Showing results for "Science Fiction Confidential" in Crime Fiction

A city is hit by a sudden and strange epidemic of "white blindness", which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there social conventions quickly crumble and the struggle for survival brings out the worst in people.

From Emmy Award-winning author David Quantick, All My Colors is a darkly comic novel about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences. A bizarre, mind-bending story at the intersection of Richard Bachman, Charlie Kaufman, and Franz Kafka.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

Nile Nightingale is on the run. Fleeing across the border to rural Quebec, he seeks refuge at an abandoned church when his junked-up, overstimulated mind takes in that he has just witnessed a body drop - in a bloody sack tied with Christmas ribbon. The contents, unconscious but still alive, turn out to be 15-year-old Cleste Jonqures, who has been beaten and slashed, like wild game, to slowly bleed out. From his hideout, as he nurses his patient back from the brink and begins to face his own life, he pieces together what he has stumbled into.

An unlikely vigilante slips through the alleys of Old Korvosa, the armor of the insidious Gray Maidens - former stormtroopers of an insane queen - imprisoning her within a past she can neither forget nor atone for. But when an innocent comes to her in need, this mercenary avenger must test her mettle against a foe just as resolute and merciless as she once was.

Living busily on Planet Earth, we rarely remember that we actually inhabit only a miniscule part of the universe. In The Planets and the Solar System, Jen Green paints the wider picture, and takes us on a journey across billions of kilometers in our galaxy, from our Sun to near and distant planets. Some, like Mercury, have a molten core surrounded with crust and spins quickly; Jupiter, on the other hand, is a big ball of gas.

Levi Yoder is a member of the Mafia and a fixer of people's problems. He takes on issues where the law is otherwise unable to help. Unfortunately, Levi can't fix the problem he's facing. Having been diagnosed with a terminal case of cancer, Levi readies himself for death, but what he didn't prepare himself for was waking up one morning and learning that he's in complete remission. Perimeter is a story of a man thrust back into a life he'd assumed was over.

In a prosperous yet gruesomely violent near future, superhero vigilantes battle thugs whose heads are full of supervillain fantasies. The peace is kept by a team of smooth, well-dressed negotiators called The Men in Fancy Suits. Meanwhile a young girl is caught in the middle and thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. Zoey, a recent college graduate with a worthless degree, makes a reluctant trip into the city after hearing that her estranged con artist father died in a mysterious yet spectacular way.

Zoey is not the woman she once was. She's watched her friends die at the hands of their captors, been hunted, and returned from the brink of death. Now she must find the truth about who she is. In search of the family she never knew, Zoey learns of personal records stored in an Idaho missile silo that may contain the information she and the other women seek. With the help of her group of newfound friends, Zoey travels to the missile facility, but among the records, they uncover information that leads to an insidious and horrific new foe.

From one of the most acclaimed and profound writers in the world of comics comes a thrilling and provocative exploration of humankind's great modern myth: the superhero. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Grant Morrison draws on art, science, mythology, and his own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of the superhero - why they matter, why they will always be with us, and what they tell us about who we are... and what we may yet become.

The city of Luskan has always been a den of pirates, thieves, and murderers. But lately, things have gotten much worse. A ship crashes offshore with nothing but corpses. Every day, people go crazy and brutalize those around them. And the only signs that even the most hardened criminals still walk the streets at night are bones. Luskan's sister city, Waterdeep, has sent a detachment to quarantine the unclean city - to let the filth within die, rather than infect the rest of the Realms. But Myrin has slipped inside, declaring that she will save Luskan.

Say you're a time traveler and you've already toured the entirety of human history. After a while, the outside world might lose a little of its luster. That's why this time traveler celebrates his birthday partying with himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City in 2071, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and drinks 12-year-old Scotch (lots of it) with all the other versions of who he has been and who he will be.

Rumors are swirling around the dark corners of Westgate that a brutal vigilante is dealing violence and havoc in the guise of Shadowbane. Kalen and Myrin have just arrived from Luskan, in search of Kalen's former apprentice, Rhett. Though Kalen believes Rhett to be dead, Myrin won't give up hope as she in turn seeks more information about her past. And Kalen too must find his place, perhaps in the Eye of Justice - the organization that trained him - though that's the last place he wants to end up. But who are is this mysterious vigilante who wields the vaunted sword Vindicator?

Meet Sam Thornton. He collects souls. Sam’s job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure they are dispatched to the appropriate destination. But when he’s sent to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that’s doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before... “No.”

While on routine patrol in the tinder-dry Topanga Canyon, environmental scientist Rafael Salazar expects to find animal poachers, not a dilapidated antique steamer trunk. Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It also promises to reveal a terrible secret - the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Zoey has only ever known a world with few women and a society capable of unimaginable evil. Now she's about to learn she may be the only hope it has for salvation. After she and her companions flee a vicious attack, barely escaping with their lives, Zoey finds herself faced with a new threat: video evidence suggesting she is the mother of an unborn baby girl - and the key to mankind's survival. Knowing that her former captors will stop at nothing to control the power that lies within her, Zoey sets out on her own for the last American city, Seattle, in search of answers.

A journey to a faraway world… With mankind on the brink of economic collapse, a population growing at an unmanageable rate and a limited supply of natural resources, there is only one place we can look to for our future… the stars. A deep space mining tug is sent to HD 85512 B, an Earth-like planet codenamed New Dawn, to begin a mission that will eventually see the relocation of humanity. …but will they survive?

A fabulous yellow diamond becomes the dangerous inheritance of Rachel Verinder. Outside her Yorkshire country house watch the Hindu priests who have waited for many years to reclaim their ancient talisman, looted from the holy city of Somnauth. When the Moonstone disappears, the case looks simple, but in mid-Victorian England no one is what they seem, and nothing can be taken for granted.

Born and raised in rural Alabama, Billy Creekmore was destined to be a psychic. His mother, a Choctaw Indian schooled in her tribe's ancient mysticism, understands the permeable barrier between life and death - and can cross it. She taught the power to Billy, and now he helps the dead rest in peace.

In 2092, the world's ecology is in ruins, drought and famine are widespread and survival is a never-ending challenge. Harold Erdman leaves his dying community with one goal, to make his way to Esmeralda, an island paradise run by the Huntworld Corporation which has turned public murder, among willing competitors, into a thriving and lucrative business. Can he survive the journey and then the many rounds of deadly competition on his way to the Big Payoff.