Robert Charles Wilson's time has come. His first novel from Tor, Darwinia, was a finalist for science fiction's Hugo award, and a #1 Locus bestseller in paperback. His next novel, Bios, is a critical and commercial success. Now Wilson's brilliant short science fiction is available in book form for the first time. Beginning with "The Perseids," winner of Canada's national SF award, this collection showcases Wilson's suppleness and strength: bravura ideas, scientific rigor, and living, breathing human beings facing choices that matter. Also included among the several stories herein are the acclaimed Hugo Award finalist "Divided by Infinity" and three new stories written specifically for this collection.

Lady Arabella Blydon has beauty and a brain, and she’s tired of men who can see only one without the other. When a suitor tells Arabella he’s willing to overlook her appalling bluestocking tendencies on account of her looks and fortune, she decides to take a break from the Marriage Mart. During an extended stay in the country, she never expects to meet Lord John Blackwood, a wounded war hero who intrigues her like no other man. Lord John has lived through the worst horrors of war… but nothing could have been as terrifying to his tormented heart as Lady Arabella. She is intoxicating, infuriating… and she makes him want to live again. Suddenly he’s writing bad poetry and climbing trees in the pitch-dark night… just so he can dance with her as the clock strikes midnight. And even though he knows he can never be the sort of man she deserves, he can’t help wanting her. But when the harsh light of day replaces the magic of midnight, can this tormented soul learn to love again?

A month before eighth grade begins, Alice realizes she is going to have to face something she's been afraid of forever. Everybody, she knows, is afraid of something: elevators, dogs, planes, spiders... but her fear is worse. It's going to bring absolute disaster to the rest of her summer, maybe to the rest of her life. The truth is she's afraid of deep water! It's a hot August, and everyone in Alice's gang goes to Mark Stedmeister's swimming pool almost every day. Alice sits at the shallow end. She plays badminton. She makes excuses, and keeps her problem secret. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Pamela, Alice's two best friends, tackle problems of their own, and are more or less successful. Life is changing for everyone but Alice. Bravery begins in little ways, with small steps. That's what Alice finally discovers. And after she faces this particular fear, she knows she can summon the courage to face other fears as well. As in her previous adventures, Alice tackles some of the big problems of growing up with humor and enterprise and learns once again that a brother, a father, and friends can offer amazing amounts of help.

From the universally acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day comes a mesmerizing novel of completely unexpected mood and matter—a seamless, fictional universe, both wholly unrecognizable and familiar. When the public, day-to-day reality of a renowned pianist takes on a life of its own, he finds himself traversing landscapes that are by turns eerie, comical, and strangely malleable. From the Hardcover edition.

Second-century Roman Britain is the setting for epic battle, high drama, bravery and romance in these two stories for young readers. A Circlet of Oak Leaves gradually reveals the mystery behind humble horse-breeder Araco's award for outstanding bravery, and Eagle's Egg follows the story of Quintus, a young standard-bearer, determined to be promoted so that he can marry the girl that he loves.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY SALMAN RUSHDIE As well as her eight novels, Angela Carter published four wonderful collections of short stories during her lifetime, and contributed stories to several anthologies. The stories were scattered amongst different publishers, and a couple of the volumes are now out of print. In Burning your Boats they are gathered for the first time; this is a key collection and a major event for Angela Carter aficionados.

In the summer 1991, a Russian couple who deal in icons are found murdered in a villa in Berlin. There is evidence that the woman has been tortured before being killed. In Moscow, an officer in the new security service of the Russian Federation is despatched to German to find a rogue agent of the former KGB who has disappeared. Back in Berlin, an American art historian, Francesca McDermott, flies in to curate a major retrospective exhibition of Russian avant-garde art. The exhibition is the brain-child of Berlin’s new minister of culture, Stefan Diederich, a former dissident whom Francesca had known before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Stefan tells her that the price for Russian co-operation in mounting the exhibition is that she work with a Russian art historian, Andrei Serotkin. Serotkin turns out to have all the qualities of which the liberal-minded, feminist Francesca disapproves – he is a chain-smoking male chauvinist – but after he saves her from rape in Berlin’s Tiergarten she feels an involuntary attraction. He is also mysterious and has some kind of hold over Stefan Diederich. It is a time when Russia is in chaos, its assets plundered by cronies of Boris Yeltsin, and Berlin jittery because of the revelations that are emerging from the Stasi files. (Source: http://www.pierspaulread.co.uk/fictio...)

The first book in a sweeping family saga from the author of the popular Deverry series. From San Francisco's Summer of Love through revolution and war to the most unexpected challenge of all, five generations of Corey mothers and daughters face the past and the future.

Six teens struggle to discover the source of their strange and horrific abilities in this first book of The Star Shards Chronicles. Dillon has the terrifying power to create massive amounts of destruction with the slightest tweak of his will. Deanna is so consumed by fear, it has become like a black hole, drawing to her the very things that terrify her. Then, when the glare of a supernova sixteen light-years away illuminates the night sky, they have a vision: There are six of them out there, all teenagers, and all suffering from supernatural afflictions that disfigure their bodies and souls. Only by finding one another will the six ever be strong enough to defeat these mysterious forces that, bit by bit, are devouring their souls from the inside out.

The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne's skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich.

Hilary Mantel's seventh novel examines the pressures on women during the 1960s to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status. Pushed by a domineering mother, Carmel McBain climbs her way through the pecking order and ends up at London University as an acquiescent and undernourished teenager, achieving the status so desired by her mother, but too weak to make use of it or pose a threat to anyone. Though this is Carmel's story, it reflects on a generation of girls desiring the power of men, but fearful of abandoning what is expected and proper.

In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. “Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward,” she writes, “and speak the word aloud. Peace.” Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the “Glad Season” is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths. From the Hardcover edition.

Classic ERB story.

The first four books in the Betsy-Tacy series: Betsy-Tacy, Betsy-Tacy and Tib, Betsy and Tacy Go over the Big Hill, and Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown.

In the year 1260, under the supervision of the architect Gerhard Morart, the most ambitious ecclesiastical building in all of Christendom is rising above the merchant city of Cologne: the great cathedral. Far below the soaring spires and flying buttresses, a bitter struggle is underway between the archbishop of Cologne and the ruling merchant families to control the enormous wealth of this prosperous commercial center—a struggle that quickly becomes deadly. Morart is the first of many victims, pushed to his death from the cathedral's scaffolding by a huge man with long hair, clad all in black. But hiding in the branches of the archbishop's apple orchard is a witness: a red-haired petty thief called Jacob the Fox, street-smart, cunning, and yet naive in the ways of the political world. Out of his depth and running for his life, he soon finds himself engaged in a desperate battle with some very powerful forces. Most dangerous of all is the killer himself—a mysterious man with remarkable speed, strength, and intelligence, hiding dark secrets that have stripped away his humanity and turned him into a cruel, efficient hired assassin who favors a miniature crossbow as his weapon of choice. But who is he killing for? Jacob the Fox—uneducated and superstitious—fears the killer is the Angel of Death himself. But the wily Fox makes an alliance with some of the strangest of bedfellows: a beautiful clothes dyer, her drunken rascal of a father, and her learned uncle, who loves a good debate almost as much as he loves a bottle of wine. Can this unlikely foursome triumph against the odds and learn the truth of the evil conspiracy before their quest leads to their death at the end of a crossbow arrow? Readers who loved the richly textured setting and historical accuracy of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose will thrill to discover a new novel through which they can vicariously enter the medieval world. With its vivid evocation of both the rich and powerful and those struggling to survive another day at the bottom of society's rungs in the Cologne of 1260, Death and the Devil, the first novel by Frank Schatzing, sends a clear announcement to the literary world that an important new voice in fiction is here.