Recently, Kessinger Publishing's rare reprints has re-issued the book. The protagonist, Roger Stetworth, unwillingly joins a slave ship called the -Golden Hind- captained by Luke Chilton. (When Chilton demanded that Roger -sign aboard- he refused and was clubbed on the head and thrown overboard.) He is rescued by the -Hurst Castle- and doctored by a painfully stereotyped Irishman. The -Hurst Castle- is abandoned but does not founder in a gale and the crew, unable to get to him, are forced to leave Stetworth marooned aboard. The ship drifts into the center of the Sargasso Sea where Stetworth finds himself in a ships' graveyard in which survivors of previous shipwrecks still inhabit the forgotten ships. Stetworth must rely on his own ingenuity to get free from the choking sargasso weeds........ Thomas Allibone Janvier (July 16, 1849 - June 18, 1913) was an American story-writer and historian, born in Philadelphia of Provencal descent. Early life and marriage: Janvier received a public school education, then worked in Philadelphia for newspapers from 1870-81. In 1878 he married Catherine Ann Drinker (May 1, 1841- July 19, 1922), an artist who was the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and first teacher to Cecilia Beaux. Later in life, she accompanied her husband on his travels while writing books and translating books from the Provencale language. Many of Janvier's published works would be dedicated -To C. A. J.- New York: Janvier went to New York in 1881. From 1884-94, he lived in the Washington Square district of New York. A few years after arriving, he published the Ivory Black Stories, tales of artist life, which were reprinted in book form in 1885 as Color Studies. In them he pictured the life and color of what was then considered the Latin quarter of the city, with the old-fashioned French restaurants, the artist colony to the north, and the studios in Tenth Street where Abbey, Millet, F. Hopkinson Smith, Laffan and others made the Tile Club famous. He published many stories and articles in Harper's Magazine.[2] Travels and death: Janvier spent several years in Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, thereby gaining inspiration and material for much of his literary work. His travels in Mexico produced the Aztec Treasure House and his stories of Old New Spain. He and his wife also lived for three years in Avignon, Provence, France, where they became friends with Mistral and Felix Gras. Catherine A. Janvier's translations of the latter's work introduced him to English-speaking readers.His books from this period include An Embassy to Provence, Christmas Kalends of Provence and The South of France. He was made an honorary member of the Felibrige society in France, and of the Fol Lore Society of London, where he and his wife lived from 1897 to 1900, and the Century Club in New York. Janvier died in New York on June 18, 1913. He is interred in Moorestown, New Jersey. Literary family: Janvier's sister, Margaret Thomson Janvier (1844-1913), was born in New Orleans. Under the pen name Margaret Vandergrift she wrote many juveniles, among which are: The Absent-Minded Fairy, and Other Verses (1884); The Dead Doll, and Other Verses (1900); Under the Dog-Star (1900); and Umbrellas to Mend (1905). Janvier's niece, Emma P. Spicer, going by the stage name of Emma Janvier, was a well-known comedian on Broadway and elsewhere from the turn of the century until her death in the early 1920s. Janvier was also related to Philadelphia businessman and poet Francis De Haes Janvier.

    “An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean? In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.

    Donihe is the best kept secret of the bizarro fiction genre." - Carlton Mellick III, author of Adolf in Wonderland There once was an odd reclusive little man who was in love with his house. He loved this house not in the way that normal people love their homes. His was a more intimate love, like the love between two humans. He loved his house so much that he asked it to marry him, and he believed that his house happily replied with a yes. Unfortunately, their love was to be torn apart the day before their wedding, on the day of the great house holocaust. On this day, every house in the world collapsed for no explainable reason. It was as if they killed themselves, and took many of their occupants with them. Distraught and despairing over the death of his fiance, this man must go on a quest to find out what happened to his beloved home. On his quest: He will meet Tony, a self-declared superhero, who looks kind of like a black Man-At-Arms from the old He-Man cartoons and claims to protect the world from quasi-dimensional psychopomps with his powerful sexpounding abilities. He will meet Manhaus, who seems to be part man and part house. And, finally, he will venture to House Heaven, a world where houses live inside of bigger houses made of people.

    But visitors Gerald Sternbruck and Ernst Carlsberg soon realise that the still waters of the lake conceal a frightful evil that preys on flora, fauna - and human beings.Then they discover that the same evil first manifested itself before the valley was flooded - and may have been the basis for H.P. Lovecraft's classic story The Colour out of Space.For fifty years one waman has been planning her revenge on the monstrous force which caused the strange shimmering colours -- and sucks the very life from the people in its clutches....

    He contained it and buried it in cold storage deep beneath a little-used military repository.Now, after decades of festering in a forgotten sub-basement, the specimen has found its way out and is on a lethal feeding frenzy. Only Diaz knows how to stop it.He races across the country to help two unwitting security guards—one an ex-con, the other a single mother. Over one harrowing night, the unlikely trio must figure out how to quarantine this horror again. All they have is luck, fearlessness, and a mordant sense of humor. Will that be enough to save all of humanity?

    It’s the last place you should be. Gabriel doesn't know how it began. Nobody does, not even Kane, and he was President. Gabriel was on a tour of the White House with Mags and the rest of Miss Kimble’s first-graders when it happened. They fled in helicopters to a long-abandoned mountain bunker, even as the first of the missiles found their targets.Ten years have passed, and Gabriel still lives deep inside the mountain, waiting for the world to thaw. But outside the ash-storms continue to rage, and supplies are running low. The President says it will be okay, but Gabriel isn’t so sure. He’s their scavenger; he’s seen what it’s like out there.Then one day Gabriel finds a bloodstained map. The blood’s not a problem, nor are the frozen remains of the person it once belonged to. Gabriel’s used to seeing dead bodies; there's far worse to be found in any Walmart or Piggly Wiggly you care to wander into. Except this one he recognizes, and it shouldn’t be here. Now all Gabriel can think is how he's going to make it back to the bunker to let the President know what he's found.But the map Gabriel has found is the key to a secret, one that has been buried for a decade. Gabriel's about to learn that inside the mountain things are not as they seem. And to get Mags and the others out he will need to face the thing that terrifies him most.

    As one of the Gutter District’s nameless destitute, it has gone undiscovered that she has a unique talent: when Skyla looks at a person’s shadow she sees through it and into another world. She can see people’s fears, desires, their past sins--all as swimming, living creatures.Her mother has never told her the real reasons why they must remain hidden, never explained the true dangers that exist outside the city walls. But when her mother’s past catches up with them both, Skyla finds she must flee out of the city and into a world still recovering from a second Dark Age, a world of adults with secrets only she can see.For a stranger has recently moved into Bollingbrook, a man some call the Pope of the South, a witch hunter to some and a hero to others. When more children begin to disappear, suspicions are raised and an unlikely search party is formed to find Skyla in the hopes that they aren’t already too late.

    Carlton’s Prophets of the Ghost Ants explores a world in which food, weapons, clothing, art—even religious beliefs—are derived from Humankind’s profound intertwining with the insect world. In a savage landscape where humans have evolved to the size of insects, they cannot hope to dominate. Ceaselessly, humans are stalked by night wasps, lair spiders, and marauder fleas. And just as sinister, men are still men. Corrupt elites ruthlessly enforce a rigid caste system. Duplicitous clergymen and power-mongering royalty wage pointless wars for their own glory. Fantasies of a better life and a better world serve only to torment those who dare to dream. One so tormented is a half-breed slave named Anand, a dung-collector who has known nothing but squalor and abuse. Anand wants to lead his people against a genocidal army who fight atop fearsome, translucent Ghost Ants. But to his horror, Anand learns this merciless enemy is led by someone from his own family: a religious zealot bent on the conversion of all non-believers . . . or their extermination.A mix of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadow of the Apt, Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, and Phillip Pullman’s Golden Compass, this is a powerful new addition to the genre.

    This should be a time of rest, of contemplation and reconnection with his elderly father, a chance to recharge in the fresh air of the remote village. However, grim nightmares and daytime visions of hellish environments populated by insidious creatures serve only to fray his already ragged nerves. A chance encounter with a fellow sufferer leads to an unlikely alliance as imaginary threats suddenly become manifest, and the entire village falls under the sway of the Black Star. As neighbours become enemies and the world around him crumbles, Ben must search for the truth but, more importantly, he must be prepared to accept it. Black Star, Black Sun – an unsettling new novella from Rich Hawkins, the author of the critically acclaimed novel, The Last Plague.

    Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication.In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans—a single mother disconcerted by her daughter's menacing "smart" toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a "pacification unit" go haywire—but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late.When the Robot War ignites—at a moment known later as Zero Hour—humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united. Robopocalypse is a brilliantly conceived action-filled epic, a terrifying story with heart-stopping implications for the real technology all around us ... and an entertaining and engaging thriller unlike anything else written in years.

    From this moment on, their lives become webs of deceit and revelation as they vie to outwit and expose one another.Their rivalry will take them to the peaks of their careers, but with terrible consequences. In the course of pursuing each other's ruin, they will deploy all the deception their magicians' craft can command--the highest misdirection and the darkest science.Blood will be spilled, but it will not be enough. In the end, their legacy will pass on for generations...to descendants who must, for their sanity's sake, untangle the puzzle left to them.

    So has her talent for clever dialogue, and pointed social commentary with a light touch.The Anvil of the World is her first fantasy novel, a journey across a fantastic landscape filled with bizarre creatures, human and otherwise. It is the tale of Smith, of the large extended family of Smiths, of the Children of the Sun. They are a race given to blood feuds, and Smith was formerly an extremely successful assassin. Now he has wearied of his work and is trying to retire in another country, to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him.His problems begin when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from the inland city of Troon to the seaside city of Salesh. The caravan is dogged with murder, magic, and the brooding image of the Master of the Mountain, a powerful demon, looking down from his mountain kingdom upon the greenlands and the travelers passing below. In Salesh, Smith becomes an innkeeper, but on the journey he befriended the young Lord Ermenwyr, a decadent demonic half-breed. Each time Ermenwyr turns up, he brings new trouble with him.The outgrowth of stories Baker has been writing since childhood, as engaging as Tolkien and yet nothing like him, Smith's adventure is certainly the only fantasy on record with a white-uniformed nurse, gourmet cuisine, one hundred and forty-four glass butterflies, and a steamboat. This is a book filled with intrigue, romance, sudden violence, and moments of emotional impact, a cast of charming characters, and echoes of the fantasy tradition from Lord Dunsany and Fritz Leiber to Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny.

     NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLYSet in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.   Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.   The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.   Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.Praise for The Games   “Blends the best of Crichton and Koontz.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)   “Outstanding . . . very like something Michael Crichton might have written . . . [a] bold mix of horror and SF . . . Expect big things from [Ted] Kosmatka.”—Booklist (starred review)   “Kosmatka successfully captures the thrill of groundbreaking technology. . . . The pleasure of his polished, action-packed storytelling is deepened by strong character development. This near-future SF thriller . . . seems destined for the big screen.”—Library Journal (starred review)

    Gripping, unnerving, exhilarating, and haunting, Sleepless is well worth staying up for.What former philosophy student Parker Hass wanted was a better world. A world both just and safe for his wife and infant daughter. So he joined the LAPD and tried to make it that way. But the world changed. Struck by waves of chaos carried in on a tide of insomnia. A plague of sleeplessness.Park can sleep, but he is wide awake. And as much as he wishes he was dreaming, his eyes are open. He has no choice but to see it all. That's his job. Working undercover as a drug dealer in a Los Angeles ruled in equal parts by martial law and insurgency, he's tasked with cutting off illegal trade in Dreamer, the only drug that can give the infected what they most crave: sleep.After a year of lost leads and false trails, Park stumbles into the perilous shadows cast by the pharmaceuticals giant behind Dreamer. Somewhere in those shadows, at the nexus of disease and drugs and money, a secret is hiding. Drawn into the inner circle of a tech guru with a warped agenda and a special use for the sleepless themselves, Park thinks he knows what that secret might be. To know for certain, he will have to go deeper into the restless world. His wife has become sleepless, and their daughter may soon share the same fate. For them, he will risk what they need most from him: his belief that justice must be served. Unknown to him, his choice ties all of their futures to the singularly deadly nature of an aging mercenary who stalks Park.The deeper Park stumbles through the dark, the more he is convinced that it is obscuring the real world. Bring enough light and the shadows will retreat. Bring enough light and everyone will see themselves again. Bring enough light and he will find his way to the safe corner, the harbor he's promised his family. Whatever the cost to himself.It is July 2010.The future is coming.Open your eyes.

    To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future.Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug that took his mother from him. Too bad his contract has been purchased by Alexander Bishop III, whose ultra-rich family is the brains (and money) behind Dociline and the entire Office of Debt Resolution. When Elisha refuses Dociline, Alex refuses to believe that his family’s crowning achievement could have any negative side effects—and is determined to turn Elisha into the perfect Docile without it.