Two lovable adolescent characters embrace a four-year journey during the late fifties. Although life turns out to be unpredictable for each of them, they remain constant by just being themselves. Join them in their separate journeys to see where lifes twists and turns take them.

A Voyage For Fortune Leads Them to the Heart of Fear. In the desolate reaches of the Cluster, aboard the weary cargo ship Benbow, a disparate crew drifts through an meager existence. Among them are the brooding Captain Solet, the smirking Syndac, amiable Sudu, ambitious Alkmeney, enigmatic Livesey, and Lenore and Faarax, a Feles and her human ward sworn to kill each other. Their monotonous routine is shattered when fate delivers to them a mysterious datacube containing the coordinates to a hidden fortune. Igniting a covert mission to investigate, the crew embarks on a perilous journey to the very edge of the galaxy, where an ancient space habitat holds the promise of unimaginable wealth. However, as they venture beyond the boundaries of known space, they encounter not only the treachery of rival factions but also startling revelations about their own pasts. Facing both their deepest fears and darkest desires, the crew of the Benbow must come together to unravel the mystery of the ancient space habitat before it consumes them all. Following in the tradition of sci-fi luminaries like Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick, Thomas Wrightson walks the fine line between space opera and horror with authority. Strap in tight, Lost Station Circé is a thrill-a-minute voyage into the depths of space and terror the likes of which you won’t soon forget.

Maurice is the Station Mouse, and so he must follow The Station Mouse Handbook: Rule 1: A Station Mouse must remain unseen. Rule 2: A Station Mouse must never go out in the daytime. Rule 3: A Station Mouse must never approach the passengers. Now, there's a reason why these rules exist: people do not like mice. And if Maurice breaks the rules, even to help a little boy who has lost something very important, there's going to be a price to pay...

WINNER OF THE AUGUST DERLETH AND ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDS • A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” (The Washington Post) “[China Miéville’s] fantasy novels, including a trilogy set in and around the magical city-state of New Crobuzon, have the refreshing effect of making Middle-earth seem plodding and flat.”—The New York Times The metropolis of New Crobuzon sprawls at the center of the world. Humans and mutants and arcane races brood in the gloom beneath its chimneys, where the river is sluggish with unnatural effluent and foundries pound into the night. For a thousand years, the Parliament and its brutal militias have ruled over a vast economy of workers and artists, spies and soldiers, magicians, crooks, and junkies. Now a stranger has arrived, with a pocketful of gold and an impossible demand. And something unthinkable is released. The city is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape.

"On the backwater planet of Brynner, at Persephone Station, a community of android refugees, all female, are hiding since they were able to awaken their AI and escape servitude. But the Serrao-Orlov Corporation is nothing if not tenacious, especially about it's proprietary AI's, and it wants their property back. However, Persephone is run by Rosie, and they are in charge of an organized group of beneficent criminals and assassins, along with a bunch of worn mercenaries who have a thing for doing the honorable thing, despite the odds. And in a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation, the odds are not going to be good, but it would be a glorious fight. Award-nominated author Stina Leicht has created a visciously feminist take on The Magnificent Seven by the way of Blade Runner and Westworld"--

By 1910, Leo Tolstoy, the world's most famous author, had become an almost religious figure, surrounded on his lavish estate by family and followers alike. Set in the tumultuous last year of the count's life, The Last Station centres on the battle for his soul waged by his wife and his leading disciple. Torn between his professed doctrine of poverty and chastity on the one hand and the reality of his enormous wealth, his thirteen children, and a life of hedonism on the other, Tolstoy makes a dramatic flight from his home. Too ill to continue beyond the tiny station of Astapovo, he believes he is dying alone, while outside over one hundred newspapermen are awaiting hourly reports on his condition. Narrated in six different voices, including Tolstoy's own from his diaries and literary works, The Last Station is a richly inventive novel that dances bewitchingly between fact and fiction.

From the birth of Berlin’s railway network to the time when the bombs of the Second World War and the concrete slabs of the Wall changed the city forever, the Prussian and later German capital counted eight major railway stations. These were beacons in the city: impressive monuments, magnificently built for the bygone rituals of arrival and departure, yet tightly woven into a distinct part of town. Railway stations are magical, meaningful places, allowing for escape as well as promise, nostalgia as well as novelty. They process all sorts of people, from well-to-do business types to unfortunates forced to live on the fringes of society. There is a nervous energy around them, created by those looking forward to their journey, others trying to get oriented in a place that is new to them, and some facing the drudgery of yet another commute. And if pre-World War 2 Berlin was anything, it was energetic. Building an adequate transport infrastructure for Europe’s fastest-growing city proved to be a continuous challenge that required flexibility and adaptation and touched the city in ways that can still be seen today. This is the history of Berlin’s railway stations, the people that used them, and the way the city was shaped by them.

These are stories of the sort loved by true fans of the greatest of all detectives, in which a client tells Holmes a strange tale, drawing him into a baffling mystery. Whether in fogbound London or deep in the English countryside, these action-packed stories, set during the 1880s and early 1890s, before Holmes’s disappearance at the Reichenbach Falls, faithfully recreate the atmosphere of Conan Doyle’s early Holmes stories. This wonderful anthology brings together the best work of Denis O. Smith, much admired for his new Sherlock Holmes stories, including ‘A Hair’s Breadth’, ‘The Adventure of the Smiling Face’ and ‘An Incident in Society’. Ten of these stories have never previously been published in book form.

This book interrogates the vocabulary used in theorizing about Indian cinema to reach into the deeper cultural meanings of philosophies and traditions from which it derives its influences. It re-examines terms and concepts used in film criticism and contextualizes them within the aesthetics, poetics and politics of Indian cinema. The book looks at terms and concepts borrowed from the scholarship on American and world cinema and explores their use and relevance in describing the characteristics and evolution of cinema in India. It highlights how realism, romance and melodrama in the context of India appear in a culturally singular way and how the aggregation of constituent elements – like songs, action, comedy – in Indian film can be traced to classical theatre and other diverse religious and philosophical influences. These influences have characterized popular film and drama in India which present all aspects of life for a diverse nation. The author explores concepts like ‘fantasy’, ‘family’ and ‘patriotism’ by using various examples from films in India and outside, as well as practices in the other arts. He identifies the fundamental logic behind the choices made by film-makers in India and discusses concepts which allow for a fresh theorizing on Indian cinema’s characteristics. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of film studies, media studies, cultural studies, literature, cultural history and South Asian studies. It will also be useful for general readers who are interested in learning more about Indian cinema, its forms, origins and influences.