From a New York Times–bestselling author: After the Civil War, a young Confederate bride finds herself living in the shadow of her husband’s first love. Having lost her fiancé in battle, Lora Blair knew it was the heartache of war, not true love, that drew her to Union soldier Wade Tyler, a grieving widower who still mourned his late wife, Virginia. Married quickly in the ravished little Southern border town where Lora was born, they headed back North to Wade’s Staten Island mansion, where he lives with his motherless son and bitterly unwelcoming family. It’s not just Lora’s Southern roots among wealthy Yankees that are met with severe disapproval. Lora knows that she’ll forever be in the shadow of Wade’s adored, devotedly maternal, and peerlessly beautiful first wife. Though her most dangerous opposition is yet to come, Lora must face the secrets hidden in the Tylers’ past—including those Virginia took with her to an early grave. The recipient of the Agatha Award for Lifetime Achievement, Phyllis A. Whitney is “a superb and gifted storyteller” (Mary Higgins Clark). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Phyllis A. Whitney including rare images from the author’s estate.

SHAKING THE QUICKSILVER POOL: Poems that point to Infinite Beauty (The Book of Infinite Beauty being the too ambitious previous title of this collection), which is only Allah, al-Jamal, Who created everything out of love in a balance of Beauty and Majesty, two attributes sometimes clearly manifest, sometimes at odds with each other, as seen by our clouded human perceptions. But behind every event and every creation, is that Infinite One, and the quicksilver pool is our total existence here, which, to focus more intensely, we might give a shake (our selves), to see God's Face in the things we see...

The wife of a scientist fights for her marriage—and her husband’s sanity—in postwar Japan in this novel by “a superb and gifted story teller” (Mary Higgins Clark). When Jerome Talbot’s brilliant career as an atomic physicist leads him once again to Japan, his wife, Marcia, knows it means yet another long separation, but she hopes to reunite with him soon. Confidently awaiting word to join him, she is blindsided when she receives a letter demanding divorce. Stunned and hurt, she leaves their home in Hawaii to confront Jerome in Kyoto, certain she’ll get an explanation to heal her wounded heart. But when Marcia arrives, she can’t be sure of anything . . . Jerome has become a stranger—obsessed, cruel, unhinged, and resolved never to return home—committed only to his work, which reaches back to World War II. Even more peculiar, he’s living in unusual intimacy with a a close-knit, unnervingly private Japanese family whom Marcia is forbidden to talk to and to whom Jerome seems not only beholden, but enslaved. Marcia resolves to stay in Kyoto until she discovers the secret driving her husband mad—and the truth behind a terrible legacy that could threaten both their lives. A “brilliant, absorbing, [and] moving” novel of romantic suspense by a New York Times–bestselling, multiple award–winning author—who was herself born in Yokohama—The Moonflower is an authentic exploration of life in postwar Japan, as well as a chilling tale of guilt, family secrets, and a marriage at risk in the never-forgotten shadow of Hiroshima (Richmond Times-Dispatch). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Phyllis A. Whitney including rare images from the author’s estate.

An extra-terrestrial way of death. When legendary linguist Marius Thorndyke visits the bizarre planet of Pe-Ellia, he is inexorably sucked into the local way of life, of sex, of death. Nearly twice our size, powerful, intelligent, skin-changing yet roughly humanoid, the alien Pe-Ellians are vulnerable - and deadly.

When mankind moves out to the stars, the colonists of the future will remake the worlds they inhabit in their image. Included here are twenty stories from the most imaginative writers in the field: Poul Anderson Cordwainer Smith Arthur C. Clarke Richard McKenna Roger Zelazny John Varley Gregory Benford Ian McDonald Bruce Sterling Charles Sheffield Robert Reed G. David Nordley Joe Haldeman Phillip C. Jennings Geoffrey A. Landis Stephen Baxter William H. Keith, Jr. Kim Stanley Robinson Pamela Sargent Laura J. Mixon These are the stories of the explorers and pioneers who transform their destinations in the image of their distant home--exciting tales of alien landscapes and the struggle to make them suit human desires.

Whatever your mood, you will find something within these pages to entice and enthral you. The science fiction narratives include adventures involving space travel, motherships, aliens and master races. Within these extra-terrestrial settings, human minds are pitted against superior intellects from other worlds and other galaxies. The supernatural stories are also other-worldly, but this time more contemplative, spiritual and mystical. The pace is slower, the atmosphere more eerie, more contemplative. The narratives are both thought-provoking and mysterious. They draw the reader into worlds slightly off-kilter, slightly less certain and definitely enigmatic. All the narratives are highly readable: some are adventurous, some enchanting, some cryptic, some inexplicable, but all are hugely thrilling and entertaining.