It might have been better to let the world die... “Here are the bullet points. Sparks—people like me—have superpowers. We’re from this Earth, and we get our powers from a big ol’ Maelstrom at the center of the planet. The Shard is a giant black rock the Maelstrom created and banished to an alternate Earth just after the creation of the Universe. And the Chosen come from that Earth, where the Shard rules everything. “Are you still there? It’s a lot, right?” A year has passed since the heroes of the maelstrom saved the world by bringing its new conqueror from an alternate earth. The good guys and girls split apart, hiding from the Shard and its Chosen rulers of the planet, preparing for the final battle. Battle lines are drawn and moral lines will be crossed in the exciting conclusion to the Tragic Heroes Trilogy. Avatars of the Maelstrom is the third book in the Tragic Heroes Trilogy and Jan-Ives Campbell’s fourth novel. He is also the author of the graphic novel, The League of Super Groovy Crimefighters.

This is the CORE book that an aspiring sorcerer will need to study to learn all the essential skills of a worker of dark magick. Communing with dark spirits, working with divination, curses, and other forms of magick.

Second in the Rifters Trilogy, Hugo Award-winning author Peter Watts' Maelstrom is a terrifying explosion of cyberpunk noir. This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who'd inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It's not as through there was a choice: saving the world excuses almost any degree of collateral damage. Unless, of course, you miss the target. Now North America's west coast lies in ruins. Millions of refugees rally around a mythical figure mysteriously risen from the deep sea. A world already wobbling towards collapse barely notices the spread of one more blight along its shores. And buried in the seething fast-forward jungle that use to be called Internet, something vast and inhuman reaches out to a woman with empty white eyes and machinery in her chest. A woman driven by rage, and incubating Armageddon. Her name is Lenie Clarke. She's a rifter. She's not nearly as dead as everyone thinks. And the whole damn world is collateral damage as far as she's concerned. . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Savannah has loads to juggle as a college freshman, but now that she’s a vampire, everything royally sucks! It's a lot to swallow but she doesn’t want to hurt anyone, and she doesn't want to blow it..... Her best friend Phil uses his head and comes up with an alternative food source for her. You see, men have a particular weakness, and she intends to get what she needs before everything goes down! Do you get it? Will their unorthodox plan work, or is she doomed to a life as a bloodsucking denizen of the underworld? Not only does she need to eat, but she's got a crazy stalker vampire who wants to spend eternity together, and a squad of vampire hunters wants to drive a stake through her heart! Find out what happens in sVck, the first of the Quick Bites series. You'll be glad you did!

A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew--people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater--down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness. Unfortunately the only people suitable for long-term employment in these experimental power stations are crazy, some of them in unpleasant ways. How many of them can survive, or will be allowed to survive, while worldwide disaster approaches from below? Starfish, the first installment in Peter Watts' Rifters Trilogy At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The purpose of Reading the Fantastic Imagination: The Avatars of a Literary Genre is the observation of the very hybridity of the fantastic genre, as a typical postmodern form. The volume continues an older project of the editor and a large number of the contributors, that of investigating the current status of several popular genres, from historical fiction to romance. The scrutiny continues in this third volume, dedicated to the fantastic imagination and the plethora of themes, moods, media, and formats deriving from it. FanLit is surely trendy, even if it is not highbrow, despite its noble ancestry. This apparent paradox characterizes many of the literary genres en vogue today, from historical fiction to romance. This very contradiction forms part of the basis for this book. After the success of the previous book in the series dedicated to a “borderline” literary genre – Romance: The History of a Genre was declared by Cambridge Scholars Publishing as the Critics’ Choice Book of the Month in January 2013 – this collection of studies about the fantastic imagination takes a further step into completing a larger research project which seeks to investigate the varieties of popular fiction. Although all contributors in the series teach canonical literary texts, they did not hesitate to plunge into the opposite area of fictional work and, moreover, continued doing so even though such a project caused the “raise of a few (high)brows,” (Percec 2012, 232) as argued in the Endnote of Romance: The History of a Genre.

Separated from her companions and enslaved, Mira must come to grips with her new reality. Reeling from the loss of those closest to her and blocked from using magic, she must fight in the ring every day just to survive, magically healed from her wounds only to be forced to fight soon again. Meanwhile, the time spell is spinning out of control, threatening to destroy all of Daoine. Some believe Mira is the only one who can do anything about it. But has she become too broken to care?

A decade of peace has passed in Terre D'Ange, the country founded by the god Elua. Since the world's most famous courtesan saved her queen from assassination, Phèdre n? Delauny has been enjoying a quiet life until a prophetic dream calls upon her to serve her gods one last time. But what they ask may be too painful for even an anguissettte to bear. When the young son of the traitor Melisande Shahrizai—Imriel de la Courcel, who stands third in line for the crown—is kidnapped, Phèdre enters an uneasy bargain to find the boy in exchange for the information that will free her beloved childhood friend Hyacinthe from his eternal imprisonment as the new Master of the Straits. When it becomes clear that Imriel's disappearance is part of a larger, far darker scheme, Phèdre knows it is her sacred duty to end it. At her side is her loving consort Josselin, who will also risk losing himself in Phèdre’s gamble to rescue Imriel and save her country from a spreading darkness. And beyond her doubt, her fear, dangles the promise of a holy mystery so great that it could transform Phèdre into justice incarnate... or consume her in the flames of her own passion. All of Phèdre’s journeys have led here, to the grandest of conclusions in an epic tale of fantasy, adventure, and, above all, love. Kushiel's Avatar is the stunning conclusion to Jacqueline Carey's epic trilogy. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The gods may have been restored to their rightful seats of power—but the end of the Time of Troubles does not mark the end of all strife Although the gods have regained their powers and no longer walk in the mortal world, there is still little peace between them. When their deeply engrained power struggles erupt once more, ex-comrades Mystra—formerly known as Midnight and recently elevated to godhood—and Cyric are bound together in conflict. Cyric, now the god of strife, murder, and the dead, has become even more obsessed with power and revenge. No longer content with just the Tablets of Fate, he wants the Forgotten Realms all to himself—and to rule them in the name of evil. Only Mystra, the new goddess of magic, has the ability to defeat him and restore the balance that has been lost.

From Some Forgotten Age A Storm of Evil Raged, A Wind of Night has Come And Swept Away the Sun.... When Virgil Deux loses his heart to the little alien diplomat marooned on his world, he never imagines she will lead him across the galaxy and into the maelstrom of political and mystical intrigues swirling at the end of the Second Galactic Age. An ancient god of Darkness has manipulated the great mortal empires of the galaxy to the brink of apocalypse, and only the Avatar of Light can prevent their ultimate annihilation. However, Virgil discovers that instead of a god, the Light has chosen his own fragile soul as its champion, and has compelled him to embark on an odyssey that takes him from Twinsun IV's crystalline Imperial Citadel to Nema's sanguinous capitol of Enirum, from Sodome's great city-state of Port Royal to General Gondaga's flying war metropolis, Vampyr - and finally to the very heart of the galaxy and the legendary treasure planet of Aura. There, with Councilor Aurelia and Captain Coreandra Flint beside him, he must pit his love against a faceless storm of evil to save all loving souls.