These stories are linked by humor, setting, themes and recurring characters — cat lovers, murderers, gamblers, ghosts and fools — but mostly by the movie stars, gods and goddesses who look down on us struggling mortals with a mixture of benevolence and wrath. From Scarlett Johansson to Joan Crawford, Clint Eastwood to Jerry Lewis, they represent the impossible ideals to which lesser beings turn for hope in an otherwise baffling world.<

<p>«Die Sonne bröckelt.«</p><p>Der rundliche Rheinländer Altfried Janich findet nach der Wiedervereinigung eine Stelle im» Ostschloss«, einem heruntergekommenen Barockbau, der neuerdings eine psychiatrische Anstalt beherbergt. Hier hält er es für seine Aufgabe, seinen Patienten gegenüber die Sonnenposition einzunehmen, ihnen Orientierung und eine Quelle des Trostes zu sein. Als sein Freund Odilo durch einen rätselhaften Autounfall zu Tode kommt, gerät er selbst auf die Nachtseite der Dinge. Tagsüber rücken ihm die Patienten zu nahe, nachts geistert er durch die Säle, es bedrängen ihn Erinnerungen, und auch seine Familiengeschichte mit ihren Verlusten holt ihn ein. Altfrieds ganzes bisheriges Leben scheint auf die Situation im Schloss zuzulaufen: Alle Geschichten enden hier, und bald stellt sich die Gewissheit ein, dass er aus dem Schloss nicht mehr wegkommen wird.</p><p>Marion Poschmanns lange erwartete neue Prosa ist ein Roman über Deutschland aus der Sicht der Kriegsenkel. Ein Roman über die Macht der Zeit, über Erinnerung und zeitlose Verbundenheit. Ein Roman über fragile Identitäten, über den schönen Schein und die Suche nach dem inneren Licht — funkelnd, glasklar und von subtiler Spannung.</p><

Diving Universe

<p>Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she’s an active historian. She wants to know about the past—to experience it firsthand. Once she’s dived the ship, she’ll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It’s a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.</p><p>Then one day, Boss finds the claim of a lifetime: an enormous spacecraft, incredibly old, and apparently Earth-made. It’s impossible for something so old, built in the days before Faster Than Light travel, to have journeyed this far from Earth. It shouldn’t be here. It be here. And yet, it is. Boss’s curiosity is up, and she’s determined to investigate. She hires a group of divers to explore the wreck with her, the best team she can assemble. But some secrets are best kept hidden, and the past won t give up its treasures without exacting a price in blood.</p><p>What Boss finds could rewrite history, cost lives, and start an intergalactic war.</p><

Diving Universe

<p>But one day, she found a ship that would change everything—an ancient Dignity Vessel—and aboard the ship, the mysterious and dangerous Stealth Tech. Now, years after discovering that first ship, Boss has put together a large company that finds Dignity Vessels and finds “loose” stealth technology.</p><p>Following a hunch, Boss and her team come to investigate the city of Vaycehn, where fourteen archeologists have died exploring the endless caves below the city. Mysterious "death holes’ explode into the city itself for no apparent reason, and Boss believes stealth tech is involved. As Boss searches for the answer to the mystery of the death holes, she will uncover the answer to her Dignity Vessel quest as well—and one more thing, something so important that it will change her life—and the universe—forever.</p><

<p>Tina Fontana is the hapless but brazen thirty-year-old executive assistant to Robert Barlow, the all-powerful and commanding CEO of Titan Corp., a multinational media conglomerate. She’s excellent at her job and beloved by her famous boss — but after six years of making his reservations for restaurants she’d never get into on her own and pouring his drinks from bottles that cost more than her rent, she’s bored, broke, and just a bit over it all.</p><p>When a technical error with Robert’s travel-and-expenses report presents Tina with the opportunity to pay off the entire balance of her student loan debt with what would essentially be pocket change for her boss, she struggles with the decision: She’s always played by the rules. But it’s such a relatively small amount of money for the Titan Corporation — and for her it would be a life-changer…</p><

Rivers of Babylon

Racz has come to Bratislava to make money so that he can be a suitable suitor for the woman from his village he loves. He gets work as the stoker in the Hotel Ambassador, one of the most prestigious hotels in Bratislava, and in his single-mindedness soon discovers that he can take advantage of his position. People will pay to have the heat on and, in short, Racz learns that he who puts the heat on can control things. He rises quickly from stoker in the Ambassador to its owner and much else. Those who oppose him (small-time money changers, former secret police, professional classes) knuckle under while those whose dreams have foundered in the new world order have to make do or become, like academics, increasingly irrelevant. Peter Pišt'anek’s reputation is assured by and by its hero, the most mesmerizing character of Slovak literature, Rácz, an idiot of genius, a psychopathic gangster. Rácz and tell the story of a Central Europe, where criminals, intellectuals and ex-secret policemen have infiltrated a new ‘democracy’. Slovak readers acknowledge Peter Pišt'anek as their most flamboyant and fearless writer, stripping the nation of its myths and false self-esteem. The novel has been translated by Peter Petro of British Columbia University, in close collaboration with author and publisher.<

World War II

<p>One nation taking a desperate gamble of war.</p><p>Another fighting for survival.</p><p>Two armies locked in a bloody cataclysm that will decide history…</p><p>David L. Robbins has won widespread acclaim for his powerful and splendidly researched novels of World War II. Now he casts his brilliant vision on one of the most terrifying—and most crucial—battles of the war: the Battle of Kursk, Hitler’s desperate gamble to defeat Russia, in the final German offensive on the eastern front.</p><p>Spring 1943. In the west, Germany strengthens its choke hold on France. To the south, an Allied invasion looms imminent. But the greatest threat to Hitler’s dream of a Thousand Year Reich lies east, where his forces are pitted in a death match with a Russian enemy willing to pay any price to defend the motherland. Hitler rolls the dice, hurling his best SS forces and his fearsome new weapon, the Mark VI Tiger tank, in a last-ditch summer offensive, code-named Citadel.</p><p>The Red Army around Kursk is a sprawling array of infantry, armor, fighter planes, and bombers. Among them is an intrepid group of women flying antiquated biplanes; they swoop over the Germans in the dark, earning their nickname, “Night Witches.” On the ground, Private Dimitri Berko gallops his tank, the Red Army’s lithe little T-34, like a Cossack steed. In the turret above Dimitri rides his son, Valya, a Communist sergeant who issues his father orders while the war widens the gulf between them. In the skies, Dimitri’s daughter, Katya, flies with the Night Witches, until she joins a ferocious band of partisans in the forests around Kursk. Like Russia itself, the Berko family is suffering the fury and devastation of history’s most titanic tank battle while fighting to preserve what is sacred–their land, their lives, and each other–as Hitler flings against them his most potent armed force.</p><p>Inexorable and devastating, a company of Mark VI Tiger tanks is commanded by one extraordinary SS officer, a Spaniard known as la Daga, the Dagger. He’d suffered a terrible wound at the hands of the Russians: now he has returned with a cold fury to exact his revenge. And above it all, one quiet man makes his own plan to bring Citadel crashing down and reshape the fate of the world.</p><p>A remarkable story of men and arms, loyalty and betrayal, propels us into the claustrophobic confines of a tank in combat, into the tension of guerrilla tactics, and across the smoking charnel of one of history’s greatest battlefields. Panoramic, authentic, and unforgettable, it reverberates long after the last cannon sounds.</p><

Captain Alexei Dimitrevich Korolev

<p>Captain Alexei Korolev has nothing to complain about. He has his own room in an apartment, a job in the police force that puts food on the table, and his good health. In Moscow in 1937, that’s a lot more than most people have to be grateful for. But for the first time in a long time, Korolev is about to be truly happy: his son Yuri is coming to visit for an entire week.</p><p>Shortly after Yuri’s arrival, however, Korolev receives an urgent call from his boss—it seems an important man has been murdered, and Korolev is the only detective they’re willing to assign to this sensitive case. In fact, Korolev realizes almost immediately that the layers of sensitivity and secrecy surrounding this case far exceed his paygrade. And the consequences of interfering with a case tied to State Security or the NKVD can be severe—you might lose your job, if you’re lucky. Your whole family might die if you’re not. Korolev is suddenly faced with much more than just discovering a murderer’s identity; he must decide how far he’ll go to see justice served… and what he’s willing to do to protect his family.</p><p>In , William Ryan’s portrait of a Russian policeman struggling to survive in one of the most volatile and dangerous eras of modern history is mesmerizing.</p><

Nameless Detective

Shaken after a hair’s-breadth escape from death, Nameless has made changes in his professional life, but he’s not put himself out to pasture. Again he enters San Francisco’s shadowy underworld, this time in a search for the identity of a gentle, mentally disturbed homeless man who has been found dead in an alley doorway. Clues are few, but eventually they bring the Nameless Detective to the small California town that drove the nameless victim tragically to murder and madness.<

Sorcerer's Ring

<p>In A VOW OF GLORY (Book #5 in the Sorcerer’s Ring), Thor embarks with his Legion friends on an epic quest into the vast wilds of the Empire to try to find the ancient Destiny Sword and save the Ring. Thor’s friendships deepen, as they journey to new places, face unexpected monsters and fight side by side in unimaginable battle. They encounter exotic lands, creatures and peoples beyond which they could have ever imagined, each step of their journey fraught with increasing danger. They will have to summon all their skills if they are to survive as they follow the trail of the thieves, deeper and deeper into the Empire. Their quest will bring them all the way into the heart of the Underworld, one of the seven realms of hell, where the undead rule and fields are lined with bones. As Thor must summon his powers, more than ever, he struggles to understand the nature of who he is.</p><p>Back in the Ring, Gwendolyn must lead half of King’s Court to the Western stronghold of Silesia, an ancient city perched on the edge of the Canyon that has stood for one thousand years. Silesia’s fortifications have allowed it to survive every attack throughout every century—but it has never been faced with an assault by a leader like Andronicus, by an army like his million men. Gwendolyn learns what it means to be queen as she takes on a leadership role, Srog, Kolk, Brom, Steffen, Kendrick and Godfrey by her side, preparing to defend the city for the massive war to come.</p><p>Meanwhile, Gareth is descending deeper into madness, trying to fend off a coup that would have him assassinated in King’s Court, while Erec fights for his life to save his love, Alistair and the Duke’s city of Savaria as the downed shield enables the wild creatures to invade. And Godfrey, wallowing in drink, will have to decide if he is ready to cast off his past and become the man his family expects him to be.</p><p>As they all fight for their lives and as things seem as if they can’t get any worse, the story ends with two shocking twists.</p><p>Will Gwendolyn survive the assault? Will Thor survive the Empire? Will the Destiny Sword be found?</p><p>With its sophisticated world-building and characterization, A VOW OF GLORY is an epic tale of friends and lovers, of rivals and suitors, of knights and dragons, of intrigues and political machinations, of coming of age, of broken hearts, of deception, ambition and betrayal. It is a tale of honor and courage, of fate and destiny, of sorcery. It is a fantasy that brings us into a world we will never forget, and which will appeal to all ages and genders. It is 75,000 words.</p><

Sorcerer's Ring

<p>In A CHARGE OF VALOR (Book #6 in the Sorcerer’s Ring), Thor continues on his quest, deeper into the Empire, to retrieve the stolen Destiny Sword and save the Ring. As he and his friends meet unexpected tragedy and lose a member of their close-knit group, Thor and his remaining friends become closer than they ever were, learning that they must face and overcome adversity together. Their journey takes them to new and exotic terrains, including the desolate Salt Fields, the Great Tunnel, and the Mountains of Fire, as they face a host of unexpected monsters at every turn.</p><p>Thor’s skills deepen as he undergoes his most advanced training yet, and he will need to draw on powers greater than he has ever used if he is to survive. They finally discover where the Sword has been taken, and they learn that, to retrieve it, they will have to venture to the most dreaded place in the Empire: the Land of the Dragons.</p><p>Back in the Ring, Gwendolyn recovers slowly and grapples with deep depression after her attack. Kendrick and the others vow to fight for her honor, despite the impossible odds. There follows one of the great battles in the history of the Ring, as they struggle to free Silesia and conquer Andronicus.</p><p>Meanwhile, Godfrey finds himself in disguise behind enemy lines and begins to come into his own, learning what it means to become a warrior, in his own, unique way. Gareth manages to stay alive, using all his cunning to avert capture by Andronicus, while Erec fights for his life to save Savaria from the oncoming invasion by Andronicus—and to save his love, Alistair. Argon pays a precious price for doing the forbidden: meddling in human affairs. And Gwendolyn must decide if she will give up on life, or take up the secluded life of a nun in the ancient Tower of Refuge.</p><p>But not before, in a shocking twist, Thor finally learns who his real father is.</p><p>Will Thor and the others survive the quest? Will they retrieve the Destiny Sword? Will the Ring survive Andronicus’ invasion? What will become of Gwendolyn, Kendrick and Erec? And who is Thor’s real father?</p><p>With its sophisticated world-building and characterization, A CHARGE OF VALOR is an epic tale of friends and lovers, of rivals and suitors, of knights and dragons, of intrigues and political machinations, of coming of age, of broken hearts, of deception, ambition and betrayal. It is a tale of honor and courage, of fate and destiny, of sorcery. It is a fantasy that brings us into a world we will never forget, and which will appeal to all ages and genders. It is 70,000 words.</p><

<p>Nebula nominee Ross Rocklynne’s awe inspiring cosmic masterpiece, is a science fiction classic of “vast, nebula-like beings and follows their life courses through billions from galaxy to galaxy.” ()</p><

The Long Earth

<p>Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a normal life in New Springfield – they even adopt a child – but it seems they have been guided there for a reason. As rumours of strange sightings and hauntings proliferate, it becomes clear that something is very awry with this particular world.</p><p>Millions of steps away, Joshua is on a personal journey of discovery: learning about the father he never knew and a secret family history. But then he receives a summons from New Springfield. Lobsang now understands the enormity of what’s taking place beneath the surface of his earth – a threat to all the worlds of the Long Earth.</p><p>To counter this threat will require the combined efforts of humankind, machine and the super-intelligent Next. </p><

<p>What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you?</p><p>Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, the characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers-and we see that no one is quite who they appear.</p><

<p>Building can be seen as a master metaphor for modernity, which some great irresistible force, be it fascism or communism or capitalism, is always busy building anew, and Houses is a book about a man, Arseniev Negoyan, who has devoted his life and his dreams to building.</p><p>Bon vivant, Francophile, visionary, Negoyan spent the first half of his life building houses he loved and even gave names to — Juliana, Christina, Agatha — making his hometown of Belgrade into a modern city to be proud of. The second half of his life, after World War II and the Nazi occupation, he has spent in one of those houses, being looked after by his wife and a nurse, in hiding. Now, on the last day of his life, Negoyan has decided to go out at last to see what he has wrought.</p><p>Negoyan is one of the great characters in modern fiction, a charming monster of selfishness and self-delusion. And for all his failings, his life poses a question for the rest of us: Where in the modern world is there a home except in illusion?</p><

Melot ir slikti. To zina pat mazs bērns. Tomēr ir kāda zeme, kurā runāt patiesību ir aizliegts ar likumu. Šajā zemē, lai saskaitītu, ir jāatņem, bet, lai sareizinātu, - jādala. Netici? Ienāc itāliešu rakstnieka Džanni Rodāri radītajā Melu zemē un pārliecinies pats! Par dīvainībām, kas notiek Melu zemē, vislabāk var pastāstīt Dželsomīnopuisis, no kura balss skaļuma ne vien izbirst logiem rūtis, bet pat sagrūst nami. Domātā nevar būt? Nekavējies! Izstaigā Melu zemi kopā ar Dželsomīno!<

<p>Published in 1954, John Cowper Powys called this novel, a 'long romance about Odysseus in his extreme old age, hoisting sail once more from Ithaca'.</p><p>As usual there is a large cast of human characters but Powys also gives life and speech to inanimates such as a stone pillar, a wooden club,and an olive shoot. The descent to the drowned world of Atlantis towards the end of the novel is memorably described, indeed, Powys himself called it 'the best part of the book'.</p><p>Many of Powys's themes, such as the benefits of matriarchy, the wickedness of priests and the evils of modern science which condones vivisection are given full rein in this odd but compelling work.</p><

<p>The human journey is an emotional quest to find truth and meaning. Countless books have presented this story through the eyes of people who concluded their search with devotion to God, salvation by Jesus, or commitment to religion. But a growing number are choosing a different path, finding truth and meaning from the opposite perspective. tells their stories.</p><p>The people in this book come from different religious upbringings, races, sexual orientations, and genders. Many have gone through very emotional journeys in coming to a sustained, open atheistic worldview. Most were quite religious at one point in their lives. Through the internet, humanity is engaged in a global conversation unlike any before in history — about who we are, why we are here, and how we should live — and these individuals have an important perspective to share.</p><

<p>"Sam Pink is dictator of the island of the bizarre." — As You Recognize Your Transience</p><p>"Reading Sam Pink will make you recognize the reptile smuggler that has always been hiding out inside your brain." — Cameron Pierce, author of Ass Goblins of Auschwitz and The Pickled Apocalypse of Pancake Island</p><

<p>From Annie Proulx — the Pulitzer Prize — and National Book Award-winning author of and “Brokeback Mountain,” comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world’s forests.</p><p>In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a “,” for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a Mi’kmaw woman and their descendants live trapped between two inimical cultures. But Duquet, crafty and ruthless, runs away from the seigneur, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred years — their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand, under stunningly brutal conditions — the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over again, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.</p><p>Proulx’s inimitable genius is her creation of characters who are so vivid — in their greed, lust, vengefulness, or their simple compassion and hope — that we follow them with fierce attention. Annie Proulx is one of the most formidable and compelling American writers, and is her greatest novel, a magnificent marriage of history and imagination.</p><

Alex Albury has it all: a successful public relations business, a luxurious house, a beautiful wife and two sons. Then one September morning the police burst into his home and arrest him. Now, three and a half years later, newly released from Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight, Alex is intent on finding the man who framed him for fraud and embezzlement. All he knows is his name: James Andover. But who is he? Where is he? Alex embarks on his quest to track down Andover, but with the trail cold he is frustrated at every turn. Worse, he finds himself under suspicion by the police. The pressure is on and Alex has to unearth the answers and quick. But time is running out. For Alex the future looks bleak and soon he is left with the option - to kill or be killed...<

Warriors

The Chupacabra Trilogy

<p>He is called El Barquero. He makes his trade along the border, smuggling guns and killing without remorse. As he faces his one last mission, his perfect plan is unwittingly foiled by Avery, a paranoid loner obsessed with global conspiracy theories who spends most of his time crafting absurd and threatening letters to anyone who offends him. That means pretty much everyone. </p><p>What unfolds is a laugh out loud dark comedy of madcap adventure stretching from Austin to the West Texas border featuring a lunatic band of civilian border militia, a group of bingo-crazed elderly ladies (one packing a pistol nearly as long as her arm), a murderous and double-crossing cartel boss, a burned-out hippy, and a crotchety retired doctor and his pugnacious French bulldog. Read it to believe it.</p><

With the fate of the planet hanging in the balance, retired naval officer and Naval Academy graduate Neil Loken steers a trimaran and her passengers to the literal end of the earth in this taut thriller about a small group of friends escaping a nuclear holocaust.<

Bridges of Time

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Rivers of Babylon

Set around the wooden snack bars in a Bratislava of thieves and pornographers, the characters of Rivers of Babylon sink to new depths and rise to new heights. A naïve American Slovak blunders into Rácz’s world and nearly loses his life in this black comedy.<

Rivers of Babylon

Pišt'anek’s tour de force of 1999 turns car-park attendant and porn king Freddy Piggybank into a national hero, and the unsinkable Rácz aspires to be an oil oligarch, after Slovaks on an Arctic archipelago rise up against oppression. The novel expands from a mafia-ridden Bratislava to the Czech lands dreaming of new imperial glory, and a post-Soviet Arctic hell. Death-defying adventure and psychological drama supersede sheer black humour.<

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<p>After My Fashion has an unusual publishing history. Although it was John Cowper Powys third novel written in 1920, it wasn't published until 1980. It seems that when his US publisher turned it down Powys made no effort to place it elsewhere. Indeed, when Powys had finished a book he tended to be oddly indifferent to its fate.</p><p>The novel has two other unusual features: its locations (Sussex and Greenwich Village) and Isadora Duncan being the inspiration for Elise, the dancer and mistress of the protagonist, Richard Storm (based quite largely on Powys himself).</p><p>As one would expect from Powys the writing is vivid, not least in the descriptions of the Sussex landscape and the bohemian milieu of Greenwich Village.</p><

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<p>"Rodmoor is, unusually for a John Cowper Powys novel, set in East Anglia, Rodmoor itself being a coastal village. The protagonist, Adrian Sorio, is a typically Powys-like hero, highly-strung with only precarious mental stability. He is in love with two women — Nance Herrick and the more unconventional Phillipa Renshaw.</p><p>This was Powys second novel, published in 1916. It deploys a rich and memorable cast of characters.</p><

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<p>Wood and Stone was John Cowper Powys' first novel published in 1915. It is no prentice-work however — the author was already in his forties.</p><p>The novel is set in the area of south Somerset that John Cowper Powys grew up in. The village of Nevilton is based on Montacute where his father was vicar for many years. When he wrote it Powys was living in the USA and it is perhaps this absence that accounts for the heightened vividness of the descriptive writing.</p><p>Powys deploys a large and wonderfully delineated cast of characters. They are loosely divided between 'the well-constituted' and 'the ill-constituted'. Characteristically Powys favours the latter.</p><

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<p>Ducdame was John Cowper Powys' fourth novel published in 1925. It is set in Dorset. The protagonist, Rook Ashover (a wonderfully Powysian name) is an introverted young squire with a dilemma: to go on loving his mistress, Netta Page, or, make a respectable marriage and produce an heir.</p><p>Of his early novels (pre- Wolf Solent) this one is often considered to be the most carefully constructed and best organized. Like them all it contains a gallery of rich, complex characters and glorious writing.</p><