America, 2036: a wasteland in economic ruin. Terrorism and ultra-violence plague a once powerful society, whose only escape is to numb itself on flashback - a euphoric yet cripplingly addictive drug that allows its users to re-visit their happier, past experiences. Ex-cop Nick Bottom is about to receive a proposition. Flashback dependency has taken his badge, his reputation, and the love of his son. All he has left are the flash-induced memories of his beloved wife, Dara, taken from him in a tragic car accident. Now powerful magnate Hiroshi Nakamura needs Bottom's services, and, in particular, his memories. As head of the original investigation into the murder of Nakamura's son - an unsolved and seemingly impossible mystery - Bottom's flashbacks now, six years later, hold the key to solving what was the toughest case of his career. But as Nick delves deeper, the harder it becomes to trust those around him. And when he uncovers a connection to Dara's death, it is not only Hiroshi Nakamura who wants answers.

An expert on uncovering the cause of unnatural disasters, Dawin Minor investigates a seemingly random series of fatal car crashes, suspecting foul play and fraud. By the author of The Crook Factory. 40,000 first printing.

Dr. Kate Newman adopts a sick orphaned Romanian child only to have him kidnapped by vampires.

On June 9th, 1865, Charles Dickens, the most popular novelist in England, perhaps the world, boards a train bound from Folkstone to London, accompanied by his youthful mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan. Shortly afterward, the train derails near the village of Staplehurst, toppling into an abyss. Dickens emerges from the carnage physically, if not mentally, unscathed. And he has a story to tell.He tells it, with typical Dickensian brio, to his friend and occasional collaborator, Wilkie Collins, the narrator of this magisterial novel. The story concerns an otherworldly figure who calls himself Drood, and who moves through the wreckage like a pale, unholy apparition. The mysteries surrounding Drood form the heart of an epic narrative encompassing ancient religious practices, subterranean cities, hallucinatory visions, madness, murder, and the limitless power of the creative imagination. The result is a fever dream of a book that vividly recreates the sights, sounds, and smells of 19th century London, while illuminating the final years of a great writer s life. Absorbing, moving, and constantly surprising, Drood shows us Dan Simmons at his inimitable -- and mesmerizing -- best.

The touch of cold fangs. The pallor of undead skin. The human shape that casts no reflection. The nocturnal wanderer, the nighttime feeder, like the owl, the bat, and the snake. Vampires have always been with us, in our nightmares. From the cannibal, the werewolf, and the ghoul, extract various features and mix in the right proportion, to yield that most evil, most terrifying of all human-like creatures, the vampire: among us, but not one of us, resembling us, mingling with us, but secretly stalking us.

Richard Baedecker, the aptly named hero of this extraordinary novel, is a man adrift, searching for a lost sense of purpose. A former astronaut, Baedecker once walked on the moon, briefly escaping the tidal pull of gravity itself. Sixteen years later, gravity and other entropic forces have overtaken him. His marriage has ended. His professional life has grown increasingly meaningless. His relationship with his only son has all but disintegrated. At this critical moment, against the unlikely backdrop of Poona, India, Baedecker encounters a remarkable young woman named Maggie Brown, who will point him toward the "places of power" he has left behind and help him rediscover his essential self.Phases of Gravity is a novel about the power of dreams and the possibility of second chances, about journeys remembered and newly undertaken. It is also, like so much of Dan Simmons's work, a deeply affecting reflection on "the richness and mystery of the universe." Moving effortlessly from the surface of the moon to the small towns of the American Midwest to the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, and filled with wisdom, unexpected turnings, and flashes of irreverent wit, Phases of Gravity is, by any definition, a major work, the kind of durable, fully realized creation that only a master novelist could produce.

In 1893, Sherlock Holmes And Henry James Come To America Together To Investigate The Suicide Of Clover Adams, Wife Of The Esteemed Historian Henry Adams - A Member Of The Family That Has Given The United States Two Presidents. Quickly, The Investigators Deduce That There's More To Clover's Death Than Meets The Eye - With Issues Of National Importance At Stake. Holmes Is Currently On His Great Hiatus - His Three-year Absence After Reichenbach Falls During Which Time The People Of London Believe Him To Be Deceased. The Disturbed Holmes Has Faked His Own Death And Now, As He Meets James, Is Questioning What Is Real And What Is Not. Holmes' Theories Shake James To The Core. What Can This Master Storyteller Do To Fight Against The Sinister Power - Possibly Moriarty - That May Or May Not Be Controlling Them From The Shadows? And What Was Holmes' Role In Moriarty's Rise? Conspiracy, Action And Mystery Meet In This Superb Literary Hall Of Mirrors From The Author Of Drood.

Dale Stewart's life has become a shadow of what it once was. A respected college professor and successful novelist, he sabotaged his career and his marriage with an obsessive love affair that ended badly.\nWith darkness closing in on him, Dale decides to return to his boyhood home in Illinois. Drawn by a recurring nightmare that has plagued him since his youth -- and a troubling certainty that something is waiting for him there -- he hopes to exorcise his demons.\nIn the last hours of Halloween, he reaches the outskirts of the dying town of Elm Haven. There, he moves into the abandoned farmhouse that was once the home of his closest boyhood friend, the strange and brilliant Duane McBride, who lost his young life in a grisly "accident" back in the terrible summer of 1960. Hoping to find peace in isolation, he settles in for the long, harsh winter.\nBut Dale is not alone. Soon after he arrives, cryptic messages begin appearing mysteriously on his computer screen while he struggles to work on his novel. He sees black dogs roaming the grounds. And an old enemy has reemerged, a bully who seems as determined to persecute Dale as he was in childhood.

By overdeveloping Mauna Pele, a resort on the Kona Coast of Hawaii, billionaire Byron Trumbo has unwittingly reopened a centuries-old battle between Pele, goddess of volcanoes, and her immortal enemies. Giants are being spotted, guests turn up dead and dismembered, volcanoes erupt and send lava flowing close to the resort, and Byron must face the wrath of his enemies.

Sometimes revenge is best paid in cold steel. HARDCASE Joe Kurtz has been wronged one too many times. So when he takes out the drug-dealing thug who killed his girlfriend, the ex-PI gets to cool his heels for 11 years in Attica. It's there that he meets "Little Skag" Farino, the son of an aging Buffalo, New York, mob boss. In exchange for protecting the kid's manhood against any unwanted jailhouse affection, Kurtz gets an audience with Little Skag's father upon his release from prison. Semi-retired Don Byron Farino is still clinging to what dwindling power he holds on the New York organized crime scene. He enlists Kurtz's help to track down the Family's missing accountant--a man with too much knowledge of Family business to have on the loose. But someone doesn't want the accountant found. As the story twists and turns and the body count rises, Kurtz no longer knows whom he can trust. Everyone seems to be after something, from the mob boss's sultry yet dangerous daughter, to a hit man named The Dane, an albino killer who is good with a knife, and a dwarf who is armed to the teeth and hell-bent on revenge. Bestselling author Dan Simmons expertly builds the tension as he springs one surprise after another, all the while daring the reader to take a ride with Kurtz through the cold, windy streets of Buffalo where one wrong move could mean a belly-full of lead.

Jack Vance's stories of the Dying Earth are among the most indelible creations of 20th century fantasy. Set on a far future Earth moving toward extinction under a slowly dying sun, these baroque tales of wonder have exerted a profound influence on generations of writers. One of those writers is Dan Simmons, who acknowledges that influence in spectacular fashion in The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz, an informed and loving act of literary homage.The narrative begins at a critical moment in the Dying Earth's history, a moment when signs and portents indicate that the long anticipated death of the planet is finally at hand. Against this backdrop, Simmons's protagonist--Shrue the diabolist--learns of the death of Ulfant Banderoz, ancient magus and sole proprietor of the legendary Ultimate Library and Final Compendium of Thaumaturgical Lore. Determined to possess its secrets, Shrue sets out in search of the fabled library, guided by the severed nose of the deceased magician. The narrative that follows tells the story of that quest, a quest whose outcome will affect the fate of the entire dying planet.The result is a hugely engrossing novella filled with marvels, bizarre encounters, and an array of astonishing creatures--the pelgranes, daihaks, and assorted elementals of Jack Vance's boundless imagination. Written with wit, fidelity, and grace, and rooted in its author s obvious affection for his source material, The Guiding Nose of Ulfant Banderoz is something special, a collaborative gem in which the talents and sensibilities of two master storytellers come powerfully--and seamlessly--together.

Black Hills is an important and revelatory novel, the most singular accomplishment to date by the always unpredictable Dan Simmons. With empathy and great narrative power, it illuminates a significant chapter in the nation s history, and takes us deep into the heart of an extraordinary American life.The story begins at the Battle of Little Big Horn in June of 1876. Eleven-year-old Paha Sapa (whose name, in the Lakota dialect, means Black Hills ), is present at the precise moment of Custer s death, a moment that will have enormous ramifications. The narrative that follows encompasses eighty years of highly charged history and ranges from the eponymous (and sacred) Black Hills of South Dakota to the Dust Bowls of the Great Depression to the emerging face of Mount Rushmore, where an astonishing revelation awaits.On one level, Black Hills is a story of profound and inescapable loss: of family, of cultural heritage, of the ancient gods that once dominated the Lakota's world. On another, it is a visionary account of love, hope, and unexpected discovery, and a meditation on the Mystery that lies 'at the heart of the heart of the universe.' Absorbing, moving, and constantly surprising, Black Hills is, by any standard, a major novel, another landmark achievement in a constantly evolving career.

The third in a series of critically acclaimed anthologies of original horror fiction features the works of such notable authors as Ray Bradbury, Ed Gorman, and Dan Simmons

A collection of stories explores the relationship between eroticism and horror and examines the mysteries of love and death in a dangerous world. By the author of Carrion Comfort. 50,000 first printing.

In the distant future, a wandering acting troupe performs the plays of Shakespeare for a series of increasingly important alien species, with evidence that the fate of all humanity may rest on the quality of their work.

Perhaps more than any region, the American South is haunted by the mythology of the vampire, returned from the dead to drain life from the living.

After she and her father take a walk and have a bedtime snack, a little girl is finally sleepy enough to go to bed.

The Past...Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face-to-face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazis themselves....The Present...Compelled by the encounter to survive at all costs, so begins a journey that for Saul will span decades and cross continents, plunging into the darkest corners of twentieth-century history to reveal a secret society of beings who throughout the ages may exist behind the world’s most horrible and violent events. Killing from a distance, they are people with the psychic ability to “use” humans: read their minds, subjugate them to their wills, experience through their senses, and force them to acts of unspeakable aggression. Each year, three of the most powerful of this hidden order meet to discuss their triumphs of bloodshed and destruction. But at this reunion, something will go terribly wrong. Saul’s quest is about to reach its elusive object, drawing hunter and hunted alike into a struggle that will plumb the depths of mankind’s attraction to violence, and determine the future of the world itself.“[Carrion Comfort is] one of the few major reinventions of the vampire concept, on a par with Jack Finney’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend, and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot.” ― DAVID MORRELL

Beneath the gaze of the gods, the mighty armies of Greece and Troy met in fierce and glorious combat, scrupulously following the text set forth in Homer's timeless narrative. But that was before twenty-first-century scholar Thomas Hockenberry stirred the bloody brew, causing an enraged Achilles to join forces with his archenemy Hector and turn his murderous wrath on Zeus and the entire pantheon of divine manipulators; before the swift and terrible mechanical creatures that catered for centuries to the pitiful idle remnants of Earth's human race began massing in the millions, to exterminate rather than serve. And now all bets are off.

A collection of horror stories in which Stephen King contributes three stories, ranging from an unusual haunting to witchcraft, and George Simmons, winner of the World Fantasy Award, also contributes three stories. The book is rounded off with a werewolf novella by George R.R. Martin.

Somewhere in Western New York, there's a remote mountaintop in the moonlight, its dark forests and moon-dappled meadows populated only by corpses. If ex-PI Joe Kurtz doesn't unravel the secret of that place in five days, he'll be one of them.Everyone seems to want a piece of Kurtz these days and most succeed in getting one. Unknown assailants gun down Kurtz and his female parole officer, giving Kurtz the headache of a lifetime but putting pretty Peg O'Toole on life support. Working his own case through a haze of concussion migraine, Kurtz has to deal with Toma Gonzaga, the gay don who owes Kurtz a blood debt, and Angelina Farino Ferrara, the female don who is after Kurtz's body-or maybe just his head.And while someone is murdering all the heroin addicts in Buffalo and hauling away the bodies, a serial killer called the Artful Dodger hatches his twisted plan.In Kurtz's corner is police detective Rigby King, a beautiful woman who had been his young lover when they were both rebellious teenagers in Father Baker's Orphanage. Rigby also has designs on Joe Kurtz, but whether they're aimed at bedding or abetting him, helping him stay alive or simply putting him away for life, Kurtz will have to discover the hard way.Lightning fast pace and unrelenting action are the hallmarks of this series, but the epic struggle portrayed in this book sets a new standard for crime fiction. Saturated with the ragged-edged aggression of the Buffalo streets, Dan Simmons's Hard As Nails comes down like a hammer smashing a thumb on a cold day.

In 1942, FBI agent Joe Lucas journeys to Cuba in order to keep an eye on Ernest Hemingway, who, with a motley assortment of characters--including an American millionaire, a young Cuban orphan, a Spanish jai alai champ, and a priest--has taken on the self-appointed role of spy. 38,000 first printing. Tour.

Collecting the creme de la creme of the horror and fantasy fields, this third volume amasses the best from 1989, including works by Scott Baker, Pat Cadigan, Joe Haldeman, Tanith Lee, Jonah Carroll, Robert McCammon and Bruce Sterling, as well as extensive overviews of the year in horror and fantasy, and Ed Bryant's survey of the year's movies.

Seventeen dark tales include Dean Koontz's "Nightmare Gang," in which a deadly gang leader recruits new members in an evil way, and Philip K. Dick's "The Fatherland," in which a young boy witnesses his father's terrifying transformation. Original.

A collection of new horror stories includes contributions by Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, David J. Schow, Nancy Collins, and others. Original.

It has been almost one hundred years since a clutch of intrepid Englishmen drove a stake through Dracula's heart, and yet the cunning count, thanks in no small part to his creator, Bram Stoker, continues to exercise a tenacious hold on the imaginations of both readers and writers. We refuse to let him die. Not that his immortality consists of a fixed image. Consider these reappearances: in various stories Dracula has fought the Nazis, befriended Sherlock Holmes, been reviled as parasite feeding off civilization, even earned the distinction of being an unparalleled lover. RIVALS OF DRACULA, a collection of stories written over the last five decades that feature Dracula as a character, is the culmination of the vampire's exploits so far. For Stoker, the bloodthirsty Count Dracula represented the ultimate menace to civilization as defined by Victorian England: he was a foreigner, a defiler of the innocent, and a spreader of corruption that destroyed from within. The writers of the stories collected here are both traditional and inventive in their portrayals of the count, giving us Draculas who closely resemble Stoker's and Draculas who don't. Readers will encounter, for example, a Dracula who actually invites the sympathy of other social outcasts; a Dracula who has found a way to fit in with human society; and another whose sense of decorum and tradition is lost on his vulgar modern descendants. Some writers acknowledge Dracula's Eastern European roots but speak more directly to late-20th-century concerns: their Draculas are powerful metaphors for political tyranny and the ravages of human disease. And what do the stories in RIVALS OF DRACULA tell us about our persistent fascination with the monster? As editor Stefan Dziemaianowicz says, Dracula "is an irreplaceable expression of the dark side of our imagination".

In The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons brings to a triumphant conclusion one of the most celebrated, compelling, and dramatic science fiction sagas of our time. Brilliant, provocative, unfailingly inventive, the odyssey began with the Hugo Award-winning Hyperion, continued through the critically acclaimed The Fall of Hyperion and Endymion, and now ascends to its greatest heights yet....The final chapter of this magnificent saga begins with two momentous events: the death and resurrection of Pope Julius XV and the coming-of-age of the new messiah. Her name is Aenea and she is the only person who can counter the pope and his plan to unleash the Pax Fleet, the Church's military wing, on a final genocidal Crusade to gain total dominion over the universe. The Church is allied with the infamous AI Core, which has offered immortality to humankind--or at least to those faithful who pledge total obedience to the Church--but at what terrible price? The Core has its own dark motives and secrets, and only Aenea knows what they are.Aenea, too, has an ally. Her protector, Raul Endymion, onetime shepherd and convicted murderer, finds her in exile undergoing a strange apprenticeship on Old Earth. Here she has gained access to an information matrix created by the Others--the same mysterious Others who moved Old Earth to save it from the Core. But who are these Others? What has Aenea learned from them? And why has Old Earth been turned into a stage upon which cybrids from the past--from John Keats to Frank Lloyd Wright--repeat historical dramas of human genius for purposes known only to the Others?The answers to these questions must wait. Together with the android A. Bettik, Endymion and his beloved Aenea embark on a final mission to find and comprehend the underlying fabric of the universe. The surprising nature of this medium and Aenea's ability to instruct her growing army of disciples in its discovery and use could provide the one weapon powerful enough to thwart their enemies while liberating humanity. Meanwhile, the enigmatic Shrike--monster, angel, killing machine--has followed them on their intergalactic sojourn and now stands ready to complete its own mission, revealing at last the long-held secret of its origin and purpose.In The Rise of Endymion, Dan Simmons masterfully weaves together the complex strands of this extraordinary series. He answers all of the unsolved mysteries posed in the earlier volumes and brings the story full circle to the planet Hyperion, where it all began. A work of unparalleled power and vision, The Rise of Endymion is a masterpiece of the imagination by one of our most gifted writers.

Two books in one, Hyperion and The fall of Hyperion. 928 pages of science fiction - set 8 centuries in the future, on the brink of intergalactic war.