A young man seeks vengeance against the man who killed his parents in this action-packed science fiction thriller series opener. It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and “towns” that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity. Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He’s come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden’s nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden’s spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn’t bode well for Fanning’s chances . . .

The Complete Vigra Series discounted ebundle includes: Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, Pirate Sun, Sunless Countries, Ashes of Candesce Futurist Karl Schroeder groundbreaking space opera series envisions a world of endless sky, with no land, no gravity. This is Virga, a fullerene balloon universe three thousand kilometers in diameter. In this saga, we are given a rare and penetrating look into the post-human condition. Beginning in the seminal science fiction novel Sun of Suns, the saga of Virga introduces us to the people of stubborn pride and resilience who have made this world their home. But lurking beyond the walls of Virga is the mysterious threat known only as Artificial Nature. Virga is hard science fiction space opera taken to the next level. “Schroeder is a master.” --Cory Doctorow Tor books by Karl Schroeder Lady of Mazes Permanence Ventus Lockstep The Million At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

As profiled in the New York Times Magazine… Based on the author’s twenty-five years of experience as a veterinarian and veterinary behaviorist, The Soul of All Living Creatures delves into the inner lives of animals – from whales, wolves, and leopards to mice, dogs, and cats – and explores the relationships we forge with them. As an emergency room clinician four years out of veterinary school, Dr. Vint Virga had a life-changing experience: he witnessed the power of simple human contact and compassion to affect the recovery of a dog struggling to survive after being hit by a car. Observing firsthand the remarkably strong connection between humans and animals inspired him to explore the world from the viewpoint of animals and taught him to respect the kinship that connects us. With The Soul of All Living Creatures, Virga draws from his decades in veterinary practice to reveal how, by striving to perceive the world as animals do, we can enrich our own appreciation of life, enhance our character, nurture our relationships, improve our communication with others, reorder our values, and deepen our grasp of spirituality. Virga discerningly illuminates basic traits shared by both humans and animals and makes animal behavior meaningful, relevant, and easy to understand. Insightful and eloquent, The Soul of All Living Creatures offers an intimate journey into the lives of our fellow creatures and a thought-provoking promise of what we can learn from spending time with them.

Clues that solve a crime can be as evanescent as virga: rain that falls in the desert which the deserts rising heat evaporates before the rain has a chance to reach the ground. Using Zens pragmatic approach to discover the complexity of a crime that had been regarded as cut and dry, Beryl Tilson and Sensei Percy Wong of Wagner & Tilson, Private Investigators, apply their skill and intuition to free a man who has been wrongly accused of murder. The biggest clue to solving this mystery is in the false evidence that was submitted at trial. A gun which was alleged to have lain in the Sonora desert for 5 hours in July was apparently picked up without pot holders - directly in the hand and shown to a covering TV camera. This cannot happen. But the defense attorneys are not desert people and know only Hollywood versions of desert life. Beryl Tilson has lived in the Mojave and understands sun and heat. Nobody can pick up metal that has been lying in the sun for half an hour much less 5 hours. (Also you can never see sweaty shirts in the desert. Perspiration evaporates as fast as you can produce it.)

"It's impossible to imagine another writer in America who is better than Craig Childs at elegizing the fearsome and confounding appeal of our most austere landscapes." —KEVIN FEDARKO, author of The Emerald Mile From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons—a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more–than–human. CRAIG CHILDS is the author of more than a dozen books on nature, adventure, and science, including The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Outside. Recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award, he lives in Colorado.

"Gaywyck," the first gay gothic romance, treads firmly in beloved territory, both honoring it and reinventing it. Classic in style, Vincent Virga creates a world as authentic as anything penned by DuMaurier, retaining the creaking ancestral mansion and mysterious and brooding master of the manor, while replacing the traditional damsel in distress with the young and handsome Robert Whyte. Vincent Virga has been called "America's foremost picture editor." He has researched, edited, and designed picture sections for more than 150 books, including "Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States" and the full-length photo essay "The Eighties: Images of America." He is also the author of "A Comfortable Corner." He is working on a third novel, "Theatricals."

“Gabriel Kruis is a really formidable poet. Acid Virga is rather terrifying, also a tour de force and a formal breakthrough. . . a blend of narrative and lyric the way the mind is. . . ” —ALICE NOTLEY “As wildly visionary as it is linguistically alive, Gabriel Kruis’s Acid Virga drills down into the bedrock of American life to produce a book unparalleled in its exploration of how visionary experience and social upheaval collide in ways that are both transformative and annihilating.” —TOM SLEIGH “If you’ve ever been conscious, and felt a little disturbed about it, of life as ancient and ephemeral or that falling apart is an integral force, this is a book to read over and over.” —STACY SZYMASZEK “. . .a great affliction and affection inform Acid Virga, fast-moving with strophes like brisk moving cloud banks over the mind in your heart.” —MAJOR JACKSON “Meanwhile, in el mal pais, leaned out on mucinex, mixing dexy cocktails in the haloed pharmacy of the car...” An unusually assured debut, Acid Virga is a memoir in verse cutting between a vivid Southwest upbringing and modern O’Hara hustle in New York City, deeply and seriously reckoning with the psychedelic heritage of religion and the psychological clarity of chemical consciousness. It is both thrillingly propulsive and dense enough to read again and again, always offering up something new. Language is boundlessly specific, evocative of states internal and external, reading at times like a melancholy memoir stuck between stations, an epic poem or even a philosophical tract, always a true and important record of our American lives as lived now—an endless and reliable ticker tape of the soul.

A world of endless sky, with no land, no gravity: this is Virga. Beginning in the seminal science fiction novel Sun of Suns, the saga of this striking world has introduced us to the people of stubborn pride and resilience who have made Virga their home; but also, always lurking beyond the walls of the world, to the mysterious threat known only as Artificial Nature. In The Sunless Countries, history tutor Leal Hieronyma Maspeth became the first human in centuries to learn the true nature of this threat. Her reward was exile, but now, in Ashes of Candesce, Artificial Nature makes its final bid to destroy Virga, and it is up to Leal to unite the quarrelling clans of her world to fight the threat. Ashes of Candesce brings together all the heroes of the Virga series, and draws the diverse threads of the previous storylines together into one climactic conflict. Blending steampunk styling with a far-future setting and meditations on the posthuman condition, Ashes of Candesce mixes high adventure and cutting-edge ideas in a fitting climax to one of science fiction's most innovative series.

Science fiction roman.

Venera Fanning was last seen falling into nothingness at the end of Sun of Suns. Now, in Queen of Candesce, Venera finds herself plunging through the air among the artificial worlds of Virga, far from home and her husband, who may or may not be alive. Landing in the ancient nation of Spyre, Venera encounters new enemies and new friends (or at least convenient allies). She must quickly learn who she can trust, and who she can manipulate in order to survive. Survival isn't her only goal; with the powerful Key of Candesce in her hands, she can control the fate of the entire world of Virga, yet something even more pressing is driving her--the all consuming need for revenge.