Or is there? There’s this nerdy kid Charles who has a scheme so risky and preposterous that in all likelihood it will blow up in his face like some schoolboy chem lab experiment. Except its not a chem lab. It’s a planet.

Well, how many schoolboys have let that discourage them?

But Casseia believes in him. She’s the rebellious daughter of a conservative family, and she sees Charles’s cockeyed idea as fuel for the student protests she’s leading. It’s hard to imagine a less likely love object than Charles, but maybe Casseia could learn to get attached to someone who thinks he knows how to save their world. Maybe this tender love story explains why it wasn’t just the science fiction reviewers that loved Moving Mars (“…an accomplished, thoroughly mature novel that should be placed at the top of anyone’s ‘to be read’ stack” – Science Fiction Age), but the romance reviewers too (“…a grand adventure in hard science fiction” – Romantic Times).

E-Reads carries a great list of Greg Bear’s backlist titles and there are more to come!

- Richard Curtis

(Above image of Mars courtesy of NASA.)

Profane Men brings the dark and searing energy of such Miller horror classics as Slob and Chaingang to a story set in Vietnam during the late 1960’s. The novel is clearly informed by Miller’s personal experience. In fact, it’s filled with autobiographical touches (the central narrator character has a developing career in broadcast radio, among other things).

A rootless young man drifting through life and facing the likelihood of being drafted decides to choose his own destiny, seeking a way to avoid becoming cannon fodder. Unfortunately, he finds himself thrust into some of the worst corners of Vietnam, working with a team of assassins tracking a pirate radio broadcaster who seems to be supplying intelligence to the Viet Cong. And then things get complicated…

Other books by Rex Miller

Empress of Light

In this sequel to Shanji, Kati has used the light of creation to win a war bringing her to the throne as Empress of her planet, and she has forged new alliances with former enemies. Her daughter Yesui is born with powers exceeding her own, and Kati discovers that raising a super-being is no simple task. Yesui is willful and a prankster, enjoys torturing her baby brother Mengjai, who turns out to be much more than he seems to be. But Yesui is the true Empress of Light, and is later called upon to save a dying gaseous planet by adding mass to its core. She finds love with a gentle empath there and must help in resisting a coup that endangers his family. Along the way, she discovers there are living beings in the universe with powers even greater than her own, and that death is only a transformation to something new.

Of Shanji Algis Budrys proclaimed “It comes pretty close to singing.”

In Nebula and Hugo Award winner Greg Bear’s Eon [now available in Kindle for the first time], the arrival of a 300-kilometer long stone was the answer to humanity’s desperate plea to end the threat of nuclear war. Inside the deep recesses of the stone lay the remnants of a human society versed in English, Russian and Chinese. The artifacts of this familiar people foretell a great Death caused by the ravages of war. Deeper still within the stone is the Way. For some the Way meant salvation from death, for others it was a parallel world where loved ones live again. Here is some of the outpouring of acclaim for Eon:

“Eon may be the best constructed hard SF epic yet.”
—The Washington Post

“Sharing aspects of Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, its uniqueness arises from Bear’s bold imagination. Bear is a writer of passionate vision. Eon is his grandest work yet.”
—Locus

“A powerful, imaginative novel.”
—Library Journal

“The only word for it really is blockbuster. It is big and breathtaking; the story and the concepts are ambitious to the point of mind boggling.”
—Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine

Now, in Eternity, Bear returns to the Earth of Eon and it’s clear that the first novel was a prequel to an even grander story. The crew of the asteroid-starship Thistledown has thwarted an attempt to sever the link to the Way, an endless corridor that spans universes. The asteroid had settled into orbit around Earth and discovered that the tunnel snaked away, forming a contained universe of its own. Forty years later, war breaks out to reopen The Way. And humankind is about to discover just how completely it has underestimated its ancient adversaries.

Eternity completes a trilogy that includes the prequel Legacy, and all three titles are now available for download at E-Reads as well more than a dozen other unforgettable works by the author rightfully described as the heir to the late Arthur C. Clarke’s mantle.

RC

We first meet him in Paris during the reign of Louis XV when he is, apparently, a wealthy, worldly, charismatic aristocrat, envied and desired by many but fully known to none. In fact, he is a vampire, born in the Carpathian Mountains in 2119 BC, turned in his late-thirties in 2080 BC and destined to roam the world forever, watching and participating in history and, through the author, giving us an amazing perspective on the time-tapestry of human civilization.

In Hotel Transylvania Saint-Germain makes his first appearance in a story that blends history and fiction as Saint-Germain is pitted against Satanists to preserve Madelaine de Montalia from ruin.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has been called “The Mother of Paranormal Romance.” Read her astute analysis of her archetypal protagonist in Saint-Germain and the Lives of Women.

One Amazon reviewer who gave it five stars writes, “For those interested in understanding one soldier’s view of the US Special Forces and covert special operations in the Vietnam era, I HIGHLY recommend Eagles Cry Blood. The author is well qualified. For 18 months, Donald Zlotnik served in combat as a highly-decorated officer in Vietnam in a Special Forces A-team and then in top secret ‘recon’ special operations…Buy and read Eagles Cry Blood. It’s a classic and more importantly a tribute to the bravest of the brave.”

Dan Simmons

John Kwok, a leading Amazon reviewer and blogger, has chosen Dan Simmons as one of “the best living American writers of science fiction.”

“Dan Simmons is a prolific award-winning writer of both excellent mainstream and science fiction and fantasy fiction. His ‘Hyperion Cantos’ (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion) raised the stakes with regards to writing literary space opera science fiction, drawing from sources as diverse as the poetry of John Keats and cyberpunk. A more recent literary space opera is his superb take on the Homeric epics, Iliad and Odyssey, set on a distant future Earth and Mars; Ilium and Olympos. One of my favorite novels of his is a most engrossing fictional account of the writer Ernest Hemingway indulging in spying on Nazis in Cuba during the early years of World War II, The Crook Factory [Mulholland Books reissue coming soon]. Dan Simmons’ latest novel is the near future dystopian thriller Flashback.”

E-Reads carries two masterpieces by Simmons, Phases of Gravity and Song of Kali.

Cassandra Beringer would never allow her daughter Cicely to repeat her mistake and marry a man twenty years her senior–even if he is the handsome Viscount Ingelsby, considered by her sister to be the catch of the season.

The memory of her own disastrous marriage to an older man still haunts her, despite being widowed for many years. However, fate and a wet marble staircase interrupt her plans to keep Jeremy Ingelsby away from her only child. How will she stop them when she can’t even remember her own name?

Elizabeth Mansfield fan?  Check her author page for more of her delightful novels.

On the outskirts of the Ayne Sector sits Pock’s World. Years ago, humankind settled the planet. Now, it might or might not have been infested by humanoid aliens, hidden amongst the populace, waiting to interbreed and use humans as incubators for their parasitic spawn.

Five people are chosen to travel to the quarantined Pock’s World to find out whether it should be sterilized of all life–a ruthless priest, a scandal-seeking reporter, an ambitious politician, a bureaucrat, and a questionable billionaire. Each has his or her own agenda as to what they wish to find on that distant planet. Instead, they discover the unexpected–a web of deceit, love, politics, and religion. With very little time left, there don’t seem to be any simple answers in the complicated universe of Pock’s World.

“Entertaining, fast-moving and thoughtful SF, with engaging characters.” – S. M. Stirling

You can purchase the e-book of Pock’s World here, or click here to buy the printed version published by Edge.

In the late fifties and sixties, Greenwich Village was the quirkiest, most charming, jazzy, eccentric and urban of environments, the center of all that was both quaint and “cool”: brownstones and beatniks, coffeehouses and college students, folksingers and freethinkers, poets and “prophets.” Into this fascinating mix of cultural archetypes came a young rabbi, Harvey M. Tattelbaum, who became known as the Village Rabbi of the Village Temple.

The spirit of Sholom Aleichem infuses his Tales of the Village Rabbi, a touching and laugh-out-loud funny memoir of his tenure at a small synagogue in the heart of Greenwich Village. Though his years in this magical place were productive and soul-filling, rabbinical training hadn’t exactly prepared him for the bikers, thieves, ex-cons, eccentric old ladies, drug-users, cleavage-baring brides and other Village denizens he encountered while serving the congregants of his spirited little temple.

Rabbi Tattelbaum shares his insider’s tales-both downtown and uptown-of wayward weddings (and funerals), contentious temple boards, irreverent interfaith shenanigans, heartaches and triumphs. But the Tales also reveal a deep personal struggle with some of the most profound philosophical problems of ancient and modern religion and are filled with a warm, humane and rational approach to spirituality and religious meaning.

RC

The fast-growing cult of the Nazarene is becoming a threat to the political stability in the region—and to the power of Rome as well. Many of the witnesses to the tale are long dead, the trail of evidence is chancy at best. Surviving witnesses lie to protect their own lives. Questor Varro pursues his mission with zeal and conviction, determined to produce a report that will demolish the claims of those he regards as religious fanatics and crackpots. Along the way, his investigation stirs religious passions, immerses him in unexpected intrigue and foments violence. He also finds himself attracted to a beautiful Jewish slave girl.

Varro completes his devastating report. It demolishes the myth fueling the new Christian movement. He is set to return to Rome when an extraordinary -  in fact miraculous – event changes everything…including Varro’s own deepest convictions.

In Inquest, a magnificently conceived and executed historical novel, Roman historian Stephen Dando-Collins creates a historical conceit worthy of the work worthy of comparison with The Da Vinci Code.

RC