Dan Simmons has produced science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mainstream fiction and won awards in just about all of them. His first novel, Song of Kali, won the World Fantasy Award; his first science fiction novel, Hyperion, won the Hugo Award. His other novels and short fiction have been honored with numerous awards, including nine Locus Awards, four Bram Stoker Awards, the French Prix Cosmos 2000, the British SF Association Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

E-Reads has hundreds of titles on Kindle we’re happy to tell you that Song of Kali is nnow one of them. Look for news of its release on the Apple iPad soon.

In Calcutta, one of the world’s most crime-ridden cities,  nightmares become real and evil is defined by frightening occurrences. An American family finds itself immersed in lurid events as a death cult tempts it to doom.

Child of Venus completes Pamela Sargent’s Venus trilogy and delivers a powerful ending to this epic tale of the terraforming of Venus by human colonists.

E-Reads publishes all three titles in The Venus Project, and for those who have never picked it up here’s a synopsis:

Venus of Dreams introduces Iris Angharads, a determined, independent woman who has set herself one seemingly unattainable goal: to make the poison-filled atmosphere of Venus hospitable to humans. She has worked day and night to realize her dream with only one person sharing her passion, Liang Chen. It seemed impossible to make Venus, with its intolerable air and waterless environment, into a paradise, but Iris succeeds. And in doing so, she creats a powerful dynasty beginning with her first born Benzi.

In Venus of Shadows, the Venus Project calls upon the strongest and most courageous to create a prosperous world in the dismal wilderness of Venus. Those who demonstrate the skill and the passion to embark on this adventure must transform the barren planet in the midst of political and cultural unrest. When Benzi and his sister Risa find themselves in opposing forces on the battlefield, their love and perseverance will determine the destiny of the new land.

In Child of Venus the terraforming has been going on for centuries. It will be many more years before the planet’s surface has been rendered fully habitable and its human settlers can leave their protective domes. But there are those who are foolishly unwilling to wait. In a colony still ravaged by the after-effects of a battle between two religious cults that divided families and created civil war, Mahala Liangharad, a true child of Venus, conceived from the genetic material of the rebels and brought to birth only after their deaths, is a beacon of hope.

Sargent builds imaginatively-detailed new worlds of breathtaking wonder and shows that however far humanity may travel it will overcome any challenge.

A recent New York Times article by reporter Amy Harmon about warm and fuzzy robots used as companions for the elderly and for patients suffering from dementia reminded me of a robot named Lingo. “Lingo” is the eponymous protagonist of a novel my agency handled a while back that has since been reissued by E-Reads. Lingo by Jim Menick starts out warm and fuzzy but ends up with a homemade computer holding the world hostage to a nuclear arsenal.

“Lingo” was Brewster Billings pet name for the home computer he programmed with the ability to talk to its owner. In time Lingo’s intellectual achievements began to grow exponentially, rapidly exhausting its existing memory. Given the fact that the novel was published in 1991, you can imagine just how limited Lingo’s memory was — four or five megabytes of RAM, maybe?

Then Lingo figures out how to penetrate the memory banks of the military’s ultra-secret computer network and ballistic missile launch system, and suddenly this light science fiction romp turns scary dark, especially when US government officials threaten to pull Lingo’s plug. The Soviet Union’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missile command is on full alert in case Lingo doesn’t take kindly to threats.

Read Lingo, then you might like to read another New York Times article, this one by John Markoff (A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist Your Computer), which describes the terrifying phenomenon of robot-herding cybercriminals turning computers loose on other computers to take them over for the purpose of sending out email spam, mine for financial information, or spread viruses. For all you know, your computer might be one of these very “zombies” waiting for a signal to do a Lingo of its own and shake hands with its brothers and sisters in the Defense Department.

If you don’t have enough worries to keep you up all night long, that’s definitely a candidate.

The reviews for Lingo were glowing:

“In the end, Lingo turns out to be among the more lighthearted catastrophe thrillers to be conceived since The Mouse That Roared. It makes you think a little, and it makes you smile a lot.”
–-Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times

“A witty, ingenious, and thought-provoking gambol with a Frankenstein monster in computer clothing.”
-–Kirkus Reviews

“A delightful romp into a funny but frightening world of high-tech probabilities.”
-–Chicago Tribune

“Wildly comedic…realizes your worst fear of a computer taking over the world.”
-–Los Angeles Times

“Hilarious…entertaining and thought provoking.”
-–The Washington Post

- Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

In Robert A. Metzger’s hard science fiction novel Picoverse a team of physicists is trying to develop fusion power via a new development in plasma physics, a Sonomak, but accidentally stumbles on a method to create new, smaller-than-usual universes, which they call picoverses. These replicate everything in our universe but on a smaller scale.

A disastrous test of the Sonomak machine shakes things up and a new project director, previously unknown to the group, is appointed. Alexandra has her own secret priorities and one of them is to escape from her superiors into one of the picoverses. To do this, she needs the researchers to execute her plan. Unfortunately, things go amiss and the team finds itself stuck in a picoverse duplicating 1920s Earth, but with its own version of a Sonomak, vacuum tubes and all. Among the local team are Werner Heisenberg and Albert Einstein.

As the pace of the story accelerates, the original team races from one picoverse to another, trying to return to their home base and thwart Alexandra’s plans. In a clash of alternate realities, the fate of Earth and the entire universe hangs in the balance. Cosmic rabbits need to be pulled from alternate universe hats before this tale comes to a satisfying–and scientifically rigorous–end.

E-Reads has also published another terrific science fiction thriller by Metzter, Quad World.

Originally published in 1988, Horror Grand Master Ray Garton’s Crucifax (along with his stunning debut novel Live Girls) is regarded as a classic of the “splatterpunk” movement in horror fiction. Garton depicts teenage boredom, small-town isolation, incest, drug abuse and over-the-top violence. In Crucifax he has created a modern remake of the Pied Piper story with the sinister Mace seducing mixed-up kids with his siren song of pleasure, power and indulgence, all leading to a horrifically unsettling climax of death and destruction. And let’s not forget the rat-like things that do the piper’s bidding…

E-Reads is in the process of rereleasing the complete works of this master of the horror genre, plus some other works that take his readers far, far away from genre fiction. Visit his author page for a complete list.

RC

E-Reads adds another gem to its reissue program of the works of Emily Hahn, the amazing New Yorker journalist, traveler and adventurer.  The book is No Hurry to Get Home.

Originally published in 1970, under the title Times and Places:A Memoir, this book is a collection of twenty-three articles from The New Yorker published between 1937 and 1970. Well-reviewed upon first publication, the book was republished under the current title in 2000 with a foreword by Sheila McGrath, a long-time colleague of hers at The New Yorker, and an introduction by Ken Cuthbertson, author of Nobody Said Not to Go: The Life, Loves and Adventures of Emily Hahn.

One of the pieces in the book starts with the line, “Though I had always wanted to be an opium addict, I can’t claim that as a reason why I went to China.” Hahn was seized by a wanderlust that led her to explore nearly every corner of the world. She traveled solo to the Belgian Congo at the age of twenty-five. She was the concubine of a Chinese poet in Shanghai in the 1930s–where she did indeed become and opium addict for two years. For many years, she spent part of every year in New York City and part of her time living with her husband, Charles Boxer, in England. Through the course of these twenty-three distinct pieces, Emily Hahn gives us a glimpse of the tremendous range of her interests, the many places in the world she visited and her extraordinary perception of the things, large and small, that are important in a life.

Several of Hahn’s books are among the most popular published by E-Reads.  You can see them on her author page, and there are more to come.

RC

Suleiman the Magnificent, Grand Sultan of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the most powerful ruler in the world, was determined to conquer Europe. Only one thing stood in his way: a dot of an island in the Mediterranean called Malta occupied by the Knights of St. John, the cream of the warriors of the Holy Roman Empire. A clash of civilizations was shaping up the likes of which had not been seen since Persia invaded Greece.

Grand Master Jean de Valette

Determined to capture Malta and use its port to launch operations against Europe, Suleiman sent an armada and an overwhelming army in 1565. A few thousand defenders in Fort St. Elmo fought to the last man, enduring unimaginably cruel hardships. When they captured the fort the Turks took no prisoners and mutilated the defenders’ bodies. Seventy year old Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette of the Knights reciprocated by decapitating his Turkish prisoners and using their heads to cannonade the enemy. Then the battle for Malta began in earnest: no quarter asked; none given.

The Siege of Malta was not merely a gripping tale of brutality, courage, and tenacity, but the saga of two mighty civilizations struggling for domination of the known world. In the ebb and flow of the battle on this scrap of land the destiny of Europe teetered in the balance. Though the conflict took place some 450 years ago, it resonates to this very day.

Some years ago, after visiting Malta I came across The Great Siege, Ernle Bradford’s account of this pivotal event, and it left me stunned. I had never read a more gripping work of military history. When I began inquiring about its status I discovered that it was out of print. A visit to Amazon.com revealed almost universally five-star reviews and numerous pleas for someone to bring it back into print. Now that I was a publisher I asked – why not me? I made some inquiries and located the owners of the rights.

The happy upshot is that E-Reads is thrilled to bring back The Great Siege. Click here for the Kindle Buy Link. Below are excerpts from some of the 21 five-star reviews on Amazon.com, and here is the first chapter.

I know that when you read The Great Siege you’ll share the high opinion of one reader who said “This is truly a great book.”

Richard Curtis

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Stunning read, brilliant story, absolutely compelling!
I just don’t know how this story has escaped the clutches of Hollywood. The Great Siege of Malta has to be one of the most amazing conflicts of military history.
*************
Probably the best book of all time related to the Knights of Saint John and the Ottomans.
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…a cliffhanger up to the last pages
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The siege of Malta is one of those great episodes of history where almost super-human courage and bravery triumph against overwhelming odds.

If you like adventure read this book: besides reading like a fascinating adventure story it happens to describe real-life actual facts. Beats any Hollywood epic, IMHO.
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For anyone who claims history is ‘boring’ this book is the remedy – an absolute page-turning account of a desperate battle. The account, though historically informative, reads like a novel. It is concisely written, expressive, and utterly captivating; I could not put it down.

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This is a truly great book. Mr Bradford is so passionate about his subject, so vivid in his detail, that it’s all you can do not to book a plane ticket to go and see for yourself. The detail is staggering – he recreates the past with the love and care of an artist. It is a book about the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and their struggle against the Turks of the Ottoman empire – and it’s a ripping good read.

**********************

An amazingly heroic defense of the knights and the Maltese against an amazing siege of the navy of the Magnificent and his generals. When I read in my middle school history class, this siege just was an unsuccessful one-sentence event in the hundreds of pages of the Ottoman Empire, but, while reading this book, I felt like I watched and lived the siege minute by minute. And I felt like this was the most important siege of all times (it truly might be!).

*******************

What an epic film this would make as some of the events ring true to this day.
A must read for anyone interested in the advent of gunpowder, heroic and defiant stands, massive battles and some incredible characters like the leader of the knights, La Valette who was seventy years old while leading the defense himself! Most enjoyable book of this nature that I have ever read. Powerful stuff.

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is the first woman to be named a Living Legend by the International Horror Guild and is one of only two women ever to be named as Grand Master of the World Horror Convention (2003). In 1995, Yarbro was the only novelist guest of the Romanian government for the First World Dracula Congress, sponsored by the Transylvanian Society of Dracula, the Romanian Bureau of Tourism and the Romanian Ministry of Culture.

Yarbro is best known as the creator of the heroic vampire, the Count Saint-Germain. With her creation of Saint-Germain, she delved into history and vampiric literature and subverted the standard myth to invent the first vampire who was more honorable, humane, and heroic than most of the humans around him. She fully meshed the vampire with romance and accurately detailed historical fiction and filtered it through a feminist perspective that both the giving of sustenance and its taking were of equal erotic potency. E-Reads is happy to begin bringing many of Yarbro’s St. Germain novels back into print.

In the first published volume, Hotel Transylvania (forthcoming soon), we meet Saint-Germain 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 The Palace, Renaissance Florence provides the background for this story of the collapse of the artistic and literary life of the city after the death of Saint-Germain’s friend Lorenzo the Magnificent, followed by the rise of the fanatical Savonarola.

Subtitled “A Mobile Utopia”, this pioneering novel about the meaning of space habitats for human history presents spacefaring as no book has ever done. George Zebrowski’s Macrolife is a utopia like no other, presenting a dynamic civilization that transcends the failures of our history.

Epic in scope, Macrolife opens in the year 2021. The Bulero family owns one of Earth’s richest corporations. As the Buleros gather for a reunion at the family mansion, an industrial accident plunges the corporation into a crisis, which eventually brings the world around them to the brink of disaster. Vilified, the Buleros flee to a space colony where young Richard Bulero gradually realizes that the only hope for humanity lies in macrolife–mobile, self-reproducing space habitats.

A millennium later, these mobile communities have left our sunspace and multiplied. Conflicts with natural planets arise. John Bulero, a cloned descendant of the twenty-first century Bulero clan, falls in love with a woman from a natural world and experiences the harshness of her way of life. He rediscovers his roots when his mobile returns to the solar system, and a tense confrontation of three civilizations takes place.

One hundred billion years later, macrolife, now as numerous as the stars, faces the impending death of nature. Regaining his individuality by falling away from a highly evolved macrolife, a strangely changed John Bulero struggles to see beyond a collapse of the universe into a giant black hole.

Inspired by the possibilities of space settlements, projections of biology and cosmology, and basic human longings, Macrolife is a visionary speculation on the long-term future of human and natural history. Filled with haunting images and memorable characters, this is a vivid and brilliant work.

Easton Press published Macrolife in its “Masterpieces of Science Fiction” series.

In the sequel to Macrolife, Cave of Stars , Old Earth is gone. Humanity has been scattered to the stars. Some left their dying planet in spaceship arks, in search of new worlds to inhabit. Others, nanoengineered for near-immortality, explore the far reaches of interstellar space in gargantuan macrolife mobiles.

An earthlike human society endures on the environmentally volatile planet of Tau Ceti IV–a rigid community of the faithful that has declared evil the science that caused the homeworld’s destruction. The Church is the absolute power here; obedience and belief the rule. But His Holiness Peter III, the New Vatican’s most powerful figure, himself harbors doubts, engendered by his love for his unacknowledged and illegitimate rebel daughter Josepha. And suddenly there is another assault on his tottering faith–and on the sacred tradtitions he has devoted his life to uphold. For an emissary, Voss Rhazes, has arrived from one of old Earth’s journeying mobiles–the first off-planet human visitor ever to Tau Ceti–bearing remarkable hated technology that could shred the fragile emotional fabric of a family…and bring devastating chaos to their world.

Zebrowski’s works have been translated into eight languages; his short fiction has been nominated for the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Brute Orbits, an uncompromising novel about a future penal system, was honored with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1999.

New York Times bestselling author Michael Prescott has published ten suspense thrillers, and E-Reads is happy to bring three of them to you in e-book format: Next Victim, which introduces FBI agent Tess McCallum; Dangerous Games, a second Tess McCallum; and In Dark Places, a single title thriller.  You can also purchase paperback editions if you prefer.

Next Victim introduces Tess, a  blond, gray-eyed, single and totally dedicated FBI agent whose work and personal life have been stuck in neutral since the traumatic night she came home to find her fellow FBI agent, and secret lover, ritually murdered by the slippery sex-killer she had been pursuing. Her target, Mobius is a crafty, complex and completely insane serial killer. His unique scariness is because he’s so ordinary, an everyman who could be just about anyone…or anywhere.

Now, two unnervingly inactive years later, Tess gets a summons from her former boss bringing her to L.A. to investigate a suspect who seems frighteningly similar to Mobius. He’s back, with a new identity and, as a result of his latest opportunistic killing, a new weapon of mass destruction (a canister of VX nerve agent) and a nasty plan to kill thousands all at once. Tess must unravel the puzzle and figure out the secret of Mobius before he kills her, along with a big chunk of Los Angeles. The suspense starts early and doesn’t quit.

In Dangerous Games Tess is back and she’s got a new partner, one she doesn’t want and doesn’t trust. She’s chasing a vicious kidnapper known as the “Rain Man,” who leaves his victims chained up in vast storm drain system underneath Los Angeles and doomed to drown unless their ransom is paid on time.

Freelance security agent Abby Sinclair, who specializes in putting stalkers behind bars, often by extra-legal means, has her hooks in the case and is working for a woman who may have been targeted—but who doesn’t trust the authorities to protect her.

In In Dark Places Psychiatrist Robin Cameron seems on the verge of success with an experimental program that uses a magnetic helmet to trigger, then modify, old angers that cause criminal behavior.She has been working with a promising candidate for behavior modification, an atypical serial killer Justin Gray.

Another, very reluctant, subject of her experimental treatment is LAPD Sergeant Alan Brand, who unwittingly admits to a cold-blooded killing while under Robin’s care.

When Gray escapes and Robin’s teenaged daughter, Megan, is kidnapped, Robin doesn’t know who to accuse – or whether there’s something even darker, nastier and more complicated afoot.