The Thyme Fiend by Jeffrey Ford is a dark fantasy novelette about a young man who can only prevent seeing visions by eating or smoking thyme. When he finds the skeleton of a missing man the skeleton begins to haunt him. What does it want? At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Peter D. Buckow hadn't had much luck in his short life. An abused and neglected child, he struggled hard to overcome the disadvantages of his upbringing. He worked hard as Henry Blough's ranch hand; he labored from sunup 'til sundown; he never shirked a task. But when Henry Blough tries to cheat the sixteen-year-old Buck of his pay, he decides to take his wages out in steers...Caught red handed by the deputy Sheriff, poor Peter Buckow is hanged with his own rope and left for dead.Except Buckow didn't die.He survived and was given an extraordinary chance at a second life. And now he had to choose between the easy path of violence and vengeance, or a life of honest hard work with no guarantee of success.

The Flight from Kar opens The Emperor's Library series with seventeen-year-old Jon's trial and expulsion from the only home he has known, the Valley of Women. In the larger world beyond the Valley, he finds a love that will change his destiny and unexpected allies among old and new friends, including Zoë the Forester and her family. But a brewing religious war ends Jon's idyllic romance with Zoë's brother John and sends him with his comrades to Kar, the imperial capital, to save the Emperor from the fanatics who menace the city. A last-ditch attempt to rescue the Emperor's Library from their onslaught leads to a journey of remarkable discovery, in which the travelers encounter unknown lands and intimations of an undreamed-of past. Can they use this knowledge in their counteroffensive against the enemies of the Empire, the religious zealots who call themselves The Chosen?Part high fantasy, part adventure, part psychological exploration, The Flight from Kar and the novels that...

Robin Light was behind the fish tanks of her Syracuse pet shop when the teenager walked in the door. With her electric blue hair, corpse-white lipstick, and in-your-face nose ring, Amy Richmond wasn't the type you could forget. But her appearance paled beside the message she had for Robin, "Murphy said you'd help me."Murphy was Robin's ex-husband who'd lived fast and died too young. And now, his 15-year-old daughter Amy was in trouble recently named the prime suspect in the sensational murder of her wealthy stepfather. Suddenly, the inveterate sleuth finds herself moving through the edgy, drug-infested world into which Amy has disappeared. Hitting up on her street connections, Robin plugs into a secret network of strippers, addicts, and runaways, where a low-life named Toon Town appears to be calling all the shots, and where Robin has to find a terrified young girl, before it's too late.From Library JournalA nervous teen-aged girl asks pet shop owner Robin Light (Chutes and Adders, LJ 7/94) to keep her albino ferret, then disappears. Robin finds out that the girl is wanted for murdering her step-dad. An appealing series.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistLast seen in In Plain Sight , Block's Robin Light seems unable to avoid murder, no matter how hard she tries to mind her own business, which happens to be a pet store in Syracuse called Noah's Ark. When a young girl comes into the store and demands that Robin board her pet ferret because Murphy said she would, Robin is speechless. Murphy, her husband who died of a drug overdose and left behind a mess that made Robin a chief murder suspect, has again risen from the dead. But before she can find out more, the girl drops her ferret and bolts out the back, just as two cops arrive in pursuit. Thus begins yet another intricately plotted mystery, this one involving the girl's murdered father and a connection to one more part of Murphy's life about which Robin knew nothing. Block's gripping denouements are especially good: they have previously starred a poisonous snake, a tarantula, and a bat. This one extends the streak, but this time we're not revealing the animal involved. Robin Light was recently named one of Booklist's Top Five Lesser-Known Female Sleuths . Soon she will have outgrown that category. Stuart Miller

When Lightning Strikes Twice by Barbara Boswell has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

"In Birth of an Age, book two of the Christ Clone Trilogy, the promised catastrophes in the biblical book of Revelation are poured out. Asteroids are on a crash course toward earth, locust-like insects inflict terrible pain on mankind, and a generalized madness infects the world's population, spawning horrific violence. In the midst of these turbulent events, Christopher announces he is the [Messiah], and promises that a new era is about to be ushered in. --Cindy CrosbyThe Messiah of the New Age. His coming is prophesied by more than a dozen major religions. Cloned from cells of Jesus Christ found on the Shroud of Turin, Christopher Goodman was born into the most turbulent time in human history. Already two nuclear holocausts have shaken the planet -- the first in 2003, destroying much of the Russian Republic, and the second in 2019, killing half a billion people in China, India, and Pakistan. Unknown to the world's inhabitants, an even greater threat is waiting just beyond the earth's horizon -- a threat that may annihilate the entire human race! Thrown from their orbits by the spiritual powers of two religious madmen, one who claims to be the Apostle John, three asteroids are hurtling toward the planet. Yet Christopher Goodman, the only one who can stop the destruction, must wait and allow it to happen. For it is far more than life and death that hang in the balance. It is the fulfillment of galactic destiny, humankind's final evolutionary step that will propel man as far beyond his current state as humans are now above the insects. It is the birth of a New Age!

- The first book in the Dragon Throne series, The Stone of the Stars (0-446-69098-8), was published in Aspect trade paperback in 2/04 and has already gone back to press for a second printing. The mass market edition will be published by Aspect in 7/05 and will tie in with this novel. The second novel in the series, The Empire of the Stars, will be published in Aspect trade paperback in 11/04. - Alison Baird, a highly decorated Canadian writer, is the author of The Witches of Willowmere (Penguin, 2002). The Wolves of Woden (Penguin, 2001), and The Hidden World (Penguin, 1999). She is a Silver Birch Award regional winner for The Dragon's Egg (Scholastic, 1994), received an Honorable Mention for the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for Dragon Pearl (St. Martin's Press, 1996), and was a finalist for the IODE Violet Downey Book Award for White as the Waves (Creative, 1999). - Dragons remain one of fantasy fiction's most popular creatures. The illustrated dragon cover will clearly position....

It is 1941 and Britain is pressed on all sides. With Japan in the war and convoys being sunk by submarines the last bastion fighting Hitler is beleaguered. The Commandos are the only ones who can fight beyond the Atlantic Wall. Tom Harsker and his section are sent behind enemy lines on a daring mission that will place them in great danger.

After starpackin' for a spell in Benton, Rawley Pierson and his pard Chaw Stevens reckoned it was high time they got back to some honest work like cow punching. So, they handed in their tin stars and headed north through the Diablos, fixin' to find work in the panhandle. But trouble seems to follow the men like coyotes on a spring herd, and soon they found themselves trading lead in a full scale range war.Hired by Zeb Hawkins to protect his small Circle H Bar spread from the army of gun-totin' rustlers working for rival cattleman Ed MacWilliams, Rawley and Chaw kept their guns loaded and the herd on the move. But when Rawley kills a gunsel in a fair fight and is sentenced to hang, there's hell to pay. Bustin' out of jail to clear his name, the ex-sheriff and his ornery sidekick go gunnin' for payback until the open Texas range runs red with rustlers' blood.

When James destroyed the Iron Mines at Sorna in a mammoth volcanic eruption after rescuing Miko from his enslavement, massive tsunamis wreaked havoc all along the Empire’s coastland. This brought the attention of certain powers within the Empire to bear.

Romance. 40596 words long.

"Alex Duarte is my kind of cop. I hope he sticks around for a long, long, time." – Michael Connelly It was supposed to be a low-level bust for ATF agent Alex Duarte, with the hope that he could work it up the ladder to someone important. He just didn't know how important. In New Orleans to check out a mysterious Panamanian named Ortiz who likes to trade guns illegally and import marijuana by the truckload, Duarte suddenly finds himself in the middle of something bigger than he has ever known. Because guns and drugs are bad enough-but there are other things that are much, much worse. A shadowy colonel who is not what he seems… a white supremacist intent on becoming "the man who changed America"… an attractive FBI agent with a lot of pull and a lot of secrets… Alex Duarte knows he's in deep with these characters. He just hopes he's not over his head.

Fantasy/Science Fiction. 60170 words long.