. .When professional house-sitter Lila Emerson witnesses a murder/suicide from her current apartment-sitting job, life as she knows it takes a dramatic turn. Suddenly, the woman with no permanent ties finds herself almost wishing for one. . . .Artist Ashton Archer knows his brother isn’t capable of violence—against himself or others. He recruits Lila, the only eyewitness, to help him uncover what happened. Ash longs to paint her as intensely as he hungers to touch her. But their investigation draws them into a rarified circle where priceless antiques are bought, sold, gambled away, and stolen, where what you possess is who you are, and where what you desire becomes a deadly obsession. . . .

    But these aren’t random kidnappings. They’re crimes of passion,planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Revenge.Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with few clues to follow. The police said there’s little they can do for her, but that isn’t good enough for her boyfriend, Jonathon Payne.With the help of his best friend (David Jones), Payne gives chase, hoping that a lead in New Orleans somehow pays off. Together, they uncover the mystery of Ariane’s abduction and the truth behind the South’s most violent secret.

    PASSENGER 13A novella by Scott MarianiFive years before the events of The Alchemist's Secret... June 2003: the world is still on fire in the aftermath of 9/11. Fresh from the bloody conflict of the Second Gulf War, SAS soldier Ben Hope returns to Britain for some R&R leave, only to find himself embroiled in an intrigue deadlier than anything he's encountered on the battlefields of Iraq. When a passenger aircraft piloted by Ben's former army comrade Nick Chapman crashed off the Cayman Islands killing everyone on board, the official line was that Chapman committed suicide. But things don't add up, and Ben's old friend is barely in his grave before unfolding events point to something far bigger and more sinister going on. What did Chapman witness that powerful forces would do anything to suppress? Who was the mysterious thirteenth passenger on board the doomed flight? Following the trail of clues from the rugged Welsh borders to the Caribbean paradise that Chapman had made his home, Ben quickly discovers that some kinds of knowledge will get you killed - fast. Knowledge that threatens to unmask a global conspiracy of shocking proportions and change the way we view the world... and its masterminds have just made Ben Hope their principal target.Praise for Scott Mariani:"A rollickingly good way to spend some time in an easy chair"- USA Today"Scott Mariani is an awesome writer!" - Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of THE HUNTERS"Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart... Scott Mariani packs a real punch"- Andy McDermott, bestselling author of THE SACRED VAULT

     The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as "Accelerando, Halting State," and "Saturn's Children" delivers a rich selection of speculative fiction- including a novella original to this volume- brought together for the first time in one collection, showcasing the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century's most daring visionaries.

    The hunt is on for...ATLANTISMarine archaeologist Jack Howard has stumbled upon the keys to an ancient puzzle. With a crack team of scientific experts and ex–Special Forces commandos, he is heading for what he believes could be the greatest archaeological find of all time——the site of fabled Atlantis——while a ruthless adversary watches his every move and prepares to strike.But neither of them could have imagined what awaits them in the murky depths. Not only a shocking truth about a lost world, but an explosive secret that could have devastating consequences today. Jack is determined to stop the legacy of Atlantis from falling into the wrong hands, whatever the cost. But first he must do battle to prevent a global catastrophe.

    He has not been afraid to press the CIA to the explosion point - or to play cat-and-mouse with the KGB. He has successfully tricked Qaddafi and the IRA and once even set himself up as governor of a remote Caribbean island torn between Fidel Castor and the Colombian drug trade.But times have changed and mavericks like McCready are an endangered species. Now, before a panel of his peers, McCready must defend his unorthodox exploits or face dismissal. What hangs in the balance is not only his own career, but the very future of British intelligence.

    And seldom has the hidden eye of British Intelligence selected such an unlikely champion as Harry Pendel—a charmer, a dreamer, an evader, a fabulist and presiding genius of the house of Pendel & Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of London and presently of Panama City.Yet there is a logic to the spies' choice. Everybody who is anybody in Central America passes through Pendel's doors. He dresses politicos and crooks and conmen. His fitting room hears more confidences than a priest's confessional. And when Harry Pendel doesn't hear things as such—well, he hears them anyway, by other means.For what is a tailor for, if not to disduise reality with appearance? What is truth if not the plaything of the artist? And what are spies and politicians and journalists if not themselves selectors and manipulators of the truth for their own ends?In a thrilling, hilarious novel, le Carré has provided us with a satire about the fate of truth in modern times. Once again, he has effortlessly expanded the borders of the spy story to bring us a magnificent entertainment straight out of the pages of tomorrow's history.JOHN LE CARRÉ was born in 1931. After attending the universities of Bern and Oxford, he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. His third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was solidified by the acclaim for his trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People. His mostly autobiographical novel, A Perfect Spy, wa followed by The Russia House, The Night Manager and Our Game. The Tailor of Panama is his sixteenth novel.John le Carré lives in Cornwall, England.

    But the Order has other plans for him: to uncover a deadly secret that could shatter the very might of the Church itself.

    Each of the writers was asked to write a new story based on one of his or her most famous series. Stephen King tells a tale of Roland, the Gunslinger, in the world of The Dark Tower, in "The Little Sisters of Eluria."Terry Pratchett relates an amusing incident in Discworld, of a magical contest and the witch Granny Weatherwax, in "The Sea and Little Fishes"Terry Goodkind tells of the origin of the Border between realms in the world of The Sword of Truth, in "Debt of Bones."Orson Scott Card spins a yarn of Alvin and his apprentice from the Tales of Alvin Maker, in "Grinning Man."Robert Silverberg returns to Majipoor and to Lord Valentine's adventure in an ancient tomb, in "the Seventh Shrine."Ursual K. Le Guin adds a sequel to her famous books of Earthsea, portraying a woman who wants to learn magic, in "Dragonfly."Tad Williams tells a dark and enthralling story of a great and haunted castle in the age before Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, in "The Burning Man."George R.R. Martin sets his piece a generation before his epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, in the adventure of "The Hedge Knight."Ann McCaffrey, the poet of Pern, returns once again to her world of romance and adventure in "Runner of Pern."Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga is the setting of the tale of "The Wood Boy."Robert Jordan, in "New Spring," tells of crucial events in the years leading up to The Wheel of Time, of the meeting of Lan and Moiraine and the beginning of the search for the child who must grow to lead in the Last Battle.

    Among the witnesses are the only two cops in the city not on the take, but within moments one is murdered and his partner, Sonchai Jitpleecheep—a devout Buddhist and the son of a Thai bar girl and a long-gone Vietnam War G.I.—is hell-bent on wreaking revenge. On a vigilante mission to capture his partner’s murderer, Sonchai is begrudgingly paired with a beautiful FBI agent named Jones and captures her heart in the process. In a city fueled by illicit drugs and infinite corruption, prostitution and priceless art, Sonchai’s quest for vengeance takes him into a world much more sinister than he could have ever imagined.

    Action-packed stories featuring hit men, underworld bosses, rogue cops, private dicks, and shady ladies are assembled here, written by such renegade authors as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ed McBain, Jim Thompson, James Ellroy, Robert Bellum, and Ed Gorman.

    When a man arrives with his wounded black Lab, Ned, she has no idea that she is about to be plunged into a whirlwind of terror and destruction.Jude Marrock is out for revenge and has no choice but to involve Devon in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game with an escalating body count. She doesn’t trust him one bit, but when the shots start flying and friends start falling, she finds herself with nowhere else to run. And there are innocent lives, both human and animal, at stake, including Ned and his mysterious pack. Is Jude her salvation or her damnation? Are the secrets he’s protecting worth killing for . . . or dying for?With a lightning-fast pace, unforgettable characters, and gut-wrenching action, Dark Summer is compelling new terrain for this master storyteller.

    AN ARAB TERRORIST ATTACK. DEMOCRACY UNDER SIEGE. Mario Puzo envisioned it all in his eerily prescient 1991 novel, The Fourth K.President Francis Xavier Kennedy is elected to office, in large part, thanks to the legacy of his forebears– good looks, privilege, wealth–and is the very embodiment of youthful optimism. Too soon, however, he is beaten down by the political process and, disabused of his ideals, he becomes a leader totally unlike what he has been before. When his daughter becomes a pawn in a brutal terrorist plot, Kennedy, who has obsessively kept alive the memory of his uncles’ assassinations, activates all his power to retaliate in a series of violent measures. As the explosive events unfold, the world and those closest to him look on with both awe and horror.

    The Given Day tells the story of two families—one black, one white—swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power.Beat cop Danny Coughlin, the son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.Here, too, are some of the most influential figures of the era—Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless Red-chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious young Department of Justice lawyer named John Hoover.Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time—including the Spanish Influenza pandemic—and culminating in the Boston Police Strike of 1919, The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and in the thrall of, itself. As Danny, Luther, and those around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another and, together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change all their lives.

    Your bones he'll keep. Twenty years ago, four teenagers went exploring in the local woods, trying to find to the supposed home of The Bone Keeper. Only three returned. Now, a woman is found wandering the streets of Liverpool, horrifically injured, claiming to have fled the Bone Keeper. Investigating officer DC Louise Henderson must convince skeptical colleagues that this urban myth might be flesh and blood. But when a body is unearthed in the woodland the woman has fled from, the case takes on a much darker tone. The disappeared have been found. And their killer is watching every move the police make.The brilliant new police procedural from Luca Veste, featuring series characters Murphy and Rossi - a guaranteed page-turner.