Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Fantasy

The Final Key is the completion of the duology Triad, which began with the novel Schism, and which reveals the epic story of how a war of galactic proportions first exploded between two great empires and how the Ruby Dynasty reached maturity. Schism ended with the Skolian Empire torn asunder by personal conflict within the royal family.

Schism is how it all began, harkening back to the early years of the Skolian Empire, back to the beginning of the war between Skolia and the Euban Traders. Twenty-three years have passed since the fateful vote in the Skolian Assembly that Roca missed in Skyfall. It created the first open hostility between Eube and Skolia, which has only deepened in the ensuing years. Now Eube senses an opportunity, for strife has riven the first family of the Skolian Empire.

Russell Walker retreats from the shock of his wife's death by becoming a hermit in the woods of British Columbia. There he finds himself thrust into a precarious role as intermediary between a telepath called Smelly, so sensitive he can't stand to be near most people, and Constable Hilda, a skeptical police officer who needs Smelly's insight to track down a monstrous serial killer.

This sequel to the acclaimed Primary Inversion continues the story of Sauscony and Jaibriol, each the heir to an interstellar empire, as they become entangled again in the machinations of the Skolian Empire.

When Kelric, a scion of the imperial family of Skolia, crash-lands his fighter on the off-limits planet of Coba, he figures it will be only a short time before he makes his way home. But he fails to account for the powerful matriarchy of Coba, the mistresses of the great estates who do not want the Empire to know about their recent cultural advances. First they take him prisoner. Then, one by one, the most powerful women on the planet fall in love with him!

Separated for decades by circumstance and political machinations, the Ruby Dynasty, hereditary rulers of the Skolian Empire, struggle to bring together the tattered remnants of their family in the shadow of a disastrous interstellar war. Too many have died, others are presumed lost. Yet they must move quickly if they are to resume their rightful place as rulers of Skolia.

Eons ago, Sirens were exiled from the Mortal Realm and held captive in a cove at the edge of Tartarus. They are beautiful beyond imagination, but deadly beyond compare. And they have set their sights on breaking free. They risk everything to sneak out of Tartarus and ascend to the forbidden Mortal Realm with one mission: to mate with human men to dilute their cursed bloodline and form a new race of Sirens, free from their prison in the Underworld.

Martians, Go Home,originally published in 1955, is a comic science fiction novel that tells the story of Luke Devereaux, a science fiction writer who witnesses an alien invasion of little green men. These Martians haven't come to Earth to harm anyone - just to annoy people.

Pandemic drought, skyrocketing oil prices, dwindling energy supplies, and wars of water scarcity threaten the planet. Only four people canprevent global chaos.

Someone is bumping off rock’s wrinkled royalty. After the death of the third aging rock star, lead singer Freddie Finger, astrologer-detective David Lowell takes on the case, scrutinizing suspects’ charts for any clues in the stars that could point to a killer.

It’s 2026, and catastrophe has struck from an unexpected source. The Alpha Centauri supernova has risen like a second sun, rushing Earth toward its last summer. Floods, fires, starvation, and disease paralyze the planet. In a blue aurora flash of gamma rays, all microchips worldwide are destroyed, leaving an already devastated Earth without communications, transportation, weaponry, or medicine. The disaster sets three groups of survivors on separate quests. A militant cult seizes the opportunity to free their leader, known as the Eye of God, from the long-term coma to which a court sentenced her.

For millennia after the Accident, Earth lay cold and still, its small population punished by the dismal climate, harried by plague, and impoverished by frequent, bloody wars. Then, unexpectedly, a hero emerged and offered hope to the oppressed. With great ice fleets, he conquered the forces of tyranny and brought the promise of renewal to an otherwise miserable world. But nothing was quite as it seemed—either to Michael Ormson or to his followers.

Hiram Granville, a modern Leonardo, secured more than a thousand patents during his lifetime, often just ahead of others who had already been working on the same ideas. His son, John, an economics genius, never lost a cent in the stock market—or any other financial deal—and was investigated for insider trading on more than one occasion. Now Cat, a documentarian; her researcher, Mercy; and Cracker Jack, an electronics whiz, are doing a film about the Granville clan. What they find as they research the family is madness, suicide, and a frightening glimpse about what it means to peer into the future.

Five hundred years have passed since the combined fleets of humanity met and broke the berserker armada at Stone Place. But though the human victory was total, one of the killer machines (weaponless, its star drive a ruin) managed to limp to a secret sanctuary on a planet called Hunter's World. Over the years, a new cult has arisen there, a cult dedicated to Death as the only and ultimate Good.

In the discreet little Key West bar that Jake Stonebender established, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested, and Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.

In the heart of the singing desert, the people are fading from the world. Mothers bear few live children, the warriors and wardens are hard-pressed to protect those who remain, and the vash'ai - the great cats who have called the people kithren for as long as there have been stories - bond with fewer humans each year. High above, the Sun Dragon sings a song of life and love while far below, the Earth Dragon slumbers as she has since the beginning of time. Her sleep is fitful, and from the darkness of her dreams come whispers of war...and death.

Fantasy icon Jane Yolen is adored by generations of readers and listeners of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined.

Miss Ada Quicksilver, a student of London's Lovelace Academy for Promising Young Women, is spending her holiday in Ireland to pursue her anthropological study of fairies. She visits Dublin's absinthe bars to investigate a supposed association between absinthe and fairy sightings. One night a handsome Irishman approaches her, introducing himself as Edward Donoghue. Edward takes absinthe to relieve his sleepwalking. She discovers that he's the earl of Meath, and that he will soon visit a mysterious ruin. On learning about Ada's area of study, he invites her to accompany him.

The Big War started in Western Europe with a Soviet nerve gas attack that laid waste to France, Germany, and Spain. The world’s democracies fought back, and pilots like Hawk Hunter led the charge - tearing across the flaming wreckage of the continent at supersonic speeds. They pushed the Russians back and just when victory was in sight, a traitor at the highest level of government turned off America’s missile defense system, and Soviet nukes rained from the sky.

Mary and Eddie are meant for each other - but love is no guarantee, not in these suburbs. Like all children, they exist in an eternal present; time is imminent, and the adults of the street live in their assorted houses like numbers on a clock. Meanwhile, ominous rumors circulate, and the increasing agitation of the neighbors points to a future in which all will be lost. Soon a sorcerer's car will speed down Mary's street, and as past and future fold into each other, the resonant parenthesis of her girlhood will close forever. Beyond is adulthood.