AT THE RISK OF
DEATH

Tarl Cabot, warrior and tarnsman, left the forbidden Sardar Mountains on a mission for the Priest-Kings of Gor, the barbaric world of Counter-Earth.  The Priest-Kings were dying, and he had to find their last link to survival.  All he knew about his goal was that it lay hidden somewhere among the nomads.

There were the Wagon Peoples, the wild tribes that lived off the roving herds of bosk, fiercest of the animals of Gor.  But still more fierce were their masters, the savage Tuchuks. All men fled before them when they moved.

All except Tart Cabot, who stood alone, watching the oncoming clouds of dust that might bring him death.

THE NORMANS were a relatively short-lived cultural and political phenomenon.  They emerged early in the tenth century and had disappeared off the map by the mid-thirteenth century.  Yet in that time they had conquered England, southern Italy and Sicily, and had established outposts in north Africa and in the Levant.

The reality is that, even within this short time span, the Normans changed as time and place dictated from Norse invaders to Frankish crusaders to Byzantine overlords to feudal monarchs.  In the end their contribution to medieval culture was largely as a catalyst for other, older traditions.

Trevor Rowley is an Emeritus Fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford.

THE DUDE
He came from the East to buy cattle, to the untamed land where there was no law but a man's courage.  He came to get his steers to the railroad, not to kill.  He was a peaceable man, but when French Williams and the local outlaws mistook him for a victim, there was lead to pay.

NORTH TO THE RAILS

LOUIS L'AMOUR
Our foremost storyteller of the authentic West, L'Amour has thrilled a nation by bringing to vivid life the brave men and women who settled the American frontier.  There are now over 100 million of his books in print around the world.

From amazon.com:

Now with a new afterword by David Drake!

The inhuman Rulers of the galaxy sent three fleets to learn what had happened to the world located by Captain North and the Survey Team he led. Neither a soul nor a message returned. The fourth time, the Rulers sent a single man: Nils Hansen.

Commissioner Hansen had a mind that saw the shortest path to each task's completion and a ruthless determination to do what the task required. The cost - to himself and whoever happened to be in the way - didn't matter. Hanson's Special Units had kept his planet safe from the most sophisticated and violent criminals in the galaxy. Now Hansen was being sent to penetrate a spacetime enigma which had made gods or demons of the first humans to discover it. He would succeed or die.

Northworld: a place of slashing violence and mystic transformation
Northworld: a place of treachery and dazzling beauty
Northworld: a place of honor, of faith, and of love.

Hansen's iron will and strong arm confront godlike power and godlike cunning while a galaxy trembles for the outcome. And if Hansen dies - he will not die alone!

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Praise for The Northworld Trilogy:

"Down and dirty . . . this one blazes!" —Los Angeles Daily News

"Fast-paced adventure with convincing depth!" —Publishers Weekly

"Good military SF . . . the action is fast and the tension is high!" —Locus

"Northworld is that rare work-a novel that works on more than one level. A stunning tapestry . . . highly recommended!" —The SFRA Newsletter

Vietnam veteran, former lawyer, former bus driver, and now bestselling author, David Drake tells a military story like no other. His readers recognize that he can take them where no one else can, with gut-wrenching description that puts them face-to-face with the enemy, and in the midst of the action right on the battlefield. He helped create the audience for mercenary military science fiction with his best-selling "Hammer's Slammers" books. Drake graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history (with honors) and Latin. His stint at Duke University Law School was interrupted for two years by the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry in Vietnam and Cambodia. Drake has a wife, a son, and various pets.

"Explosive and nearly impossible to put down."
- People

Two small towns in the middle of nowhere: Hope and Despair.  Between them, nothing but twelve miles of empty road.  Jack Reacher can't find a ride, so he walks.  All he wants is a cup of coffee.  What he gets are four hostile locals, a vagrancy charge, and an order to move on.

They're picking on the wrong guy.

Reacher is a hard man.  No job, no address, no baggage.  Nothing at all, except hardheaded curiosity.  What are the secrets that Despair seems so desperate to hide?

"Colossal.  Earthshaking.  Stupendous...  Jack Reacher is one of the most enduring action heroes on the American landscape."
- JANET MASLIN, New York Times

With just one ally - a mysterious woman cop from Hope - and many enemies, Reacher goes up against a whole town, hunting the rich man at its core, cracking open his terrifying agenda, asking the question: Who has the edge - a man with everything to gain, or a man with nothing to lose?

"Do yourself a favor and get hooked on this series."
- The Plain Dealer

"Even if a magician's powers surface of their own accord, he will soon be dead if he does not gain the knowledge of how to control them."

Alone among all the novices in the Magician's Guild, only Sonea comes from lowly beginnings.  Yet she has won powerful allies - including Lord Dannyl, newly promoted to Guild Ambassador.  But Dannyl must now depart for the Elyne court, leaving Sonea at the mercy of the lies and malicious rumors her enemies are busy spreading... until the High Lord Akkarin steps in.  The price of Akkarin's support is dear, however, because Sonea, in turn, must protect his mysteries - and a secret that could lead a young novice mage deep into the darkness.

Meanwhile, Dannyl's first order to resume High Lord Akkarin's long-abandoned research into ancient magical knowledge is setting him on an extraordinary journey fraught with unanticipated peril - as he moves ever-closer to a future both wondrous... and terrible.

"Engaging... with some distinctive touches and delightful characters that lift it well above average."
Locus

"This stellar novel combines harrowing adrenaline rushes with complex morality, humor, and a landscape described so vibrantly it seems to have a life all its own."
- PEOPLE

"A thoroughly entertaining mystery."
- CHICAGO TRIBUNE

It's Joe Pickett's last week as temporary game warden in the mountain town of Baggs, Wyoming, but his con-science won't let him leave without checking out the strange reports coming from the wilderness: camps looted, tents slashed, elk butchered.  Not to mention the Olympic hopeful who'd been training in the region and then just... vanished.  What awaits him is like something out of an old campfire tale, except this story is all too real - and all too deadly.  Joe thought he was saddling up for his last patrol.  If only he'd known how true that might turn out to be...

"Box's series is the gold standard."
- LIBRARY JOURNAL

"One of today's solid-gold A-list must-read writers."
- LEE CHILD

NULL-A THREE

One of the immortal classics of science fiction is A E, Van Vogt's The World of Null-A.  Published in the Golden Age of SF, it shook the science fiction world with its astounding hero, Gilbert Gosseyn, who apparently could not be killed, and with its presentation of General Semantics as applied to the future of all humanity.
An SF landmark, in print to this day, it was followed by an equally remarkable sequel.  Now, in response to the myriad admirers of these ground-breaking concepts, Van Vogt has written the third and last book in the Null-A universe.

Meet again Gilbert Gosseyn, the man with the extra brain who staved off disaster for the Solar System, as he finds himself launched on his greatest challenge - a showdown with the originators of cosmic civilization.

NULL-A-THREE is destined to become an instant classic - a mind-boggling galaxy-spanning adventure!

A Pioneer from Earth

The overcrowded Earth isn't room enough for Evesham Giyt, a solitary and brilliant computer hacker who yearns for the long-gone frontiers of the past.  Chasing stories of unspoiled beauty and endless possibility, he takes a leap across the stars to the rugged colony world of Tupelo and soon finds himself a respected member of the community and mayor of the colony's human population.

Humanity isn't the first race to colonize Tupelo: as mayor, Giyt is part of a council of races trying to peacefully coexist despite wildly disperate cultures and traditions.  But as Giyt learns to like his alien neighbors, he begins to realize that his fellow humans may have other plans for Tupelo, plans that don't include peace but do include lots of dead aliens.  It will be up to Giyt to crack the human conspiracy and carve out a future for all of Tupelo... before it gets him killed!

"Another fine work from one of our finest craftsmen."
- Jack Williamson, author of The Silicon Dagger

"A thoroughly engaging and enjoyable story from one of the most reliable writers in the field."
- Science Fiction Chronicle

From amazon.com:

The #1 New York Times bestselling sequel to Words of Radiance, from epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson at the top of his game.

In Oathbringer, the third volume of the New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive, humanity faces a new Desolation with the return of the Voidbringers, a foe with numbers as great as their thirst for vengeance.

Dalinar Kholin’s Alethi armies won a fleeting victory at a terrible cost: The enemy Parshendi summoned the violent Everstorm, which now sweeps the world with destruction, and in its passing awakens the once peaceful and subservient parshmen to the horror of their millennia-long enslavement by humans. While on a desperate flight to warn his family of the threat, Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with the fact that the newly kindled anger of the parshmen may be wholly justified.

Nestled in the mountains high above the storms, in the tower city of Urithiru, Shallan Davar investigates the wonders of the ancient stronghold of the Knights Radiant and unearths dark secrets lurking in its depths. And Dalinar realizes that his holy mission to unite his homeland of Alethkar was too narrow in scope. Unless all the nations of Roshar can put aside Dalinar’s blood-soaked past and stand together—and unless Dalinar himself can confront that past—even the restoration of the Knights Radiant will not prevent the end of civilization.

From audible.com:

This is the way the world ends, for the last time.

The season of endings grows darker, as civilization fades into the long cold night.

Essun - once Damaya, once Syenite, now avenger - has found shelter, but not her daughter. Instead there is Alabaster Tenring, destroyer of the world, with a request. But if Essun does what he asks, it would seal the fate of the Stillness forever.

Far away, her daughter Nassun is growing in power - and her choices will break the world.

Roz snarled up into the face of her abductor. 'If you touch me I'll kill you. Who are you? Just what the hell is going on?' The blond man looked down at her with a mixture of what looked like fear and pain. 'My name's Chris Cwej,' he said. 'And as to what's going on, hell is probably as good a word for it as any.'

Something has burst through the worn and patchwork fabric of the universe, like a high-velocity round through a rotten apple. The timelines are cut loose and whipsawing - alternative pasts, presents and futures slicing through the world we think of as real.

At the centre of the disruption three adventurers, Nathan li Shao, Leetha and Kiru, are trapped on a parallel Earth - flung from one twisted alternative to another by a man called Deed, who has usurped the power of the Godhead. If their friend Sgloomi Po cannot reach them in time they will be obliterated. Deed is attempting to forge his own reality and consign all others to oblivion.

To help end the chaos, Sgloomi has assembled a number of old friends: Bernice Summerfield, the feckless Jason Kane and Christopher Rodonante Cwej... but there has been one small mistake. A miscalculation has placed someone among them who should not be there. Someone who should be dead.

Imagine yourself suddenly and
without warning catapulted
into the distant past or into
the far-off future...

OCTOBER THE FIRST IS TOO LATE unfolds the incredible adventures on a planet twisted by time splits.  The familiar world of the 1960's has vanished everywhere except in England.  In Western Europe World War I is still raging.  Greece is in the Golden Age of Pericles.  America is thousands of years into the future, while Russia and Asia are nothing but a glasslike plain incabable of sustaining life - the final phase before the end of the earth as we know it.

Against this macabre backdrop of co-existing time spheres, two young men risk their lives to find the truth.  But the truth is in the mind of the beholder.  And who is to say who are the dreamers and who are the dreamed?  You and I, dear reader, may indeed be shadows, existing solely in the mind of some traveler through time...

Only a writer with the unique talent and imagination of Fred Hoyle, a world-famous astronomer and astrophysicist, could create such an authentic and mind-chilling novel as
October the First Is Too Late

The locales are Flemingly sinister:
a paradise in he British West Indies, the border territory between East and West Berlin, and a auction room at Sotheby & Co., London

THE ACTION IS ELECTRIC WITH TENSION.  BOND IS DEVESTATINGLY DARING AND DEADLY-DEADLY.  HE'S THE ONE AND ONLY 007...  THE INIMITABLE SECRET AGENT WHO KEPT THE WORLD IN WILLING BONDAGE FOR OVER A DECADE.

"OCTOPUSSY IS A BRILLIANT GEM" - Publisher's Weekly

"Fine Flemming... has a fascination that will linger - charmingly chill." - John O'Neill, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"Vintage Fleming" - Omaha World Herald

"Superb examples of James Bond at his best" - The Courant Magazine

Here they are -
THE LAST GREAT ADVENTURES OF AGENT 007...
Octopussy, The Living Daylights, The Property of a Lady (the latter published here for the first time in book form)

THE NEW AMERICAN LIVRARY publishers of
SIGNET, MENTOR, SIGNET CLASSICS & NAL BOOKS

When things get scary, it’s nice to know that Odd is on our side.

The one and only Odd Thomas is back - in his second edgy and enthralling graphic-novel adventure from #1 New York Times bestselling suspense master Dean Koontz.

It’s Halloween in Pico Mundo, California, and there’s a whiff of something wicked in the autumn air. While the town prepares for its annual festivities, young fry cook Odd Thomas can’t shake the feeling that make-believe goblins and ghouls aren’t the only things on the prowl. And he should know, since he can see what others cannot: the spirits of the restless dead. But even his frequent visitor, the specter of Elvis Presley, can’t seem to point Odd in the right direction.

With the help of his gun-toting girlfriend, Stormy, Odd is out to uncover the terrible truth. Is something sinister afoot in the remote barn guarded by devilish masked men? Has All Hallows Eve mischief taken a malevolent turn? Or is the pleading ghost of a trick-or-treater a frightening omen of doom?

"MARVELOUS... THIS IS KOONTZ WORKING AT HIS PINNACLE."
- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The dead don't talk.  I don't know why."  But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant.  Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz's dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.


Sometimes the silent souls who seek Odd out want justice.  Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime.  But this time is different.  A stranger comes to Pico Mundo, accompanied by a horde of hyena-like shades who herald an imminent catastrophe.  Aided by his soul mate, Stormy Llewellyn, and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock 'n' Roll, Odd will race against time to thwart the gathering evil.  Hos account of these shattering hours, in which past and present, fate and destiny, converge, is a testament by which to live - an unforgettable fable for our time destined to rank among Dean Koontz's most enduring works.

"With this exceptional entry, Box solidifies his place the upper end of the crime fiction pantheon."
- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

The Red Desert of Wyoming is a beautiful and punishing place for anybody, but never more dangerous than it is now for game warden Joe Pickett, his friend Nate Ro-manowski, and the one who should never have been there, Joe's daughter Sheridan.

Nate is off the grid when he is suddenly confronted by a small team of elite professional operators.  They want to make a deal.  They need help destroying a domestic terror cell in the Red Desert, and in return, will make Nate's criminal record disappear.  But they are not what they seem - they have a very different plan in mind, one that might just take them all down.

"C. J. Box continues his spectacular roll with the darkly mesmerizing Off the Grid.  Joe Pickett and Nate Romanowski have become the gold standard, playing off each other perfectly as different sides of the same coin."
- PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

"Box is a master!" - THE DENVER POST

WHEN OGRE HOOD
WAS IN FLOWER

Smash knew all about ogres.  After all, despite his having a human mother, Smash was an ogre himself.  Ogres were not only huge and horribly ugly, as Smash was; they were also so stupid they could hardly speak, and they spent most of the time fighting, destroying, and eating young girls.

So what was he doing here with seven assorted females looking for him to guide them and save them?  Even in Xanth, where magic made anything possible, why should Tandy the Nymph trust him and seem fond of him?  And how could all then high-flown conversation be coming out of his mouth?

But that, it seemed, was what he got for going to Good Magician Humphrey for an Answer - before he even knew what the Question was!

FIRST PUBLICATION ANYWHERE

Don't Miss the Earlier Xanth Adventures
A SPELL FOR CHAMELEON
THE SOURCE OF MAGIC
CASTLE ROOGNA
CENTAUR AISLE
- All Available from Del Rey Books -

'The King's balls get bigger every year!'

Bernice Surprise Summerfield is settling into her new job as Professor of Archaeology at St Oscar's University on the planet Dellah — one of the most prestigious centres of learning in the Milky Way. She wants to put the past, especially her failed marriage, behind her.

So she's glad when she gets the chance to take her tutorial group to investigate the lost civilisation of Perfecton. Three whole weeks of archaeological research in the field. The perfect way to forget your worries.

She doesn't bank on three things.

That Menlove Stokes, Professor of Applied Art, and various other academics would be along for the ride. That vicious alien marauders would decide to explore the planet at the same time. And that a reactivated Perfecton device would plunge her into a situation that can only be described as — panto.