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In the Old Country, they called them the Gentry: ancient spirits of the land, magical, amoral, and dangerous. When the Irish emigrated to North America, some of the Gentry followed...only to find that the New World already had spirits of its own, called manitou and other such names by the Native tribes.Now generations have passed, and the Irish have made homes in the new land, but the Gentry still wander homeless on the city streets. Gathering in the city shadows, they bide their time and dream of power. As their dreams grow harder, darker, fiercer, so do the Gentry themselves--appearing, to those with the sight to see them, as hard and dangerous men, invariably dressed in black.Bettina can see the Gentry, and knows them for what they are. Part Indian, part Mexican, she was raised by her grandmother to understand the spirit world. Now she lives in Kellygnow, a massive old house run as an arts colony on the outskirts of Newford, a world away from the Southwestern desert of her youth. Outsider her nighttime window, she often spies the dark men, squatting in the snow, smoking, brooding, waiting. She calls them los lobos, the wolves, and stays clear of them--until the night one follows her to the woods, and takes her hand....Ellie, an independent young sculptor, is another with magic in her blood, but she refuses to believe it, even though she, too, sees the dark men. A strange old woman has summoned Ellie to Kellygnow to create a mask for her based on an ancient Celtic artifact. It is the mask of the mythic Summer King--another thing Ellie does not believe in. Yet lack of belief won't dim the power of the mast, or its dreadful intent.Donal, Ellie's former lover, comes from an Irish family and knows the truth at the heart of the old myths. He thinks he can use the mask and the "hard men" for his own purposes. And Donal's sister, Miki, a punk accordion player, stands on the other side of the Gentry's battle with the Native spirits of the land. She knows that more than her brother's soul is at stake. All of Newford is threatened, human and mythic beings alike.Once again Charles de Lint weaves the mythic traditions of many cultures into a seamless cloth, bringing folklore, music, and unforgettable characters to life on modern city streets.<

From Publishers Weekly

If there still remains any doubt, this novel confirms Lethem's status as the poet of Brooklyn and of motherless boys. Projected through the prism of race relations, black music and pop art, Lethem's stunning, disturbing and authoritatively observed narrative covers three decades of turbulent events on Dean Street, Brooklyn. When Abraham and Rachel Ebdus arrive there in the early 1970s, they are among the first whites to venture into a mainly black neighborhood that is just beginning to be called Boerum Hill. Abraham is a painter who abandons his craft to construct tiny, virtually indistinguishable movie frames in which nothing happens. Ex-hippie Rachel, a misguided liberal who will soon abandon her family, insists on sending their son, Dylan, to public school, where he stands out like a white flag. Desperately lonely, regularly attacked and abused by the black kids ("yoked," in the parlance), Dylan is saved by his unlikely friendship with his neighbor Mingus Rude, the son of a once-famous black singer, Barnett Rude Jr., who is now into cocaine and rage at the world. The story of Dylan and Mingus, both motherless boys, is one of loyalty and betrayal, and eventually different paths in life. Dylan will become a music journalist, and Mingus, for all his intelligence, kindness, verbal virtuosity and courage, will wind up behind bars. Meanwhile, the plot manages to encompass pop music from punk rock to rap, avant-garde art, graffiti, drug use, gentrification, the New York prison system-and to sing a vibrant, sometimes heartbreaking ballad of Brooklyn throughout. Lethem seems to have devoured the '70s, '80s and '90s-inhaled them whole-and he reproduces them faithfully on the page, in prose as supple as silk and as bright, explosive and illuminating as fireworks. Scary and funny and seriously surreal, the novel hurtles on a trajectory that feels inevitable. By the time Dylan begins to break out of the fortress of solitude that has been his life, readers have shared his pain and understood his dreams.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From

Dylan Ebdus is a white kid on a black-and-brown street. As he struggles through public school in 1970s Brooklyn, he is "yoked"--put in a headlock--and frisked for change on a daily basis. Testing into a good Manhattan school, he steps into a long-lasting role: vulnerable among street kids, he's street-smart compared to his new, privileged pals, and loathes himself as a poseur with both crowds. When he finds a ring that grants the power of flight, he's afraid to use it, but his black friend, Mingus, is not. They try their hand at crime fighting, but like many teenage endeavors, the project fizzles out. Lethem is a tremendous writer, and in the first half he uses magnificent language to capture the complexity of a child's worldview. When he jump-cuts to Dylan's adulthood, however, his switch to a more conventional narrative style is disappointing. The story regains momentum when Dylan rediscovers the ring and a new power it offers, then returns to his old street and ponders a sacrifice: whether to give the ring to the boy who yoked him the most. Lethem explores many avenues: the origins of gentrification, the development of soul music, the genealogy of graffiti, the seeds of the crack epidemic. The different concepts converge in the closing pages, but this often-excellent novel labors under the weight of its ambition. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Philip Drake, an impoverished but titled gentleman, is forced to liquidate his assets and go back to his past gaming habits in an effort to right himself. Lady Susannah Messingham is a woman with a past and nearly ten years Philip's senior. After watching him at the tables, she propositions him to teach her to win at gaming. This fascinating and original look at an uncharted aspect of English life explores a gentleman snared by gambling, the threat of debtor's prison, and the wayward lady who redeems him.<

SUMMARY: Venetian cop, Commissario Guido Brunetti, wonders whom he knows to bring pressure on a local government department, to investigate the lack of official building approval on his apartment. But when that same official phones him at work, clearly scared by some information he plans to give Brunetti, and is later found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is clearly wrong, something with far greater implications than the fate of Guido's own apartment. Brunetti's investigations take him into the unfamiliar areas of Venetian life - drug abuse and loan sharking - while the deaths of two young drug addicts, and the arrest and release of a suspected drug dealer, reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venice to have 'Friends in High Places'.<

Product Description

IF EVER THERE WAS A TIME TO "TRUST LOIS" THIS WOULD BE IT.
When the home office adds an unexpected crew member to the environmental section of the Lois McKendrick, Ishmael Wang faces being put ashore at the next port. Not even his multiple division ratings can save him because he refuses to bump someone else in his place. In just a few days, Ishmael will lose both his friends and the home he has made for himself while traveling through the Deep Dark.

Just when he thought matters could not get any worse, an EMP damages the ship and threatens the lives of everyone on board. Gone are the days when Ish's biggest challenge was making a good cup of coffee. Now he must use his wits and rely on the ingenuity of his shipmates just to survive. Return with the crew of the SC Lois McKendrick, in what may prove to be their final voyage. All your favorites will be aboard including: Ish, Pip, Cookie, Brill, Diane, and Big Bad Bev.

"Nathan Lowell does what few authors can...make each successive book better than the previous one. While Full Share remains true to Nathan's goal of exploring the lives of ordinary people, what we find is something truly extraordinary-the coming of age of a character that we just love spending time with. Nathan's Solar Clipper has been compared to the addictiveness of crack cocaine and a return to classic Heinlein; I think both descriptions are well deserved." - Michael Sullivan, bestselling author of the Riyria Revelations

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
2010 Parsec Award Winner for Best Speculative Fiction for Captain's Share
2009 Podiobooks Founder's Choice Award for Captain's Share
2009 Parsec Award Finalist for Best Speculative Fiction for Double Share
2008 Podiobooks Founder's Choice Award for Double Share
2008 Parsec Award Finalist for Best Speculative Fiction for Full Share
2008 Parsec Award Finalist for Best Speculative Fiction for South Coast

GOLDEN AGE OF THE SOLAR CLIPPER SERIES
Trader's Tales
Quarter Share
Half Share
Full Share
Double Share
Captain's Share
Owner's Share
Shaman Tales
South Coast
Cape Grace*

Forthcoming
* Available in audio, print and ebook versions coming soon

Review

The futurologists of the world have gathered at their Eighth World Congress at the Costa Rica Hilton to discuss the problem of overpopulation. Their deliberations, however, are interrupted by a revolution which the government attempts to quell with chemical weapons. The air and water are laden with "benignimizers" and other exotic drags which send futurologist Tichy careening into a hallucinatory tomorrow. Lem's view of the overcrowded future is original and disturbing. A pessimistic, mordantly funny book, well translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel. (Kirkus Reviews )

Language Notes

Text: English, Polish (translation)

Note: All of these stories are also in Baen's Retief! collection.

Retief is an officer of the distinguished Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne, a supra-national organization devoted to keeping the peace - or more accurately, to maintaining a state of tension short of armed conflict.

Retief is not exactly in the mainstream of current Galactic diplomacy, as expounded by such giants of the C.D.T. as Crodfoller, Hidebinder, Straphanger, and his own immediate superior, Magnan. Deviously sincere, uncompromisingly venal, fearlessly cowardly, these great, dedicated public servants will seem curiously familiar as they strive to keep the peace seven hundred years in the future.

But when Retief's on the scene things have a way of coming right in the end...

Contents:

Ultimatum • (1965) • novelette (aka Mightiest Qorn)

Saline Solution • (1963) • shortstory

The Brass God • (1965) • novelette (aka Retief, God-Speaker)

The Castle of Light • (1964) • novelette

Wicker Wonderland • (1965) • novelette (aka The City That Grew in the Sea)

Native Intelligence • (1965) • novelette (aka The Governor of Glave)

The Prince and the Pirate • (1964) • novelette

Courier • [Bolo] • (1961) • novelette (aka The Frozen Planet)

Protest Note • (1965) • shortstory (aka The Desert and the Stars)

Kidnapped and sent to an alternate reality, Lafayette O'Leary must find the source of his own power to alter reality in order to return to his wife in his home world, Artesia

In the dead of night, December 1939, a train winds its way through Italy towards the Alps with a cargo too precious to destroy, too awful to reveal. On board is an iron box. Its sinister contents, documents concealed for centuries, could rip apart the Christian world and set religion against religion, an entire people against another. Now, as the Nazi threat marches inexorably closer, good men and evil are drawn into a violent and deadly hunt. The richest aristocrat in Italy is responsible for the documents' safety, but he's marked for death by the Nazis. Some people want the secrets told. Some people want to plunge the world into a catastrophic holy war ...

In this stunning debut, author Scott Lynch delivers the wonderfully thrilling tale of an audacious criminal and his band of confidence tricksters. Set in a fantastic city pulsing with the lives of decadent nobles and daring thieves, here is a story of adventure, loyalty, and survival that is one part Robin Hood, one part Ocean’s Eleven, and entirely enthralling.…An orphan’s life is harsh–and often short–in the island city of Camorr, built on the ruins of a mysterious alien race. But born with a quick wit and a gift for thieving, Locke Lamora has dodged both death and slavery, only to fall into the hands of an eyeless priest known as Chains–a man who is neither blind nor a priest. A con artist of extraordinary talent, Chains passes his skills on to his carefully selected “family” of orphans–a group known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Under his tutelage, Locke grows to lead the Bastards, delightedly pulling off one outrageous confidence game after another. Soon he is infamous as the Thorn of Camorr, and no wealthy noble is safe from his sting.Passing themselves off as petty thieves, the brilliant Locke and his tightly knit band of light-fingered brothers have fooled even the criminal underworld’s most feared ruler, Capa Barsavi. But there is someone in the shadows more powerful–and more ambitious–than Locke has yet imagined.Known as the Gray King, he is slowly killing Capa Barsavi’s most trusted men–and using Locke as a pawn in his plot to take control of Camorr’s underworld. With a bloody coup under way threatening to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the Gray King at his own brutal game–or die trying.…From the Hardcover edition.<