The Karnikov Card: A Spade/Paladin Conundrum

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About Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance, and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the bestseller lists —even in London— and have been published in 14 countries and 13 different languages. Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Aw Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer.

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In the past year, she has been nominated for the Hugo, the Shamus, and the Anthony Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo award for editing and a Hugo award for fiction. In addition, she's written a number of nonfiction articles over the years, with her latest being the book "A Freelancer's Survival Guide". She has also published as: Her father the King confirms her belief when he decides to marry her to a prince from a neighboring kingdom, despite the threats of assassination that pour Peter enjoys his solitary life in the Montana countryside.

Higher mathematics, greater thought, sustain him more than companionship. When Detective Webster Coninck arrives at the murder scene outside Tups Tavern, he quickly identifies the body: Former classmate, full of charisma, and a man with enough enemies to line up interviews into next week. From early on, Devin Culhane navigates the political world like a pro. When President Milan handpicks Devin as an intern, he comes to idolize Milan as a sort of demigod. When Greta arrives at Grayson Place with her ballet company, her memories haunt her. The entire world convulsed in the middle of the 20th century.

Everything changed—even the magical universe. From faerie to mages, from wizards to war criminals, the Second World War touched every single life. The War and After explores the effect o Not because he believes in ghosts, but because he believes in science. Geneva, a physicist, believed that linear time was just a perception, one humans could overcome. If she was right, For seniors who need a comfortable place to live, SeniorSource fits the bill.

But if he fai Emily Trencheon lives life as a prodigy—and a successful experiment. She provides a shining example for the Academy of Universal Languages to continue its program with the Miaslan. But she alone knows the truth. And she fears her final act of commu John Lundgren loves the challenge of defending his clients.

As a public defender in the great city of Chicago, he defends them all: But when he gets assigned Richard Palmer, a highly intelligent m When Robert Cooper first sees Nathalie Renard, he finds himself drawn to her.

• Kristine Kathryn Rusch Book List - FictionDB?
• Introduction to Partial Differential Equations: From Fourier Series to Boundary-Value Problems (Dover Books on Mathematics).
• Hawaiian Historical Legends.
• THE BRIDE WHO ARGUED WITH GOD.

She seems ethereal, magical. And when he finally meets her, he finds her even more beguiling. But Robert has a job to do, and Nathalie seems the best candidate from the Par Simpson will do anything for his art. In a quest to truly understand color, Simpson buys the Alter Ego of a blind man, and begins to explore. Soft yellows, rich reds, decadent browns, and black: But the deeper he Vi thought trying to teach complicated choreography to inexperienced middle-aged men made for a bad day.

When a vicious attacker leaves Nicole Walker for dead, she fights against the odds to survive. And to succeed, she must remember-the attack, the attacker, even her own desire to live. Her mind wants to flit away and escape the horrors of the atta Maxwell Scobel writes about heroes for a living. He studies them, imagines them, imagines being them. But when a routine drive turns into a fight for his life-and the life of his soon-to-be-adopted three-year-old daughter-he must Justin needs something to believe in. At a crossroads in life, he arrives in New York City reminiscing about the past but uncertain of the future.

Until he meets Wendy, who inspires him to take a leap of faith. But soaring into the unknown might prov The Room of Lost Souls. An abandoned space station with different names but one certainty: Enterran Empire Operations Commander El But when the crew begin writing about a ghostly vision—a vision impossible to believe but inadvisable to ignore—he mus In Boss' time, a thing of legend. Long before Boss and her crew found their first Dignity Vessel, long before the Room of Lost Souls claimed its first life, the Fleet used its advanced technology to explore the galaxy.

But even in its heyd People often misquote Benjamin Franklin on the only certainties in life—death and taxes. But Patrick wonders about the truth in that. Now, older and jaded, he It only takes her a moment to realize something went seriously wrong. The lack of sound, the smell. You know that famous mystery writer? The one whom death stalks wherever she goes?

Turns out bad luck doesn't cause death to follow her. She provokes it all—for a reason. And this time, someone will stop her. A student at a writing workshop has a se Boss remembers the Room. Her mother died there. Now, a client wants her to go back. She wants Boss to help her uncover the Room's mysteries.

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But the truths she discovers might destroy everything Boss holds sacred. The Room of Lost Soul But they must wait for Boss and her team to dive it, explore the wrecks, and piece together what happened in that faraway place. Boss loves the chall Two days ago, Moira escaped the Midwest with Kasey and her Barbie doll in the back seat of a beat-up van.

Now, on sun-drenched Highway 95 in nowheresville Nevada, she wonders if she escaped at all. The residents of Hawthorne, one of the few towns in The woman who helped Boss dive the Dignity Vessel, known then as Squishy, claims a long and storied history with stealth tech. Her research into the lost science caused deaths before, and she fa Michael does his best to treat the persistent illness, but he secretly wonders if it marks the end of them all. Until the child shows appears. These five acclaimed stories Her music inspires people.

It draws crowds to her, no matter where she performs. But it draws something else, as well. And for Devon, Rach In a world where Apollo 8 veered tragically off course, the event sent the astronauts, and the space program, hurtling into space, lost and helpless.

The tragedy so affected eight-year-old Richard Johansenn that he dedicates his life—and the fortun Dirk wants to learn how to sing like the natives, but they have no word for singing nor a concept of it. Intrigued, she offers to help—only to discover that teaching Dirk to sin And like Jack The Ripper, never caught, his identity lost to history. In , the Carnival Sniper terrorized Vienna, murdering the famous and not-so-famous alike. Police Detective Johann Runge neve Larissa Johanssen has spent her adult life running from her own memories of trauma.

As a top-notch journalist, she immersed herself in stories of violence and disruption in other peopl In the future, humans retain the capability to commit acts of terrible violence. For the reporter known as Martha Trumante, determined to find the truth behind the horrors, that truth raises questions so disturbing she might never find a way to repor Talia and Max seldom work together at a crime scene, but on this one they must, not just because of the lives lost or the way they died, but because of the memories the crime brings up.

Now, Talia must employ her best forensics skills to solve the mu Denny and Nikki share a similar history. Or so it seems to Denny when Nikki shows up, bruised and withdrawn, in the quiet Oregon Coast town he now calls home. But history creates a powerful pull on the psyche. Sometimes in good ways. In the Wild West, gunslingers populate the legend of many a dime novel. And Renn knows her way around a gun—and a book—better than most of them, including her famous brother, who can credit his skills to Renn. So, when the strange little men show So many mysteries in the past.

So many opportunities as well. Neyla believes the 17th century discovery of the dead Princes near the Bloo But his discovery could put the At night, Darren dons his secret identity. He presides over bar trivia contests and no one can beat him. Until a girl appears.

Stories, Listed by Author

A very pretty girl who just might be smarter than D Oregon provides the setting for all five stories in this collection. They put on a pretty face and soften the blow of ugly news. They must hold the line betwee Everyone wants the ability to teleport from one place to another in an instant. But what happens if something goes wrong? And what happens if the government refuses to listen? When a journalist on assignment visits a convention held by a fringe group As a Medieval woman, Maude knows her place.

But when a woman appears on her doorstep bloodied and broken, Maude must decide Reed Hamlin has everything—money, success, a small amount of fame. But no close relationships, and no family. Until he hears on the news that police have caught a Vietnam protester who bombed a munitions site. An anti-war radical who has No-nonsense private eye Belinda Sweet, the only person in Los Angeles who wants no part in fame, avoids cases that bring her attention. Until she stumbles on one in a bar, when a barfly asks her to act as his alibi for killing his wife.

Her police colleagues call it a sma And thanks to Seavy County Coroner Hamilton Denne, she finds herself scouring the beach for idiots drawn to the t Alone for Christmas, Michela longs for the past, the future—anything but the present. The present holds pain, loneliness, longing, loathing. The present offers nothing but ghosts and nightmares about deeds that cannot be undone. To see her son agai Santa sneaks in during the dead of night. He steals cookies, drinks some milk, maybe tracks ashes all over the living room.

These ten stories all appeared at Christmas time. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, called one of the best short story writers of her generation, has compiled ten of her best favorite Christmas stories into one volume. These stories run through a variety of ge Four years ago, a bomb destroyed part of the dome protecting Armstrong, the largest city on the Moon.

Now, as the city celebrates its survival with an event it calls Anniversary Day, a larger threat looms one that begins with the murder of the mayor, The Moon, shaken by the Anniversary Day tragedies, deals with devastation. The Earth Alliance believes another attack imminent, but no one knows where or when it will strike.

Just like no one knows who ordered the attacks in the first place. The entire neighborhood hates Wicked the dog. Wicked barks all the time—until the day he gets kidnapped, and the entire In Los Angeles, everyone knows Ms. She finds an amazing amount of it in that sunlight-filled city, but nothing like the unnamed horror she faces on her current case. It arrives in a van. It has cameras, an agenda, and the abili Alone on Christmas Eve, he haunts a casino like he always does. Then he meets Alli, and even though she tells him she has come to Vegas for someone else, he spends time wi Kristine Kathryn Rusch, famous for her range as a writer, shows her amazing diversity in this collection of short mystery stories.

Oscar cleans portable toilets for a living. He loves the job—it takes him to beautiful isolated places, like the Lonely Rocks Wayside on the Oregon Coast. Nothing really grosses him out either—until he discovers the body, slashed to death, with a From the moment of her birth, Brooke Cross was a loser.

Conceived to win a First Baby of the Millennium contest, Brooke came five minutes late. Her mother never let her forget it. This Christmas season, he has more than his usual number of nutballs. The man who calls himself Matt Sturtz only connects with other human beings at Christmas. He takes a job as a mall Santa, and marvels that no one checks his resume, or his identification for that matter.

But this year, something goes wrong. Bobbert got his name from his little sister Sarah. He likes her okay. But she can be annoying, like when she wants to make snow angels at the Christmas tree farm. Bobbert wants to cut the tree himself. He has a knife, but Dad won't let Bobbert near t Election night—the busiest night of the year, at least for the newsroom at the local listener-sponsored radio station. Marisa, the news director, has no time for anything, certainly not for the death threats that some idiot insists on calling into Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln scrawled the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope as he traveled to the battlefield to dedicate a cemetery.

Words that must so Tommy said Santa stole. No one believed him, thinking robbers dressed as Santa emptied that house. And when Tommy turns Urban legends have their basis in fact. Some people know that better than others. That story about the hook teenagers tell each other at parties? The police often show up at science fiction conventions, but not because Secret Master of Fandom and private detective Spade calls them. Although he has this time. Paladin has found a box with a note, a box she believes contains a bomb. When a dead body turns up at the first ever Dinocon, Secret Master of Fandom and Private Detective Spade knows just who might be behind it all: Now he just has to pr Hayes loves the Earth to the Moon route on Christmas Eve.

But Trish, his companion on this Christmas Eve flight, offers a perspective that mixes history and the future and the meaning of Christmas all into one. At least about the witch part. So, when she gets caught using her magic to help one of the animals in Mrs In a rundown bar on a space station at the end of the universe, a customer asks for passage to Dunyon. But the owner and bartender have never heard of Dunyon. When the next night, more and more people show, Dunyon, that little bar, and the entire spa He expects changes when he returns to the good old U.

Her workload includes more clients than she can defend, most of them from cultures she does not understand. All of his short life, Paavo Deshin has seen ghosts. The same two ghosts who have now approached him on the school playground, ghosts who look older and actually smell bad. Things, not people, not animals. Until he gets in trouble and must work for the alien Gyonnese. They want a person to answer for her crimes, and they want to use Yu to get her.

Hugo-nominated, chosen as one of the best stories of the year, The Retrieval Artist created an entire universe, and Flint himse But then the statue arrives—broken—and a spectacular forgery. Her boss—impressed—calls the statue the ultimate forgery. The Black King wants her to use her special abilities on a job that will change the Fey forever.

But Solanda wants to change t War correspondents and soldiers possess one thing in common: They only see pieces of the war—even a magical war. Everything rests on a single magical weapon, dispatched by Pixie Air, which the soldiers believe will solve everything. So when a handsome Elvis impersonator—the young Elvis, not the old, fat Elvis—shows up at her door talk The Princess—once named Cinder Ella—murdered. The King demanding justice. Only the sheriff knows that justice means destroying the kingdom.

Can he do it? Can he convince the King to go along? Stacy calls herself a Parking Space Vigilante. Instead, this powerful short novel follows Meklos Verr, hired to guard an arc The second Nick Carraway in a family where the name Nick Carraway has a certain mystique finds himself in New York, just like his grandfather before him. Carraway quickly learns that the go-go s have a lot in common with the hard-partying s, He expected a joyous wedding on Christmas Eve. But when the justice of the peace arrives, he finds a pregnant bride, no congratulatory family, and reluctant witnesses.

What joy can the future hold for this young couple? Unless they can find someone, The locals usually appreciate his discretion. This year, everyone has an Not a marriage counselor, but someone who will advise how to achieve a perfect marriage through the perfect ceremony. Only the present malfunctions. Should Mason and Roxy fix the present? Or should they simply enjoy it? The roses he spent his morning crafting came from her stalker. Shelton, embarrassed and frightened for her, gives Suze loves her music. She hides in it when her parents fight. Whenever things get rough, Roxanne escapes to other worlds.

She possesses a talent that skips generations, a talent that no one else believes exists. Except her granddaughter Marissa, who exhibits the same talent. Before her twenty-fifth year, she was both a princess and a prisoner, a royal daughter and the daughter of a traitor. Now Elizabeth Tudor has become queen of England and, in her private moments, cannot quite believe she survived.

She has to figure ou The battle ended ten months ago, the war ended two weeks ago, and still the battleground remains a dangerous place—at least for one man. A man who sees everything, and can say nothing. A man no one else notices. A man who must bury the dead in orde Centuries ago, a tsunami hit the Oregon Coast, destroying miles of coastline. When beach erosion reveals the stumps of a dead forest from that disaster, Anne and Louisa cut school to see the trees.

But they freak Louisa out. She sees faces trapped in Wyatt calls Ro and Gil into his office, they fear the worst for their baby. Wyatt thinks he has good news. This news means choices that could change their future—choices Ro and Gil never wanted to make for their ch After a particularly brutal attack, Sydne needs physical therapy for her knee.

The therapists try a new technique that involves repairing the damaged muscles, but the damaged emotions as well. Sydne hates the procedure. She hates the therapists m Fortunately, tests exist for that. The results have arrived, and now they must choose: Every frequent flyer shares a nightmare—trapped inside a plane in trouble. For his entire life, Willard Harrison envied Mrs. Rose Grenlauer, but never more than now. Willard lost his arm, his wife, and everything he owned to the Yankees.

Except think of Mrs. Three whorehouses and a few independents to service the miners who survived the mines outside of town. When someone murders a prostitute, Will, the mayor, must fill in for the dr Until one lonely night, when caretaking becomes too much, Stacy sits at the piano and plays Bach. She hopes to escape into the comfo Long ago, before the dawn of civilization, they were banished to the realm of nightmares.

Now the terrors are real. A generation ago, another Starship EnterpriseTM fought off a ship of exiled aliens intent on conquering all of the Alpha Quadrant He feels like a stray himself, a man who has lost everything even though he has a house and an antiquarian bookstore in Seavy Village on the Oregon Coast.

But the cat adopted him. And she proves a mystery. They send the best and brightest to war, then observe them when the soldiers return. Prince Tadeo has his heart set on a Songbird for the coronation. He sends Reynaldo, the best magic hunter in the business, after it. Once upon a time, Songbirds served the king. Now Reynaldo must convince one Songbird to return. Gavin spends his morning reading the email of his ex-girlfriend, Stella.

So, the email has to do. Until Stella disappears from the world. Gavin thinks he knows what happened to h The day the Red Letters arrive, the day that students get a glimpse into their own future. But a handful never get a letter and no one knows why. One teacher has an idea though: Mae, chief linguist on the Ivoire, heads a diplomatic mission to Ukhanda. The final installment in the exciting, fast-moving, and passionate space opera. Searching for ancient technology to help her friends find answers to the mystery of their own past, Boss ventures into a place filled with evidence of an ancient space He must save Celebcon Five from itself.

Kincaid always shows up at a crime scene before the crime happens. Except at the Burger Joint. He got stuck in Los Angeles traffic and arrived just after the shooting ended. Eleven-year-old Christopher always spends Christmas alone. This year, he's going to change that. This year, he's going to make his parents stay home.

Everyone tells him he'll ruin Christmas, but he doesn't care. He wants a good Christmas, and he' Joanne makes her home the perfect place for Christmas so her grandchildren will always remember the holiday. She travels from nursing home to nursing home, fixing problems, helping others. Until she meets Eloise Mortimer. Rich, famous Eloise Mortimer. Dying Eloise Mortimer, who fancies herself a latte Kendall Dee disappears on her first day as a professional hairdresser at a New York Fashion Week runway show. When she turns up murdered, her friend Corry Lindstrom decides to find out what happened.

Because Corry, a professional fashion photographer When Mount Rushmore suddenly disappears—no more presidents gracing its face—The American Observer sends Emelia Sunlake to give the California perspective. Rena lost everything when her husband and son died in a fiery car accident.

Now she has only her daily swim at the rec center, where she hopes no one pays attention to her horrible burn scars.

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But someone noticed, the same someone who murders a lifeg Now she has only her daily swim at the rec center, whe In the first days of the Clinton administration, Ransom, a DC private eye specializing in Republican dirty tricks, falls on hard times. He finds himself investigating the murder of a local celebrity—Bob the Weather Cat. Ransom finds it hard to tak Leta collected all of the versio Diving Universe - 2.

Boss, a loner, loved to dive derelict spacecraft adrift in the blackness of space But one day, she found a ship that would change everything -- an ancient Dignity Vessel -- and aboard the ship, the mysterious and dangerous Stealth Tech. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis-former first lady, editor, mother, grandmother-lives a life of mystery. But she wants to solve a mystery of her own: A group of conspirators? Colin hates his job at the online entertainment site, Gossip Hourly, but he does what he can to make money. Reed Brasher knows he has forgotten something important. A lot of somethings, actually.

The memory of his entire life slips through his grasp save for bits and pieces. Age, they tell him. And at 90, maybe he should believe them. Sarah finds herself faced with a terrible decision. Her dying mother insists that if she goes to the extended care facility, they will kill her. She wants to go home with Sarah. Readers know Hugo-award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch for her serious, deeply thought-out science fiction.

Davy Moss died fifteen years ago, but his fans keep him alive. They hold reunions, listen to his music over and over again. When they were boys, Scott and Richard went into Felton Woods in the middle of the night and took pictures of a mysterious phenomenon, it changed their lives.

Scott went to MIT and used his science background to be come a crash site detective. Joe Decker drinks because he can. In s Paris, alcohol flows freely unlike Prohibition America. He thinks he has come to Paris to write his novel, but he has come to Paris to block his visions with alcohol. The visions that started when he touched Fifteen dragons have died in less than a century. Rumaad, a different kind of dragon, collects information about the killings the way some dragons collect jewels. Tyrone has come home, if home still exists.

Once upon a time, he was part of the People, the faerie people that hide in plain sight throughout Europe. He grew up in Nuremberg, only to leave centuries ago to live with the humans. Now he returns to pho Sheriff Dan Retsler finally believes in magic. His successor has arrived just as the ghosts return to the lighthous He finds a beautiful, talented woman working at the Paris Telephone Exchange. Her gift with languages seems magical—and maybe it is.

Or maybe the magic comes Her family called her Hilda, before the war, before the Great Wulf murdered them all with his mind. Now the war is over, Europe is in ruin, and the remaining Nazis have scattered. Hilda hunts them, but really, she hunts him. And thanks to an old frie Carol wants a nap. Carol needs a nap. And no one will let her have one because the grown-ups need her. But the grown-ups underestimate Carol. And they fail to realize that Carol will do anything to get her nap. So when he wakes up one morning t A tiny woman with pointed ears asks him to help her with a case at FleshCon, a California science fiction convention.

The tiny woman turns out to be the infamous Paladin, wh Ruby had the idea - help the magic users in New Orleans survive Hurricane Katrina. Pretty charitable for a tiny cat. Winston thought he knew why. The southeast asia tsunami scared her, made her realize her home on the Oregon Coast was vulnerable to n He calls himself Ben…sometimes. He kills people for a living, but he has standards.

He uses astrology to help him follow the right path. On the first Christmas since her husband Tyler died, Amelia goes to the lab to revisit their research. After all, what could it hurt? One little leap into the past, just to touch an old memory. To see him one last time. Paige Racette has spent her entire career imagining the perfect man. But when Josiah Wells starts using her novels as a blueprint for the way to romance her, she finds A beautiful but scared woman tries to hire Winston Karpathian, but wonders why.

Winston possesses only small magic, nothing spectacular, and certainly nothing helpful for a woman like that. But when she turns up dead, Winston must work with a detecti But what happens to a single mom when her parents are dead, and her daughters worry that Santa, like Daddy, won't show up? Is the magic of Christmas an illusion? Or will that magic appear on Chri When the storm of the century hits Whale Rock, Sheriff Dan Retsler does everything he can to prevent hundreds of deaths.

Everything except the thing that could have prevented the storm in the first place. He should have listened to the beautiful woma Silas has worked for Death in Nevada for years. He gets Christmas and Christmas Eve off. Only this year, his substitute finds him in a Las Vegas casino. His substitute, who is little more than a boy, a boy whose task terrifies him.

If the boy fin Rowena runs the House, a place for homeless Sky veterans. The House, open only to the women who compose the Elite Squad, has only a few rules: No names, no details, no weapons. Anything can become a weapon—even a toilet bowl scrubber. Buster's final wish - a Viking funeral.

Although Winston, a small magician with a small talent, wants to give his familiar his ideal funeral, he can't imagine how he'll manage a burning boat at sea. Still, a Viking funeral is a small price to pay for Violet had been pretty once, in high school, before Skeeter Johnson shot her in the face and ruined her life. But he has no explanation for the horrible deaths that take place on his beach. Nor does he know why so many locals fear the sea.

The answer lies in legends of mermaids—not the When Pamela finds herself called to jury duty—and worse, selected for the jury on a murder trial—she fears she must see it through to keep up appearances a But when her instructor ends up dead, Patricia Sarah thinks she has the perfect family.

She and her husband decide to share that perfection with Echea, an orphan from the Moon Wars. But after Sarah adopts Echea, she realizes that Echea has problems. Problems that might change Sa Imagine a dinner party in an English country manor with an American cook named Bubba making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, waiters from Cal Tech, British royalty among the guests, a cat named Pudgy, and a thief. Honestly, what could go wrong? Steffie makes her living as a coolhunter—someone who discovers an interesting look and makes it fashion, often overnight.

KD, genetically altered to remain a child, asks Steffie to George has lived a full life as a decorated WWII veteran, high-end attorney, family man. But the incident that haunts him only took five minutes—five minutes when he shared a Coke with a woman on her way to California, a woman who would die hours Pita Cardenas finds herself with the toughest case of her career. The only attorney in the small town of Rio Gordo, she decides to fight the biggest railroad company in the state to get compensation for the widow of a man who might have raced a train At a high school for the magical, the most picked-on kid dreams about J.

Rutherford Wisenhaur II killing people with a fire spell. She knows her nightmares portend the future, but her domestic magic lacks the power to do most difficult spells. Tara, a former agent of Abracadabra Incorporated, once helped shut down black magic all over the world.

She retired from that world for a quieter life of running a little magic shop. But black magic finds her anyway. On a trip to Paris, she discover The five magical stories in this short collection include stories of fairies and shapeshifters and magic shops. Funeral directors deal with everything at a funeral, but only a few must handle an influx of flower fairies.

Flower fairies are unpredictable…except when they get angry. New York Times bestselling author Some are retired, some are a little shady, some have seen too much. But none of them believed in UFOs. Until that night when the lights went out i Crime reporter Atkins discovered Scrawny Pete at the scene of a murder-suicide.

The hard-bitten reporter took to the cat, and the cat took to him. Together they traveled through the city on the police beat, until the day they come across another crim When a child prodigy loses everything familiar, he must learn how to surv After receiving a great shock, Grace, a CPA who always lived a cautious life, decides to sell her business and move west, not realizing that the man who bought her business deceived her. Her departure looks like guilt, and suddenly Grace, who only wa In a world that sells and records dreams, a celebrity will do anything to guard his privacy.

But the paparazzi try to steal a celebrity's dreams anyway. And who do the dreams belong to? The person who dreamed it or the person who recorded it? Portia Meadows runs one of the few pet stores that sells familiars to the magical. Familiars—delicate, moody creatures—keep magic clean and pure. To lose a familiar means losing magic. Sounds like a joke. Or a bar bet.

Or maybe, just maybe, a bit of magic follows him everywhere. Homer Ziff wanted to know how his outdoor cats spent their days, so he attached a tiny digital camera to their collars—and discovered a mystery in his own backyard. Reese Catton manages campaigns. The dirty side of campaigns. But in politics—as in life—nothing is as it seems. Not even the relationship between vampires and Fluffy leads the perfect life. Her cat bed, her kibble, a human to wait on her. And they will change everything—unless she finds a way to stop them. Everyone thinks of Kyle as the good-for-nothing only son of Jackson Worthington.

But Kyle keeps his real nature hidden: Until he discovers a body in an alley on the way home from school. Perspectives on technology, space, and aliens, and how they might affect humanity are explored in this collection of short science fiction. In the title story, a near-future is examined in which an eight-year-old, at the time of the loss of the Apoll Diving Universe - 1. Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars.

She wants to know about the past—to experience it firsthand. A Retrieval Artist Novel - 7. When a journalist working with him is murdered and his daughter Talia goes missing, Retrieval Artist Miles Flint, on a mission to destroy a corrupt law firm, discovers that Talia's quest to find her other five clones and his search for a killer are s A Retrieval Artist Novel - 6.

On Jupiter's moon Callisto, a mysterious Recovery Man kidnaps Rhonda Shindo after he terrorizes and then abandons her brilliant thirteen-year-old daughter, Talia. While authorities on Callisto search for Rhonda, her employers at the Aleyd Corporation A Retrieval Artist Novel - 5. He owes his livelihood, and his very sense of honor, to a woman known as Paloma. It was she who was responsible for setting A Retrieval Artist Novel - 4.

Forensic anthropologist Aisha Costard has been summoned to Mars. A Retrieval Artist Novel - 3.

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The victim was one of the Disappeared--outlaws in hiding who are wanted for crimes against alien civilizations--whose family had her brought home, believin Strange things have always happened in Seavy County, the most rugged stretch of Oregon's coastline. Violent storms spring up like magic, even when the rest of the state enjoys sunshine; unearthly beings are sometimes glimpsed in the twilight; and tho A Retrieval Artist Novel - 2. While searching for the Disappeared - criminals on the run for commiting unspeakable acts of violence against alien cultures - Retrieval Artist Miles Flint investigates two suspicious deaths, leading him to a demented scientist who is now one of the A Retrieval Artist Novel - 1.

In a world where humans and aliens coexist, the future can be altered forever. In a world where murder is sanctioned, the rules of humanity no longer apply. In a world where no one can guarantee safe haven, one man has found a job. Collection of mystery short stories. Fantastic, very personal introduction by the author, 7 pages. The personals ads are certainly a prime source for people's private fantasies, some of which end in happiness, while others turn into total disasters.

But what if there was something "special" about either the placer of the ad or the one who answered Black Throne - 2. For Gift, who has renounced the Black Throne t Black Throne - 1. The Fey Empire has been at peace for fifteen years. But Queen Arianna, who holds the Black Throne, has become increasingly troubled by a mysterious presence that is waking in her mind. It is a force of ruthless power, determined to seize the throne e But to hold his conquest, Black King Rugad must capture his two half-Islander, half-Fey great-grandch A thrilling and twisting tale set in a dark and fateful time in history,this storyby a renowned fantasy writerhints at what might have happened had Hitler been derailed early on by scandal "So we have blood and a supposed body.