Hades has a hell of a firewall in this WebMage novel from Kelly McCullough. Not just any computer geek can hack into Hades. But Ravirn, a direct descendant of one of the three Fates, is no ordinary hacker. Magic has gone digital in the twenty-first century, and Ravirn is a sorcerer with a laptop—otherwise known as his shape-changing best friend. These days, Ravirn’s crashing at his girlfriend's place while she works on her doctorate in computer science. Only one problem: all of her research is in her webgoblin's memory, which is now in Hades along with its soul. To save Cerice's webgoblin (and her PhD), Ravirn must brave Hell itself. But can he do it without corrupting the mweb—the magical internet—and without facing down the Lord of the Dead himself?

Hades has a hell of a firewall in this WebMage novel from Kelly McCullough. Not just any computer geek can hack into Hades. But Ravirn, a direct descendant of one of the three Fates, is no ordinary hacker. Magic has gone digital in the twenty-first century, and Ravirn is a sorcerer with a laptop—otherwise known as his shape-changing best friend. These days, Ravirn’s crashing at his girlfriend's place while she works on her doctorate in computer science. Only one problem: all of her research is in her webgoblin's memory, which is now in Hades along with its soul. To save Cerice's webgoblin (and her PhD), Ravirn must brave Hell itself. But can he do it without corrupting the mweb—the magical internet—and without facing down the Lord of the Dead himself?

ONE WRONG MOVE COULD BE HIS LAST... In the mission given him by the Dragon Dunkelzahn, Ryan Mercury promises to deliver the magical Dragon Heart safely to the metaplanes, where Thayla and her song are all that defend the earth against the onslaught of the Enemy. But when the protector of the world is swallowed by the Chasm, all hope for the future disappears with her. Now nothing stands between humanity and the greatest scourge the planet has ever known... AND IF HE FALLS, THE SIXTH WORLD FALLS WITH HIM... The Enemy bears unlimited power, all of it evil. With Thayla destroyed, and the metaplanes unprotected, the Enemy's army of flesh-shredding beasts is about to lay waste to the world. As the ultimate battle is waged between the forces of good and evil, Ryan and his dauntless shadowrunners have only two options: total victory or certain destruction...

Reviews over 400 seminal games from 1975 to 2015. Each entry shares articles on the genre, mod suggestions and hints on how to run the games on modern hardware.

In this collection of new essays from the Liminal & Pantera Press Nonfiction Prize longlist, First Nations writers and writers of colour bend and shift boundaries, query the past and envision new futures. They ask: How do we write or hold our former selves, our ancestries? How does where we come from connect to where we are headed? How do we tell the stories of those who have been diminished or ignored in the writing of history? How do we do justice to the lives they lived, or to the people they were? From the intricacies of trans becoming, to violences inflicted on stateless peoples, to complex inheritances and the intertwining of tradition, politics and place, this prescient collection challenges singular narratives about the past, offering testimony and prophecy alike. ESSAYS BY André Dao, Barry Corr, Brandon K. Liew, Elizabeth Flux, Frankey Chung-Kok-Lun, grace ugamay dulawan, Hannah Wu, Hasib Hourani, Hassan Abul, Jon Tjhia, Kasumi Bocrzyk, Lucia Tường Vy Nguyễn, Lou Garcia-Dolnik, Lur Alghurabi, Mykaela Saunders, Ouyang Yu, Ruby-Rose Pivet-Marsh, Ryan Gustafsson, Suneeta Peres da Costa and Veronica Gorrie

Enter the "fascinating world"(Fresh Fiction) of the Fallen Blade in this thrilling fantasy novel from Kelly McCullpough. After the fall of the goddess of justice, temple assassin Aral Kingslayer lost his purpose in life and turned to the bottle. That might have been the end of him if luck hadn’t given him a few people to help him get back on his feet—notably the irresistible Baroness Maylien Dan Marchon, who once sought his aid in claiming the throne that’s rightfully hers. Reluctant to resume the role of an assassin, he turned her down. But now Aral has learned that one of the few people willing to help him in his darkest days has been imprisoned by Maylien’s uncle, King Thauvik. Aral knows he can’t let an old friend die, but the alternative is to return to the life he left years ago. It was the death of Thauvik’s half brother that earned Aral the name Kingslayer, and now he is thrust into a war that will see no end until he lives up to his name…

At the eve of the new millennium, teenager Alice Fell is alone on the streets of a strange city, friendless and without a pound to her name. She is not sure whether she's losing her mind, or whether she is called by inescapable visions to some special destiny. Along with a strange man named Stillman Waters, a retired occultist and spy – or so he claims – she finds herself pursued by strange creatures, and driven to steal the priceless "vanishing gem" that may contain the answers to the mysteries that plague her. A century earlier, consulting detective Sandford Blank, accompanied by his companion Roxanne Bonaventure, is called upon to solve a string of brutal murders on the eve of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. The police believe that Jack the Ripper is back on the streets, but Blank believes that this is a new killer, one whose motive is not violence or mayhem, but the discovery of the Holy Grail itself. And what of the corpse-white Huntsman and his unearthly hounds, who stalks the gaslit streets of London? And in the sixth century, Galaad, a young man driven by strange dreams of a lady in white and a tower of glass, travels to the court of the high king Artor in Londinium, abandoned stronghold of the Roman Empire in Britain. With Galaad’s bizarre dreams as their only guide, Artor and his loyal captains journey west to the Summerlands, there to face a threat that could spell the end of the new-forged kingdom of Britain. These three adventures—Dark Ages fantasy, gaslit mystery, and modern-day jewel heist—alternate until the barriers between the different times begin to break down, and our heroes confront the secrets that connect the Grail, the Glass Tower, and the vanishing gem. And lurking behind it all, the entity known only as Omega.

In the year 2060, violence rules the streets of Seattle and a conspiracy is hatched to spread a plague of vampirism. When Rachel Meyer's boyfriend Warren Storey is abducted by these conspirators, she hires shadowrunners to find Warren and bring him back. But the runners uncover a plot by Dr. Oslo Wake to transform all metahumans into walking dead. For Dr. Wake is developing a new strain of the virus that causes vampirism. The strain is far from perfected. Now, Warren has become a test subject in a medical procedure to create these unstoppable creatures. It's up to Rachel and her vampire hunter friends to rescue him.

A Guardian Best Book of 2022 * “Clever and surprising.” —BuzzFeed * “Brilliantly funny.” —San Francisco Chronicle * “Ingenious.”—The Millions * “Powerful.” —Harper’s Bazaar A captivating debut novel about a classics professor immersed in research for a new book on a prophecy in the ancient world who confronts chilling questions about her own life just as the pandemic descends—for readers of Jenny Offill, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Sally Rooney. Covid-19 has arrived in London, and the entire world quickly succumbs to the surreal, chaotic mundanity of screens, isolation, and the disasters big and small that have plagued recent history. As our unnamed narrator—a classics professor immersed in her studies of ancient prophecies—navigates the tightening grip of lockdown, a marriage in crisis, and a ten-year-old son who seems increasingly unreachable, she becomes obsessed with predicting the future. Shifting her focus from chiromancy (prophecy by palm reading) to zoomancy (prophecy by animal behavior) to oenomancy (prophecy by wine), she fails to notice the future creeping into the heart of her very own home, and when she finally does, the threat has already breached the gates. Brainy and ominous, imaginative and funny, Delphi is a snapshot and a time capsule—it vividly captures our current moment and places our reality in the context of myth. Clare Pollard has delivered one of our first great pandemic novels, a mesmerizing and richly layered story about how we keep on living in a world that is ever-more uncertain and absurd.

Within these passages lies a tale of atonement. Punishment, though not without compassion, is entwined with interplanar wars of apocalyptic proportion by the stoic tutelage of Halo, the Paladin Lord. Trespassers of his tenets try to salvage their dignity, yet groomed in discipline and tact are those that have caused offense. Through a training course which tests the very fabric of the soul, the lines of alter-realities, and the paradox of time travel intermingle. Planar defenders attempt to sew the rifts between tradition and innovation. Intimate knowledge of trespasses and morality of the spirit realm lie as a foundation for the physicality. The deviations of reality are played out in a hallucination that questions science, sorcery, and sexuality.