Small and Independent Press Highlights

From Rambo-creator David Morrell, the father of the modern action novel, comes a gripping global thriller that explores the meaning of friendship and the naked edge between love and hate. 

He calls himself Cavanaugh. No first name, and even “Cavanaugh” isn’t his actual last name. He’s a protector. If you refer to him as a bodyguard, which he regards as a synonym for a thug, you won’t like his reaction. His hatred of bullies compelled him to enlist in Special Forces, where he was accepted into Delta Force. Now as a civilian, he runs Global Protective Services, the world’s best security company. His goal? To defend the helpless, to keep predators from their prey.

Once Cavanaugh had a boyhood best friend. They played in the woods near their homes, pretending to be soldiers surviving behind enemy lines.  Grownup, they belonged to Delta Force and later worked as protectors for the world’s best security company.

Now their lives have taken drastically different paths, pitting them against each other, forcing them to play their boyhood game again, this time to learn who dies.

The survival of a great city hangs in the balance as two friends-turned-enemies hunt each other and discover that there’s a line between predators and prey, a line that’s called The Naked Edge.

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night's sleep can get you killed. Here, then, is a book from that place.Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who've walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of the power of dream with them to fight back the night - always at a terrible cost. For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes - or at least find their way back home. For you, a choice. Turn away. Don't read this book. And maybe you'll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you've ever dared to imagine! Don't Read This Book introduces 13 forbidden tales from the Mad City and the world of the Don't Rest Your Head RPG.

EARTH 2717: THE 3RD GOLDEN AGE

Building a better tomorrow today...

The planet we call home slowly dies beneath us.

Most humans now live in teeming surface "Terrarium Cities," off world colonies or orbiting space stations. All of earth's resources have been depleted.

All corporations, nations and technologies have merged into THE CONGLOMERATE, whose Enforcer Battalions now conquer whole planets to feed its shareholders' insatiable appetites.

THE CONGLOMERATE, which began with the spirit of the best mankind had to offer, saved humanity from itself by taking us to the stars and has become the most ruthless profit machine to ever exist.

Never use a robot when a human will do...

Dishonorably discharged from the Conglomerate's elite Enforcer Corps, Jon is doing a job too lowly for a robot. He leaps at the chance to go on a peaceful, first contact mission to an untainted world. Playing armed babysitter to Samantha, the daughter of a powerful Conglomerate executive, shouldn't be too hard.

What could go wrong?

Everything...

For Jon, it's a relief to get away - on an easy assignment protecting a couple of do-gooders visiting a peaceful new planet. For Samantha, it's a mission to change the world. For Jasson, it's a chance to put his theories to the test.

Being marooned on Anomaly where technology doesn't work, the terrain is lethal and the creatures even more so, Jon quickly learns he's not the man he once was. Dark secrets surround the various species that call this world home. Jon's actions here have the potential to ripple across the void of space, and touch everything in it... Maybe even the Conglomerate...

But when Anomaly sprouts synthetics-eating viruses, flesh-eating mutants and deadly magic, it becomes a race against which form of death will come first. Who will survive? Who will return?Join us on an adventure that reclaims our humanity and saves a world
Bonus: includes Anomaly UAR that integrates the print and virtual experience like never before and the Anomaly app, featuring the entire book with incredibly rich interactivity.

"This is a hell of a collection. Twenty-five hard-boiled gems, with each story wilder than the next."--Dave Zeltserman, bestselling author of "Small Crimes" "Immensely enjoyable. Will be welcomed by anyone interested in the development of American noir, and indeed people who just like a gripping crime story."--Lee Horsley, author of "The Noir Thriller" "Brewer marinated crime and lust together in the humid Florida heat to produce stories of sexual hunger, obsession, and predation. David Rachels has done us a service by collecting Brewer's neglected short fiction. His introduction traces Brewer's life and art with style and insight, and the stories continue to delight."--Leonard Cassuto, author of "Hard-Boiled Sentimentality: The Secret History of American Crime Stories "[designer: if necessary for length, this blurb can be cut] "Gil Brewer's short stories, like his novels, are visceral, exciting, and sometimes very bleak, indeed. He takes familiar elements and turns them into tales that are both brutal and shocking."--Bill Crider, author of "The Wild Hog Murders" Gil Brewer (1922-1983) built his reputation on the gritty foundations laid by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and James M. Cain. His everyday characters were often underdogs, frequently downtrodden, and desperate to get ahead in life, yet all too often they succumbed to their own weaknesses and desires.Taking advantage of the explosive growth of pulp magazines and novels, Brewer wrote prolifically, in genres ranging from mystery to pornography, under a number of pseudonyms. But after publishing more than 100 short stories and 50 novels, including "A Taste for Sin, Satan Is a Woman, "and "13 French Street"--which sold more than a million copies but was deemed "unfilmable" because of its sexual content--Brewer hit a wall. As though possessed by one of his characters, he faded into an alcoholic and financial slump, dying alone in St. Petersburg.Although many of his novels have been reissued, this is the first collection of his stories to be made available. It will grab you by the throat and won't let go. David Rachels, professor of English at Virginia Military Institute, has edited three volumes, most recently "Mark Twain's Civil War."""

Derrick Payton has finally been promoted to store manager, but when he learns he has one week to improve sales or face having the store shut down permanent he wonders what he’s walked into. In addition to the pressure of making sales he has to deal with employees who think coming to work on time is optional, a wife pushing for him to get a raise, and customers about to push him over the edge. Derrick can’t help but to wonder….Who says the customer is always right?

he year is 2068, the place is near earth orbit, an environment so hostile to human life that every day is a constant reminder that the only thing keeping you from a painful, horrifying death is the thin metal and technological systems that surround you. For Drusilla Xao and her contemporaries…this is home. Dru and her fellows are not your average teenagers. They were raised and taught by AIs and a cycle of off-watch adults, their parents sometimes weeks or months away. Through it all, Dru kept herself sane in the classic way: Video games, browsing the Lag-Net (so called because it connects stations in orbit to Earth born cities…and because light-speed limitations make it extremely laggy) and pining over her Earth-born girlfriend, Sarah.

And then, in one instant, the orderly life that they had known was shattered. A terrorist attack on an unfinished space elevator causes a cascade of debris impacts, which destroy station after station, killing thousands and sparking a war between the distant Earth and their rebellious Lunar colony. Dru’s parents are killed and her hopes for one day visiting Earth are dashed, as the cloud of debris that choke the Earth’s orbit prevents travel to and from the surface. Now, the only chance for the war to be won is to create an army with what is left in orbit…and while all the adults have vital life sustaining jobs to accomplish, Dru and her contemporaries haven’t qualified for a single one.

Now, their lives are all too familiar to those who live on Earth. Their lives are the lives of the millions of men and women throughout history who have joined the military: Long periods of boredom followed by infinitesimal moments of absolute terror. But for Dru, the horror of war has given her the chance to make a difference.

If she can survive.

Signed copies available while supplies last.

Nearly a thousand years have passed since God created the first mortal. During that time, the angels of the heavens are forced to battle the jinn-embittered and angry over the creation of the humans. But resentment and fury dwelled in other hearts as well. Lucifer, the first angel of creation and leader of all angels, harbors a growing hatred for the mortals, who he feels usurp his place in God's affection and regard. His soul has been divided over the centuries as bitterness slowly overwhelms him, until his rage explodes causing a rift-not only among the angels, but all the creatures of the universe. God calls upon Azrael, the angel who overcame the trials of Mother Earth to help Him make the humans, to reveal many secrets to a mortal named Enoch. Their perilous journey thrusts them into the center of the brutal conflict sweeping the heavens and aeirliel as Lucifer turns brother against brother in his quest for power and a new order.

It all begins in the closet. Paris Jablonski, wife, mother, social worker, and aspiring writer, is celebrating her seventh wedding anniversary when she uncovers a secret letter about her sexy French husband—and his girlfriend. The letter is in French, nearly incomprehensible, and so is the betrayal. How could she, an experienced mental health professional, have so misread her own life? After traveling to France to confront her husband, Paris returns to face wildfires, evacuations, and a new job with recovering addicts. And she finds herself attracted to the most unlikely candidate: a recovering alcoholic who also happens to be a client. In this heart-tugging story of love, loss and renewal, Paris Jablonski is a heroine whose street savvy must learn to take back seat to a wiser heart.

Presenting the posthuman future in its wildest science-fictional imaginings and intriguing speculations, this far-reaching anthology of fiction and nonfiction traces the path of the Singularity, an era when advances in technology totally transform human reality. The featured stories and essays travel from the alien far-future of H. G. Wells and the almost-human, near future of Ray Kurzweil to Elizabeth Bear’s fusion of woman, machine, God, and shark and Isaac Asimov’s evolution of ineffable logic. Daring to peek over the edge of the event horizon as intelligence both figuratively and literally explodes, this collection also includes pieces by Nick Bostrom, Cory Doctorow, Robert Reed, Justina Robson, Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, and more.