Welcome to Welton, and other BVC offerings
If I’d been smart, I would have this ready to go a few months ago. But: “Welcome to Welton,” the prequel novella to Lies and Prophecy, is now available as a proper ebook from Book View Cafe. It’s free for the downloading, as either epub or mobi; you can also still read it on my site.
Other things have been coming out from BVC as well; I can only blame the madness of November for me being remiss in posting about the October releases. So here is two months’ worth, for your delectation:
Interloper at Glencoe, by Julianne Lee
Nick Moulin is a rational, thinking man, who one day acquires a fascinating old book that brings him a dream of a beautiful woman and an adventure of long ago.
Magna Bloody Carta, by Phyllis Irene Radford
Is the Magna Carta better than the US Constitution? Was it a power grab by English noblemen, or is it a rights-of-man declaration penned by Robin Hood? The answers may surprise you as author and historian Irene Radford picks apart the clauses and explains them in context to the history surrounding this amazing document. Magna Carta, a true turning point in the history of democracy.
Sequel to the WSFA Award finalist What Ho, Automaton!
Guy Fawkes is back, and this time it’s a toss up who’s going to be blown up first – Parliament or Reginald Worcester, gentleman consulting detective.
But Guy might not be the only regicide to have been dug up and reanimated. He might be a mere pawn in a plan of diabolical twistiness.
Only a detective with a rare brain – and Reggie’s is amongst the rarest – could possibly solve this ‘five-cocktail problem.’ With the aid of Reeves, his automaton valet, Emmeline, his suffragette fiancée, and Farquharson, a reconstituted dog with an issue with Anglicans, Reggie sets out to save both Queen Victoria and the Empire.
Two Stories: “Nahiku West” and “Nightside on Callisto”
Two science fiction stories by Nebula-award-winning author Linda Nagata:
In the nanotech-drenched future of “Nahiku West” anything is possible, but not everything is allowed. Police officer Zeke Choy is charged with enforcing molecular law–but his first task is to determine if a crime has taken place. “Nahiku West” is a Nanotech Succession story, set in the same world as the award-winning novel The Bohr Maker. (~9,000 words)
In “Nightside On Callisto” four aging explorers accept a hazardous mission to Jupiter’s airless moon, a place of unimaginable cold and lethal radiation—but Callisto proves less dangerous than the enemy they brought with them. (~6,400 words)
Music and Poetry of the Kesh, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Le Guin’s classic novel was originally published with a cassette tape, Music and Poetry of the Kesh, Music by Oregon Shakespeare Festival Resident Composer Todd Barton, words by Ursula K. Le Guin, who performs many of the selections.
Book View Café offers Music and Poetry of the Kesh as a zipfile containing 13 MP3s, plus an ebook in both MOBI/Kindle and EPUB form of the liner notes and lyrics.
Dispossession, by Chaz Brenchley
What would you do if you woke up in hospital and your last memory was dated January, but the calendar said April?
If they said you’d crashed a car, and you not only didn’t remember the crash, you didn’t remember the car either?
If you were a solicitor and rigidly honest, and the biggest bunch of flowers in your room came from the biggest crook in town?
If there were no flowers or visits from your girlfriend, but the total stranger at your bedside claimed to be your wife — and proved it?
If someone drove a blazing truck through the window in an obvious attempt to kill somebody, and very possibly you?
When all this happened to Jonty Marks, he ran for sanctuary. To the mountain garden of a fallen angel. Where else…?
Dead Man’s Hand, by Pati Nagle
Only one will leave the final table . . . alive.
Wild Bill Hickok awakens to the feel of flesh crawling onto his bones. Alive again, in the graveyard in Deadwood on a cold October night, he has an irresistible compulsion to go to Atlantic City.
There, in the mysterious and magical Black Queen casino, he joins a rogue’s gallery of resurrected scoundrels, all gamblers who were murdered like himself. Will the father of organized crime revert to his bad habits and attempt to take over the Queen? Will Wild Bill finally find out if those aces and eights are winners? Five murdered men sit down to a poker tournament for the highest possible stakes: the right to stay alive.
The Irish Duchess, by Patricia Rice
Neville Perceval, the bankrupt Duke of Anglesey, has been burdened since youth with more responsibility than one man should handle. He has finally accepted that he needs to marry a wealthy, gracious lady who will ease his burdens and smooth his political path.
Fiona MacDermot, the rebellious, untamed cousin of an Irish earl, has the freedom and independence Neville has never known. Like the duke, she needs cash to help starving villagers and orphans. Unfortunately, she’d rather earn a living than have anything to do with useless men, and the politicians she knows all belong at the wrong end of a rope.
But when the duke is nearly beaten to death, and Fiona’s looms are lost to a murdering thief, their lives are entangled in ways that threaten their futures. Lust shouldn’t factor into their destinies, but it does, and now they have to find their dreams together, or die trying.
Two linked stories by Vonda N. McIntyre: “Wings” and “The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn.” Alien people abandon their dying planet in a generation ship, but a few are left behind.
“Wings” was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Living in Threes, by Judith Tarr
Three lives. Three worlds. Three times. Three young women, past, present, and future, come together to solve an age-old mystery and save a world.
Meredith has the summer all planned. She’ll hang out with her friends, ride her horse, and spend time with her mom, who is recovering from cancer. Then her mom drops a bomb: she’s sending Meredith to Egypt to dig up mummies with her aunt the archaeologist. Meredith doesn’t want to go. At all. But there are more forces at work than a sixteenth-birthday present she doesn’t want and a summer she didn’t plan—and a greater adventure than she could ever have imagined.
Meru lives in a far-future Earth, where disease has been eliminated and humans travel through the stars in living ships. Meru and her friend Yoshi have been accepted into the school for starpilots, but just as they’re about to leave, a strange message from Meru’s mother drives Meru away from her home and family and sends her on a journey to find her mother and save the people of Earth from a terrible plague.
Meritre is a singer in the Temple of Amon in ancient Egypt. Her people have survived a devastating plague, but Meritre is foresighted, and what she sees is terrifying. As she tries to find a magical spell that will keep her family and friends safe, the gods take one last life—and that life, and death, resonate through Meredith and Meru to the end of time.
Dragon Virus, by Laura Anne Gilman
It began soon after the Millennium. Reports of newborns with strange malformations, too weak to live…caused by a single genetic mutation. Or, as the press quickly dubbed it, the Dragon Virus. Scientists predicted that it was an evolutionary dead end; that the mutation would burn itself out quickly; that it was nothing to be worried about.
They were wrong.
Every racial type. Almost every continent. No known cause. Human-created, maybe. Or just God, throwing the dice. Infecting us, warping us. Tied into our genetic code, from here on in. No known treatment. No idea where even to begin.
Everything was about to change.
Scandalous, by Patricia Burroughs
Why live in the boring present when you have a century’s worth of vintage couture to live up to? Why be ordinary with centuries of Vandermeir scandals to shape your destiny?
Paisley Vandermeir was born on a hippie commune in the 60s, transplanted to high society Manhattan in the 70s and mentored by her wild Aunt Izzy, whose Roaring 20s exploits still tarnish the family name. Paisley is the very definition of “Vandermeir scandal.” It’s simply a matter of what and when. Following in the steps of her forbears, she intends to create her own scandal, then walk away from family and Society and find her own future.
Enter Christopher Quincy Maitland, the blond and gorgeous Rock of Gibraltar who carries the weight of his family’s fortune on his shoulders–safe, dependable, scandal proof. Or is he?
When irresistible force meets immovable object, what happens next is SCANDALOUS.
