Showing results by publisher "Skyboat Media" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

Gorlen and Plenth, the wandering bards in question, have quit a life of rambling to raise their daughter, Aiku, in peace at the edge of a curious sea. Aiku's other father is the gargoyle Spar, who is also husband to a songwood tree and father to a young grove. It's no more unusual than most families, and their life no less ordinary…until one extraordinary day, when the messenger birds Aiku loves begin to deliver ominous notes and soon flap away in a frenzy, like a storm fleeing before an even greater storm.

Silvariah and Walter’s little girl is in danger, and facing the tyrant, Penn, is the only recourse left. In a brazen act of desperation, they travel to the Moon, convinced it holds the secret to his nefarious empire. They know Penn is baiting them. They go anyway. When Scarlet disappears, they face off against their enemy with all their wits and strength, hoping it will be enough. Penn is confident he can’t lose - but there are factors no one could have anticipated.

The circus is in town, and on the planet Boon, that’s big - potentially riotous - news. The delicate, decaying political balance maintained by the cloned human grands at the expense of the uplifted dog and cat populations is in danger of toppling under the influence of mysterious forces both outer and inner.

Death didn't solve anything for Claire. Now condemned to an eternity of roaming the Earth as a 16-year-old, she has to figure out this whole ghost thing from the other side. Lesson one: Memories are power. Lesson two: This sucks.

Now genuinely a Spirit Knight, 16-year-old Claire wants to know everything about the job. Fate dumps a dragon on her, and she only has more questions. She knows how much she needs training and wishes she could snap her fingers to learn everything at once. Justin can answer Claire's questions, but between his demanding young daughters, his sarcastic horse, and the recent loss of his own mentor, he'd rather just be a Knight.

Sixteen-year-old Claire wants her father back. His death left her only memories and an empty locket. After six difficult years in foster care, her vocabulary no longer includes "hope" and "trust". But everything changes dramatically when she encounters Justin, a Spirit Knight restlessly hunting dangerous ghosts that devour the living, who rides into her path on his magical horse and takes her under his wing. When an evil spirit threatens Claire's life, she'll need Justin's help to survive.

It all comes down to this: Bobby has to find the girl, save the woman, wake the team, stop the disaster, open the door, and eat the partridge in a pear tree. Not even Head Cowboy can do it all alone. Like it or not, he needs help, and the only places he has left to look for it are the unlikely ones.

Everyone got comfortable. It was understandable, really: soft beds, good food, contentment. Not for Bobby; together with Stephen, he's shaking off the torpor and getting into bed with Privek - nothing is out of the question to find the lost 11. Will the Vampire-Dragon Inquisition turn out to be something no one expected? Is the mysterious agent still 15 steps ahead of them all? A warlord, a cruise ship, a splashdown - oh my!

Kayla Nighthawk, born crippled and orphaned in the theocratic realm of Potemia, defies her society's ban against reading the ancient books on sciencecraft. Her search for a cure for her deformities and for the meaning of existence itself becomes a matter of life or death for Kayla - as well as for all of humanity. This is the history of the next millennium of humankind. An epic tale of technology and the backlash against it.

All Bobby wanted was a girl to come home to after a hard day of work. Like the last one said before she left, he was going exactly two places - no and where - and he was happy with that. But somebody had other plans for him. A murder. The terrorist watch list. For what? Underage drinking? Things couldn't possibly get worse. Right? Oh, yes, they could. A lot worse.

Goon Squad is set in a version of modern-day Manchester. Its biggest divergence from the real city is that it - along with most other large urban centers - has a team of superheroes to protect it against unusual threats with which the conventional forces of law and order would have problems.

Goon Squad, Volume 2: Without Sin is composed of "A Star in Strange Ways", "Holy Fool", "Dead Man Tells Tale", "A Brief History of the Goon Squad", "Tale of Terror", and "Pomona Island", as well as an introduction read by the author.

From Nebula Award winner Gregory Benford comes this ambitious hard SF anthology that collects five original novellas. Each one takes the very long view - all are set at least ten thousand years in the future. The authors take a rigorously scientific view of such grand panoramas, confronting the largest issues of cosmology, astronomy, evolution, and biology.

The Sound of His Horn is a classic novel of the uncanny. Alan Querdilion becomes a prisoner of war during World War II and then awakes, only to find himself in an alternative future in which the Nazis have won the war. Against a sylvan backdrop, the legend of the wild huntsman is revived and genetic experiments have created strange hybrids. Humans are hunted for game, haunted by the sound of the huntsman's horn.

Decency, humanity, and humility don't live on the Darkside. Seattle's underbelly in a darker, grimmer future plays host to a collection of novellas, each exploring how people wind up in that forsaken hellhole - and what they're willing to do to prove they belong. This audiobook includes three titles from the Darkside Seattle series: Street Doc, Fixer, and Mechanic.

Abner Harris came to Earth on a mission of extreme urgency. A subject of the Spirit had no right to question his orders. And his orders said that the universe was in danger of enslavement by the pebble-skinned Medlins. And that the fight against their evil scheming called for him to assume the guise of a flesh-and-blood Earthman. But once in that new synthetic body, he made a mind-bending discovery: the real villains of space were neither the Medlins nor the people of Earth, but his own kind!

Eighteen-year-old Emma Harper knows she has a problem. Now she has to learn to live with it. Learning to eat like a normal person, though, is the least of her worries. When hostile aliens interrupt her attempt to get herself and her Marines home to Earth, she’ll have to evade capture and figure out what really matters to her. Who is she? How can she help? What can she even do a zillion light years from everything she’s ever known? Five lives hang on the answers, and she doesn’t even know where to start.

These ladies aren't waiting. Twenty best-selling and award-winning authors offer enchanting tales of women and girls forging paths through darkness and peril. Cleverness, curiosity, and determination make worthy heroines in fantastical new worlds. Featuring stories by: Elmdea Adams, Sarah Bartsch, Robyn Bennis, Lou J. Berger & Ian Berger, Jeffrey Cook & Katherine Perkins, Katie Cross, Lee French, Fulvio Gatti, Connie J. Jasperson, Frog and Esther Jones, Edward J. Knight, Robert J. McCarter, Jody Lynn Nye, Raven Oak, Dawn Vogel, Matt Youngmark, and Jeremy Zimmerman.

In the near future, Britain has given up its constitutional monarchy to become a republic. But though the crown is a museum piece and the family no longer bears its ancient titles, Stephen Windsor feels the stirrings of the lives of ancient sacred kings in his bones, which is not surprising, as at key points in Britain's history, he has been reincarnated to perform the supreme kingly act. And though the throne is empty and forgotten, the land remembers and calls once more for a crown upon a royal head - and royal blood upon the ground.

It's a rollicking cat-and-mouse tale, but this time, they're both on the same side - racing against time to save our world and theirs. The task takes on new urgency when they discover that what is at stake is nothing less than the power of imagination itself. A modern take on timeless truths, familiar rhymes, fables, and fairy tales, told through the eyes of an "ultra-logical" mouse, a nonpredatory cat, and a teenage storyteller. You think you know these tales, but once the layers start peeling back, what is underneath will surprise and delight you.