Deshler Dean faces this problem every day of his life.Dean is far more brilliant and productive when he's blackout drunk. In the last few months alone, he has invented a hamburger more addictive than crystal meth, scored a six-figure record contract for his terrible art rock band, and started dating a woman he doesn't even recognize. Worse yet, he has become entangled in the biggest war since the Allies took on Germany.When rival fast food chains duke it out for control over Dean's burger-inventing genius, Dean and his band mates plunge into the absurd world of corporate paranoia and greed. As the violence of the burger wars spills out onto the streets, it's up to them to win over the hearts (and stomachs) of the American people and save the country from the equivalent of a deep-fried nuclear warhead.With the humor of Christopher Moore and the madcap sprawl of Thomas Pynchon, Broken Piano for President is a comic masterpiece about the fast food industry, booze, and the necessity to choose happiness over work and security.

    He has no communication, limited power, and an unbreakable will to survive. His one goal: find his way BACK to his family. Shepard is an astronaut on his first mission to the International Space Station. When a violent blast of solar magnetic radiation leaves him stranded in orbit, he’s forced to use his wit and guile to find a way home. He has no idea what he’ll find when he gets there. SPACEMAN is a post-apocalyptic/dystopian tale that tells the survival story of a man and the family he left behind. It’s written with the help of former astronauts, NASA team members, and well-respected astrophysicists that give SPACEMAN a unique sense of detail and desperation.

    Sometimes things don’t quite go the way you planned. And sometimes you don’t plan. . . . This collection of sixteen stories (and one lonely poem) chart the many ways trouble can ensue. No actual human beings were harmed in the creation of this book.Stories from Eileen Gunn are always a cause for celebration. Where will she lead us? "Up the Fire Road" to a slightly alternate world. Four stories into steampunk’s heart. Into a very strange family gathering as they celebrate Christmas. Into the golem's heart. Never where we might expect.

    Together they learn the awesome power of the imagination to turn lies into truth, death into love, darkness into light...

    The Realm has degenerated into a harsh caste system and Middle Ages technology. Their religion strictly enforces the castes who can marry, and which children are allowed to live. Eric Born is a lapsed priest and a son of one of the noble families. Like all members of the priesthood, he is a very precise telekinetic, but he also has the rare gift of healing. Stifled by the backward ways of The Realm, he escapes to make a new life among the stars. Since then, he has established himself as a freelance computer engineer. He is employed by the Rhudolant Vitae, space traders who travel between star systems trading their technological and management skills for raw materials and political influence. The Vitae's deepest desire is to find their native world, from which they were forced to flee many centuries ago. When Eric Born discovers that The Realm is that very world, his loyalties are split.

    They are soon caught in a tempest of ancient magic and fierce battles all connected to ancient feuds and the cousins' own mysterious roots.

    Shawn, a magnetic rock star; Corey, part Indian, whose heritage gave the movement its name; Billy, a brilliant young scientist; and Joanna, a pretty runaway "army brat" who survives on pot and sex. Through the experiences of four young revolutionaries, this macabre and moving adventure brings an all-too-possible future into shattering focus.

    Her job sucks. Her apartment-the one with the unbreakable lease-has a ghost. And worst of all, her mother won't let up about her joining the "family business." Since that business is moving the spirits of the dead on to the next plane of existence and doesn't pay at all, Marie's not interested. She wants a normal job-a normal life. That's not too much to ask, is it? Apparently, it is. Even when she applies for the job of her dreams, Marie doesn't get what she wants. Well, not entirely. She does get the job-but she also gets another ghost. Farley Hewitt, the newly dead caretaker of the building, wants her to prove his death is not an accident, and she's pretty sure he's going to haunt her until she does. All she wants is normal. She isn't going to get it.

    He left behind a newly married sister and his estranged father. They received only one letter from him. As she lies dying in 1984, Leo Nolan's mother asks him to find her brother, Jack Radey, whom she hasn't seen or heard from in over fifty years. Leo does everything he can to locate his uncle, but can find no trace before his mother dies. And then a letter arrives. It is from Jack. It was sent a few weeks after the other letter - fifty years ago. Jack had just moved on in his search for work. Some time later another letter arrives from Jack, also postmarked in 1934. Jack was heading south. A final letter arrives - from Ashland, Kentucky. Jack had settled down there. Fifty years ago. Moved by these letters, windows on the youth of his mother and an uncle he never knew, Leo goes to Ashland. He finds a town that still bears the scars of the 1930s. He finds his love, a woman who, like Leo, has been disappointed by life but who is unwilling to let it make her bitter. And he finds Jack, a man pushed to desperate action, while Leo himself experiences the despair of the Great Depression as no one else has in over fifty years.

    James Ozryck has a monster in his head. All of his life the entity that he calls Catskinner has made him a fugitive, afraid to get too close to anyone, afraid to stay in one place for too long. Catskinner kills, without compassion and without warning, and is very good at it. Now James has learned that Catskinner is not the only monster in the world, a world that has suddenly become a far stranger and more dangerous place than he imagined. In order to survive he will have to become something more than a monster, he will have to learn what it means to be human.

    It's a game where legends come to life, the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred, and the impossible becomes - probable?Unicorn Magic is the 1st story in the Celtic Fey series set in Anthea Sharp's Feyland universe (with her kind permission). A stand-alone short story with a full plot arc, Unicorn Magic was first published in the anthology Chronicle Worlds: Feyland.This is a clean urban fantasy which is set in Scotland (and the faerie realm) and uses British English spelling and grammar.

    Fly in air balloons, drink mysterious and pleasant cocktails, smoke opium with the dregs of gnomish society. Or dream and speak of liberation for all the races. Fall in love and abscond into the caverns. It's up to you, because this is an adventure of your own choosing.

    No longer a handsome screen idol, Clark now makes his living as an unlicensed matrimonial private eye. When gorgeous April Lamotte contacts the low-rent gumshoe, he sees a golden opportunity to make some quick and easy cash. All he has to do is impersonate April’s wealthy,reclusive screenwriter husband, sign a contract for a new biopic, and then slip back into the shadows. But when someone tries to assassinate Clark and pass it off as a suicide, he realizes he’s gotten too deep into something deadly. And as more and more of the Hollywood elite start turning up dead, Clark must race to uncover the shocking truth behind the Bechmeir field’s origins, and expose a terrible secret that someone’s all too willing to kill for.