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Red and Buried (The Red Menace)

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It’s the end of all life on Earth unless the Red Menace and Dr. Wainwright can stop a crazed communist colonel’s countdown to Armageddon!

WHO IS THE RED MENACE?

Throughout the 1950s this was the number one question from Moscow to Beijing and in every communist palace and malaria-ridden backwater in between. The mysterious masked figure was a shadow and a whisper. For the Kremlin and its fellow travelers he was a damnable monkey wrench tossed into the gears of the not-so-glorious worldwide revolution. Wherever Reds schemed, the Menace was there to set things right.

And then, just like that, 1960 came and the whisper grew silent.

Twelve years later, Patrick “Podge” Becket, computer tycoon and security expert, thinks he’s hung up his mask and cape for good. He escaped the spy game while still a young man, and none but a select few know about his long-dead secret identity. But into his restless retirement steps a ghost from his past, a bitter Russian colonel with nothing to lose and the means to wreak worldwide destruction.

Aided by his partner, brilliant inventor and physician Dr. Thaddeus Wainwright, the Red Menace is dragged back into the hero game. But it’s a whole new world out there, and if the Menace doesn’t watch his step the swinging Seventies might just find him RED AND BURIED!

Callback for a Corpse (Maxi and Moxie)

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A murdered stoolie leaves behind a tip for “Moxie” Donovan, freelance reporter. A glamorous actresses appears too perfect.

Could she be connected to multiple murders and occult magic?

In between takes for a musical version of Alice in Wonderland, Donovan’s wife Maxine (“Maxi”) joins the investigation. Within a strange animation studio lurks an alchemist with a unique method of “remaking” starlets.

The E. Hoffmann Price Spicy Adventure MEGAPACK

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E. Hoffmann Price was one of the “Weird Tales Circle” that included H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. In fact, he was the only person to meet both Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft in person.

The stories collected here span multiple genres and multiple decades: detective, western, adventure, and fantasy. The one thing they have in common (aside from some mildly titillating content) is the sure voice of a born storyteller. Once you start reading an E. Hoffmann Price story, you won’t put it down.

The introduction by Darrell Schweitzer, which leads off the collection, provides a lot more information on Ed’s work for the “Spicy” magazines…though quite tame by modern standards, they were considered quite risque in their day.

Night of the Living Trekkies

Night of the Living Trekkies
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Journey to the final frontier of sci-fi zombie horror!

Jim Pike was the world’s biggest Star Trek fan—until two tours of duty in Afghanistan destroyed his faith in the human race. Now he sleepwalks through life as the assistant manager of a small hotel in downtown Houston.

But when hundreds of Trekkies arrive in his lobby for a science-fiction convention, Jim finds himself surrounded by costumed Klingons, Vulcans, and Ferengi—plus a strange virus that transforms its carriers into savage, flesh-eating zombies!

As bloody corpses stumble to life and the planet teeters on the brink of total apocalypse, Jim must deliver a ragtag crew of fanboys and fangirls to safety. Dressed in homemade uniforms and armed with prop phasers, their prime directive is to survive. But how long can they last in the ultimate no-win scenario?

I, the Sun

I, the Sun
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From the annals of the ancient Hittite king, Suppiluliumas, from the Amarna letters of Egypt and the court records of a wealth of “lost” civilizations, comes this saga of kingship and greatness, love and death, politics and treachery in the second millennium, B.C.

Beyond a few cursory references to the Hittites in the Bible, for thousands of years nothing has been known of this first mighty Indo-European culture. Now, based on translations of the ancient texts themselves, comes the story of Suppiluliumas, Great King, Favorite of the Storm God, King of Hatti, who by his own count fathered forty-four kings and conquered as many nations, who brought even mighty Egypt to her knees. Tutankhamun’s widow sent him an urgent letter begging for a son of his to make her husband. The earliest Hebrews knew him as their Protector. The entire Mediterranean world revered and feared him.

But though he conquered armies, countries, and even foreign gods, he could not conquer his love for the one woman fate denied him, the Great Queen Khinti.

With the exception of a single slave girl, every prince and general, mercenary and scribe, princess and potentate in these pages actually lived, loved and died nearly fourteen hundred years before Christ. Now they live again in I, the Sun.

High Couch of Silistra (Silistra Quartet)

High Couch of Silistra (Silistra Quartet)
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High Couch of Silistra is a story of sex, power, metaphysics and adventure told from the perspective of one world’s most desirable courtesan.

FOR ADVENTUROUS READERS ONLY

“We are all bound,” is the great truth of Silistra: Bound by biological necessity and genetics, the men and women of Silistra struggle to sort Nature from Nurture – where Nature always wins.

Welcome to Silistra, a glimpse of a far distant future wherein a civilization proclaims the greatest feat an individual can perform is to produce one child, yet distrusts the sciences that brought them to the verge of extinction. Here women and men coexist uneasily in a society ravaged by war, technology, and infertility, each vying for power, seeking dominion over one another.

Be warned, if your tastes run to simplistic plots, throbbing organs, swooning damsels or kick-boxing women in men’s armor, Silistra may be too challenging. Misogynists, misanthropes, misandrists, or fans of political diatribe, this is not the book for you.

High Couch of Silistra, first of the notorious Silistra Quartet, brings us to a realm where thought alters probability, where creativity is inextricably linked to the urge to own and dominate, and where the universe itself is amenable to a focused mind. Rooted deeply in humanity’s mythic past yet unaware of the planet Earth, High Couch of Silistra begins one woman’s quest for self-knowledge – with surprising results.

Beyond the Ranges

Beyond the Ranges
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For Jason Graham, the world ends not with a bang, not even with much of a whimper.

One second, he’s sitting in a restaurant in Mobile, Alabama, chatting with a server, the next he finds himself in a strange room, rescued by mysterious alien benefactors. Seems the world did end, though how and why are something of a mystery.

Now, Jason—and five hundred million other humans—are in orbit around an Earthlike world that is abundant in natural resources and totally untamed. For the newly awakened humans, this is a chance to start society with a clean slate and a bright future. For Jason, who has knocked about aimlessly in several different careers in his Earth life, it’s an opportunity to unleash his creativity and ambition and see what he can really do.

Shane

Shane
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In this true Western classic Jack Schaefer tells the story of a mysterious stranger who finds himself in the Wyoming Territory joining local homesteaders in their fight to keep their land and avoid the intimidating tactics of cattle driver Luke Fletcher. While trying to leave his gunslinging days behind him, the mysterious stranger, Shane, is tested by Fletcher and his men. In Shane, Schaefer executes a perfect Western narrative while exploring the overarching themes of virtue, the human condition, and a man’s search for self.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jack Schaefer was a journalist and writer known for his authentic and memorable characters set in the American West. Schaefer received the Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1975 and the Saddleman Award in 1986 from the Western Writers of America. His popular Western novels include Shane (1949) and Monte Walsh (1963).

ACCLAIM
“A real superiority here, narrative and literary.” — Kirkus Reviews

“The author has created a tale that captivates the reader’s attention from beginning to end. His skill in depicting a character, a situation, or a mood, with a minimum of words, gives the story a tightly woven quality. . . . The book almost demands completion in one sitting.” — Library Journal

Swordplay

Swordplay
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Thirteen Tales of Sword & Sorcery!

Mixing classic with unconventional approaches, SWORDPLAY collects into a single volume a group of tales like you’ve never experienced, while retaining a familiar feel all fans of the genre will recognize.

Lending their considerable talents toward tales of blades, battles, necromancers, sorceresses and lethal creatures, thirteen writers celebrate the genre while enhancing and expanding the range and scope of Sword & Sorcery.

Featuring original tales by:

CLIFF BIGGERS- DAN BRERETON- CULLEN BUNN- MICHAEL BURKE- RICHARD DANSKY- CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN- STEVEN GRANT- TONIA LAIRD- BRACKEN MACLEOD- JAMES A. MOORE- ALLISON PANG- LINDA ROBERTSON REINHARDT- CHARLES R. RUTLEDGE

Zothique: The Final Cycle

Zothique: The Final Cycle
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Zothique, a mythical land of the far future, is Clark Ashton Smith’s most carefully worked out fantasy realm, and many of his most celebrated stories are set in this evocative world of languid decadence, strangeness, and sexuality. Beginning with “The Empire of the Necromancers” (1932) and extending all the way to the short play The Dead Will Cuckold You (1956), Smith fashioned Zothique in tale after tale, each adding new elements to the locale.

As we read the Zothique tales, we see how the imminent extinguishing of the sun has caused civilization to collapse. Paradoxically, society has reverted to a kind of primitivism with the return of royalty, superstition, and sorcery. This scenario allowed Smith to engage in tongue-in-cheek archaism of both langauge and setting. Some of the most poignant stories he ever wrote—stories that fused fantasy and the supernatural with a sense of aching loss and tragedy—are set in Zothique, including “The Dark Eidolon” and “Xeethra.”

Other tales, such as “The Weaver of the Vault” and “Necromancy in Naat,” focus morbidly on death. Eroticism is the focus of “The Witchcraft of Ulua” and “Morthylla,” while “The Voyage of King Euvoran” is grimly humorous. And “The Last Hieroglyph” is a fitting capstone to the series in its depiction of the ultimate destruction of the realm.

Of all his story cycles, Zothique allowed Clark Ashton Smith the widest scope for his imagination. This volume presents his expression of that imagination in prose fiction, drama, and poetry. All the texts have been scrupulously edited by leading Smith scholar Ron Hilger, and the book features a new introduction by Donald Sidney-Fryer.