"Augmented Reality" game Transdimensional Hunter seems too real for comfort as the world of the game merges with reality. Now, teenage game prodigy Lynn Raven will have to conquer the game or be destroyed by it.
REALITY BITES—AND IT HAS BIG TEETH
Becoming a global celebrity overnight would make most people happy.
Not Lynn Raven.
As a teenage gaming prodigy, she’s enjoyed years of anonymity behind the virtual mask of Larry Coughlin, war-hardened vet and virtual gaming mercenary. But now Lynn has stepped out of the shadows to compete in the cutting-edge augmented reality game TransDimensional Hunter that has taken the world by storm.
And she’s winning.
But with success has come swarms of paparazzi drones, jealous teammates, and a backstabbing rival team that will use any trick in the book to ruin her.
Then there’s the game itself. At times, the “augmented” reality seems too real for Lynn’s comfort, and strange accidents keep happening. Something is going on; she just has to figure out what.
Lynn would much rather fight monsters than do paparazzi interviews, but somehow she’ll have to master both—and pass her senior year to boot. She managed to step into the real, but will the storm of reality now defeat her for good?
1462: an alien who feasts on the suffering of sentient beings dines off the agonies of Vlad the Impaler’s twenty-thousand victims near Targoviste, Romania.
1688: a woman is framed for witchcraft and hanged by the neck in Boston.
1965: a toy store that never seems to run out of special toys is suspected of being the location of a temporal portal, the same one used by the agony-feeding alien.
2022: a grandfather, showing his young grandchildren what remains of the Boston of his youth, is shown that portal by his granddaughters.
And they’re off! Off through the gate that grants wishes, off to deal with time travel, off to break and enter, off to endure the pain of seeing afresh loved ones long since departed in their own time. They’re off to deal with hardened, murderous criminals and with equally murderous aliens.
And all of that is set around the time of Christmas joy, in old, fine hotels, with presents, fresh loves, Handel’s Messiah, a department store’s enchanted village, old delicacies, modern weapons, lasers . . . and a very special calico cat.
NEW GORDIAN DIVISION NOVEL: When a top engineer on Saturn commits suicide, Detective Isaac Cho and Special Agent Susan Cantrell are called in to review the case. But what seems like an open-and-shut case spirals into the strange. And if Cho and Cantrell don't solve the mystery soon, they may be the next ones to wind up dead.
The Atlas Corporation was all set to tear apart the planet Mercury—converting its resources into a swarm of solar-collecting megastructures—when Esteban Velasco, lead Atlas engineer, is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Detective Isaac Cho and Special Agent Susan Cantrell, both eager to return to active duty despite close calls on their last case, are sent in to assess the situation. Their superiors expect a simple declaration of suicide, but Velasco’s death proves anything but typical.
The detectives soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery far more complex—and strange—than anyone expected, leading them to a church for Mercury-loving weirdos, a “nudist” colony open to Saturn’s unbreathable atmosphere, an exclusive park for hunting dinosaurs, and a ghost town where forgotten machines wage war over condo floorplans.
What was meant to be an easy return to duty for the detectives takes a sudden dark turn when ruthless mind-hackers ambush and nearly kill them, making one fact crystal clear:
If they don’t solve this case soon, it’ll be their corpses that turn up next.
THIS NEW NOVEL IN ERIC FLINT’S LANDMARK RING OF FIRE SERIES CONTINUES THE EASTERN EUROPE STORYLINE EXPLORED IN 1637: THE POLISH MAELSTROM
Up-timer Morris Roth and his Grand Army of the Sunrise stand at a crossroads. Military success against the Polish-Lithuanian magnates has all but guaranteed a continued push east into Ruthenian lands. There, Roth hopes to further his Anaconda Project so that tens of thousands of Jews are not slaughtered in what’s to become known as the Chmielnicki Pogrom of 1648.
An envoy from Transylvania arrives with a promising offer from its prince, who wishes to form an alliance with Bohemia, but the land shrouded in the fog of the Carpathian mountains and known only to most up-timers as the playground of Count Dracula is a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire. Such an alliance would surely draw the ire of Sultan Murad IV.
The United States of Europe agrees to assist the Bohemian forces, and sends in the Silesian Guard, under the command of Brigadier Jeff Higgins. They also send in Gretchen Richter to organize and lead the political struggle.
Transylvania is thrown into political, social, and religious turmoil as battle lines are drawn. Whatever happens and whoever wins the fight, one thing is certain: the history of Eastern Europe will change radically. In fact, it already has.
THREE PENRIC AND DESDEMONA NOVELLAS IN THE WORLD OF THE FIVE GODS BY GRANDMASTER LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD
Penric and Desdemona are back in three novellas from Grand Master Lois McMaster Bujold.
“Masquerade in Lodi” Bastard’s Eve is a night of celebration for most residents in the canal city of Lodi—but not for sorcerer Learned Penric and his Temple demon Desdemona, who find themselves caught up in the affairs of a shiplost madman, a dangerous ascendant demon, and a very unexpected saint of the fifth god.
“The Orphans of Raspay” When the ship in which they are traveling is captured by Carpagamon island raiders, Temple sorcerer Penric and his resident demon Desdemona find their life complicated by two young orphans, Lencia and Seuka Corva, who are far from home and searching for their missing father. Pen and Des will need all their combined talents of mind and magic to unravel the mysteries of the sisters and escape from the pirate stronghold.
“The Physicians of Vilnoc” When a mysterious plague breaks out in the army fort guarding Vilnoc, the port capital of the duchy of Orbas, Temple sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona are called upon by General Arisaydia to resurrect Penric’s medical skills and solve its lethal riddle. In the grueling days that follow, Pen will find that even his magic is not enough to meet the challenges without help from dedicated new colleagues—and the god of mischance.
Includes a new introduction, “outroduction,” and suggested reading order by Lois McMaster Bujold.
A RACE TO BUILD THE FIRST SPACE ELEVATOR IN AFRICA
New money, old tribes, and international megacorps race to build the first space elevator. With a little Dabare magic, it just might work!
The Sadous, an oil-rich West African family, are handed a plum contract as repayment for a decades-old favor that could make the next generation even richer if the family doesn’t tear itself apart first. Two engineer daughters of the Sadou family, Pascaline and Maurie, upon whom the burden of success rests, have troubles of their own. One wants nothing more than to leave and make her own name as an engineering prodigy, while the other is troubled by fever dreams and snakes. Ethan Schmidt-Li is an ambitious megacorp executive with eyes on a big promotion—only to get more than he bargained for when put in charge of the company’s make-or-break project. These are some of the people that Tchami “Chummy” Fabrice has brought together to an ambitious end—constructing the world’s first space elevator in Africa and ensuring the space industry that it catapults will enrich the continent and all involved. They have the carbon nanofiber, prime land around Kilimanjaro, and a captured rock in orbit for the tether. The hard part will be getting all these different people working together long enough to see it built.
That’s what sixteen-year-old Nicole Taylor learns when a mysterious time-bending stranger saves her from a rampaging cyborg centipede.
See, the top bun? That’s our dimension. The bottom bun? That’s the monster’s dimension. And the patty? That’s a dimension where the two worlds meet – and the Reavers can attack.
The Reavers are horrific cybernetic killing machines, and their plans for the top bun? Well, they’re as terrifying as you’d expect.
But Nicole isn’t helpless. She has a rare gift. She can bend time around her and even stop it completely.
Plagued with nightmares and ambushed by monsters at every turn, Nicole has one chance to stop the Reavers’ genocidal invasion. With help from a chain-smoking pyromaniac, a neurotic sword-wielding assassin, and an icy goth chick with a crossbow, she’ll make a stand against the evil bugs.
Because if the universe is a hamburger, the Reavers want a bite.
From national best-selling author Jacob Holo comes a world of super powered teens, time manipulating cyborgs, and nonstop high-stakes action for fans of Renegades (Marissa Meyer), Steelheart (Brandon Sanderson), and Zeroes (Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti).
Eric Flint 
