One of the great World War I antiwar novels—honest, chilling, and brilliantly satiricalBased on the author's experiences on the Western Front, Richard Aldington's first novel, Death of a Hero, finally joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. Our hero is George Winterbourne, who enlists in the British Expeditionary Army during the Great War and gets sent to France. After a rash of casualties leads to his promotion through the ranks, he grows increasingly cynical about the war and disillusioned by the hypocrisies of British society. Aldington's writing about Britain's ignorance of the tribulations of its soldiers is among the most biting ever published. Death of a Hero vividly evokes the morally degrading nature of combat as it rushes toward its astounding finish.**

The Only Girl in the Game, one of many classic novels from crime writer John D. MacDonald, the beloved author of Cape Fear and the Travis McGee series, is now available as an eBook.Her employers are the high priests of the great gambling mecca in the desert - and she is their handmaiden. Her job is to lead the lambs to the sacrifice, to keep them happy at the tables, where her partners slaughter the suckers. She longs to be free of the entertainers rubbing elbows with thugs at the craps tables, the divorcées hocking their jewels next to all-night marriage chapels, and the little white balls bouncing along the roulette wheels twenty-four hours a day in this world without end. But no matter how hard she tries to escape her past, she's fated to be caught forever backstage in the sick glitter of the infamous Las Vegas strip with nothing but sand and neon and money, money, everywhere. Features a new Introduction by Dean KoontzPraise for John D. MacDonald"The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller." - Stephen King"My favorite novelist of all time." - Dean Koontz"To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen." - Kurt Vonnegut"A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about thebest." - Mary Higgins Clark

SHE HAD THE MANNERS OF A TOMBOY—AND THE HEART OF A WOMAN.In all the Hudson River Valley of 1788, there was no lovelier, gayer, more headstrong girl than Lancey Quist. She was the daughter of a fisherman and proud of it.Life had taught her to handle men—or so she thought—until she found herself in love with two of them at the same time.Dirck van Zandt was the suave and handsome son of a rich landowner. Justin Pattison was a rough outlaw who had taken part in Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts. In addition to being rivals in love, the two men were bitter political enemies.Lancey finally made her choice—after a bloody duel had revealed the man she really wanted.Cover painting by Clark Hulings

Catherine Cookson was one of the world's most beloved writers. Her books have sold millions of copies, and her characters and their stories have captured the imaginations of readers around the globe. Now, available for the first time in this country, comes one of Cookson's earliest and most stirring historical romances: The Fifteen Streets. John O'Brien lives in a world where surviving is a continual struggle. He works long hours at the docks to help support his parents' large family. Many other families in the Fifteen Streets have already given up and descended into a dismal state of grinding poverty, but the O'Briens continue to strive for a world they are only rarely allowed to glimpse. Then John O'Brien meets Mary Llewellyn, a beautiful young teacher who belongs to that other world. What begins as a casual conversation over tea quickly blossoms into a rare love that should have been perfect. Fate steps in, however, when John is accused of fathering the child of...

The Committee, a group of powerful CIA fanatics, has friends in the Mafia, the Congress, in every important department of government up to and including the President's Oval Office. They are funded by a reclusive billionaire, and they have always gotten what they wanted. Now they want everything. This timely and chilling thriller, in the tradition of The Manchurian Candidate, is edge-of-the-chair suspense fiction…with the future of the world hanging in the balance. Enraged by the Chinese-American detente, the Committee conceives a sinister plot to destroy vital portions of the Chinese population. Their weapon is a Chinese youth (code name: Dragonfly) who had been surgically implanted with a deadly virus. He has no memory of what has been done to him, yet he walks around, a human time bomb, set to explode at the right moment, and release the plague within him, killing hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. He must be found. Thus begins a bizarre and violent odyssey, shifting from Washington to Peking and back. A poignant love story provides the counterpoint to a fast-paced and spectacular plot; the combination makes Dragonfly a book readers will not be able to put down. NOTE: K.R. Dwyer is actually a pen name for Dean Koontz (the initials, KRD, are Koontz's initials backwards).

Why didn't the corpses stay put at this Christmas houseparty? When the miserly Mrs. Ballinger decides to invite her nieces and nephews for Christmas, her paid companion Leigh Smith sees the possibility for some fun. What Smithy doesn’t expect is to encounter the family curse. When a dragging noise is heard in the attic it foretells death. And once a Ballinger dies, if you don’t watch the body until it’s buried, it’s likely to walk...

From Robert Silverberg’s “Earthmen and Strangers” anthology, 1966: The German word “ gestalt” means “shape” or “pattern,” but it also has the sense of “group” or “formation.” The science-fictional concept of the gestalt mind has frequently been examined—the intelligence that includes more than one individual. On Earth, the rule of one-body-one-intelligence seems to hold true, but who knows what we may find on other worlds? We already know of some simple creatures, like the corals and sponges, that exist in colonies numbering many individuals. Such Unkings are purely physical; the possibility exists, though, that on another planet some higher form of life may have developed a colony of linked minds. What it would be like to encounter such a form of life is considered in this story.

After the "Accident," all males on earth become sterile. Society ages and falls apart bit by bit. First toy companies go under. Then record companies. Then cities cease to function. Now earth's population lives in spread-out, isolated villages, with its youngest members in their 50's. When the people of Sparcot begin to make claims of gnomes and man-eating rodents lurking around their village, Greybeard and his wife set out for the coast with the hope of finding something better. With a New Introduction from the Author! "When is science fiction not science fiction? The answer must be: When it becomes too frighteningly believable. This is.î - Sacramento Bee

Book DescriptionCrispin Mayo was a stranger to the law of the gun. He had come west from Ireland to seek his fortune--one man with nothing but his fists to protect him. What he found instead was trouble. A cutthroat band of Confederate renegades were planning a train kidnapping. It was none of Mayo's business--until the desperate plea of a lady changed his mind. Soon the diehard rebels would be very sorry indeed they'd ever crossed paths with the lone man from Skibbereen.

Book DescriptionRafter Crossing's cattlemen swore they would close the mines that were poisoning the range, and the miners were stealing the high-grade ore that rightfully belonged to Laine Tennison. Laine hired Mike Shevlin to get her ore back, but Shevlin had an old debt he wanted to pay in lead--not gold. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

An alien gives a country doctor a vaccine to wipe out mankind's diseases—including a few we never recognized.

"He killed me," the dying man had said. He stabbed me." Those words stayed with young Jean Talon as he journeyed westward, finally reaching the Missouri in search of a simple and honest life building river boats. But the stranger died. And that meant unraveling a deadly knot that tied together a vicious renegade's army, the Louisiana Purchase, and the missing brother of a beautiful, headstrong woman. Too near the truth to break away, Jean Talon turns in the tools of his trade for a far more dangerous kind of work--the kind that either gets men killed or earns them a new home in a violent, untamed land. **