When the season brings a chill, nothing warms the heart or elevates the spirits like a new novel by Anne Perry, whom the Chicago Sun-Times calls "the most adroit sleight-of-hand practitioner since Agatha Christe." Perry's gifts are on full display in A Christmas Grace--a hope-filled tale of forgiveness that is rich with mystery and intrigue.With Christmas just around the corner, Thomas Pitt's sister-in-law, Emily Radley, is suddenly called from London to be with her dying aunt. Leaving her husband and two children behind, Emily makes the long journey to an all-but-forgotten town in the county of Connemara, on the western coast of Ireland. She soon discovers that a tragic legacy haunts the once closeknit community. Violent storms ravage the coast and keep alive painful memories of an unsolved murder and unsettling fears that a killer may still live among the residents of the lonely Irish town. Determined to lighten her aunt's heart and help the troubled...

The sinister zerg leader no longer commands her legions of bloodthirsty aliens against the humans of the Koprulu sector, all thanks to the combined courage and tenacity of Jim Raynor, General Horace Warfield, and a mismatched team of Dominion soldiers and outlaw rebels. Although the queen is no more, Sarah Kerrigan is very much alive. The woman who once controlled countless alien minds in a rampage across the stars has been spirited away by the man who dethroned her. Now Arcturus Mengsk's Dominion armada is on her heels, roaring for blood. Jim Raynor will need to test his strength, his wit, and his loyalties against impossible odds to protect the woman he loves. StarCraft II: Flashpoint bridges the events that take place in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and the upcoming StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. Featuring never-before-seen glimpses into Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan's past, this novel opens a window into a world of passion, action, and adventure.

Simon. Something frightful has happened to Jamie. Please come . . .When James Asher is found unconscious in the cemetery of the Church of St. Clare Pieds-Nus with multiple puncture-wounds in his throat and arms, his wife, Lydia, knows of only one person to call: the vampire Don Simon Ysidro. Old friend and old adversary, he is the only one who can help Lydia protect her unconscious, fevered husband from the vampires of Paris.Why James has been attacked – and why he was called to Paris in the first place – Lydia has no idea. But she knows that she must find out, and quickly. For with James wavering between life and death, and war descending on the world, their slim chance of saving themselves from the vampires grows slimmer with each passing day . . .

Warfare has changed on this strange world to which a ship carrying two Civil War regiments was transported. In their ongoing fight against enslavement inflicted on all human societies by the terrifying 9 ft. tall nomadic Hordes, Lieutenant Andrew Keane has allied his Union troops with descendants of medieval Russians and ancient Romans. But the Hordes’ weapons and technology are now more advanced, following the recent arrival of three members of the Bantag Horde via the mysterious “tunnel of light”. Once again the human armies under Andrew Keane must fight to keep the Hordes from recapturing the liberated human cities. The latest attack comes during a bitterly cold winter, and it will take every ounce of ingenuity and courage for Keane’s army to counter the Hordes’ brutal assault. Military fiction at its best. “The Lost Regiment series moves like a bullet … an exciting read.” - Locus Magazine "One of the most intriguing writers today in the field of historical and military science fiction." 
- Harry Turtledove, author of THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH and HOW FEW REMAIN [The Lost Regiment series is] “A parallel world of majestic sweep and gripping intensity." 
- L. Sprague de Camp, author of LEST DARKNESS FALL and THE ANCIENT ENGINEERS “Exciting and moves like a bullet with good characters and battle scenes. . . . An excellent read.” - Analog "With Bill Forstchen, you'll get some of the best adventure writing in years!" 
- Science Fiction Chronicle 

"Bill Forstchen is highly respected in the military history community because he is the only one working in the field who understands the operational aspects of war, as well as the tactical and the policy/Strategic levels." - Dr. Dennis Showalter, Past President of the Society for Military History, author of TANNENBERG: CLASH OF EMPIRES William R. Forstchen is the author of over forty books, has a Ph.D. in history from Purdue University and is a Faculty Fellow at Montreat College. His broad spectrum of writing includes science fiction and fantasy, historical fiction, alternate history, several scholarly works, numerous short stories and articles and near-future thrillers ONE SECOND AFTER, ONE YEAR AFTER, THE FINAL DAY, and PILLAR TO THE SKY. **About the Author William R. Forstchen is the author of more than forty books, including the award-winning We Look Like Men of War. He is a professor of history and Faculty Fellow at Montreat College, in Montreat, North Carolina. Forstchen resides near Asheville, North Carolina. 

The Devil is certainly at work in the dark streets of the slums of Victorian London—and Charlotte and Thomas Pitt must stop a killer before he strikes againA serial killer is loose in the slums of Devil's Acre. The murders are brutal, but it is the killer's grizzly signature that shocks even Inspector Thomas Pitt, no stranger to death and violent crime. The victims are stabbed and sexually mutilated. When Pitt recognizes one of the victims as a blackmailing footman from a case on Callander Square, his investigation takes him from the brothels to the high reaches of Victorian society and into a world where upper-class women descend to depravity to relieve their boredom. Despite Pitt's warnings, his wife, Charlotte, pursues her own investigation. With the help of her sister Emily, Lady Ashworth, Charlotte reenters the elegant drawing rooms of Callander Square to find out more about the former footman who, Pitt discovers, owned an exclusive high-class whorehouse...

It is the far future. Earth is a beautifully planned, efficiently run and happily united. But still it is a world with problems—people have become so lazy, so self-satisfied, that human progress has all but ceased. Addicts of the newly-developed “programmed dreams” are increasing at an enormous rate. Only a few individuals realize that the human race is destroying itself. This book is about what those few people do.

Amazon.com ReviewAlastair Reynolds's first novel is "hard" SF on an epic scale, crammed with technological marvels and immensities. Its events take place over a relatively short period, but have roots a billion years old--when the Dawn War ravaged our galaxy.Sylveste is the only man ever to return alive and sane from a Shroud, an enclave in space protected by awesome gravity-warping defenses: "a folding a billion times less severe should have required more energy than was stored in the entire rest-mass of the galaxy." Now an intuition he doesn't understand makes him explore the dead world Resurgam, whose birdlike natives long ago tripped some booby trap that made their own sun erupt in a deadly flare.Meanwhile, the vast, decaying lightship Nostalgia for Infinity is coming for Sylveste, whose dead father (in AI simulation) could perhaps help the Captain, frozen near absolute zero yet still suffering monstrous transformation by nanotech plague. Most of Infinity's tiny crew have hidden agendas--Khouri the reluctant contract assassin believes she must kill Sylveste to save humanity--and there are two bodiless stowaways, one no longer human and one never human. Shocking truths emerge from bluff, betrayal, and ingenious lies.The trail leads to a neutron star where an orbiting alien construct has defenses to challenge the Infinity's planet-wrecking superweapons.At the heart of this artifact, the final revelations detonate--most satisfyingly. Dense with information and incident, this longish novel has no surplus fat and seems almost too short. A sparkling SF debut. --David Langford, Amazon.co.ukFrom Publishers WeeklyThis distant-past/far-future, hard sci-fi tour de force probes a galaxy-wide enigma: why does spacefaring humanity encounter so few remnants of intelligent life? Excavating the 900,000-year-old Amarantin civilization on its home world, Resurgam, archaeologist Dan Sylveste discovers evidence of a splinter cult that abandoned Resurgam for the stars but returned, only to be swallowed up by a mysterious cataclysm that destroyed all the Amarantins. Aboard the Nostalgia for Infinity, a vast light-hugger ship in interstellar space, the ominous Triumvirate of cyborg starfarers seeks Sylveste to heal its captain, afflicted by the deadly Melding Plague, which turns once-humans into their own semisentient spaceships. In Chasm City on the slum-ridden world of Yellowstone, assassin Ana Khouri joins the Nostalgia's crew intent on killing Sylveste. Clearly intoxicated by cutting-edge scientific research in bioengineering, space physics, cybernetics Reynolds spins a ravishingly inventive tale of intrigue. Hard SF addicts will applaud the author's talent for creating convincing alien beings and the often uneasy merging of human and machine intelligence, depicted here as nearly too frighteningly real for comfort. Others, however, may find these human-cybernetic hybrid characters chilling, dispassionate (except for their built-in drives toward revenge and murder) and foreboding. Reynolds's vision of a future dominated by artificial intelligence trembles with the ultimate cold of the dark between the stars. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

A yuletide tale set in exotic India. This time the mistress of mystery tells the story of a terrible crime that sets the stage for another: accusing an innocent man of murder. The year is 1857, soon after the violent Siege of Cawnpore, with India in the midst of rebellion. In the British garrison, a guard is killed and an Indian prisoner escapes, which leads to yet more British deaths. Cries for revenge are overwhelming. Despite no witnesses and no evidence against him, a luckless British medical orderly named John Tallis is arrested as an accomplice simply because he was the only soldier unaccounted for when these baffling crimes were committed. Though chosen to defend Tallis, young Lieutenant Victor Narraway is not encouraged to try very hard. Narraway’s superiors merely want a show trial. But inspired by a soldier’s widow and her children, and by his own stubborn faith in justice, Narraway searches for the truth. In an alien world haunted by memories of massacre, he is the accused man’s only hope. The trial of John Tallis equals the white-knuckle best of Anne Perry’s breathtaking courtroom dramas. And thanks to a simple Christmas garland and some brilliant detective work, Narraway perseveres against appalling odds, learning how to find hope within himself—and turn the darkest hour into one full of joy and light.