Adventure Fantasy Humor

This is a collection of six short stories from the Caverns and Creatures series. It includes the following stories: "Slimes and Misty Wieners", "Great Balls on Fire", "Your Anus Is a Gas Giant", "Clear and Present Ranger", "The Mimic's Chest", and "Styxian Stoners May Break My Boners".

They’re here. They’ve arrived. And they’re all eyes. The Voltarian scouting party - illegal aliens extraordinaire - on a top-secret expedition led by one Jettero Heller, Royal Officer of the Fleet. His mission: rescue the planet from pollution - and make it safe for the upcoming invasion. His problem: The planet may not want to be saved - and the invasion may just be a trick.

Captain Willard Phule is the only officer in the Space Legion with his own butler, but Beeker has stuck with him through thick and thin. Which is why Phule simply can't comprehend why his butler would run off-planet without a word - and take with him Omega Company's lovely new medic....

Best-selling author Jasper Fforde begins an effervescent new series. It's Easter in Reading - a bad time for eggs - and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town.

Hank is fairly happy that his uncle was murdered. The man had been nothing but a source of endless sorrow and hardships since they first met. Nevertheless, Hank is forced to investigate the killing and comes to realize it is connected to a much larger collection of miseries than even his uncle could manage. This episode marks a huge shift for Hank as he ventures into unknown regions of the cosmos and is confronted with the harsh truths of his reality.

Four set out, one is dead, another is barely holding it together. Still, in the face of tragedy, to save the modern world, Alexander Grant is more determined than ever to stop Elam Khai, Peter Kroll, and anyone else who stands in his way. Having lived over 1500 years, our teenage hero knows a bit about history. But as much as he’s trained, seen, and experienced, nothing has prepared him for what he’s about to face.

Sick of the stress, aggravation, and multiple genocides they've had to put up with lately, accidental space hero Cal Carver and his crew set off to start a new life in a distant corner of the galaxy. Six tedious days of warp-speed and board games later, they arrive in a sector filled with new hope, new opportunities, and new adventures. Too broke to take advantage of any of these things, they are forced to accept a series of increasingly demeaning jobs just to make ends meet.

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally.

Never meddle with unidentified spying objects...The year is: The Future. Mars and Earth are like that divorced couple who don’t exactly like each other but have at least stopped fighting in public. Floating somewhere in between them, amid all the garbage and Gene Roddenberry’s ashes, a transport vessel called the SS Jefferson is homeward bound. Its crew might have even made it on time for once, too...

After saving the grim and gritty alien city of Down Here from something big, mean, and mind-bendingly horrible, Dan is looking forward to unwinding in the closest available bar. Annoyingly, the universe has other ideas. Instead, Dan finds himself investigating a cheating husband, two horrible murders, and the potential enslavement of everyone in the galaxy. With his caseload stretching his woefully limited detective skills, his car in pieces, and the whole "being dead" thing not doing him any favors, Dan has no choice but to ask his friends for help.

He's big, burly, and way smarter than your average shapeshifting bear. He's also about to get trapped by his own game...Lou Crushek is a reasonable, mellow, easygoing kind of guy. But when someone starts killing the scumbags he works so hard to bust, that really gets under his fur. Especially when that someone is a curvy she-tiger with a skill set that's turning Crush's lone-bear world upside down - and bringing his passion out of hibernation.

There's a war brewing between high-level factions, a conflict Eve finds herself caught in the middle of. Soon enough, this secret plot, this life quest, this entire broken trilogy will come hurtling to an end. Perhaps, with any luck, there will be a loaf of bread waiting on the other side. Or maybe the real loaf of bread was the friends we made along the way. Those friends that made it through, that is.

The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

As time runs down for the players trapped by the evil Lich-Lord in the hyper-realistic MMORPG Fantasy Realms Online, Kromgorn the Barbarian is still stuck playing as the gorgeous, pleasure-fueled Lacey the Courtesan, a character designed to level fastest when she’s getting busy with every NPC in sight. The action is hot, the stakes are high, and Lacey will need to pull out every skill she can muster if she wants to win the day.

Rafe and Jimmy, two misunderstood "troublemakers", are finally up to something good. They're in charge of a huge celebration of books and reading - but when a small issue snowballs into a big problem that threatens to derail the whole event, they need to work fast to keep things on track! And the best part? Rafe and Jimmy are joined by the funniest storytellers they know, including Jamie Grimm from I Funny, Jacky Ha-Ha, the Kidd family of Treasure Hunters, and super-genius Max Einstein - everyone's favorite characters from James Patterson's best-selling series for kids!

Max's coworkers treat him like hot garbage, and his manager is a superficial dolt. Unfortunately for him, his fate was sealed before he was even born and it's way worse than working part-time in a coffee shop. Confronted out of the blue by a floating demonic eye, Max doesn't take it seriously, because who would? So when the flesh is ripped from his bones and he's hurled, screaming, into a fantastic and terrifying new world, he's a little surprised. When he learns his task is to free the daughter of the god of death who's been chained and tortured for centuries, he is stunned.

The stakes have never been higher . . . Damned by Genevieve Cogman is the final book in the Scarlet Revolution series, a spellbinding adventure of magic, vampires and mayhem. 1794. Eleanor, once a lowly English maid, is now a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel and a promising conjuror...

Cade Clarke spends his last night on Earth drinking with an old army buddy. When he decides to risk his life to defend a gorgeous bartender, he pays the ultimate price. Resurrected to Antinium, Cade finds himself thrown into a world where the very rules of reality have shifted. He chooses a unique class, customizes his soul weapon, and levels up to unlock vital skills, traits and attributes points in order to survive. Cade’s chances for success are minimal, until he finds his destiny intertwined with a group of sexy women.

The struggle to get into a top-tier college consumes 16-year-old Genie's every waking thought. But when she discovers she's a celestial spirit who's powerful enough to bash through the gates of heaven with her fists, her perfectionist existence is shattered. Enter Quentin, a transfer student from China whose tone-deaf assertiveness beguiles Genie to the brink of madness. Quentin nurtures Genie's bodacious transformation - sometimes gently, sometimes aggressively - as her sleepy suburb in the Bay Area comes under siege from hell spawn.

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen wakes up and starts hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumes he’s losing it. He isn’t. As of last night, he has a passenger in his brain - an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Over the millennia his people have trained human heroes to be great leaders, to advance our species at a rate far beyond what it would have achieved on its own. Split into two opposing factions - the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix - the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries.