An adventure tale for our times, the author combines real world events and supernatural elements in the style of a classical epic to tell a sometimes snarky, sometimes uproarious, and very poignant modern tale. Meet Hank Allensworth and Wilson Evans in a modern reflection of the Epic of Gilgamesh. An epic bromance between a Marine and his corpsman running around Oceanside, California . Degenerate Lance Corporals who have recently returned from Afghanistan, spending most of their time drunk at The Purple Church. One night while they're out drinking they are called back to base and the battalion is put on stand by because during the conflict with ISIS, the Islamic Republic of Iran decided to end the proxy war and get involved themselves. Soon after, Hank and Doc go with the regiment to keep the Iranians from crossing the Euphrates. The war kicks off and the Marines push across Iraq and into Iran. Hank and Doc both are wounded and sent home. The rest of the story they deal with survivor's guilt, alcoholism, PTSD, covering up for a murder, and trying to manage deteriorating love lives. I don't know if I could say there's any deeper meaning than gratuitous sex and violence, but I can guarantee you that if you've spent more than three days in an infantry battalion you will love this book.

Thirty years after the destruction of Earth, World War Three still rages between the Russian Federation and the United States in the depths of space. Thatch Allensworth, a decorated sergeant, struggles to maintain his personal relationships between deployments. Faced against terrifying new weapons, a relentless enemy, solar system wide combat, and an anti-romantic lover, Thatch only has his friends Stockton, Chuck, McKenzie, and O'Con to keep him from spiraling into alcoholism and madness.

Mars will run red with Nazi blood... After World War Two, Sergeant McCabe knew the British army could send him anywhere. He never imagined facing down another Nazi threat on Mars. In New Berlin colony, rivalry between Generalfeldmarschall Seidel's Wehrmacht and Reichsführer Wagner's SS threatens bloodshed. The Reichsführer will sacrifice everything to initiate the secretive Hollow Programme and realise his nightmarish future for humanity. McCabe, Private Jenkins, and the Mars Expeditionary Force must overcome bullet, bomb, and bayonet to destroy the Third Reich. While Jenkins fights to stay alive, McCabe forms an uneasy alliance with MAJESTIC-12 operatives known as the Black Visors. Will this be the final battle of World War Two or the first confrontation in an interstellar war?

EVERYTHING'S FOR HIRE. EVEN MAGIC. If you need something done, Cloke’s one of the best; a mercenary with some unusual talents and an attitude to match. But when she’s hired by a virtual construct to destroy the other copies of himself, and the down payment is a new magical skill, she knows this job is going to be a league harder than anything she’s ever done. “A full-throttle magical cyberpunk superhero thriller” - Peter McLean

A food writer travels the Silk Road, immersing herself in a moveable feast of foods and cultures and discovering some surprising truths about commitment, independence, and love. As a newlywed traveling in Italy, Jen Lin-Liu was struck by culinary echoes of the delicacies she ate and cooked back in China, where she’d lived for more than a decade. Who really invented the noodle? she wondered, like many before her. But also: How had food and culture moved along the Silk Road, the ancient trade route linking Asia to Europe—and what could still be felt of those long-ago migrations? With her new husband’s blessing, she set out to discover the connections, both historical and personal, eating a path through western China and on into Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, and across the Mediterranean. The journey takes Lin-Liu into the private kitchens where the headscarves come off and women not only knead and simmer but also confess and confide. The thin rounds of dough stuffed with meat that are dumplings in Beijing evolve into manti in Turkey—their tiny size the measure of a bride’s worth—and end as tortellini in Italy. And as she stirs and samples, listening to the women talk about their lives and longings, Lin-Liu gains a new appreciation of her own marriage, learning to savor the sweetness of love freely chosen.

The military sci-fi classic of courage on a dangerous alien planet The planet is called Banshee. The air is unbreathable, the water is poisonous. It is home to the most implacable enemies that humanity, in all its interstellar expansion, has ever encountered. Body armor has been devised for the commando forces that are to be dropped on Banshee—the culmination of ten thousand years of the armorers’ craft. A trooper in this armor is a one-man, atomic powered battle fortress. But he will have to fight a nearly endless horde of berserk, hard-shelled monsters—the fighting arm of a species which uses biological technology to design perfect, mindless war minions. Felix is a scout in A-team Two. Highly competent, he is the sole survivor of mission after mission. Yet he is a man consumed by fear and hatred. And he is protected, not only by his custom-fitted body armor, but by an odd being which seems to live within him, a cold killing machine he calls “The Engine.” This is Felix’s story—a story of the horror, the courage, and the aftermath of combat, and the story, too, of how strength of spirit can be the greatest armor of all.

Stella lives in Noctum, land of eternal night. In Noctum, the stars shine so bright it feels like you can pluck them from the sky, festivals are held for each special moon, and the Northern Lights are worshipped every wintertide. But the darkness hides many sins. Draven, Noctum's ruthless immortal king, rules behind the protective walls of Caligo. While, outside in Darkwood, Stella and the other forest dwellers live in terror of foul creatures called the Shade.Life in Darkwood is brutal and brief. When her brother, a soldier in the Shadow Guard, is killed, Stella's hope wanes as the dangers that surround her close in. But stars shine brightest in the deepest dark, and when she witnesses one falling into the black heart of Darkwood, hope arrives in the unlikeliest manner. A stranger named Luc appears speaking of strange, impossible things--of a golden disc called the sun, of lands drenched in light with vivid blue skies, and perhaps most startling of all, he claims that Noctum is under a curse that he has come to lift. To banish the darkness that covers the land, all he has to do is kill Draven.But curses are never easily broken and complications soon arise. Stella finds herself faced with an impossible choice--Luc's life or the light she so desperately longs for. Because to gain one, she will have to lose the other.

“A remarkable writer.” —Neil Gaiman, bestselling author of American Gods An Alex Award Winner There is a dark secret that is hiding at the heart of New York City and diminishing the city’s magicians’ power in this fantasy thriller by acclaimed author Kat Howard. In New York City, magic controls everything. But the power of magic is fading. No one knows what is happening, except for Sydney—a new, rare magician with incredible power that has been unmatched in decades, and she may be the only person who is able to stop the darkness that is weakening the magic. But Sydney doesn’t want to help the system, she wants to destroy it. Sydney comes from the House of Shadows, which controls the magic with the help of sacrifices from magicians.

Eithne is just a young elf maiden living in a postapocalyptic world called Raashan. Years ago, the gods partook in the Heavenly War and destroyed each other. This left Raashan in a state of chaos on a dangerous downward spiral. Eithne, along with the ever-noble captain of the guard, Darian, embark on a journey to find an ancient artifact that could possibly be the answer that Raashan is looking for . . . But things don't really go as planned, in the sense of n

Following the civil war on the human colonized world of Cygnus VII, humanity and its creations rise again. Free Trader Braden and his mindlinked Hillcat are plying the trade routes of Warren Deep when things start to get hot. Giving events time to be forgotten, Braden gathers engineered (mutant) creatures to him for a trip south of the Great Desert where he hopes to find Old Tech that he can trade for untold riches. The more he learns about the ancients, the more he wants to learn. Along the way, he establishes a new ideal regarding trade and collaboration in the south where trust of strangers is unknown. Braden and his companions, a Hawkoid, a Hillcat, a Tortoid, and a female warrior find that some Old Tech still functions, with the potential to change their world for the better or worse, depending on what they decide.