Humor Fiction Adventure

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.

Piers Anthony delivers another tale set in the best-selling world of Xanth, filled with magic, surprises, adventure, and a few puns. Here's what the author has to say about his new book: "Five Portraits is a kind of sequel to Board Stiff in that it picks up where the other leaves off, with the same characters. Apart from that, it's one of my favorites within the series.

Pursued by police and bounty hunters, Dan Lambert flees south toward the Louisiana bayous. In the swamplands he meets Arden Halliday, a young woman who bears the vivid burdens of her own past and who is searching for a legendary faith healer called the Bright Girl. Looking for simple kindness in a world that rarely shows it, bound by a loyalty stronger than love, Dan and Arden set off on a journey of relentless suspense and impassioned discovery...over dark, twisting waterways into the mysterious depths of the human heart.

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.

Tuesday Mooney is a loner. She keeps to herself, begrudgingly socializes, and spends much of her time watching old Twin Peaks and X-Files DVDs. But when Vincent Pryce, Boston’s most eccentric billionaire, dies—leaving behind an epic treasure hunt through the city, with clues inspired by his hero, Edgar Allan Poe—Tuesday’s adventure finally begins.

In China, in 1860, a lot of people mistakenly put their trust in Flashman: the English vicar’s daughter with her cargo of opium; Lord Elgin in search of an intelligence chief; the Emperor’s ravishing concubine, seeking a champion in her struggles for power; and Szu-Zhan, the female bandit colossus, as practised in the arts of love as in the arts of war. They were not to know that behind his Victoria Cross, Harry Flashman was a base coward and a charlatan. They took him at face value. And he took them, for all he could, while China seethed through the bloodiest civil war in history.

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.

After years as a court magician and interdimensional hero, Skeeve needed a rest. So he took some time off to study magic and relax. When a few months later several members of the M.Y.T.H. Inc. Team each ask him to train some talented, young magicians in "practical magic", he has to agree. But after the assassins attack and a manticore tries to eat them, the Khlad mage soon discovers that there is more going on than learning. His students are preparing for a very deadly magical game, and you won't believe where.

It's the 25th century, and the American President has taken over the world. Meanwhile, after a cleaner unplugged his cryogenic freezing machine by accident, Detective Inspector Capstan wakes up to find that he's been in a state of suspended animation for more than 400 years. As he's forced to adjust to life in the future, he finds himself reinstated as a policeman, and together with the great-great-great-great-grandson of his former subordinate, Sergeant Dewbush, he's put on the case of a missing cow.

What's worse than a child with a magnifying glass, a garden full of ants, and a brilliant mind full of mischief? Try Al, a well-meaning but impish artificial intelligence with the mind of a six-year-old and a penchant for tantrums. Hope Takeda, a lab assistant charged with educating and socializing Al, soon discovers that day care is a lot more difficult when your kid is an evolving and easily frightened A.I.

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. At 18, she has returned from boarding school - smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic - determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men" working the lobster boats.

Hi, how are you? Yes, I am talking to you, the reader of this book's description. Okay, I get it, fourth-wall breaking is overdone. Get over it. This book, Villains Rule, is a fantasy action-comedy which you have to hear. Not because it redefines the genre, far from it. But rather for what it contains. A villain's tale. How often do you get to listen to a story where the villain is the protagonist? No, not an anti-hero, or a brooding monster, nor a hero thinly disguised as a villain. And not evil. If you want evil, take that nonsense to therapy.

When the aliens came down and told us they’d enslave all of the human race if we didn’t send our bigliest warrior to participate in their arena death games, I laughed at them. It was really funny because they obviously didn’t know who they were dealing with. Know what I mean? Then they said they would pick the greatest warrior, and they picked Marc Havak. He seemed like such an average guy, but he was a true-blue American. He even worked as a truck driver! That’s the kind of good guy we want defending us from aliens.

All Georgie Turner wants is to keep her family together. But with her daughter growing up fast, her sister married to a man Georgie hates, and their aging aunt getting more and more outrageous, nothing’s simple. So when her brother-in-law makes his biggest mistake yet, Georgie sees the chance to reunite the ladies in her life. And after a little persuasion, three generations of Turner women head off on a very unusual road trip. Georgie’s confident that some sun, sea and a bottle or two of prosecco will make this an adventure they’ll never forget. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s ho, ho, ho time in this hilarious and wacky Florida holiday tale, featuring bighearted psychopath Serge Storms and his sidekick, Coleman. Like Santa, Serge knows who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. Few can give with the generosity and creativity of Serge, and as December 24 rolls around, he is filling up the Serge sleigh with an unforgettable bag of presents. But before that, it’s all a big free-range Christmas office party, where Serge will be spreading his special cheer. And there’s that last-minute go-for-broke spree at the mall (just beware of those attacking elves - they bite).

It's Gerald Dunwoody's first official government assignment. He's hunting down a deadly saboteur, and time is quickly running out. Old and new enemies combine forces to thwart him. Once again, innocent lives are on the line. He needs his friends. He can't do this alone. But Princess Melissande and Reg have troubles of their own.

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) may be considered the Canadian counterpart to Mark Twain. For many years he was professor of economics at Magill University and published a number of well-regarded texts on economics and political science. However, he is best known today for his many volumes of humorous fiction. During the 1920s he was one of the most widely read authors in the English-speaking world and was considered by Jack Benny and Groucho Marx to be one of the greatest comic writers of all time.

Finn Foley has a lunchbox, and when he opens it, weird things come out...like a seven-foot-tall robot and a strange, blinking device that glues itself to his chest. The lunchbox also opens wormholes—shortcuts through space—that take Finn to the farthest corners of the galaxy. Sounds awesome, right?

The most fearsome enemy he ever faced. Of all the enemies that our hero has shrunk away from, there was one he feared above them all. By his own admission they gave him nightmares into his dotage. It was not the French, the Spanish, the Americans, or the Mexicans. It was not even the more exotic adversaries such as the Iroquois, Mahratta, or Zulus. While they could all make his guts churn anxiously, the foe that really put him off his lunch were the Ashanti.

Poor Princess Anya. Forced to live with her evil stepmother's new husband, her evil stepstepfather. Plagued with an unfortunate ability to break curses with a magic-assisted kiss. And forced to go on the run when her stepstepfather decides to make the kingdom entirely his own. Aided by a loyal talking dog, a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt, and some extraordinarily mischievous wizards, Anya sets off on a quest that, if she plays it right, will ultimately free her land - and teach her a thing or two.