Can anyone hear me? …hello? Is anyone out there?The end of the world has given us a harsh, merciless existence, where nature tries hard to push mankind to the very brink of extinction. Everything is against us, between us... Untold miles of lawless, apocalyptic roads wait for our feet, and the future, cold and dark, offers little comfort. Without change, there can be no peace. Only survivors.”From dangerous trips into dark, apocalyptic cities, to patriotic rescues and furious revelations, Life After War is an action-packed fantasy series where those left alive must come to terms with their mistakes in the old world, while fighting for a place in the new one. Life After War. Magic and Reality blended into a post-apocalyptic fantasy series that you won't ever forget. Summary in 20 words or less: An action adventure quest, with a supernatural romance, and many other subplots, set during the aftermath of the apocalypse. What can you expect to discover in this fantasy series? The End of the World, up close and full of apocalyptic horror. A government conspiracy that caused the apocalypse. An adventure into the wastelands to find family, supplies, and safety. A supernatural romance with a dangerous secret about a child's parentage and a love strong enough to survive nuclear armageddon. An invasion, ambushes, attacks from nature and man-guns and magic! A refugee camp with very different laws, picking up those who have survived. A hero you will love, even as you ponder the secrets that could lose him leadership. A witch, a doctor, a government storm tracker, a star, and three Marines struggling to keep their people alive and together as they prepare to defend themselves against Cesar's slavers. A constant battle for survival that includes deadly trips into decaying American cities, insanity, relics of the past, and ghosts that stalk their every move. Note from the Author: This book has now gone through multiple editors since the release in 2010: The total I have spent is more than 3K, just for the file you are about to read. If there are still mistakes, I apologize.

    She never imagined it would go this far. It begins with a reality TV show. Twelve contestants are sent into the woods to face challenges that will test the limits of their endurance. While they are out there, something terrible happens—but how widespread is the destruction, and has it occurred naturally or is it human-made? Cut off from society, the contestants know nothing of it. When one of them—a young woman the show’s producers call Zoo—stumbles across the devastation, she can imagine only that it is part of the game. Alone and disoriented, Zoo is heavy with doubt regarding the life—and husband—she left behind, but she refuses to quit. Staggering countless miles across unfamiliar territory, Zoo must summon all her survival skills—and learn new ones as she goes. But as her emotional and physical reserves dwindle, she grasps that the real world might have been altered in terrifying ways—and her ability to parse the charade will be either her triumph or her undoing. Sophisticated and provocative, The Last One is a novel that forces us to confront the role that media plays in our perception of what is real: how readily we cast our judgments, how easily we are manipulated.

    It is the world's best-kept secret-and its most terrifying. Trying to regain his life in the Alaskan wilds, ex-con/ex-cop Travis Chase stumbles upon an impossible scene: a crashed 747 passenger jet filled with the murdered dead, including the wife of the [resident of the United States.Though a nightmare of monumental proportions, it pales before the terror to come, as Chase is dragged into a battle for the future that revolves around an amazing artifact. Allied with a beautiful covert operative whose life he saved, Chase must now play the role he's been destined for-a pawn of incomprehensible forces or humankind's final hope-as the race toward Apocalypse begins in earnest. Because something is loose in the world. And doomsday is not only possible...it is inevitable.

    . . ." The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal. Stories is a groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction and affords some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley and Jodi Picoult—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and "master anthologist" (Booklist) Sarrantonio personally invited, read, and selected all the stories in this collection, and their standard for this "new literature of the imagination" is high. "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all." Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man's descent into evil in "Devil on the Staircase." In "Catch and Release," Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in "Unwell." Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in "Wildfire in Manhattan." Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams's "The Knife." Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in "The Therapist." A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains." As it transforms your view of the world, this brilliant and visionary volume—sure to become a classic—will ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.

    They have been the subject of films, radio dramatizations and have even been presented on ice Read the originals now and one of the world's greatest ever story tellers will give you hours of pleasure and enjoyment.Stories included are: "Around the World in 80 Days, The Clipper of the Clouds, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

    Two men, two stories, one breathtaking conclusion. The first man is Samuel Wade, an ex-soldier, on the run and blamed for the murder of his beloved wife and daughter. But he’s on the trail of the real murderer and is seeking revenge. He boards a coach bound for Edinburgh, hot on the heels of his one-time friend and army colleague John Travers – a man who was kidnapped and brutally tortured by insurgents. A man who blamed Wade for allowing it to happen. The man who killed his family. What happens next is totally unexpected and bizarre. Trying to sleep during a storm, Wade wakes to discover that the coach and its ten remaining passengers is no longer headed to Edinburgh. Impossibly, it’s in the middle of a vast, unknown and hostile desert, abandoned by its driver. Are they asleep, is it a dream? Are they all dead? So their nightmare begins. The second man is Robert Napier, second-in-command at Lindegaard Software, a company run by the powerfully wealthy Dale Lindegaard. Dale took over the business when his brother Jeremy and niece Melissa were brutally gunned down by an activist group known as CSL. Jeremy died, and Melissa was reduced to a vegetative state, and all because of Lindegaard’s complete control of a controversial new drug called tremethelene, used by millions worldwide. CSL was duly crushed, their leaders now in jail. But CSL has come back from the dead with a new leader called Charlie Sharland, threatening Dale Lindegaard’s tremethelene monopoly all over again. Lindegaard is determined to stamp them out for good and urges Robert Napier to do whatever it takes to rid him of them. Even murder. As Samuel Wade’s living nightmare in the desert grows ever more bizarre and terrifying, Robert Napier is forced to work with Dean Villiers, a cold, calculating and violently ambitious man. He is drawn ever deeper into the dark underbelly of a multi-billion dollar corporation, where violence and greed are the norm and nothing is as it first appears. Who is the mole known as Cobalt? Who and where is Charlie Sharland? Does he even exist? And what exactly is motivating the scheming Dean Villiers? Both men are out for revenge. Wade because of his family’s murder, Napier because of what happened to the vegetative Melissa Lindegaard, his wife-to-be. Both men’s lives are irrevocably intertwined. Both their stories will come crashing together in the terrifying, surprising, jaw-dropping climax of D. M. Mitchell’s undeniably original and most imaginative thriller to date. Dare you take a journey into nightmare?

    Now it is their only chance for survival... Britain in 2075 is a dangerous place. A man known only as the Governor rules the country with an iron hand, but within the towering perimeter walls of London Greater Urban Area anarchy spreads unchecked through the streets. In the abandoned London Underground station of St. Cannerwells, a group of misfits calling themselves the Tube Riders seek to forget the chaos by playing a dangerous game with trains. Marta is their leader, a girl haunted by her brother's disappearance. Of the others, Paul lives only to protect his little brother Owen, while Simon is trying to hold on to his relationship with Jess, daughter of a government official. Guarding them all is Switch, a man with a flickering eye and a faster knife, who cares only about preserving the legacy of the Tube Riders. Together, they are family. Everything changes the day they are attacked by a rival gang. While escaping, they witness an event that could bring war down on Mega Britain. Suddenly they are fleeing for their lives, pursued not only by their rivals, but by the brutal Department of Civil Affairs, government killing machines known as Huntsmen, and finally by the inhuman Governor himself.

    Even more unexpected is the fact that the bullet doesn’t kill him—instead, it causes the rest of humanity to vanish. Darren’s attempted murder has caused a temporal paradox extending back over a thousand years, and now it’s up to him to repair the damage. Embarking on a mind-bending journey through time, Darren encounters Vikings, a depressed Norwegian silversmith, a cult that believes in salvation through pain, a beautiful Hebridean lass, and Archibald Fischer—the foul-mouthed, Kurt Cobain-worshiping Head Librarian of the Library of Timelines, where all of the possibilities that could ever happen are catalogued, tracked, and managed.

    If my last name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of my great-great uncle Werner Heisenberg. He was a physicist who came up with something called the Uncertainty Principle. But listen, Uncle Werner had no idea how uncertain things really are. I work for a group, called the Keepers, that label themselves the custodians of time. And, believe me, time is a mess. It needs all the custodians it can get. Which is, of course, why the Keepers selected me, a nineteen-year-old high school dropout, to join them. I recently worked as a janitor for a couple months. Perfect fit, right? Okay, it didn’t make much sense to me either, but I wasn’t in a position to turn down a steady job and a roof over my head. Besides, all I’m supposed to do is travel through time and save the universe as we know it, how hard could it be? Yeah, better hold on. This could get ugly.

    But she had other ideas . . .This ebook contains two stories about marriages affected by supernatural forces. In the title story, FOREVER, David Scarsdale finds himself trapped in an endless void with his wife. Who is controlling it? And will he ever escape?In TWELVE MINUTES Jude must make a painful decision about the fate of his marriage - a marriage in which his wife is conscious for only twelve minutes each day . . .If you are a fan of The Twilight Zone these stories could be for you.The ebook also contains an extended preview of Lee Moan's forthcoming novel, Lazarus Island, a supernatural thriller. *This ebook: 11225 words approx.

    Someone else though wants her dead! With the help of ex-SAS bodyguard Eddie Chase and beautiful heiress Kari Frost, Nina faces a breakneck race against time around the world, pursued at every step by agents of the mysterious - and murderous - Brotherhood of Selasphoros. From the jungles of Brazil to the mountains of Tibet, from the streets of Manhattan to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, the hunt for Atlantis leads to a secret hidden for 11,000 years - which in the wrong hands could destroy civilization as we know it...

    She casts webs of power, reading the feelings of living beings and telling them what to do. Nobody knows what causes it, least of all her. Her name is Jessica, but most people call her ‘freak’.One fateful day, her ‘web’ connects with a stranger, and stray power causes the plane in which she’s travelling to crash in an alien world. An accident? The more she discovers about the world in which she has landed, the more she doubts it.She is a survivor from an ancient race that once travelled the stars. Her ancestors were powerful and dangerous, and it seems at least two people want her: the man who invades her mind, and the man who’s desperate to help her get back home. But Jessica grew up an Earth girl, and isn’t having any of this. She’ll pander to no one, thank you very much, even if her stubbornness enrages the tyrant race who hold the world in their grip.

    A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut novel of a writer with astonishing gifts.

     They may have survived the apocalypse, but the Virus changed them... Grad student Dani O'Connor won't let a cross-country move end her closest friendship. But when a mysterious virus consumes the world and Dani, herself, falls violently ill, she fears she'll never see her loved ones again. After her fever finally breaks, she barely recognizes the devastated world around her. Everyone is dead. Dani is all alone. Or so she thinks... As a bartender, Zoe is used to dealing with hotheads and dirtbags, but nothing could have prepared her for the twisted thoughts of her fellow survivors. Her family is gone, and anyone left alive in the world is either sick, crazy, or changed...like her. As her newfound super senses gain strength, Zoe must learn to control them before she loses herself to madness completely. Perilous terrain spans the distance between them, and deranged survivors lurk in dark corners everywhere. Can Dani and Zoe overcome deadly attacks and unseen dangers in order to find each other? Or will they lose their way--and their lives--along the journey? After The Ending is the first book in the evocative, superpowered post-apocalyptic adventure, The Ending Series. If you like unbreakable friendships, gritty dystopian settings, and a touch of romance, then you'll love Lindsey Pogue and Lindsey Fairleigh's heart-wrenching tale. Buy After The Ending to embark on a supernatural survival story today! THE ENDING SERIES After The Ending Into The Fire Out Of The Ashes Before The Dawn The Ending Beginnings: A Collection of Stories World Before: A Collection of Stories

    An infamous poet living in self-imposed exile. An ancient treasure about to fall into the wrong hands.Melanie Karsak's Chasing the Star Garden takes readers on a thrilling adventure from the gritty opium dens of gaslamp London to the gem-coloured waters of the ancient world. Lily Stargazer, a loveable but reckless airship racer with a famous lover and shattered past, reluctantly plunges into a centuries-old mystery in a romantic adventure best described as Dan Brown meets Mary Shelley.It all begins on one of the worst days of Lily’s life. She just lost the London leg of the 1823 Airship Grand Prix. To top it off, a harlequin fleeing from constables shoved a kaleidoscope down her pants, told her to fly to Venice, then threw himself from her airship tower. What’s a girl to do? For Lily, the answer is easy: drink absinthe and smoke opium. Lily’s lover, Lord Byron, encourages her to make the trip to Venice. Lily soon finds herself at the heart of an ancient mystery which has her running from her past and chasing true love and the stars along the way.