A rookie detective investigates the murder of a bestselling mystery writer. Two shots on a snowy Seattle street, and a bestselling writer lies dead. When Brick Ransom is assigned to the case, the trail quickly leads to an up-and-coming hard-boiled mystery writer, his publisher, and one of Seattle's most powerful companies. But who did it? And why? And with the murders still happening, who will be next? Bloody Pulp is bloody good fun, with all of the mystery, suspense, humor, and over-the-top action Brick Ransom fans crave!

During the 20th century's first half, millions of Americans flocked to newsstands every month in search of thrills provided by all-fiction magazines printed on cheap pulp paper. These periodicals introduced and popularized such famous characters as Tarzan, Zorro, Sam Spade, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Hopalong Cassidy, and Conan the Barbarian, to name just a few. The producers of pulp fiction churned out their vigorous and occasionally outre stories at a feverish pace, generally for a mere penny per word. Some eventually graduated from the pulps to become world-famous, best-selling authors-among them Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ray Bradbury, Louis L'Amour, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. Often derided in their own time, the "rough paper" magazines had an incalculable effect on American pop culture. They gave birth to modern science fiction and the hardboiled detective story, but also to plot devices, character types, and storytelling innovations that live on in today's most popular novels, movies, and TV shows. Illustrated with more than 600 magazine covers and original paintings, THE BLOOD 'N' THUNDER GUIDE TO PULP FICTION presents a complete and lively history of this unique literary form, covering genres individually and identifying key titles, authors, and stories. It also offers advice on collecting the vintage magazines and directs readers to recently published reprints of classic pulp."

"In my best guess, Czar Nicholas the Second of Russia is a throwback to something around the year seventeen hundred...perhaps even earlier than that!" William Donaldson would live to see firsthand how these words from his boss were completely accurate. For a recent college graduate like William, such archaic and inflexible viewpoints added up to the Romanov family's ultimate damnation. Time would eventually prove him right... During his travels across the European continent during the summer of 1914, William got to meet a young Winston Churchill, Bernard Law Montgomery, and Adolph Hitler. Arriving in Saint Petersburg, the capital city of Imperial Russia on the day World War I begins, William finds himself forcibly conscripted into the United States Foreign Service. In his eventual role as a civilian military observer, William Donaldson, a most reluctant Attaché to the United States Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, would get to witness that demise personally. For an unwilling, but dedicated, American diplomat, such unprecedented access to the Russian military would reveal the malaise and ultimate bankruptcy which was the Imperial Romanov Court at the turn of the twentieth century. Accompanied from battlefield to battlefield along the Eastern Front with his devoted White Russian interpreter and lover, Sonjya Mastrova, William meticulously documents the decline and subsequent devolution of Imperial Russia's sovereign liege. As the military and political situation steadily progresses from bad to worse, William concludes that the final overthrow of the 300-year-old Romanov autocracy is no longer a question of if, but when. The only nagging issue William struggles to determine is simply this: "What type of government will replace the monarchy?"

The third book in the School for Heiressess series, by New York Times bestselling historical romance author Sabrina Jeffries, is a delightfully sexy regency-era romance. Lady Venetia Campbell's visit to her childhood home in Scotland takes a dramatic turn when she's kidnapped at pistol point by her father's sworn enemy. Sir Lachlan Ross is widely feared in his guise as The Scottish Scourge, but Venetia remembers her former neighbor as a handsome youth whose attentions she craved. Now a wickedly sexy man, Lachlan's appeal is even more intoxicating...and much more dangerous. Though Lachlan tries to treat her as his foe, his scorching kisses tell another story. And despite his plan to use her as a weapon against her father, Venetia is determined that Lachlan's lust for revenge will be trumped by an even more powerful desire...

As the tumultuous tide of the Second World War ebbs, Frank and Amy stand on the precipice of change, their futures hanging in the balance. In the waning days of conflict, this sergeant of the Australian Army and his counterpart, an intrepid Army nurse, are compelled to confront the daunting choices that await them as peace promises to restore normalcy. With the cessation of war comes the inevitability of their separation: Amy yearns to embrace a new beginning in Sydney, with dreams of donning the physician’s coat, while Frank envisions a pastoral life in Tasmania, cultivating world-class Merino wool on his family’s farm. The question that looms over them is one of compromise: can their individual aspirations weave together to form a shared tapestry of life? Their quest for answers is fraught with dilemmas, knowing that each step taken will etch permanent marks on their lives and those of future generations. Spanning half a century, Another Time is a rich tapestry of familial ties, an emotional odyssey through love and loss, fidelity, and betrayal, set against the rapidly shifting moral landscape of the 20th Century, forever altered in the aftermath of conflict.

"On the surface, Thompson looks like any other blue-collar New Jersey town. But beneath the working-class exterior lies a bizarro world of fetishistic crime, sleazy motels, and squid. In these three bizarro-noir novellas, the reader is thrown into a world of murderers, drugs made from squid parts, deformed gun-toting veterans, and a mischievous apocolyptic donkey." -- Back cover

DIVDIVA playwright vacationing in Jamaica becomes dangerously obsessed with deep-sea diving/divDIV /divDIVRon Grant is one of the finest playwrights of his generation, second only to Tennessee Williams in pure genius. But success does not mean he feels like a man. On vacation in Jamaica with his mistress, an ice queen who considers him her personal trophy, his thoughts are back in New York City, with a beautiful young girl he met a few days before he left town. As the stress bears down on him, the brilliant playwright goes nearly to pieces before he finds his salvation under water./divDIV /divDIVOn his first deep-sea dive, Grant falls in love with the haunting beauty of the reef. He returns as soon as he can, staying longer and swimming deeper until all his problems seep away. But a man can’t breathe underwater forever—and his obsession will drive him to take increasing risks that will change his life forever./divDIV /divThis ebook features an illustrated biography of James Jones including rare photos from the author’s estate. /div

Hope dwindles as the world dies... Prologue Prequel is a memory from the mind of a certain general that first encountered zombies years ago. When a top secret experiment goes horribly wrong, only he stands between the world and outbreak. John's Stones are his last chance at redeeming himself. Caught between the world of humans and the mind of the monster, John might be able to make a difference; or he may be throwing stones at a hurricane. Tina's Bedside has become a place for her husband to sit and watch her grow old. The zombie apocalypse requires his attention more than she does, and Tina finds her own grim solution to the problem. The Beginning of the End is the second volume in the Zombie Zero short story collection. It details the events preceding humanity's last stand against the cataclysm documented in Zombie Zero: The First Zombie. Tina’s Bedside is about a woman who has been well loved and protected for a long happy life. When the zombies come, Tina realizes what she has been protected from all this time. She’s too old to handle a zombie apocalypse right now; too old, and too tired. Tina finds her own solution to the sudden global problem.

Zachary Nixon Johnson is the last private eye on earth (long story, starts here). And in the pop culture-crazed, deco-inspired world of 2057, that makes him a bit of a celebrity. It also makes him a magnet for trouble. In his years as a PI, Zach has seen a lot of strange things and solved a lot of crazy cases. But when the famous BB Starr, a former exotic dancer who is now the CEO of the world’s largest corporation, hires him to find her illegal, plutonium-powered, psychotic android clone, Zach knows that the weirdness of his life is about to get a whole lot weirder. Once Zach takes the case, his life is suddenly filled with unwanted publicity, uncommon dangers, and unexplained assassination attempts. He realizes that not only is this case more trouble than it’s worth, but the mystery of the missing android is deeper than he thought. Together with his beautiful, kick-boxing surgeon girlfriend Electra, his genius inventor tech expert Randy, and his holographic, sentient super-computer sidekick HARV, Zach must find a way to unravel the mystery, find the missing android, and quite possibly save all humanity from total destruction. What some guys will do for five thousand credits per day, plus expenses. REVIEWS An excellent first novel in the style of the great Douglas Adams ... This novel can be universally recommended to anyone with a funny bone. --Cinescape Surprisingly clever ... spoofs the genre and everything else in sight. --Science Fiction Chronicle (Best of '01) A fast-paced science fiction noir thriller that has entertaining plot twists. --Romantic Times Fast-paced, witty and shrewd ... futuristic pulp for the thinking reader ... No one who got two paragraphs into this dark, droll, downright irresistible novel could ever bear to put it down until the last heart pounding moment. --SF Site A tongue-in-cheek hardboiled attitude .. good fun for those who can handle the concentrated doses of humor. --Locus Manages to blend the pulpy hard-boiled detective genre with pulpy sf for an entertaining read that pokes fun at both. The writing and dialogue is snappy and smart and the story is fast paced. I can't recommend enough for anyone looking for a fun twist on sf and detective novels. --Pink Raygun