After the four worlds Alfred has at last found his people on Chelstra, the realm of sea. But his travels have taught him to be cautious... and Alfred soon realizes his caution is justified, even among his own kind. The one person Alfred can trust is, strangely, Haplo the Patryn. But Haplo's lord has decreed all Sartan to be the enemy, and Haplo dares not go against his lord. Now the companions have arrived in a land where humans, elves, and dwarves have learned to live in peace. Unaware of an even greater threat to all the realms, it is Sartan and Patryn who will disrupt this alliance of the lesser races in their struggle to gain control of all four worlds. Only Alfred and Haplo realize that they have a much older -- and more powerful -- enemy than each other...

480 p

In the Death Gate series, Weis and Hickman have created their most exciting and original epic to date. Into the Labyrinth, the sixth of seven books set in the vast and richly imagined Death Gate Universe, is a romantic and heroic tale that spans four worlds in an age-old battle to control the sundered realms of air, water, fire, and stone... Xar, Lord of the Nexus, has traveled to the fiery world of Abarrach to learn the secret art of necromancy, hoping to raise an army of the dead to conquer the four worlds. But he discovers an easier way. One of the undead tells the lord about the Seventh Gate, the magical chamber used by the Sartan to sunder the world. The Seventh Gate still exists and whoever enters it can either create worlds - or destroy them. Only one person knows the location of this gate, although he doesn''t know he knows it. That person is Haplo. Xar sends a Patryn assassin to kill Haplo and bring back his corpse. The lord plans to use his necromancy to bring Haplo back to life and turn him into a mindless slave who will reveal the location of the Gate. Xar is certain of success, for the assassin is someone from Haplos past, someone whom Haplo trusts with his life. Another assssin is also after Haplo. Hugh the Hand has been hired by the Kenkari to kill the Patryn, and the Brotherhood has provided an ancient Sartan weapon - the Accursed Blade - to help him in his task. Wounded and weakened, Haplo nearly falls victim to his killers. But when the Accursed Blade runs amok, all of them, including a terrified and extremely reluctant Alfred, find themselves fighting for their lives in the most dreaded place of all - the deadly prison maze called the Labyrinth. Betrayed by the one heloves, Haplo is imprisoned by his own people, forced to watch helplessly as an army of evil prepares to march on the Labyrinth, dooming all inside to death.

496 p

In the Death Gate series, Weis and Hickman have created their most exciting and original epic to date. Into the Labyrinth, the sixth of seven books set in the vast and richly imagined Death Gate Universe, is a romantic and heroic tale that spans four worlds in an age-old battle to control the sundered realms of air, water, fire, and stone... Xar, Lord of the Nexus, has traveled to the fiery world of Abarrach to learn the secret art of necromancy, hoping to raise an army of the dead to conquer the four worlds. But he discovers an easier way. One of the undead tells the lord about the Seventh Gate, the magical chamber used by the Sartan to sunder the world. The Seventh Gate still exists and whoever enters it can either create worlds - or destroy them. Only one person knows the location of this gate, although he doesn''t know he knows it. That person is Haplo. Xar sends a Patryn assassin to kill Haplo and bring back his corpse. The lord plans to use his necromancy to bring Haplo back to life and turn him into a mindless slave who will reveal the location of the Gate. Xar is certain of success, for the assassin is someone from Haplos past, someone whom Haplo trusts with his life. Another assssin is also after Haplo. Hugh the Hand has been hired by the Kenkari to kill the Patryn, and the Brotherhood has provided an ancient Sartan weapon - the Accursed Blade - to help him in his task. Wounded and weakened, Haplo nearly falls victim to his killers. But when the Accursed Blade runs amok, all of them, including a terrified and extremely reluctant Alfred, find themselves fighting for their lives in the most dreaded place of all - the deadly prison maze called the Labyrinth. Betrayed by the one heloves, Haplo is imprisoned by his own people, forced to watch helplessly as an army of evil prepares to march on the Labyrinth, dooming all inside to death.

496 p

The Seventh Gate is the thrilling conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. In this tale of treachery, power, and heroism, Alfred, Haplo, and Marit embark on a journey of death and discovery as they seek to enter the dreaded Seventh Gate. Encountering enemies both old and new, they unleash a magic no power can control, damning themselves to an apocalypse of unimagined proportion in a final struggle between good and evil.

368 p

Elbryan and Pony--soul mates from childhood who grew even closer over time--fervently hope that the tide of darkness is at last receding from the land of Corona. Yet if evil is on the retreat, why are hordes of goblins and bloody-capped powries slashing their way ever-deeper into civilized lands?

A sinister threat now looms over Corona, for the power of the demon dactyl was not entirely vanquished by the sacrifice of the monk Avelyn Desbris. Instead, its darkness has infiltrated the most sacred of places--as a once-admired spiritual leader rededicates his life to the most vicious, most insidious revenge against the forces of good. There may be no stopping the spread of the malignant evil . . .

544p

Time is of the essence when you're stranded in the future....
Humanity is running out of time.

The settled universe is filled with terraformed worlds linked by timeshafts -- temporal wormholes in deep space. These timeshafts are the only way to travel the vast distances between the stars.

The Chronologic Patrol is charged with guarding the timeshaft wormholes and preventing time paradoxes at all costs. But one critical mission ends in disaster, turning Anton Koffield, captain of the Upholder, into a dark legend....

As ships carrying relief supplies to a crippled planet approach a timeshaft, they are mercilessly set upon by mysterious attackers -- their crews are murdered and the sanctity of time itself is at risk.

In response, Koffield is forced to do the unthinkable: he must stop the invasion by destroying the timeshaft. Marooned eighty years in the future, he lives as a cursed figure, the villain who killed a world.

And his odyssey through time has only just begun....

496 p

Stephen Baxter's gripping page-turners are feats of bold speculation and big ideas that, for all their time-and-space-spanning grandeur, remain firmly rooted in scientific fact and cutting-edge theory. Now Baxter is back with the final volume in his monumental Destiny's Children trilogy, a tour de force in which parallel stories unfold -and then meet as humanity stands poised on the brink of divine providence . . . or extinction.

It is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is still in the throes of grief. His beloved wife, Morag, died seventeen years ago, along with their second child. Yet Michael is haunted by more than just the memory of Morag. On a beach in Miami, he sees his dead wife. But she vanishes as suddenly as she appears, leaving no clue as to her mysterious purpose.

Alia was born on a starship, fifteen thousand light years from Earth, five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole. Yet she knows him intimately. In this distant future, when humanity has diversified as a species and spread across the galaxy, every person is entrusted with the duty of Witnessing the life of one man, woman, or child from the past, recovered by means of a technology able to traverse time itself. Alia's subject is Michael Poole.

When his surviving, estranged son is injured, Michael tries to reconnect with him -and to stave off a looming catastrophe. Vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie buried beneath the poles, trapped in crystals of ice. Now that ice is melting. Once it goes, the poisons released will threaten all life on Earth. A bold solution is within reach, if only Michael can convince a doubting world. Yet as Morag's ghostly visitations continue, Michael begins to doubt his own sanity.

In the future, Alia is chosen to become a Transcendent, an undying member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis. The Witnessings are an integral part of their design, for only by redeeming the pain of every human who has lived and died can true Transcendence be achieved. Yet Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendents' plans, a vein of madness that may lead to an unthinkable renunciation.

Somehow, Michael Poole holds the fate of the future in his hands. Now, to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past. . . .

512 p

IT’S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. BUT YOU CAN SEE IT FROM HERE.

In the near future, with physical augmentation gaining ground and nano-cybernetics only years away, the dawn of limitless human evolution is just beyond the horizon, and a secret corporate cabal of ruthless men intends to make sure that humankind stays under its control. But two people on opposite sides of the world are starting to ask questions that could get them killed.

Secret Service agent Anna Kelso has been suspended for investigating the shooting that claimed her partner’s life. Anna suspects that the head of a bio-augmentation firm was the real target, and against orders she’s turned up a few leads concerning a covert paramilitary force and a cadre of underground hackers. But the cover-up runs deep, and now there’s a target on her back. Meanwhile, Ben Saxon, former SAS officer turned mercenary, joins a shadowy special ops outfit. They say they’re a force for good, but Saxon quickly learns that the truth is not so clear-cut. So begins a dangerous quest to uncover a deadly secret that will take him from Moscow to London, D.C. to Geneva, and to the dark truth—if he lives that long.

The year is 2027; in a world consumed by chaos and conspiracy, two people are set on a collision course with the most powerful and dangerous organization in history—and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

352p

Format: Paperback, 448 pages

Hot on the heels of his Hugo-nominated Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling serves up Distraction, one of the most rigorously imagined portraits of 21st-century American life ever put to paper. Anyone with more than a passing interest in science fiction -- anyone who appreciates fiction that illuminates the relationship between the vast, impersonal forces of social change and the increasingly beleaguered life of the individual -- is advised, without reservation, to read this book.

544p

Hugo Award winner.

One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was -- as usual -- in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars.

Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake -- failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line -- for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!

256 p

In the enchanting novel Prospero's Children, Jan Siegel introduced an extraordinary heroine and the lushly evocative world of wonders and terrors that quickly enveloped her normal adolescent life. Now Siegel summons us back to the magic with the continuing story of Fern Capel--and the remarkable power of her extraordinary Gift . . .

After surviving an amazing, terrifying summer twelve years ago, Fern makes a fateful decision: to deny the mystical powers that pulse through her family's past. Yearning for a simple, quiet life, she decides to marry a man twenty years her senior, a man who insists they wed at the Capels' summer house in Yarrowdale, a place swelling with mood, marvel, and magic. For when Fern returns there with her best friend, Gaynor, ancient, sinister forces reawaken.

Yet Fern has had enough: Enough of running from her fate, enough of hiding from her Gift. As she turns to face her destiny, the real world falls away, and Fern is once again swept into another land, removed from Time, void of comfort. It will take all her skill and daring to fight her way back to the present and save the people she loves from the ever-growing danger that threatens to destroy them. And to her utmost surprise, the key to survival is a dragon with the capacity to rule the world . . . but who will relinquish it all to one man.

Jan Siegel has created an intense, fascinating world. To surrender yourself under her captivating spell is to remember how remarkably powerful a literary voyage can be.

352 p

Lord John Aversin--with the help of his mageborn wife, Jenny Waynest-- has fought and defeated two dragons, earning the title of Dragonsbane. But there are creatures more terrifying than dragons. Demonspawn from a dark dimension have learned to drink the magic--and the souls--of mages and dragons alike, turning their victims into empty vessels. And now they've stolen John and Jenny's mageborn son, twelve-year-old Ian.

In desperation, John seeks the help of the eldest and strongest dragon: Morkeleb the Black. But the demons have allies, too: a vast army poised to plunge the Realm into civil war. In the coming struggle, Morkeleb will sacrifice what he values most. Jenny will question everything she trusts and believes in. And John will embark on a perilous quest for the only things capable of defeating such powerful demons--even more powerful demons . . .

320 p

Once the mighty fortress had stood strong, defended by the mightiest of all Drenai heroes, Druss, the Legend. But now a tyrannical, mad emperor had seized control of the fortress, and his twisted will was carried throughout the land by the Joinings --- abominations that were half-man, half-beast. Tenaka Khan was a half-breed himself, hated by the Drenai for his Nadir blood and despised by the Nadir for his Drenai ancestry. But he alone had a plan to destroy the emperor. The last heroes of the Drenai joined with him in a desperate gamble to bring down the emperor -- even at the cost of their own destruction.

320p