupi Kaur, you’ll explore the different styles and methods of writing, famous poets, and poetry movements and concepts—and even find inspiration for creating poems of your own. Whether you are looking to better understand the poems you read, or you want to tap into your creative side to write your own, Poetry 101 gives you everything you need!