Pride before a fall...As guests of Chief Ladon Radim, Colonel Sheppard's team witness the launch of the Genii's first starship — Pride of the Genii.Radim needs the Pride's first mission to be a success if he's going to control the hard-line opponents of his treaty with Atlantis. So when the ship disappears, he turns to Atlantis for urgent help. With the Pride out of contact, Sheppard's team must track her across the Pegasus galaxy, piecing together the events of her ill-fated maiden voyage as they race to find the stricken ship before time runs out for her crew — and for Chief Radim.But as they navigate vicious Genii politics, mysterious illnesses, and hostile wildlife, the Atlantis team soon find themselves fighting alongside the crew of the Pride — for their survival and for the future of peace with the Genii...

"Readers of police procedurals will recognize the form of Point of Dreams, if not the details, which are necessarily changed by the fantasy setting.... Scott and Barnett blend the genres deftly, transposing their mystery plot seamlessly into their magical world, effectively building suspense and scattering both clues and red herrings with panache.... Point of Dreams is a thoroughly rewarding reading experience."—SF SiteThe citizens of Astreiant have become obssessed by a new play, The Drowned Island, a lurid farrago of melodrama and innuendo. Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is not amused, however, at a real dead body found on the stage and must investigate. A string of murders follows, perhaps related to the politically important masque that is to play on that same stage. Rathe must once again call on the help of his soldier lover, Philip Eslingen, whose knowledge of actors and the stage blends well with Rathe's own hard-won experience of human greed and magical mayhem.Their task is...

Orestes was a cruel world, cold and inhospitable. Its first colonists were castaways from a crash landing, cling to survival through the institution of strict socio political pontrols. Over the generations life grew somewhat easier, but the code of honour remained. Misdeeds and errors were paid for with blood. At one time all miscreants were executed. Now a social death is imposed. Every Oresteian city has colony of "ghosts": ostracised citizens who must survive, somehow, without help from the living. But galactic civilisation is spreading and Orestes is in its path. The old ways are under scrutiny. And though the Oresteian aristocracy will fight for the status quo, they have not reckoned on the power of a thousand ghosts.

A welcome return to the vividly realized city of Astreiant with its intricate magics and deadly politics, Point of Knives takes place in the interval between the widely praised earlier novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams. A fantastical mystery and a rousing adventure, Point of Knives also reveals for the first time the beginning of the romance between Adjunct Point Nicolas Rathe and the Leaguer Philip Eslingen. The events of Midsummer have not been forgotten by the Fall Balance, and Nicolas Rathe can hardly complain that they've done any harm to his reputation, or to the reputation of the Points in general. However, newfound fame has meant that he's more in demand as an investigator, and the increased recognition and workload make it difficult to pursue friendship, or anything more, with the handsome former soldier Philip Eslingen, his comrade in the rescue of the stolen children. Eslingen's employer Hanselin Caiazzo is still deeply involved in any number of questionably legal ventures. Any association between Rathe, a representative of Astreiant's queen, and Caiazzo's bodyguard Eslingen is regarded with suspicion from both sides of the law. When a father and son rumored to be "summer-sailors," or pirates, are murdered on the same night and Rathe finds Eslingen standing over the son's body, Eslingen proves his innocence easily enough, despite loyally refusing to say exactly what errand he's running for Caiazzo at that untimely hour of the morning. But when the old man's grandson and the son's self-proclaimed wife quarrel over the son's meager belongings, and Caiazzo dispatches Eslingen to represent his interests in the investigation, Rathe begins to wonder if their friendship is going to survive. Or whether he and Eslingen will survive at all.  

Autumn downpours soak the city of Astreiant and cast a gloomy pall over its streets, while storms at sea have delayed merchant ships bearing important cargoes from distant lands. For Philip Eslingen, whose stars are bad for water, the season adds damp misery to the complications of organizing the new and controversial City Guard.The murder of a tea captain brings to a head the rivalry between Point of Sighs, where the crime took place, and Point of Dreams, where Eslingen's lover, Adjunt Point Nicolas Rathe, doubts the evidence against the son of a prominent Dreams merchant house. As extortion against traders by the dockers of Point of Sighs and corruption among the district pointsmen come to light, the mystery deepens, but nothing can prepare Rathe and Eslingen for the return of a legend and the revival of a savage cult.Centuries ago the hungry spirit that haunted the River Sier was propitiated by the ritual sacrifice of handsome young man, but the Riverdeme has...

A book such as this spins not only words but also whole worlds: eighteen of them, representing the best lesbian-themed stories of the fantastic or futuristic published the prior year: An artisan who tests the skills and wares of her friends in the hope of finding the ideal housing for an idealized love. A shape-shifting sidekick ensures that the heroine, who might not even be aware of her, saves the day. The device on a young girl's wrist that counts down the years until she will meet her soul mate poses the ultimate challenge of delayed gratification. A daydreamer wonders how she will face the coming Stone Moon and its gathering when her culture demands fertility yet her heart belongs to her best friend, who is not only female but of a higher caste. The women to be met in these pages will find themselves tested not because of their sexual identity but rather the identity they have composed, constructed, and spun.

Aces high… As the threat of European war looms, the Kingdom of Ethiopia is one of the first to come under attack from the Facist powers. When Dr. Jerry Ballard’s long-anticipated dig in Alexandria is interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Iskinder on a secret mission for the Ethiopian Emperor, Jerry has to make a stand — even if it means delaying his dream of finding the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. Fortunately, the rest of the Lodge, Alma, Lewis, Mitch, and Stasi are in Sicily showing the Catalina flying boat at a prestigious European air show. Bound by oaths and friendship, they undertake a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean and into the heart of a battle where they will be tested as never before.

"Set in an alternative Middle Ages...this novel...offers intriguing looks at guild interrelationships, the uses of hand-cranked printing presses and medieval attitudes toward magic. It also offers considerable delight to those who enjoy intellectual puzzles of the fantastic kind."—Publishers WeeklyNicolas Rathe is a pointsman, a dedicated watchman in the great city of Astreiant. During the annual trade fair, with a city filled with travelers and merchants, someone is stealing children. The populace is getting angry and frightened and convinced that a foreigner must be to blame. Rathe calls on the aid of both an out-of-work soldier, the handsome Philip Eslingen, and the necromancer Istre b'Estorr. The art of astrology is a very real power in the kingdom and plays as much a role in politics as greed and intrigue. Rathe finds himself struggling to find the children before a major astrological event brings about catastrophe. The first in a series of fantasy novels filled with...

End game The battle lines are drawn. Queen Death is mustering her fleet. But who will stand against her? As conflicts and betrayal threaten to shatter Atlantis's fragile alliances with Guide's Wraith and the Genii, humanity's only hope of survival rests on the fate of an Ancient device - a weapon too terrible to use but toopowerful to cast aside. A weapon capable of exterminating every Wraith in the galaxy, and with them every human carrying Wraith DNA. With Queen Death's fleet fast approaching, Colonel Sheppard and his team must make their final choice. In the sixth and concluding installment of the STARGATE ATLANTIS Legacy series, the future of Atlantis will be decided -and more than one of her crew will be called upon to sacrifice everything in the fight for her survival.

A Deadly Paradise It’s the summer of 1935, and Gilchrist Aviation’s owner Alma Gilchrist Segura has brokered a deal that will take herself and fellow pilots Lewis Segura and Mitchell Sorley to Honolulu to test a new seaplane. It pays well enough to take their families along for a working vacation – including the children of the company’s part time handyman, whose father has abandoned them. Better still, archeologist Jerry Ballard is already there supervising a dig investigating whether Hawaii was actually discovered by the Chinese. It’s a crackpot idea, but it’s his only chance to prove that he can still handle field work after losing his leg at the end of the Great War, and he’s determined to restart his career. However, not all is as it seems. The dig is funded by anonymous sources who seem to have far too much influence on its management, including the hiring of German archaeologist Willi Radke, and who seem to know exactly what they want to find. The seaplane's testing is plagued by mysterious mechanical problems – and rumors of a curse spread through the hangar. Can you murder someone by magic? And who would want to kill a middle aged Army officer who belongs to an allied lodge? Alma, Jerry, Mitch, Lewis and Stasi are determined to defend themselves, but the power arrayed against them is greater than they imagined. It will take everything they have – as flyers, scholars, and magicians – to survive this deadly paradise.

During Dog Moon, the chief entertainment in the great city of Astreiant, for nobles and commons alike, is the basket-terrier races at New Fair. This year, with spectacularly bad timing, the massive and suspicious bankruptcy of a young nobleman has convulsed the city, leading to suicides, widespread loss of employment, and inconvenient new laws around the universal practice of betting on the races. As well, a rash of mysterious burglaries seems to suggest a magistical conspiracy. Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is naturally in the midst of all these disturbances--as is his lover, foreign former mercenary Philip Eslingen. When Eslingen receives a basket-terrier puppy in the redistribution of the bankrupt's household goods, he makes the best of it by having the pup trained for the races, an action that draws him and Rathe deeper into the coils of a mystery somehow involving New Fair's dog races, bookies and bettors, the bankruptcy and its causes and fallout, burglaries, and a new uncanny form of murder. Fourth in the Astreiant series,Fairs' Point once again demonstrates Melissa Scott's mastery of fantasy world building, detective-story plotting, and the provision of sheer delight.**

New beginnings… Elizabeth Weir and Ronon Dex are prisoners of the Vanir, whose damaged ship is plummeting into the mountains of Sateda. Meanwhile, Atlantis is in lock down, infected by a virulent contagion, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. And time is running out… Helped by Dr. Daniel Jackson, Colonel Shepherd’s team fight not only to save their city and free their friends, but ultimately to save an entire species from extinction. As tensions rise between the Wraith, the Travelers, and the Lanteans, old enemies — and long lost friends — must unite to walk a third path if the fragile peace in the Pegasus galaxy is to hold. In this riveting conclusion to the epic Legacy series, the destiny of Atlantis and her people will be decided.