But the haunted city, divided by warring religious groups, offers him no refuge from guilt and grief.As he wanders through the streets and the archaeological sites, a mysterious old woman appears to him, delivering messages that seem beyond comprehension. Then a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls, kept hidden by an elderly innkeeper, appears to offer the key to understanding the woman's pronouncements.Perhaps the spirit of Mary Magdelene is trying to reveal to Tom the hidden history of the Resurrection. And perhaps the truth is even stranger…

    She can see things no one else can, but can only draw them with her one webbed hand. Several generations have passed since North America was struck by a meteor that changed life forever. Now, Leora lives safely locked inside the walls of Village Three. Only the guards and croptenders are allowed out, where the world is said to be undeveloped and dangerous. Leora's heard stories of the ferocious birmbas -- half bear, half gorilla -- that resulted from the meteor. Mutants cannot be trusted.But Leora herself is considered a "defective" with her hidden hand and gift. When she risks her life to free a baby birmba, she finds the courage to escape beyond the tyrannical walls without knowing what she may find.

    Donning the guise of his online alter ego, Max Kool, Burroughs transforms himself into one of the hippest cybernetic surfers on the InfoBahn. "Bethke has taken the computer industry and thrown it in a blender . . . savagely funny."--"Seattle Weekly."

    All the environmental and communications systems are still running ... but their operation remains a mystery. When one member of the team tries to prove his crazy quantum black hole theory about how the alien communications unit works, he inadvertently unleashes an astrophysical time bomb that threatens the very existence of the Red Planet. Hugo Award Winner

    A vagrant betrays a priest's kindness by stealing an artifact from the church--unaware that it possesses incalculable power capable of bringing the world to the edge of chaos.

    Testimonies abound of these ‘angels’ and their hybrid offspring, the ‘Nephilim’ giants. These mighty ‘gods’ quickly rose to power, and the ancient world came alive with industry and culture. People who lived for hundreds of thousands of years as hunters and gatherers suddenly began settling in one place, cultivating the land and even governing themselves. They invented irrigation, the wheel and algebra. Yet amidst all this progress, an undercurrent of terror was spreading like wildfire, carrying whispers of ‘djinn,’ ‘daeva’ and ‘demons.’ The Watchers were supposed to do just that: watch. But humankind proved far too tempting and they ‘fell’ to earth, taking wives and even producing children. But their children grew into unruly giants whose souls didn’t ascend like human souls when they die, but remained here on earth. These errant souls haunt the earth to this day. They are the ‘djinn,’ the ‘hidden ones,’ also known as ‘daeva’ and ‘demon.’ They have one purpose—to live. But to live they need bodies. This chain of events has now reached the point where the djinn need more than just our bodies to survive. They must take back control of the earth, just as in the days when they ruled as gods. The Hidden Ones (book one) As CEO of her own thriving company, Nadia Adeire is flush with success, but a secret society dating back to the Essenes believes her to be one of the ancient djinn—the notorious demoness of Hebrew legend, Lilith. What’s more, they have reason to believe that she’s plotting a catastrophic attack on the world. Nadia is snatched from her ‘perfect’ life and caught in a maze between a present day disaster and the ancient legends of the djinn. The only way out is to retrace the steps of her deceased grandmother, Helene. The deeper Nadia delves into the past, the harder it will be for her to emerge unscathed. But it’s the only way to stop this impending disaster that was set in motion five thousand years ago!

    The only person who isn't afraid of Karen is her publishing house's best selling romance star-Hope Desiree LaFrance, a.k.a. hunky writer Steven McCord. And he has a few plans to redeem his wicked editor...he'll start by planting kisses on those full lips and take expert editorial direction from there...Instruction In Seduction - Jamie Denton Eden Matthews is a good cop with a bad reputation...for being a zero between the sheets. Cop-on-the-edge Jackson Hunt has a bad reputation...for being an absolutely legendary lover. Determined to tap into her inner vixen, Eden blackmails Jackson into teaching her what it takes to be a wicked woman...Wicked Ways - Susanna Carr Faking a wild life for the sake of her clients currently has Peyton Lovejoy in the bathroom stall of a male strip joint, making a frantic call to...the 24-hour public library hotline. Mike Ryder is certainly intrigued by Peyton's desperate questions (How does one tip a guy in a thong?) and completely captivated by the idea of answering all her sexually charged questions...

    Led by a dreamer who followed the spirit of the wolf, a handful of courageous men and women dared to cross the frozen wastes to find an untouched, unspoiled continent. Set in what is now Alaska, this is the magnificent saga of the vision-filled man who led his people to an awesome destiny, and the courageous woman whose love and bravery drove them on in pursuit of that dream.A sweeping epic of prehistory, People of the Wolf is another compelling novel in the majestic North America's Forgotten Past series from New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear

    The country's at war, and professional baseball needs able-bodied men. Danny's headed for Highbridge, Georgia - home of the Goober Pride peanut butter factory and the Highbridge Hellbenders, a Class C farm club in the Chattahoochee Valley League. He's a scrappy player with one minor quirk: a violent encounter on the train to Georgia has rendered him mute, his vocal cords tied up in knots. Danny's idiosyncrasy, however, is nothing compared to that of his new Hellbender roommate, an erudite seven-foot giant by the name of Jumbo Hank Clerval. With his yellow eyes, strangely scarred face, and sausage-sized fingers, Hank seems to have been put together in a meat-packing plant. But he plays a mean first base and can hit the ball a mile. With the Hellbenders in a pennant race as hot as the relentless Georgia sun, the eloquent Clerval forms a special kinship with the speechless kid from Oklahoma. Danny soon realizes that Hank is not an ordinary man but something more complex...more mysterious than he'd imagined. These two very different ballplayers forge a bond as the season moves inexorably toward its dramatic, and ultimately violent, conclusion. Both want a shot at the major leagues and both want to know what it's like to be a man. But they are about to discover how ambition and desire can turn even the gentlest soul into the worst kind of monster. At turns funny, tragic, and ultimately uplifting, Brittle Innings is a brilliant evocation of a uniquely American drama: a season-long contest in which fantasies are engaged, heroes are created and destroyed, and innocence is lost forever.

    It begins - or does it? - when Caspar, a genius, poor of course, and resentful at that, decides to use his "time machine" to bring back a modest fortune. It begins - or maybe it doesn't - with a mysterious bequest to a secret Otherhood charged with preserving and extending the British Empire at any cost. From the bold colonial days of empire-builder Cecil Rhodes through the wide-eyed and wondrous possibilities of the present to a strange and haunting future of magi and angels, of men and many races other than our own, John Crowley's time-travel masterpiece surfs bravely along "the infinite, infinitely broken coastline of Time" to tell a story that takes place neither here nor there, but everywhen.

    It's an election year, and what better way to celebrate than to cast your vote for the one candidate who'll tell it like it is. Born on a planet populated by talking waterfowl, Howard the Duck found himself trapped in a world he never made: ours Howard was the archetypal outsider, able to see through the absurdities of human society in the 1970s with uncanny accuracy and an acerbic wit. His adventures presented writer Steve Gerber with a platform from which to engage in an ongoing critique of contemporary fools and pretenders, from power-mad capitalist wizard Pro-Rata to cult leader Reverend Joon Moon Yuc to the dreaded Doctor Bong Experience for yourself the complete comic adventures of Howard in this Omnibus collection, reprinting his first appearances and the entire run of his first series. Collecting stories from Adventures Into Fear #19, Man-Thing #1, Giant-Size Man-Thing #4-5, Howard the Duck #1-33, Marvel Treasury Edition #12, and Marvel Team-Up #96.

    Now, in SHAMAN, he brings our past to life as never before.There is Thorn, a shaman himself. He lives to pass down his wisdom and his stories -- to teach those who would follow in his footsteps.There is Heather, the healer who, in many ways, holds the clan together.There is Elga, an outsider and the bringer of change.And then there is Loon, the next shaman, who is determined to find his own path. But in a world so treacherous, that journey is never simple -- and where it may lead is never certain.

    Separated from his real father and home in London, he's come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone, trying to master the skateboard, while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all, his once-vibrant mother has grown listless and weary, no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room. But on a damp and chilly evening, an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea, cakes, and sympathy . . . and the key to a secret, bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human machinery that once ran a home, and drawn ever deeper into a lost realm of spirits and memory. Here below the suffocating truths, beneath the pain and unhappiness, he finds an escape, and quite possibly a way to change everything. A richly evocative, poignantly beautiful modern-day ghost story, The Servants marks the triumphant return of Michael Marshall Smith—the first novel in a decade from the multiple award-winning author of Spares.

    Only one in two thousand survive the virus, and these "Survivors" are rarely left unaffected. By 2038, only 38 million people remain on Earth. Most of them live in small communities, ever fearful of outsiders who might bring the deadly Flu."Ceej Kane lives with his uncle and his Survivor sister Harryette in an abandoned hotel on the rim of the Grand Canyon. His quiet, boring life suddenly becomes a desperate adventure when Uncle and Harryette disappear. Searching for them, Ceej and his only friend, Tim, are attacked by the Kinka, a renegade band of half-mad Survivors who spread the Flu to make more of their own. Worse yet, it appears that Harryette has joined them.Fleeing deep into the Canyon, a narrow land of ghosts and ancient secrets, Ceej and Tim meet Bella, a mysterious Hopi girl. She has been searching the canyon for the Sipapuni, a mystical portal that the Hopi believe leads to another world. Tim thinks Bella is crazy, but Ceej is not so sure. Maybe there is a way out of this Flu-ravaged world. But first they must find out what happened to Uncle, and they must save Harryette from the Kinka -- if she wants to be saved.As with his earlier novels, "Mr. Was" and "Stone Cold," acclaimed author Pete Hautman pushes the boundaries of young adult fiction. Combining action, science fiction, and spirituality, "Hole in the Sky" is the rarest of novels: a thrilling page-turner that will make you think.

    Having dreamt this world into being, the wizard called 'Talking Man' falls in love with what he has made and retires there. He lives in a house trailer on a Kentucky hillside close by his junkyard, and he only uses magic on the rare occasions he can't fix a car the other way. He'd be there still if his jealous co-dreamer Dgene hadn't decided to undo his creation and return this world to nothingness. When Talking Man lights out to stop her, his daughter Crystal and chance-acquaintance William Williams give chase into a West that changes around them. The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways.A World Fantasy Award nominee"A genuinely fresh imagination at work!" —Michael Moorcock"Any novel that encompasses John Deere tractors, tobacco planting in the South, wizards at the end of Time, a six-mile wide Mississippi Canyon, singing magic, and a '62 Chrysler racing to the North Pole is covering an awful lot of ground ... Bisson covers that ground as if it were the most natural thing in this world, or any other." —Guy Gavriel Kay"The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways. A novel of the New South with a liberal does of the Old ... fantastic and gothic, charming, literate ... teasingly allusive and very entertaining!" —Publishers Weekly"An action-filled romp through a surreal landscape of ever-changing America." —Los Angeles Times"Bisson has dumped magic into non-urban America, and writes about it all with brilliance and poetry." —Asimov'sAbout the Author: Best known for his short stories "macs," "They're Made out of Meat" and "Bears Discover Fire," Terry Bisson has won every major award in SF, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon and Locus awards, and France's Gran Prix de l'Imaginaire. He lives in California.