GianLorenzo Cortese, a gamer who traveled from a distant future to our present, is writing his memoirs. In The Emperors Legacy, he dives deeper into the future of gaming with all its glamour and danger. GianLorenzos future games are as intense and involving as real life. The game engine is a machine capable of creating a virtual world indistinguishable from reality, populated by intelligent, unpredictable, and self-directed characters. In The Emperors Legacy, GianLorenzo begins his adventures among the professional gamers. In a grandiose setting, he meets the emperor, an enlightened leader of a civilization at the height of its power. As the game evolves, GianLorenzo grows oblivious to the thin lines dividing game and reality. Many menacing shadows surround the throne, and GianLorenzo will fight with all he has to keep his promise of loyalty to his emperor. GianLorenzo Cortese is also the author of Memoirs of a Gamer from the Future, the first in the Game World series.

When you've been accused of kidnapping an emperor, and every enforcer in the city wants your head, it's hard to prove yourself an honorable person and even harder to earn an imperial pardon.That doesn't keep Amaranthe Lokdon and her team of outlaws from trying. When athletes start disappearing from the Imperial Games, they may finally have an opportunity to show the emperor that they're on his side. If she and her comrades can get to the bottom of such a public mystery, they're sure to get the credit.But plans go awry when Amaranthe's own men start plotting against each other, the new ally she'd hoped to acquire tries to turn her in, and her best fighter—and closest friend—disappears.Maybe getting involved wasn't such a good idea after all…

Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is good at her job: she can deter thieves and pacify thugs, if not with a blade, then by toppling an eight-foot pile of coffee canisters onto their heads. But when ravaged bodies show up on the waterfront, an arson covers up human sacrifices, and a powerful business coalition plots to kill the emperor, she feels a tad overwhelmed.Worse, Sicarius, the empire's most notorious assassin, is in town. He's tied in with the chaos somehow, but Amaranthe would be a fool to cross his path. Unfortunately, her superiors order her to hunt him down. Either they have an unprecedented belief in her skills... or someone wants her dead.

Great new novel from Aaron Dembski-Bowden chronicling the story of the Emperor's Spears, a Space Marine Chapter on the edge of destruction, last watchmen over the Elara's Veil nebula. Now, the decisions of one man, Amadeus Kaias Incarius of the Mentor Legion, will determine the Chapter's fate… The scattered worlds of the Elara's Veil nebula were once protected by the oath of unity sworn by three mighty Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. The Star Scorpions were undone by flaws in their genetic coding. The Celestial Lions were ravaged by the Inquisition for sins they did not commit. Now, after hundreds of years, only the Emperor's Spears still keep their vigil. They are barbarian watchmen against the Outer Dark; bloodied but unbroken in their long duty. Amadeus Kaias Incarius, a brother of the Mentor Legion, is commanded to cross the Great Rift and assess the Spears' war-readiness, only to be drawn into the chaotic plight of a depleted crusade on the Imperium's benighted frontier. The decisions he makes, far from the God-Emperor's light, will decide the fate of the war-torn Chapter.

History claims she is the first female serial killer. Locusta is the daughter of a winemaker in the Roman province of Gaul. She enjoys the indulged childhood of the elite, her concerns only about the day’s amusements. She rides gentle ponies, attends parties, reads Ovid, and learns the herbal arts from her servant. But the day after meeting her betrothed, Locusta discovers the consequences of possessing such dangerous knowledge. Ordered to leave her pastoral life, Locusta is thrust into a world of intrigue, scandal, and murder—where treason lurks behind every corner and defying an emperor means death. Locusta’s life changes forever when a young Emperor Nero requires her herbal expertise and commands her to be his personal poisoner. Caught in an imperial web, Locusta must embrace her profession or die. Or is there another way out?

In The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley, the emperor of Annur is dead, slain by enemies unknown. His daughter and two sons, scattered across the world, do what they must to stay alive and unmask the assassins. But each of them also has a life-path on which their father set them, destinies entangled with both ancient enemies and inscrutable gods. Kaden, the heir to the Unhewn Throne, has spent eight years sequestered in a remote mountain monastery, learning the enigmatic discipline of monks devoted to the Blank God. Their rituals hold the key to an ancient power he must master before it's too late. An ocean away, Valyn endures the brutal training of the Kettral, elite soldiers who fly into battle on gigantic black hawks. But before he can set out to save Kaden, Valyn must survive one horrific final test. At the heart of the empire, Minister Adare, elevated to her station by one of the emperor's final acts, is determined to prove herself to her people. But Adare also believes she knows who murdered her father, and she will stop at nothing—and risk everything—to see that justice is meted out. Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne The Emperor's Blades The Providence of Fire The Last Mortal Bond Other books in the world of the Unhewn Throne Skullsworn (forthcoming) At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Offers a new perspective on Byzantine imperial imagery, demonstrating the role foreign styles and iconography played in the visual articulation of imperial power.

This book is not only about baseball, but you will enjoy the drama, romance, sights, sounds and all things associated with the love of the game. The book will make you long for the days when baseball was America's game and kids played all day long on a sandlot. It will make you long for the days when being a fan counted and you were proud of your home team and really wanted to be at the home team's ball park! Author and coach Ric Davies shows his own passion for the game in OPENING DAY and helps you to remember your own! You will enjoy this story and relive a time when this game and all that it represents was truly bigger than life!

"Christians to the lions!" The image of early Christian victims of pagan blood - lust in the Roman arenas are as familiar as a catechism to Christians of all ages. Dr. Richard DeVoe parallels the development of these two great social forces of the Roman Empire: Christianity; the Roman games which included not only the arena, but also the circus and the theatre. He questions why Christianity did not have more effect on the Roman games, as both institutions grew apace for four centuries. He concludes, contrary to traditional church history, that Christianity did not limit, but, in fact absorbed and perpetuated the games. Why? With regard not only to the games, but also education, the military and the imperial cult, Rome was not Christianized: Christianity was paganized! Christianity and the Roman Games traces this process of paganization from the first through the fifth centuries, discovering surprising consequences both for Christianity and subsequent history.