Imagine a world without hunger. With clothing and shelter for everyone. A world that is never too warm or too cold. A world where there are no decisions to be made, because everything is decided upon for the inhabitants.A utopia? Or a prison? Because paradise has a price.The story of one man: the last who can read the secret language of the machine that created the City - the last man who can change it.

Zeno Zenobius, head computer programmer for Intra-Galactic Investigations, Inc., was having a peaceful, uneventful life. Then he awoke to find himself a citizen of Wooten Dorset in England - a most unusual little town. Along with Victorian elegance, were hovercrafts, electric lights, and Zeno's own computer.And then things got stranger.There were two of him: Zeno I and Zeno II. And Zeno I's job was to find out what Zeno II was doing in Wooten Dorset.

If you ever get to drinking beer in your favorite saloon and meet a scared little guy who wants to buy you the joint, supply you with fur coats and dolls and run you for Congress—listen well! That is, if you really want the joint, the fur coats, the dolls and a seat in Congress. Just ask Mike Murphy . . . .

It's an urgent assignment for Vernay?get control of the totalitarian government of Ujvila. Hard enough, but Vernay's also got to do it before Galactic-Military solves the problem its own way: by slamming in an invasion force and destroying half the planet.The natives of Anthropol don't like aliens and they don't want Vernay. So it's going to be a tough assignment.One of the toughest of his career.

Cameron was his name. He looked like a lawman, he wore a tin badge, but the owl-hooters knew him as a bank robber who had turned traitor. And they set a trap to catch him with a band loaded with gold dust, a rangeland studded with blotched brands, and a scheme worthy of the wildcats that gave Cougar Hill its name.But Cameron had some cougar blood in his own veins, and desperation put a deadly edge to his trigger fangs.

When Special Investigator Jeff McKeon was called hurriedly back to the Puget City DA's office, it marked the end of a beautiful vacation and the abrupt beginning of an ugly frame. For while Jeff's back had been turned, his political enemies had been busy laying plans to give him a permanent vacation—in jail.This time they had the DA on their side, for the evidence seemed quite foolproof. Jeff, they convincingly demonstrated, was the new front-man for the Syndicate's big push into town.And when Jeff realized he had to tackle the Syndicate itself to disprove that, he knew that his fate now lay in the fickle hands of The Duchess of Skid Row—a gal who had every reason to want him dead.

Jim Clane, arriving in Dunlop to clean up the town, found it teeming with crime, vice and political corruption. Clane started by instigating a near-riot at a political meeting, thus at once getting in the bad graces of both the machine mayor and Wickett, the powerful newspaper publisher who backed him. Then one of the publisher's reporters died, and after that Wickett himself was murdered. And Clane's alibi—that he'd been with the nymphomaniac wife of the jealous city boss—was guaranteed to pack almost as much danger as a murder charge!A fast, tough, suspenseful baffler by a justly popular author.

Malcolm Lowry had waited five long years for his revenge; he'd built up a lot of hate in that time. But now he was ready to strike back at the men who'd slain his wife and stolen his money. It had taken that five years to get the goods on those two men and to lay his plans for his ruin.But there were things he hadn't counted on. One was Tanya, the luscious blonde he wanted to love but dared not trust. Another was that in his absence his enemies had acquired a silent partner—one who wouldn't hesitate at mayhem and murder. But Lowry couldn't afford to wait any longer. After all, he had nothing to lose but his life!

ACE catalog number 441-30590-075

Three lovely ladies provided Joe Coyle with his ticket to perdition.The first was a redhead: Ellie Lucas, who had a mind like a steel trap and had an insurance business that would require dirty work to save it.The second was a blonde: Toby Jessup, partner in a trucking deal that was ready to transfer Joe from the sunny side of heaven to the frigid side of hell.The third was a brunette: Bonita Jessup, who ran her corporation like a hard-shelled executive and her undercover business like a soft-bodied sharp-clawed panther.One of the three was dealing in murder—and Joe was to be her next victim!

The characters ...Adeline O'Hara, ex-WAC and reporter for the Teneskium (Oregon) Pioneer, also country correspondent for the Portland Press, who tells the story. She is young, red-headed, and Irish. She meetsTitus Willow, the pudgy passionate professional philanthropist, who is a badly frightened man. He is visitingCarson Delhart, the Portland millionaire, who dislikes giving interviews , and who wants to marry Titus Willow's daughterDaisy Willow, small and babyish, with a penchant for suicide. She is engaged toArthur Frew, Titus Willow's assistant, a very sullen young man who dislikes everyone and everything. He causes Adeline a lot of trouble. Also involved isGlory Martin, beautiful ice-blonde ward of Carson Delhart. She is rumored to be his mistress, and has definite tendencies toward dipsomania and nymphomania. Watching out for her isPotter Hilton, Delhart's extremely efficient secretary, who is cold and precise and at times very...

"Lucky" Tom Blane's luck as a private eye had run out when his crooked ex-partner, Enrico Pachuco, took off with his rep and his funds. So Rosanne Norton was like an angel from heaven when she offered to pay him to keep tabs on this same Pachuco, who was now operating his slippery game in Rosanne's home ground—the border between Texas and Mexico.Blane jumped at the prepaid opportunity to clear his own name and get even besides. But when he finally ran to crook to earth, it was to find the man tortured and stabbed to death—and Tome Blane everyone's favorite suspect.The cops of two nations were converging on him fast when Blane set out to unravel the frame ... with nothing to help him but a double-crossing set of two-faced females and an unknown knife-thrower aiming for his back.

A baby-faced sadist sprung from the death-house ...Two trigger-happy hoods ...A voluptuous redhead trying to outrun the vengeance of the Mob ...Here was a carload of killers, ready to fight each other and the world for a chance at the Big Money.$100,000 in unmarked ransom bills was the prize, hidden somewhere in the trackless woods of the Pacific Northwest. And they all knew that only one of them would come out alive.The hunters become the hunted in this vicious game of winner-kill-all.

They were laying for Clay Belden when he came out of the pass into the Wildhorse Valley. He didn t see them. He didn t know they d be there. He didn t think they would remember him. But they were waiting, with their rifles neatly trained from the rocks, and their fingers tight on the triggers. The first shot was a warning. The second sent Clay rolling on the ground looking for cover. The third shot was Clay s. And though he never saw at whom he was shooting, he knew then it was to be war to the finish. War between one lone drifter who didn t know his enemies and a raft of sharp-eyed triggermen who kept his features neatly framed in the long-range sights of their saddle-guns.

The first time insurance claims investigator Peter Durham's friend Arne Rasmussen had a fire on one of his ships, Peter treated it as a routine accident. The second fire he called bad luck. But when the third fire broke out, Peter knew there was no jinx, but just a very clever arsonist.Every case has its angles, but Peter found them going in all directions this time: a man almost beaten to death, a beautiful femme fatale, a strong silent Oriental, a tough Beat Generation poet, and $600,000 in foreign currency.But all these mysterious elements were nothing compared to the puzzle of what to do with a beautiful young lady who turned into an international incident when she became The Corpse Without a Country.