Dramatized Adaptation Science Fiction

Marshal Vladmir Karamatsov is dead, the victim of the fierce undersea battle for Mid-Wake. But with his arch enemy gone, John Thomas Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer and survival authority, discovers a terrifying new threat looming on the eastern horizon. On an expedition to secure peaceful relations with the Far East, Rourke's son Michael and his ambassadors are imprisoned by the mysterious leader of the Second City of China — a sadistic madman intent on unleashing another nuclear holocaust on an already war-ravaged world.

Thanks to the mindspeech lessons she’s receiving from the black dragon, Lily is temporarily benched from Unit Twelve - until her brain acclimates and the risk of total burnout passes. At least she has her new husband, lupi Rule Turner, to keep her occupied. But when her mentor calls in a favor and sends Lily to a murder scene, she’s suddenly back on active status - despite the hallucinations she can’t keep at bay. With one touch, Lily knows the man was killed by magic, but her senses don’t warn her how far the conspiracy goes....

In an effort to rule 21st century Earth, Vladmir Karamatsov and his followers used the nuclear option, nearly destroying Earth. Five centuries later, Karamatov's successors battle to use the same weapons and newer "ultimate" weapons in pursuit of 25th Century world "peace." From Pacific islands to the frozen foothills of the Himalaya's, John Rourke, The Survivalist, and his allies fight delusion and raw ambition to save the fragile planet from men and women bent on proving the American philosopher George Santayana right, "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it."

When a mat-trans malfunction strands Ryan Cawdor and his friends in a gutted redoubt in the West Indies, the crystal waters offer them a tantalizing glimpse of untouched splendor. But the oasis is abruptly shattered by violent and ruthless pirates, and Ryan has to barter with a young guide, a teenage boy on a blood quest against a sadistic local warlord, to navigate a land teeming with predators-mutie, human and animal. The race is on to find a second redoubt, buried deep in the inhospitable heart of Monster Island.

Five centuries after nuclear war laid waste to the land, the future of humankind may rest with the fishes. John Rourke, Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna and a band of Marines battle tyranny beneath the sea to defend liberty and justice under the stars.

Freedom is on the march as the rebellion against the Kurian Occupation of Earth takes the offensive. David Valentine has recruited an ad hoc company of former Quisling soldiers and puts them through a trial by fire with a successful raid against an enemy armory. Now, they're ready to join forces with a guerilla army planning to establish a new freehold in the Appalachian Mountains. Valentine knows that a permanent outpost near the East Coast would provide a strategic victory over the Kurians - and he believes that only his old ally Ahn-Kha could be leading the guerillas.

John Rourke knows that there are six people left on Earth - his loved ones. After five centuries of sleep, they wake to discover a world unlike the one they knew...and they are not alone. New and old enemies live to kill and kill to live. It could be the ultimate test of Rourke's skills as The Survivalist.

Hands bleeding, joints aching, John Rourke watches the remaining space shuttles of the Eden Project fleet land. But what kind of world have they returned to? A Soviet madman bent on world domination, a Nazi resurrection, and one of the Eden crew murdered within the first day of the fleet’s return. John Rourke, The Survivalist, must serve as judge, jury, and executioner in the pursuit of justice and the defense of freedom in The Survivalist 12: The Rebellion.

Faced with the looming threat of the Russian pack, Silver and Andrew Dare plan to host an envoy at their wedding. The Russian alpha rejects diplomacy, however, and instead sends Mikhail, an elite assassin. Mikhail begins to ritually murder sub-alphas, leaving them to bleed to death from a thousand shallow cuts. The Roanokes’ only leverage is Mikhail’s reverence for the Lady: He thinks She is reborn in Silver. Playing the Lady goes against all of Silver's beliefs, but she yields to Mikhail’s invitation for her to join him in Russia.

The brutality of post-nuclear America has spawned a dark frontier where the harsh and unforgiving new rules of existence cannot obliterate the decency and determination that drive the true human spirit. It's tested and tormented but never destroyed. A lust for power and a strong sec-force are the basic requirements of any Deathlands baron. But brilliant, charismatic Baron Eugene Arcadian has bigger visions than simply a monopoly on jack and trade. He wants the future.

On the night of the new moon, the demons rise in force, seeking the deaths of two men both of whom have the potential to become the fabled Deliverer, the man prophesied to reunite the scattered remnants of humanity in a final push to destroy the demon corelings once and for all. Arlen Bales was once an ordinary man, but now he has become something more - the Warded Man, tattooed with eldritch wards so powerful they make him a match for any demon. Arlen denies he is the Deliverer at every turn, but the more he tries to be one with the common folk, the more fervently they believe.

Traversing the terrain of Utah, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists find new evidence that the past is alive and dangerous — with a score to settle. Once before they'd battled and destroyed the brilliant and cunning cyborg know as Delphi, but he's reborn and ready to continue his drive for domination. And he's eager for the keys to the kingdom that only the legendary Deathlands survivors — and their secrets — can help him attain.

Their latest assignment takes the Ghost Finders of the Carnaki Institute to a small country village, site of a famously haunted inn. At first, JC thinks that the spirits in the King’s Arm Inn are more the stuff of folk tales and legend than anything that needs the Ghost Finder’s expertise. Then they are shown to their rooms and the inn shows its true face to JC, Melody, and Happy, and it isn’t pretty.

In the relatively untouched area of what was once Niagara Falls, Ryan and his fellow wayfarers find the pastoral farmland under the despotic control of a twisted baron and his slave-breeding farm. Ryan, Mildred, and Krysty are captured by the baron's sec men and pawned into the cruel frenzy of their leader's grotesque desires. JB, Jak, and Doc enlist the aid of outlanders to organize a counter strike — but rescue may come too late for them all.

As magistrate-turned-rebel Kane, fellow warrior Grant and archivist Brigid Baptiste face uncertainty in their own ranks, an ancient foe resurfaces in the company of Viking warriors - harnessing ancient prophecies of Ragnarok, the final conflict of fire and ice, to bring his own mad vision of a new apocalypse. To save what's left of the future, Kane's new battlefield is the kingdom of Antarctica, where legend and lore have taken on mythic and deadly proportions.

"Work Sets You Free" by David Barnett is an original short story featuring the protagonist of the forthcoming novel Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. Gideon is a young fisherman in Yorkshire, England, in an alternate 1890, who embarks on a journey to find Captain Lucian Trigger, the famed Hero of the Empire, to deal with a mystery plaguing his home village.

A teenage girl awakens to find herself trapped in a coffin. She has no idea who she is, where she is, or how she got there. Fighting her way free brings little relief - she discovers only a room lined with caskets and a handful of equally mystified survivors. Beyond their room lies a corridor filled with bones and dust, but no people...and no answers.

Having narrowly escaped with their lives from the redoubt near Cornerstone, the Deathlands survivors known as the Companions arrive via mat-trans at a destination they presume to be North Dakota, if the mysterious codes given them while in Cornerstone are accurate. That assumption is soon put in doubt as they discover a devastated city covered in continual ashfall, a sky perpetually obscured by black clouds illuminated only by sporadic lightning. The former metropolis is not deserted, however, but densely populated with ravening hordes of barely human creatures.

In the altered reality of the Deathlands, America's coastal waters haven't escaped the ravages of the nukecaust, but the awesome power of the oceans still rules here. It's a power that will let Ryan Cawdor, first among post-holocaust survivors, ride the crest of victory — or consign his woman to the raging depths. Emerging from a gateway on the ruins of the Georgia coastline, Ryan Cawdor and his warrior survivalists embark on a voyage up the Atlantic coast. But treachery awaits as they're beset by pirates, then a violent storm.

As the 22nd century emerges from the blight of nuclear damnation, humanity is slowly coming to terms with the bizarre new world of Deathlands, where each new generation holds the promise of renewal and redemption — in men like Ryan Cawdor and his son, Dean. Ryan Cawdor and companions emerge from a gateway into the ravaged world of the Rockies. It's old hunting grounds for Ryan and the Titan-haired Krysty Worth — her home and the place where they first came together.