This is the complex and compelling tale of the early life of Regis Hastur, Darkover’s greatest monarch. But Heritage also spins the terrifying and heartbreaking story of those who sought to control the deadly Sharra Matrix and tells how Lew Alton met and lost his greatest love, Marjorie Scott. This is the unforgettable showdown between those Darkovan lords who would bargain away their world for the glories of Terran science and those who would preserve the special matrix powers that are at once the prize and the burden of the Darkover.Sharra’s Exile: The most dangerous magical implement on all of Darkover was the infamous, legendary Sharra Matrix. Embodying the image of a chained woman wreathed in flames, it was the last remaining weapon of the Age of Chaos—an era of uncontrolled laran warfare which had almost destroyed all life on Darkover. The Sharra Matrix has been exiled offworld to one of the far-flung planets of the Terran Empire, in the protective custody of one who had suffered gravely from its use: Comyn Lord Lew Alton. But when Lew was called back to Darkover to contend for his rights, he had no choice but to bring this dangerous matrix back with him, and once Sharra Matrix was back, her flaming image spread far and wide, setting in motion events which would change the lands, the seven Domains, and the entire future of Darkover.

    One thing is clear: the five inhabited worlds of the sector are on the brink of civil war and the once peaceful coexistence of the three leading races -- human, Selonian, and Drallan --  has come to an end.

    Pull up a chair, grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths...and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.Callahan's Crosstime Saloon contains the following stories, virtually all of which were published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact: * "The Guy With the Eyes" * "The Time-Traveler" * "The Centipede's Dilemma" * "Two Heads Are Better Than One" * "The Law Of Conservation of Pain" * "Just Dessert" * "A Voice is Heard in Ramah..." * "Unnatural Causes" * "The Wonderful Conspiracy"

    Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars. Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.

    Ravaged 10,000 years earlier by war, Earth was reclaimed by its space-dwelling offspring as a planet of landscaping and tombstones. None of them fully human, Fletcher, Cynthia, and Elmer journey through this dead world, discovering human traits and undertaking a quest to rebuild a human world on Earth.

    Author of The World at the End of Time, his latest novel features Dan Dannerman, a poorly paid government agent in the not-too-distant future. Dannerman discovers aliens on an abandoned space station and is drawn into a conflict that encompasses the universe. According to one of its protagonists, the war Dannerman blunders into centers on what "ordinary people have been used to calling 'Heaven.'" A sequel is promised.

    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

    Released in September 2008, it’s limited to 1,200 copies, and will be available at UK Games Day, from the Black Library webstore, and at the 2009 US Games Days, until stock runs out.Set between the events of Only in Death and the forthcoming novel, Blood Pact, The Iron Star follows Colonel–Commissar Gaunt and the Tanith First and Only across an unknown and mysterious warzone. Here, they face the their old foes, the Blood Pact. But how are long–dead Ghosts able to fight at Gaunt’s side against the enemy, and who are the watchers? The key to it all lies in unravelling the mystery of the iron star.

    Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 are faced with their most challenging mission yet—rescuing renowned scientist Zefram Cochrane from captors who want to use his skills to conquer the galaxy. Meanwhile, ninety-nine years in the future on the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Picard must rescue an important and mysterious person whose safety is vital to the survival of the Federation. As the two crews struggle to fulfill their missions, destiny draws them closer together until past and future merge—and the fate of each of the two legendary starships rests in the hands of the other vessel...

    New challenges to galactic peace have arisen. And Luke Skywalker hears a voice from his past. A voice with a warning. Beware the dark side….The Rebel Alliance has destroyed the Death Star, defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, and driven the remnants of the old Imperial Starfleet back into barely a quarter of the territory that they once controlled. Leia and Han are married, are expecting Jedi twins, and have shouldered heavy burdens in the government of the new Republic. And Luke Skywalker is the first in a hoped-for new line of Jedi Knights.But thousands of light years away, where a few skirmishes are still taking place, the last of the Emperor's warlords has taken command of the remains of the Imperial fleet. He has made two vital discoveries that could destroy the fragile new Republic—built with such cost to the Rebel Alliance. The tale that emerges is a towering epic of action, invention, mystery, and spectacle on a galactic scale—in short, a story that is worthy of the name Star Wars.

    Now the dark side of the Force threatens to overwhelm the light, and only an ancient Jedi prophecy stands between hope and doom for the entire galaxy.On the green, unspoiled world of Naboo, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, arrive to protect the realm’s young queen as she seeks a diplomatic solution to end the siege of her planet by Trade Federation warships. At the same time, on desert-swept Tatooine, a slave boy named Anakin Skywalker, who possesses a strange ability for understanding the “rightness” of things, toils by day and dreams by night—of becoming a Jedi Knight and finding a way to win freedom for himself and his beloved mother. It will be the unexpected meeting of Jedi, Queen, and a gifted boy that will mark the start of a drama that will become legend.

    Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

    In the first installment, Carter wins the affections of the "princess of Mars" and the respect of the Martian warlords whom he befriends. The excitement continues in The Gods of Mars when Carter engages the Black Pirates in airborne combat above the dead seas of Mars and leads a revolt to free the Martian races from a religion that thrives on living sacrifices. In the third book, Warlord of Mars, Carter overcomes the forces of evil that would destroy the planet. By the end of the trilogy the Martians all clamor for a triumphant John Carter to be their king.About the Author:Born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 1, 1875, Edgar Rice Burroughs grew to maturity during the height of the Industrial Revolution and witnessed the emergence of the United States as a twentieth-century world power. Hailing from a well-to-do family, Burroughs was given an aristocratic education steeped in Latin and Greek, but he was drawn more to an itinerant life of adventure than to a life in the boardroom. The author of Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Burroughs did not confine himself to a single genre; he also wrote medieval romances (The Outlaw of Torn, 1914), westerns (The War Chief of the Apaches, 1927), and mainstream novels (The Girl from Hollywood, 1922).

    Corey...Before his trip to the stars, before the Rocinante, Amos Burton was confined to a Baltimore where crime paid you or killed you. Unless the authorities got to you first. Set in the hard-scrabble solar system of the Expanse, The Churn deepens James S. A. Corey's acclaimed series.The Expanse (a major SyFy Channel television series)Leviathan WakesCaliban's WarAbaddon's GateCibola BurnNemesis GamesThe Expanse Short Fiction The Butcher of Anderson StationGods of RiskThe Churn

    Created by the bestselling team of Weis & Hickman, Starshield introduces their newest fantastic universe with an unforgettable, magical, grand adventure!Rebellion threatens to rock the very foundation of civilization.  If the wrong side wins, the people will be at the mercy of minds with no conscience or humanity.  The only hope for freedom lies with the Mantle of Kendis-dai, a relic reputed to hold the power of absolute Truth.  But the Mantle of Kendis-dai is long lost in the mists of myth and time...if it ever really existed at all.Merinda Neskat, dedicated to the pursuit of Truth above all, is determined to find the legendary Mantle.  The key to her quest is a group of lost Earthpeople, led by the feckless Jeremy Griffiths, who holds knowledge he shouldn't have--and doesn't understand.  Together, Merinda, Jeremy, and his companions set off on a dangerous race against time and deadly enemy forces, seeking a mysterious world that holds the secret that can save them--or destroy the path of civilization forever.