"Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time." —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Sean Makin was a washed-up child actor, until Dagmar Shaw made him a star. Now he's starring in a big-budget action thriller that offers him the chance to become a box-office titan.

Except the action and the thrills aren't just in the movie. Dangerous and destabilizing new technology is floating around behind the scenes. Police and cartel lords lurk in the shadows. An assassin is on the loose, and has already claimed his first victim.

Sean could be next in the killer's sights, unless he can find out what the bad guys want, who's hiding it, and how many people he's going to have to betray in order to save his life—and more importantly, his celebrity.

"Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time." —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Dagmar Shaw is back in Hollywood, with a plan to lasso a series of emerging technologies into a revolutionary new form of entertainment.

Sean Makin is a washed-up child actor clinging to life on reality television, until Dagmar offers him the chance to be a star.

Sean's past, however, holds the darkest of secrets, and now it looks as if that secret threatens to break loose in a new cycle of violence and murder.

Sean's determined to succeed, even if the path to stardom is splashed with blood. But the ultimate secret is Dagmar's, and Sean has to decide how much to pay in order to find out what's on the other side of the fourth wall.

" . . . the blending of mystery-thriller, SF, and traditional Hollywood-story elements is hugely successful. It's one of those ambitious, genre-bending books in which you keep seeing, as you read, ways the story could fall apart under its own weight--but it never does. Surely the best of the Dagmar Shaw series and one of the author's finest novels." —Booklist (starred review)

"This is an ambitious novel, blending elements of science fiction, thriller and Hollywood epic into one wildly inventive narrative. It's the kind of genre-bender that you can spend a lot of time trying to describe, or you can simply say: go read it, right now." —David Pitt, Winnipeg Free Press

"Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time." —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Game designer Dagmar Shaw is skilled at creating vast online entertainments with millions of players.  But Dagmar is haunted by her past, and by memories of a burning city, and of the friends who died as a bloody vengeance plot played to its conclusion around her.

Dagmar is an expert at manipulating the online players known as the Group Mind.  But when an acquaintance appears with the plan to manipulate an entire Middle Eastern country, to stage a revolution and make the people think it was all their own idea, Dagmar is both appalled and intrigued.

Can she crash the Deep State?  And can she do it without creating another bloodbath?

This is no longer a game.  The bullets, the tanks, and the spies are real, and so is the danger as Dagmar plunges into the task of gaming an entire state.

When it first appeared, Deep State gained a modest amount of infamy as the novel that predicted the Arab Spring, and appeared the very week the Egyptians occupied Tahrir Square.

"And since this is an intrigue thriller, there are undercurrents and deceptions and hidden agendas and secret loyalties and unexpected betrayals, deeper states of operation and deeper games being played for higher (or lower) stakes. Dagmar faces not only the normal perils of an elaborate and delicate con, but those of the deep state of international politics, where you don't know who has been bought or intimidated, who might be a plant, who has a history that will blow up at the worst possible moment." —Russel Letson, Locus

"Williams has crafted a slick, intelligent techno-thriller that never allows the melodramatic storyline to swamp the cast of sympathetic characters."  —Eric Brown, the Guardian

"Both prescient and utterly of the moment, featuring an ingeniously concocted and elaborated plot and a compelling cast of characters, Deep State is a success on every level . . . if ever one of Williams' books had crossover potential . . . this is it.

" . . . The biggest plot coupon of all . . . is really the card on which the whole hand turns, and Williams does not blow the trick. On the contrary, he weaves this bit of scientific or pseudo-scientific legerdemain very deftly into the warp and weft of his plot, giving the novel that satisfies both logically and emotionally.  Like his doughty heroine, Williams is absolutely at the top of his game here." —Paul Witcover, Locus

“Walter Jon Williams is a visionary of tremendous power and originality . . . He kills every damn time.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

When you play one of Dagmar’s online games, you can’t just shut down the computer and walk away.  The games pursue you into real life: you start getting emails and phone calls from fictional characters, perfect strangers ask you to help solve their problems, and sometimes you’re asked to volunteer for a mission to discover a vital clue.

But now something is pursuing Dagmar.

From the anarchy of a street riot in Indonesia to the brutality of a Mafia killing in Los Angeles, from the seedy glitz of Hollywood to the ruthless international currency market, Dagmar finds herself at the center of an intrigue far more desperate than those she devises for entertainment.

And somehow, she knows, the key to the puzzle lies in her own past, and the gaming group she joined in college.

Dagmar must draw on all her skill to preserve her life, not the least of which is her circle of online gamers whose well-honed puzzle-solving skills may be vital to preserving her life.

This Is Not a Game.  And there is no Second Life.

“Williams (The Rift) weaves intriguing questions about games, gamers and their relationships with real life into this well-paced near-future thriller.” —Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“This Is Not a Game is a compelling mystery, one that threateningly demands—like a militant nun, ruler in hand, your knuckles spread before her—for you to continue, to finish. Stopping, it’s not an option. It’s not even a thought. You turn the pages of the book not just to get answers, but to get the questions, also. And neither disappoint. There is no letdown, no clumsy resolution, no descent into lameness. Everything works, the story coming together beautifully like a well-played game of chess, Williams maneuvering the reader, skillfully. Like a pawn. A very happy pawn. —Paul Stotts

“Williams, from his own experience, knows how these games work and how the participants react, and the result is that This Is Not a Game succeeds only as a suspense novel, but as an incisive portrait of a subculture for whom reality is increasingly contingent, and increasingly mediated.” —Gary Wolfe, Locus

“Combines droll satire, cyber-fu knowingness, ingenious extrapolation, social commentary, and techno-thriller suspense.” —SciFiWire.com

“[An] eerily prophetic thriller.” —SFX

SEQUEL TO WITCHY EYE. Next in series, which debuted with the stunningly reviewed Witchy Eye. Butler delivers another brilliant Americana flintlock fantasy novel.

TOIL AND TROUBLE

Sarah Calhoun paid a hard price for her entry onto the stage of the Empire’s politics, but she survived. Now she rides north into the Ohio and her father’s kingdom, Cahokia. To win the Serpent Throne, she’ll have to defeat seven other candidates, win over the kingdom’s regent, and learn the will of a hidden goddess—while mastering her people’s inscrutable ways and watching her own back.

In New Orleans, a new and unorthodox priest arises to plague the chevalier and embody the curse of the murdered Bishop Ukwu. He battles the chevalier’s ordinary forces as well as a troop of Old World mamelukes for control of the city and the mouth of the great Mississippi River. Dodging between these rival titans, a crew of Catalan pirates—whose captain was once a close associate of Mad Hannah Penn—grapples with the chevalier over the fate of one of their mates.

Meanwhile, a failed ceremony and a sick infant send the Anishinaabe hunter Ma’iingan on a journey across the Empire to Cavalier Johnsland, to a troubled foster child named Nathaniel. Ma’iingan is promised that Nathaniel is a mighty healer and can save his imperiled baby, but first Nathaniel—a pale young man with a twisted ear who hears the voices of unseen beings—must himself be rescued, from oppression, imprisonment, and madness.

Life. Luck. Love. Lowport.

Life, so the wags tell us, is what happens while we're making other plans.

Luck. . .or, as some have it, chance. . .Luck is what makes Life interesting; introducing spicy bits of chaos – good, bad, and neutral. Without Luck, there is no savor – no adventure – in Life.

Love. Ah, Love. The yeast of Life, Love expands our horizons, deepens our understanding, and opens our eyes. Love makes us daring.

And Lowport? Lowport tries and tests Life, and Luck. And, most especially, Love.

So here is small tale of Lives in progress, plans made and altered – and altered again. A tale of bread, and Luck, and Love . . .

. . . and Lowport.

We start with two people – a baker, Don Eyr; Serana, a captain of the Watch. Two people who have not much in common, until Luck brings them together, and they see each other.

What, you say? There are no adventures here?

Are you certain? Remember that Luck is involved.

Degrees of Separation: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 27

The Complete Mythology Series Boxed Set

by Jody Lynn Nye

The Soul Eater

by Mike Resnick

Posing for Picasso

by Sam Stone

The Complete Advise and Consent Series Boxed Set

by Allen Drury

Rise of the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

Contains all four novels in New York Times bestselling author Jody Lynn Nye’s hilarious modern fantasy series.

Mythology 101 - The adventure begins in Mythology 101. Keith Doyle, believer in myths and goodhearted nerd, discovers a secret village of magical elves occupying a vacant level of the library building. But the library is in danger of being torn down, destroying the elves’ home. The only thing that can save the elves is the magic of… free enterprise.

Mythology Abroad - The adventure moves across the ocean in Mythology Abroad. Keith Doyle and Holl, one of the Little Folk, set off to find their roots. On their tour, south of Ireland, Keith falls prey to magical beings. Holl, with magical and mundane help, must rescue Keith from his own folly and solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Little Folk….

Higher Mythology - The adventure continues in Higher Mythology. Holl has finally tied the knot with his beloved, Maura. When Holl’s cousin stumbles across a business dumping toxic waste on the Little Folks’ land, Holl, Maura, and their new baby are kidnapped. Can Keith Doyle, with the help of the Little Folk and Air Spites, rescue them before it’s too late?

AdvanceD Mythology - In AdvanceD Mythology Keith Doyle has his biggest adventure with the Little Folk yet! Malevolent spirits haunt the elves and, just as bad, a Big Person has discovered them. Keith tries to help his magical friends while evading an industrial spy. Can he do all this while planning a party to end all parties?

When someone starts killing his fellow bounty hunters in the port of Fairhaven, Drago Appleroot is happy to help his contacts in the City Watch with their investigation—for a reasonable fee, of course. But posing as an assassin-for-hire to draw out the killer attracts the attention of two separate groups from a far-off Elven kingdom whose private war is being fought on the streets of his home town.

Pitched into a maelstrom of treachery and lethal politics, Drago is forced into a long and dangerous journey to the heart of the Sylvan Marches, where one determined gnome might just decide the destiny of a kingdom. If he can survive long enough to decide which side he ought to be on.

This boxed set contains all six bestselling novels in Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent series, a masterwork of politics and human nature that spanned sixteen years of the author’s career. The original novel, Advise and Consent, is one of the high points of 20th Century literature, #1 New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner. A seminal work of political fiction, it is as relevant today as when it was first published. A sweeping tale of corruption and ambition that cuts across the landscape of Washington, DC, with the breadth and realism that only an astute observer and insider can convey.

In his novels, Allen Drury penetrates the world’s stormiest political battleground—the smoke-filled committee rooms of the United States Senate—to reveal the bitter conflicts and controversial politics when opposing parties struggle for power, by any means necessary. His works are true epics showing in fascinating detail the minds and motives of the statesmen, the opportunists, the idealists. These six novels in the Advise and Consent series follow his political cast of characters through epic worldwide struggles.

Great. Tori Karacis’s face is on the front of yet another tabloid “newspaper,” linked to Hollywood hottie Apollo Demas. It was ONE dinner, and she was pissed with him at the time. But that’s the least of her worries. Just before leaving for her cousin’s destination wedding in Delphi, she learns that her arch nemeses, Zeus and Poseidon, have escaped police custody.

Despite looking forward to seeing Detective Nick Armani in a tux, her bad preflight jitters are confirmed when Apollo, with his sexy new costar on his arm, boards the same plane. A plane that a freak storm nearly tears out of the sky.

What awaits them atop Mount Parnassus is even more deadly. A prophecy, a kidnapping, and a bloodletting that stirs up the mother of all trouble—literally. Rhea is awakened, and she’s none too happy with her offspring for losing their usurped dominion over the Earth.

The Olympians have fallen. It’s time for the Titans to rise again. Which means it’ll be a bad day for anyone standing in their way.

“There’s a lot going on in this story. It’s really pretty much non-stop action of one type or another from beginning to end. Along with it you get a smooth plot flow, nice imagery, a unique locale, lots of interesting characters and great bantering dialogue.”
—Literary Nymphs Reviews

“Wow! What a wild and crazy roller coaster ride of a story! Author Lucienne Diver has another amazing hit on her hands with this, the third installment in her wildly popular Latter-Day Olympians series … This is a fantastic novel that will enchant readers of all ages.”
—Night Owl Reviews

“I’ve said it twice now in my previous reviews of this series, but I’ll say it again: if you’re looking for an action packed Urban Fantasy with the perfect blend of Greek mythology this is the read for you! Tori is without a doubt one of my most favorite heroines now! … I look forward to reading more of her adventures and whatever mischief she gets herself into!”
—Jessica at A Great Read, 5/5 Stars

The Sleeper Wakes

The energy crisis has been solved. Core Taps have been driven 300 miles into the Earth to tap into the subterranean power source at its core. The only catch: when activated, the Core Taps disrupt brain waves, sending everyone nearby into a deep, forced sleep. It’s a small price to pay for a world of plenty. Or so it seems.

Rafe Harald is one of the few humans not affected by the Core Taps. Back from the Moon, where he has been preparing for humankind’s first trek into deep space, he makes his way through a shadowy night world of induced slumber. He’s come to discover the whereabouts of a missing colleague. What he’ll find is a mysterious figure known as the Old Man—and a conspiracy so devious in its design, he’ll wish it was a nightmare.

But soon the Old Man will discover that he has awoken a sleeping giant in Rafe Harald. And on a planet of perpetual sleep, a new day is about to dawn.

When someone starts killing his fellow bounty hunters in the port of Fairhaven, Drago Appleroot is happy to help his contacts in the City Watch with their investigation—for a reasonable fee, of course. But posing as an assassin-for-hire to draw out the killer attracts the attention of two separate groups from a far-off Elven kingdom whose private war is being fought on the streets of his home town.

Pitched into a maelstrom of treachery and lethal politics, Drago is forced into a long and dangerous journey to the heart of the Sylvan Marches, where one determined gnome might just decide the destiny of a kingdom. If he can survive long enough to decide which side he ought to be on.

SEQUEL TO WITCHY EYE. Next in series, which debuted with the stunningly reviewed Witchy Eye. Butler delivers another brilliant Americana flintlock fantasy novel.

TOIL AND TROUBLE

Sarah Calhoun paid a hard price for her entry onto the stage of the Empire’s politics, but she survived. Now she rides north into the Ohio and her father’s kingdom, Cahokia. To win the Serpent Throne, she’ll have to defeat seven other candidates, win over the kingdom’s regent, and learn the will of a hidden goddess—while mastering her people’s inscrutable ways and watching her own back.

In New Orleans, a new and unorthodox priest arises to plague the chevalier and embody the curse of the murdered Bishop Ukwu. He battles the chevalier’s ordinary forces as well as a troop of Old World mamelukes for control of the city and the mouth of the great Mississippi River. Dodging between these rival titans, a crew of Catalan pirates—whose captain was once a close associate of Mad Hannah Penn—grapples with the chevalier over the fate of one of their mates.

Meanwhile, a failed ceremony and a sick infant send the Anishinaabe hunter Ma’iingan on a journey across the Empire to Cavalier Johnsland, to a troubled foster child named Nathaniel. Ma’iingan is promised that Nathaniel is a mighty healer and can save his imperiled baby, but first Nathaniel—a pale young man with a twisted ear who hears the voices of unseen beings—must himself be rescued, from oppression, imprisonment, and madness.

FROM WEALTH AND POWER, TO POVERTY AND INSULTS!

Roy Olfetrie planned to be an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, but when his father was unmasked as a white-collar criminal he had to take whatever he was offered.

What is offered turns out to be a chance to accompany Captain Daniel Leary and Lady Adele Mundy as they go off to start a war that will put Roy at the sharp end.

Duty snatches Roy from the harem of a pirate chief to a world of monsters, from interstellar reaches in a half-wrecked starship to assassination attempts at posh houses. Roy has the choice of making friends or dying friendless; of meeting betrayal and responding to it; of breaking his faith or keeping it at the risk of his life.

Pirates, politics, and spies--and waiting for Roy if he survives all the rest, a powerful warship.

The action doesn't slow--nor can Roy, for if he does the only question is which of the many threats will be the one to catch and kill him. But Captain Leary himself has given Roy a chance, and Roy is determined make the most of it—THOUGH HELL SHOULD BAR THE WAY.

The Span of Empire

by Eric Flint and David Carrico

A Fistful of Elven Gold

by Alex Stewart

Caine's Mutiny

by Charles E. Gannon

Though Hell Should Bar the Way

by David Drake

Sleepwalker's World

by Gordon R. Dickson

Witchy Winter

by D.J. Butler

FROM WEALTH AND POWER, TO POVERTY AND INSULTS!

Roy Olfetrie planned to be an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, but when his father was unmasked as a white-collar criminal he had to take whatever he was offered.

What is offered turns out to be a chance to accompany Captain Daniel Leary and Lady Adele Mundy as they go off to start a war that will put Roy at the sharp end.

Duty snatches Roy from the harem of a pirate chief to a world of monsters, from interstellar reaches in a half-wrecked starship to assassination attempts at posh houses. Roy has the choice of making friends or dying friendless; of meeting betrayal and responding to it; of breaking his faith or keeping it at the risk of his life.

Pirates, politics, and spies--and waiting for Roy if he survives all the rest, a powerful warship.

The action doesn't slow--nor can Roy, for if he does the only question is which of the many threats will be the one to catch and kill him. But Captain Leary himself has given Roy a chance, and Roy is determined make the most of it—THOUGH HELL SHOULD BAR THE WAY.

Welcome to the hottest pocket in Larry Niven’s Known Space: the time of the assault on pacifist humanity by berserker felinoids from the planet Kzin. This time humanity’s representatives to the Warrior Race are Donald Kingsbury, Greg Bear, and Steve Stirling. As is traditional in this war for species survival, in all cases “monkey cleverness” (i.e., human cunning) is more than a match for felinoid ferocity. But as is also traditional, victory never comes cheap to those out on the sharp edge of The Man-Kzin Wars.

Tastes Like Chicken

by Kevin J. Anderson

Crazy in the Blood

by Lucienne Diver

Solar Singularity

by Peter J. Wacks, Guy De Marco, and Josh Vogt

Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I., faces his most fowl case yet, when a flock of murderous feral chickens terrorizes the Unnatural Quarter. Also in the caseload, Dan deals with a sinister spokesman for Monster Chow Industries, a serial-killer demon from the Fifth Pit of Hell, an evil gang dealing in black-market blood supplies led by the nefarious Ma Hemoglobin, a ghost fighting a hostile takeover in a chain of blood bars, a spreading contamination that drives vampires berserk, and a cute little vampire girl who may, or may not, be his daughter.

With his ghost girlfriend Sheyenne, his bleeding-heart human lawyer partner Robin, and his Best Human Friend Officer Toby McGoohan, Dan Shamble is ready to solve the case. The feathers will fly as he goes face-to-beak with the evil peckers.