Search Worlds Without End

Asia, vast continent of ancient civilizations and mysterious peoples, has many corners little known to the rest of the world. Once such was the jungle-hidden heart of exotic Cambodia, where Gordon King, a daring American explorer, stumbled upon the thousand-year old secret kingdom of The Land of Hidden Men. Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose Tarzan tales have enthralled millions, has written a novel of another such jungle hero that is as exciting, as adventure-packed and as imaginative at his best. The dangers Gordon King faced, his recuse of a jungle princess, and his combat against the perils of the lost city of Pnom Dhek are first-rate Burroughs to the last exciting line.

Four old school friends have a pact: to meet up every year in the small town in Puglia they grew up in. Art, the charismatic leader of the group and creator of the pact, insists that the agreement must remain unshakable and enduring. But this year, he never shows up.

A visit to his house increases the friends' worry; Art is farming marijuana. In Southern Italy doing that kind of thing can be very dangerous. They can't go to the Carabinieri so must make enquiries of their own. This is how they come across the rumours about Art; bizarre and unbelievable rumours that he miraculously cured the local mafia boss's daughter of terminal leukaemia. And among the chaos of his house, they find a document written by Art, The Book of Hidden Things, that promises to reveal dark secrets and wonders beyond anything previously known.

Seventeen delightfully unexpected stories from Simon R. Green—including a brand-new adventure of the Droods—take us deep into the Darkside, embroil us in the Secret Histories, and lead us into the shadowy places where monsters and demons roam

Welcome to the worlds of Simon R. Green. In this wide-ranging collection, the New York Times–bestselling urban fantasist opens doors into hidden places: strange realms bordering our own mundane existence and prowled by creatures of fancy and nightmare. Here are the strange, frequently deadly—and sometimes even dead—things that lurk in garbage-strewn city alleyways and grimy subway stations after midnight, visible only to the most perceptive human or inhuman eye.

In these tales, Green revisits the ingenious worlds within worlds that he created for his wildly popular novels. Take a stroll on the Darkside with a jaded street wizard, an underpaid government functionary responsible for keeping demons, vamps, and aliens in line. Enter the hidden recesses of Drood Hall, where the aging family member who creates powerful weapons that protect humankind recalls his long and bloody career. Join a squad of no-longer-human soldiers dispatched to combat the all-consuming jungle on a distant planet. Visit a house at the intesection of two realities that serves as a sanctuary from the evil of all worlds. Confront the unstoppable zombie army of General Kurtz in a brilliant homage to Apocalypse Now. And whatever you do, never forget that there are monsters out there. Really.

Each story includes a new afterword by the author.

Table of Contents:

• Question of Solace - shortfiction
• Street Wizard - (2010) - shortstory
• Death is a Lady - (1997) - shortfiction
• Dorothy Dreams - (2013) - shortfiction
• Down and Out in Deadtown - (2012) - shortfiction
• From Out of the Sun, Endlessly Singing - (2012) - shortstory
• It's All About the Rendering - (2011) - shortfiction
• Find Heaven and Hell in the Smallest Things - (2012) - novelette
• Jesus and Satan Go Jogging in the Desert - (2011) - shortfiction
• Food of the Gods - (2009) - shortfiction
• He Said, Laughing - (2010) - shortstory
• Soldier, Soldier - (1979) - shortfiction
• Manslayer - (1980) - shortstory
• Cascade - (1979) - shortfiction
• Soulhunter - (1982) - shortstory
• Awake, Awake Ye Northern Winds - (1979) - shortfiction
• In the Labyrinth - (1983) - shortstory

The bestselling author of Richard & Judy Book Club hit The Cold Season returns with a chilling mystery - where superstition and myth bleed into real life with tragic consequences

Pretty Lizzie Higgs is gone, burned to death on her own hearth - but was she really a changeling, as her husband insists? Albie Mirralls met his cousin only once, in 1851, within the grand glass arches of the Crystal Palace, but unable to countenance the rumours that surround her murder, he leaves his young wife in London and travels to Halfoak, a village steeped in superstition.

Albie begins to look into Lizzie's death, but in this place where the old tales hold sway and the 'Hidden People' supposedly roam, answers are slippery and further tragedy is just a step away...

From stories about time-traveling assassins, to Black Mirror-esque tales of cryptocurrency and internet trolling, to heartbreaking narratives of parent-child relationships, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories is a far-reaching work that explores topical themes from the present and a visionary look at humanity's future.

>This collection includes a selection of Liu's speculative fiction stories over the past five years--seventeen of his best--plus a new novelette.

Contents:

• xi - Preface (The Hidden Girl and Other Stories) - essay
• 1 - Ghost Days - (2013) - novelette
• 27 - Maxwell's Demon - (2012) - short story
• 49 - The Reborn - (2014) - novelette (variant of Reborn)
• 77 - Thoughts and Prayers - (2019) - short story
• 97 - Byzantine Empathy - (2018) - novelette
• 135 - The Gods Will Not Be Chained - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 1] - (2014) - short story
• 157 - Staying Behind - (2011) - short story
• 173 - Real Artists - (2011) - short story
• 185 - The Gods Will Not Be Slain - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 2] - (2014) - short story
• 209 - Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer - (2011) - short story
• 223 - The Gods Have Not Died in Vain - [Maddie (Ken Liu) - 3] - (2015) - novelette
• 249 - Memories of My Mother - (2012) - short story
• 255 - Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts - (2016) - short story
• 273 - Grey Rabbit, Crimson Mare, Coal Leopard - novelette
• 315 - A Chase Beyond the Storms: An excerpt from "The Veiled Throne", Book 3 of the Dandelion Dynasty - short story
• 335 - The Hidden Girl - (2017) - novelette
• 363 - Seven Birthdays - (2016) - short story
• 383 - The Message - (2012) - short story
• 409 - Cutting - (2012) - short story
• 413 - Acknowledgments (The Hidden Girl and Other Stories) - essay

When Jessica's parents are tragically killed in a car crash, she goes to live with her grandparents in their big old house in Connecticut. Bullied at her new school because of the injury she suffered in the crash, Jessica finds solace in her favourite fairies and the pictures she loves to draw. One day she suffers bad concussion after falling downstairs at school, and while recovering at home she hears the strange sound of children's voices calling for help.

At first Jessica cannot work out where the voices are coming from, but eventually she discovers from a mysterious but kindly old neighbour that they are in fact coming from inside her bedroom wallpaper. Attempting to overcome her own disbelief, Jessica and some friends venture into the world inside her wall where they find an extraordinary land where everyday household objects like spoons and hats take on a life of their own. But there is great danger to be found inside this hidden world, and it is up to Jessica to rescue the strange children whose voices she had heard, before it's too late.

Rachel Wright wakes up in the hospital one morning with no memory of who she is. It takes a while, but once she gets over the shock she decides amnesia isn't all bad. Rachel grasps this opportunity for a fresh start. What does she care if everyone she used to know thinks she'd changed a bit too much? Life is good for the "new" Rachel.... But now her life is starting to fray at the edges. She's been having hideous nightmares and seeing strange things in mirrors. She's becoming more and more certain that something bad is coming. Something wants to break into this world, to play games of blood and death with the living. And it's coming for Rachel.

Table of Contents:

• The Little Dirty Girl - (1982) - novelette
• Sword Blades and Poppy Seed - (1983) - shortstory
• Main Street: 1953 - (1987) - shortstory
• How Dorothy Kept Away the Spring - (1977) - shortstory
• This Afternoon - (1987) - shortstory
• This Night, at My Fire - (1966) - shortstory
• "I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket... But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!" - (1964) - shortstory
• Come Closer - (1965) - shortstory
• It's Important to Believe - (1987) - shortstory
• Mr. Wilde's Second Chance - (1966) - shortstory
• Window Dressing - (1970) - shortstory
• Existence - (1975) - shortstory
• Foul Fowl - (1987) - shortstory
• A Short and Happy Life - (1969) - shortstory
• The Throaways - (1987) - shortstory
• The Cliches from Outer Space - (1984) - shortstory
• Elf Hill - (1982) - shortstory
• Nor Custom Stale - (1959) - shortstory
• The Experimenter - (1975) - novelette
• Reasonable People - (1974) - shortstory
• Life in a Furniture Store - (1987) - shortstory
• The View from This Window - (1970) - novelette
• Old Pictures - (1987) - essay
• Visiting - (1967) - shortstory
• Visiting Day - (1970) - shortstory
• The Autobiography of My Mother - (1975) - shortstory
• Old Thoughts, Old Presences - (1975) - shortstory
• Daddy's Girl - (1975) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe (2013), edited by J. E. Mooney and Bill Fawcett, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 107, April 2019. It can also be found in the antology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Not So Much Said the Cat (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Two women captured by the ruler of a lost race in the Sahara Desert find themselves faced with a fate worse than death! Only an intrepid British soldier can save the lovely ladies.

After finding that she is the lost princess of Roumania and the mythical White Tyger, Miranda's fate is still uncertain. The ghosts of her enemies cluster about her, the insane spirit of the Baroness takes possession of her body for a time, and demons released by her mother are abroad. Through it all her heart calls out to Peter, whom she has come to love, and to her best friend Andromeda. Any answers may lie only in the hidden world of spirits, where death is but an inconvenience, and Miranda is the most powerful creature of all: the White Tyger.

A JAPANESE FANTASY OF GODS AND CURSES...

After dying in our world, Yae is reborn into a strange country called Izumo, which resembles ancient Japan, except for the fact that the supernatural is commonplace. When she is attacked by a terrifying monster called a shade, Yae has no choice but to release Arai, a golden tiger and former god, from his seal. In no time, the bossy tiger has her helping to find his brother, Sui, but it turns out that Sui has fallen ill and will soon become a monster himself. Arai, however, thinks Yae is just the person to heal his afflicted sibling... Does Yae really have what it takes to be doctor to a god?

When mages, mechanics, and myths collide

Someone wants to kill Mari, a young Steam Mechanic in the Guild that controls all technology. She has learned that her world of Dematr is headed for a catastrophe and that Mages really can alter reality for short periods. Someone also wants to kill Alain, a young Mage who has learned that Mechanics are not frauds, and that Mechanic Mari is the only person who can prevent an oncoming disaster.

While trying to learn the truth about their world so they can save it, Mari and Alain realize that the answers they seek are in the dead city of Marandur. But Marandur is guarded by Imperial Legions who have sealed it off from the rest of the world for more than a century. Mari and Alain's only hope may rest with the unseen Masters of Marandur.

Orphaned and left to fend for herself in the slums of Averalaan, Jewel Markess- Jay to her friends-meets an unlikely savior in Rath, a man who prowls the ruins of the undercity. Nursing Jay back to health is an unusual act for a man who renounced his own family long ago, and the situation becomes stranger still when Jay begins to form a den of other rescued children in Rath's home. But worse perils lurk beneath the slums: the demons that once nearly destroyed the Essalieyan Empire are stirring again, and soon Rath and Jay will find themselves targets of these unstoppable beings.

Fourteen years have passed since he was framed for theft to cover up an imperial atrocity, and disgraced military officer Thracius "Tracy" Belmanor has built a new life for himself. Living under an assumed name as the captain of a small trading vessel crewed primarily by aliens, he and his crew engage in both legal and illegal deals just under the radar of the Solar League authorities.

At the other end of the social hierarchy, Princess Mercedes de Arango has her own problems -- the major one being the lack of an heir. Meanwhile her philandering husband Boho Cullen has ably proved the problem isn't him. With rumors of a coup swirling around the throne, Mercedes makes the desperate decision to undertake a military campaign and gain her people's allegiance through a victory. But when things go badly wrong and her future lies in the hands of the man she betrayed, Tracy has a choice to make -- can he ever forgive her?

When strange wolf-like creatures kidnap his girlfriend and his mother, Torrie and his friend Ian Silverstein join Torrie's father Thorsen and the mysterious "Uncle Hosea" on a rescue mission via a passageway to the exotic world from which Hosea and Thorsen had fled two decades earlier. Once entering the world of The Hidden Ways, they must battle gods, monsters and men, including the sinister Fire Duke, who seeks ultimate power and control of magical gems that can destroy the universe. Intrigue, swordplay and courage all loom large in this first novel of The Keeper of the Hidden Ways trilogy by bestselling author Joel Rosenberg, called by Mike Resnick "a major star in the fantasy firmament."

Ian Silverstein and an old army vet from Hardwood, North Dakota make their way through a hidden passageway to Tir Na Nog to find more of the seven jewels that can shape the universe. They are followed soonafter by four friends, including Tir Na Nog natives Thorsen and the mysterious Hosea. Odin sends Ian on a mission, supposedly to broker peace between two strongholds, that places Ian in great danger, and Ian learns that gods like Odin can mislead humans for their own strange reasons. Ian's challenges include overcoming the demons within himself as well as defeating foes in the magical world of The Hidden Ways.

Ian Silverstein returns to the magical land of the Hidden Ways in search of some of the "Brisingamen" gems that can shape or destroy the universe -- and to keep them out of the hands of the likes of the trickster god Loki. Many surprises ensue, and Ian must make some tough choices and survive the deadly intrigues of the powerful lords in Tir Na Nog.

Sorcery and swordplay as well as psychological depth are present in this series that Booklist called an "excellent and intelligent fantasy adventure".

Jam, a boy from Ohio, builds a kite and attaches it to a crate and sets off to Oz with his two guinea pigs, Pinny and Gig, and a lab rat named Percy. Once in Oz, Jam realizes his pets can talk. He lands in the Hidden Valley and becomes a prisoner, but they escape and set out on adventures with the Tin Woodman.

Clive and Neville Folliot and their companions in the Dungeon face their ultimate peril in the Ren and the Chaffri, the masters of the Dungeon maze.

The fifth and final installment in a kickass urban fantasy series about fae Genny Taylor who works for Spelltrackers.com, run by witches--it pays the rent, lets her do what she's good at (magic and crack it), and it keeps the vamps off her back.

The final book in the Spellcrackers series is rollicking, action-filled adventure. Packed with humor, magic, romance, and a few revelations, and the cameo appearence of a few characters from Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant novels (Midnight Riot, Moon over Soho, and Whispers Under Ground), this is a powerful end to a fresh, fantastic, satisfying story.

Centuries before the Clone Wars or the Empire, in the early days of the High Republic, it was an age of exploration in a galaxy far, far away....

Daring pilots chart new routes through hyperspace, while Pathfinder teams make contact with frontier worlds to invite them to join the Republic. When a Pathfinder team's communications droid is found drifting in space, damaged and bearing a cryptic message, Jedi Knight Silandra Sho and her Padawan, Rooper Nitani, are sent to find the missing team members. Their investigation leads them to the planet Gloam, a ravaged world said to be haunted by mythical monsters.

Can the Jedi find the missing Pathfinders and unravel the mystery of the monsters? The answers lie in a hidden city beneath the planet's surface....

It is the twentieth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus. The Empire spans the known world. No power is greater, and nothing can threaten the peace it brings. And no one must know of the horrors that haunt it.

Aemilius thought he would die heroically in battle like his forefathers, mourned by a loving wife and many children, but he's barely a man when a harpy flies down out of the old myths and knocks him from his horse. Stunned and helpless, he waits for his end... and is saved.

Formed on the bloody battlefield of Teutoburg, the Hidden Legion are an order of soldiers, magicians, and rogues so secret that the Empire itself would hunt them down if they were exposed. And now Aemilius is one of them.

A darkness is growing across the Empire, and someone is setting traps for the Legion themselves. Aemilius and his new comrades set off on the hunt for an unknown enemy...

The life Anghara knows has ended; everyone she loved is dead or doomed. And now she must flee far from her home or die at the hands of her half-brother Sif. A defenseless child is adrift in an unfamiliar world, pursued by the minions of a false king whose brutality knows no bounds. But Anghara has a great destiny that reaches beyond the borders of the troubled realm she must one day rule -- and a miraculous gift to be awakened in secret and fortified in a distant desert land at once beautiful, mysterious, and perilous: an awesome and frightening power called Sight.

With the fate of their homeland still in jeopardy, siblings Ella and Miro must face the Primate's evil as he discovers a new technique: a method to extract essence from human blood.

The Primate has been temporarily defeated, but his home was once inhabited by the Evermen, and their ancient secrets still remain. As the mysterious Evrin sets out to destroy everything he can, the Primate stumbles upon an ancient book that tells of a hidden relic with unfathomable power--and he will stop at nothing to find it.

Realizing the solution to defeating the Primate and saving the Empire is tied to the hidden relic, Ella, Miro, Killian, and the desert prince Ilathor must race to reach the relic before the Primate... or suffer disastrous consequences.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they'll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human--just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined--but they're not yet certain of what they mean to each other.

Both Chava and Ahmad have changed the lives of the people around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets Dima, a tempestuous female jinni who's been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele--not knowing that she's about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.

"Oh, Mrs. Sirman, there's a problem with your husband's cremation. It's his body. It won't burn."

And so it begins for Pam Sirman... the first step toward learning that everything she thought she knew about her husband is wrong, perhaps even his humanity. But if he's not human, what is he?

Pam is one of three lives that will be drawn together by the apocalypse of the Upwelling.

The other two are Chan and Danni, but their worlds are already in chaos. A few weeks ago a fierce storm accompanied by an upwelling from the Atlantic abyssal plain tore into Atlantic City. When it receded, the city and its 25,000 inhabitants were gone without a trace. Chan and Danni remember being in the city that day, but the ten hours during which the Upwelling occurred have been wiped from their memories.

They want those memories back. Or do they? Did they witness something so unspeakably ghastly that their minds can't face it? Or worse: Was that ghastly thing something they did? And worst yet: Were they responsible for the Upwelling?

The survivors of what has come to be known as The Catskill Cataclysm are not out the woods yet. As the last known members of The Hidden, they are marked for extermination. Their allies - Chan and Danni, and the Troika - are hunting them as well, but the Hidden do what they do best: hide.

Something new surfaces in the South Atlantic: a Manhattan-size iceberg. And embedded within it is a long lost Nazi U-boat. Back in the day, the Third Reich claimed part of Antarctica for its own. Was the sub on an exploratory mission? It carried a strange artifact that it was ferrying home when it was trapped in the ice. The bodies of the crew are perfectly preserved from the subzero temperatures... but they all were murdered.

Could the appearance of the sub have any relationship to the Catskill Cataclysm? Unlikely. But then, there are no coincidences.

The six families of the Clan rule the kingdom of Gruinmarkt from behind the scenes, a mixture of nobility and criminal conspirators whose power to walk between their world and ours make them rich in both. Braids of family loyalty and intermarriage provide a fragile guarantee of peace, but a recently ended civil war has left the families shaken and suspicious.

Miriam, a hip tech journalist form Boston, discovered her alternate-world relatives with explosive results that shook three worlds. Now, as the prodigal Countess Helge Thorold-Hyorth, she finds herself ensnared in schemes and plots centuries in the making. She is surrounded by unlikely allies, lethal contraband, and, most dangerous of all, her family. With her modern American attitudes, she's not sure she can fit in, or if she even wants to, but to stay alive, she really has no choice.

To avoid a slippery slope down to an unmarked grave, Miriam must build a power-base of her own. She started applying modern business practices and scientific knowledge to a trade heretofore dominated by medieval mercantilists-with unexpected consequences for three different timelines, including the quasi-Victorian one exploited by the hidden family.

Humanity thought the war with demonkind was over. Now, after less than a generation to rebuild, the demon corelings have returned with a vengeance. The Spear of Ala - the fortress that stands at the gates of the demon's hive - is the last bastion against the horde, and reports say it may already have fallen.

Olive Paper is expected to take the vanguard in the fight. Only an heir of Kaji can wield the artifact that opens the gates of the Spear of Ala, and as Ahmann Jardir's child, Olive seems destined for a role as leader and savior. But Olive does not wish to follow in her father's footsteps any more than she did her mother's.

Darin Bales was born with supernatural senses that he struggles to process, and even those who love him believe he can barely take care of himself. Yet to save his mother from the clutches of Alagai Ka, the demon king, Darin will brave anything to mount a rescue.

Darin and Olive each strive to walk their own path but find themselves inextricably tied to the legacies of their parents and to a fated confrontation with the demon king and his new hatchling queen.

If they fail, humanity may not survive.

The five cousins are still trapped in the Secret Country, and must play their parts. When the King is poisoned, Ted-Prince Edward-must take the throne, even though he has no idea how to rule a country, battle magic, or inspire followers. Soon enough he will have to do all three because the Country is on the verge of war with the treacherous Dragon King.

Acclaimed author Irene Radford returns to her beloved Dragon Nimbus universe with book one of The Stargods. Here is the tale of the first Terrans, gifted with both psi powers and technology, who discover a world where dragons are real... and are worshiped as gods.

The final breathtaking volume in the Tamuli series.

The pace, as always, is white hot – as are the special effects. As readers will know from Book Two, the Shining One Xanetia can melt her enemies with a touch. Fortunately, she is on the side of our hero, and so is the god Edaemus, whose (literally) volcanic rage will be useful in the continuing fight to save the Tamul Empire from the ravages of sinister King Cyrgon of the Cyrgai. Cyrgon has called forth Bhelliom's equal in supernatural power, Klael, the very essence of evil.

And while Sparhawk is leading armies of Pandion Knights, Atan giants and Trolls in battle, Queen Ehlana is taken hostage in Matherion by the renegade Styric Zalasta and the madman Scarpa. The price for her return is no less than the Blue Rose.

Taken in chains first to the jungles of Arjuna in the South, Ehlana is tracked by Sparhawk using both Delphaeic and Styric magic. But by then Sephrenia has been murdered and Ehlana has been removed to the Hidden City of the Cyrgai. The City is protected by magic and by the invincible Klael. The ultimate battle must be fought.

How do you punish an immortal? By making him human.

After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disoriented, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favor.

But Apollo has many enemies - gods, monsters, and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go... an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood.

With the plot against them foiled and the city of Qi-Katai in safe hands, newlywed and tentative lovers Velasin and Caethari have just begun to test the waters of their relationship. But the wider political ramifications of their marriage are still playing out across two nations, and all too soon, they're summoned north to Tithena's capital city, Qi-Xihan, to present themselves to its monarch.

With Caethari newly invested as his grandmother's heir and Velasin's old ghosts gnawing at his heels, what little peace they've managed to find is swiftly put to the test. Cae's recent losses have left him racked with grief and guilt, while Vel struggles with the disconnect between instincts that have kept him safe in secrecy and what an open life requires of him now. Pursued by unknown assailants and with Qi-Xihan's court factions jockeying for power, Vel and Cae must use all the skills at their disposal to not only survive, but thrive.

Because there's more than one way to end an alliance, and more than one person who wants to see them fail... and they will resort to murder if needed.

In a brilliant mix of magic, history, and romance, M. K. Hobson moves her feisty young Witch, Emily Edwards, from the Old West of 1876 to turn-of-the-nineteenth-century New York City, whose polished surfaces conceal as much danger as anything west of the Rockies.

Like it or not, Emily has fallen in love with Dreadnought Stanton, a New York Warlock as irresistible as he is insufferable. Newly engaged, she now must brave Dreadnought's family and the magical elite of the nation's wealthiest city. Not everyone is pleased with the impending nuptials, especially Emily's future mother-in-law, a sociopathic socialite. But there are greater challenges still: confining couture, sinister Russian scientists, and a deathless Aztec goddess who dreams of plunging the world into apocalypse. With all they must confront, do Emily and Dreadnought have any hope of a happily-ever-after?

Having passed through a time and space warp, Mace Wilde, Eve Clayton, Liberty Crockett, Barney Boone, and Dr. Richter--all fellow passengers on a jetliner whose flight pattern had taken them over the Bermuda Triangle--find themselves in an alien world called Zandra. Peopled by a variety of races, some humanoid and others reptilian, Zandran civilization is at once familiar and completely foreign. Its inhabitants live in a society almost medieval in structure yet whose rulers enforce their will through the use of technologically and genetically advanced weapons.

With Princess Falana, heir to the Emperor's throne, the Earth people, or Terrans, tour the mysterious and long-neglected Zandran provinces. But the casual tenor of their voyage soon turns serious as they become the targets of both a court conspiracy to usurp the Emperor's power and the rebellious subjects they encounter.

Pressed to the limits of endurance and forced to adapt and master the lost technology of the ancient alien superbeings who once controlled Zandra, Mace and his fellows survive and conquer only to face questions beyond survival...