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Martin and Martine - Part 1, is the next in a series of “Movie Novellas” brought to you by veteran filmmaker Lawrence Bridges. This new kind of reading experience, serialized in short chapters, was created specifically for the Kindle.
Meet MARTIN, a young American working at a bank in Paris. He surfs the coast of France, drives a classic Alpha convertible through the back roads of the French countryside, and sings in the Metros with his dog “Bits” at his side. Martin is about to meet MARTINE who works in telecommunications. She is 23, tall, with short blond hair. They both love music. They both have perfect pitch.
It is the not-too-distant future and the world has been transformed by the power of technology. Think beyond “The Terminator,” beyond “The Matrix.” Benign machines run the economy and innovate well beyond the capabilities of human brains. The citizens of Paris enjoy a comfortable life, fenced in and protected from the perils of the outside world. Cities like New York, Perth, Tehran, and Beijing share the same lifestyle, frozen early 2000’s. In return for protection from the forces outside the “Fence”, human beings have relinquished control of their lives to the all-knowing “Server,” a silicone intelligence supervised by an aristocratic race of genetically engineered clones known as “the Perfects.” But for average citizens, life has never been better. Martin has never felt so alive, especially after trying a new form of entertainment released by Apple Computers that overcomes the computer/brain barrier. It’s called Best Friend, and it provides intense emotional encounters as well as instantaneous realizations of dreams and fantasies, all in 3D. Hardwired into the human brain, Best Friend is the rage of Paris and Martin is one of the earliest adopters.
Martine is similarly using the powers of Best Friend, to try to figure out a way to meet Martin. While sitting on opposite sides of the Metro tracks, they are drawn to each and connected mysteriously by Best Friend. But inside Best Friend it difficult to know what is organic and what is artificial. Will Martine be able to find out who he is, or if he even exists, before the trains come and the moment is lost?
Parts 2 and 3 are also available for download at Smashwords and the Kindle Store.
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2009 Fiction Novel of the Year!
The war with the Rilz is pushing humanity to its limits and Intruder pilot Lt. Alan ‘Mac’ McAllister and his flying partner ‘Ivan’ Ivchenko are in the thick of the fighting. Battling the Lizards is bad enough, but fighting a planet full of rebel humans tests their friendship and Mac’s integrity as a Naval pilot. But the biggest test for Mac is maintaining his own sanity in the face of a creeping dependence on the electronic link that allows him to fly the most advanced combat spacecraft ever devised. When a vicious counter attack by the Rilz places the lives of his ex-wife and her new family in harms way, he must set aside that which is still human within him in a final showdown with mankind’s most implacable enemy.
Rated PG-13
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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When anthropology graduate student Blackwell James returns from the Amazon jungle with a trunk full of hallucinogenic vines, but no research notes, his life suddenly becomes a wild, high-octane tale of adventure, suspense and intrigue.
In an attempt to help Blackwell finish his elusive Ph.D., his professor and mentor secures a job for him in Los Angeles, a place he has never been, to work on a primate experiment - something he knows nothing about. And walking unarmed into the world of Hollywood proves to be even more dangerous for Blackwell than the Amazon.
Caught up in the secret ambitions of his employers, Blackwell James’ trip through a surreal world of movies and movie stars, murder, money, a secret society, a ghost town, two large chimpanzees and several shamanistic drug-induced journeys makes THE GRADUATE STUDENT a riveting ride.
The New York Times calls Polster’s writing “Outlandish adventure”, NPR calls it “Outrageously funny”, and the San Francisco Review of Books placed him on “the cutting edge of talented, West Coast writers.”
“Polster’s deadpan wit makes the twists and turns of his clever books a joy to read.”
- Matt Groening, Creator, Executive Producer, The Simpsons
“Polster writes with the understated precision and controlled chaos of a Jason Bourne car chase.”
- Paul Sandberg, Producer of the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum
“One of the best books ever written about Hollywood, and it’s not even about Hollywood.”
- Gary Goldman, Executive Producer of The Minority Report and Writer of Total Recall
“I’ve loved Polster’s writing since I first read BROWN. THE GRADUATE STUDENT is fantastically entertaining and its view on Hollywood is hilarious, dead on, and clearly written by someone who’s been there.”
- Cary Brokaw, Executive Producer, THE PLAYER
“Bold, hilarious, essentially unclassifiable…Polster fits somewhere between Hiaasen and Vonnegut.”
- Publishers Weekly (BROWN) starred review- One of the Best Books of the Year
“Careening with Hunter Thompsonesque panache…Polster practices the humorist’s craft with a bold, sure hand that recalls Mark Twain.”
- Kirkus Reviews (BROWN)
“BROWN among the most acclaimed books of 1995-6.”
Winner - The Critics’ Choice Award
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It is the summer of 1381, London, a complex time of crisis brought on by an oppressive poll tax, the warring of two rival claimants to the Papacy, and the preaching of Friar Ball and John Wyclif. Richard II is only fourteen, and threatened by his uncle, the unpopular Duke John. Caught in this political and spiritual turmoil are Mary Oldfield, who shoulders family responsibilities beyond her years, and Paul Angus, a searching young musical genius.
The exiting and romantic sequel to The Man of Signs by the master story-teller, Jim Dameron.
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Lawyer Chambers Elliot didn’t trust the supposed priest in his office but he had to listen to the story. According to the priest, the cops had caught the wrong man in a thirty-year-old murder. Which wouldn’t have bothered Elliot so much if he hadn’t been the lawyer defending that wrong man. When the priest turns up dead, Elliot is up to his neck in trouble, especially when the Portello Crime family involves themselves.
Author Michael Paulson launches a new mystery series with this hard-boiled page-turner.
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Oliver Lincoln III is a walking contradiction – he sells combat fighters for his dad’s defense plant, but he is a dedicated pacifist.
During a sales trip to the Sirian Confederacy, Oliver’s sister, a holonews reporter, tells him a disturbing secret. When his sister is later murdered by the Sirian secret police, the KK, it doesn’t take Oliver long to put the squares together —
Sirius is about to invade a peaceful world, using the combat fighters he sold them!
Oliver can’t prevent the invasion, but in a desperate race against time he travels to Vega 3, hoping to arm them with Lincoln fighters so they can at least defend themselves. But the timetable is shorter than he thought, and he finds himself trapped in a global war with a difficult choice to make.
The Fighter King is a novel about the clash of civilization, personal choices, and coming of age. Before The Fighter Queen, there was The Fighter King. It all starts here.
Rated “R” for sex, language, and violence.
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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The Essence will help you escape reality with Sophia, a reporter who receives an unusual opportunity to interview a reclusive dictator. She digs in with gusto, but finds she needs more than just reporting skills to survive her adventure!
Here’s an excerpt from the book:
A realization flooded through Sophia. The man who had helped her up — and was still holding her hand — must be the General himself! Yes, he looked somewhat like the photograph she had found — a bit older, maybe heavier than the picture, but definitely the same man — weathered features, squared jaw, charcoal curly hair, and a full mustache with hints of gray. She had rehearsed opening lines and introductions for herself but she couldn’t recall any of them right now.
The photo hadn’t prepared her for his wild eyes. They had small pupils and gray irises with radial lines like stars, which seemed to look right into her brain. As she looked back at him, she realized the hair on the back of her neck was standing up. It was an odd sensation, not fear, but rather like she was sensing a strong unknown force.
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In the runup to the war in Iraq, dozens of intelligence operatives watched their careers evaporate when they spoke candidly about Saddam’s lack of weapons of mass destruction. One such case officer, now unwillingly retired and living in Las Vegas, finds himself a target for assassination.
The Last Days of Las Vegas is the story of Ashor dur-Shamshi, a powerful military exile from Iraq who pulls the strings of an international conspiracy that will return him as Iraq’s new dictator, and of Charles Remly, who struggles to dismantle the centerpiece of the ex-general’s conspiracy. Fueled with billions of dollars from Saddam’s looted fortune, the tentacles of Ashor’s plot reach from his war-torn homeland to the glittery streets of Las Vegas, and much of the world in between. At the heart of the plan is an event that will wake up the American people and confront the power brokers inside the Beltway with two grim alternatives: Reinstitute the military draft, or help install a military government in Baghdad that will end Iraq’s expanding conflict, while searching for the bogus terrorist organization that has created a mini-Chernobyl in Las Vegas.
The ragtag team that defends Vegas against a nuclear meltdown is led by Remly, a middle-aged spook who was forced into early retirement during the runup to the war against Iraq because he insisted on sending proof to his headquarters in Virginia that Saddam had no N-B-C weapons. Cynical and burned out, Remly has a serious heart condition and is a significantly less-than-heroic hero. Spiritually and philosophically Remly is closer to Leamas of le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold—and perhaps Meursault of The Stranger—than he is to the macho characters of modern spy fiction. He’s not entirely disconnected, but he is devious, seemingly unprincipled, and isn’t above shooting an adversary in the back. Best illustrating Remly’s take on the world is the opening of Chapter 10:
“Reality is negotiable, or so Remly was given to understand his first week on the Campus in Virginia. By the time he retired and moved to Las Vegas he concluded that reality was merely optional, and Vegas did nothing to disabuse him of the idea.”
Similarly betrayed, two old men on the team—retired from the upper echelons of the nameless intell agency in Virginia—were denied follow-on consultancy contracts because they refused to drink the Koolaid coming from inside the Beltway. One of them—an amateur magician—has a bit of a drinking problem … Leopold Gourmel cognac, not Koolaid. The other—a cranky old black-ops and regime-change specialist— has spinal disc damage and needs a walker to get around.
Another intelligence operative, described as being “a little light in his loafers,” was fired because of his sexual orientation, despite Remly’s defense of him. Then there’s a voodooman—an electronics genius also retired from the agency—who verges on a paranoid breakdown toward the end, when he’s strung out on sleep deprivation and gets wired on uppers. Rounding out the group are three sociopathic thugs from South Boston—”Neanderthals” the voodooman calls them—recruited for their black-bag skills.
Obviously, this is not a team of super-heroes.
Complicating Remly’s task are the alliances that Ashor forms with K Street lobbyists, pols on the Hill, and a cabal within the agency in Virginia - thus turning Virginia, which should be resisting Ashor, against Remly’s team. And so The Last Days of Las Vegas is as much a political thriller as it is an espionage caper.
Remly’s adversaries are equally complex and dysfunctional. Ashor is a loving husband, father, and grandfather who decides to nuke Las Vegas without a moment’s hesitation. The coördinator of the strike against Vegas is a pious, one-time Dzerzhinsky Square black-arts cadet, rumored to have chosen the Service over the Seminary on the flip of a coin, his piety no obstacle to his job of bringing death and disaster to thousands of people. Then there’s a flashy Crimean remote-control assassin, another Dzerzhinsky Square cadet, who trolls the vodka bars of Moscow in his Student Prince parade-ground uniform looking for casual sex. And an Iraqi pilot with little if any religious conviction, driven to this suicide mission by a military strike against his family at a wedding party.
The important conflict in The Last Days of Las Vegas doesn’t come from people shooting each other. Oh, there are gunfights and bombings and whole buildings destroyed, and all sorts of similar derring-do, but the real conflict comes from people trying to overcome one another through a sort-of mental kung fu— each trying to bring down his adversary with ideas and working deviously to sandbag the other’s emotions —something at which Remly excels. He likes to think of it as “manipulative empathy.” (Some might call it “mind ****ing” - though you and I and Remly never would!)
Roy Hayes is the author of The Hungarian Game, which sold just under 520,000 copies in 6 languages worldwide.
(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10)
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Maria is occupied with trying to earn her doctorate, and she’s far too busy for adventures. But when the library books she needs are unexpectedly borrowed (by a dragon) she finds herself on a quest to find the books, the dragon, a sword, courage, and the greatest cake recipe in the world… not to mention the last chapter of her thesis
“a lovely, delightful little romp for anyone who loves books and fantasy and dragons and higher education and plucky heroines.”
— Carmen Machado
Author website
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Allow me to introduce myself. I am Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed world traveler and story-teller. Of course you have heard of me, for my tales of the great heroes and their adventures have been repeated far and wide across the land.
Eaglethorpe Buxton, famed adventurer and story-teller is back, this time to put on a play about a sorceress. When the sorceress, subject of his play arrives with fire in her eyes, Eaglethorpe must pretend to be his good friend Ellwood. Will he pull off this charade and survive? And what happens when the real Ellwood shows up? One can never tell, especially when Eaglethorpe tells the story.
Praise for Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess:
Haven’t read it. Won’t read it. End of Story. And I don’t think anyone else should read it.
- Dextius Winterborn, Story-teller’s Guild.
People aren’t really reading that? Are they?.
- Sir Roderick Bairn, Adventurer
You can’t believe a damn word that boy says. He was born to hang, I tell ya.
- Margram Buxton, Father
What is it exactly? Is it some kind of story book? No. No, I don’t want any.
-Queen Elleena I of Aerithraine
Join Eaglethorpe Buxton as he adventures across a magical world to in his quest for self-aggrandizement.
Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress is a short book by Wesley Allison, author of His Robot Girlfriend, and Princess of Amathar. Available now as a free ebook.
(1 votes, average: 10 out of 10)
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Simultaneous bomb attacks on New York, London and a passenger aircraft leave the popularity of the US President and British Prime Minister in global melt down. A surprise guest at secret Anglo-American talks in the Caribbean reveals the revelations of unimaginable power deep in the bowels of Freemasonry through the Ark of the Covenant and Holy Grail. He talks of Secret masters over religion and their grip upon the equilibrium of the world and about Jesus and Mary still pulling unconquerable strings through their direct descendants. Who killed Oliver Cromwell, Adolph Hitler, John F Kennedy, Slobodan Milosevic and ………? Who could be next? The constant flexing of muscles within the unimaginable supreme power of the Knights of Black Chapter and their deadly counterparts the Knights of Incanda is intensifying especially with modern evolution. The centuries old war between these two secret iconic chapters sitting above all mankind is now reaching fever pitch. www.theknightsofblackchapter.com
$4.99 with coupon SS36Y valid ’til 31-Dec-09
376 pages
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Years ago, international aid worker Frank Bowen lost his wife Liz, when she went missing in the wilds of Belize. The constables of San Ignacio never found a trace. Years later, on a pilgrimage to her remote ‘grave,’ Frank loses his way and his world.
Frank, the ultimate “Doctor Without Borders,” is ambushed visiting Liz’s wife’s makeshift memorial in the Chiqibul wilderness of western Belize. But… by whom? Bandits? Drug runners? Maoist rebels?
Forced into an illuminating exile that rekindles hope for Liz’s survival, Frank wanders the frontiers and backroads of a war zone in search of her.
At the same time, a band of militia scouts on their way home from the enemy frontier become stranded in a small American town where they discover a plot to open Earth to their enemies.
The scouts’ attempt to foil this plan receives Frank’s oblivious and inadvertent assistance during his quest for Liz, whose trail gets warmer the farther Frank travels into “Gi”.
More info at: http://asparrow.weebly.com
$1.99 but FREE with Coupon Code: ND66P (until Nov 18, ‘09)
497 pages
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When suffering grows too great, when injustice becomes overwhelming, when evil stomps with too heavy a boot, in those moments, justice and vengence become one. For those moments, the Skullmask lives. In appearance a simple leather mask in the shape of a skull, Skullmask gives its wearer the memories, skills, and physical ability of all of those who wore it before. The Skullmask demands only one thing–vengence.
Author Teel James Glenn creates a powerful adventure harkening back to the days of pulp fiction and ‘Weird Tales.’ Skullmask is priced at $3.99, but between now and November 12, it’s only $1.00.
Skullmask–its wearers can be killed, but Skullmask only gets stronger
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Dylan knew how demanding Preston Ashcot was with his employees, yet had no idea he placed the same demands on his sons, withholding approval and love until his definition of perfection had been realized which was impossible for any human being to achieve. He hated old man Ashcot though he never let it be known either by deeds or words for fear of losing the beloved ranch he had come to regard as his own. This new insight into old man Ashcot’s true self served only to heighten Dylan’s hatred of him. He had stripped his own son, the man that Dylan now loved, of his very soul. Dylan would do whatever he could to make Brandon feel loved, and he would try as best he could to restore his self-esteem.
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Nano Wars is a techno-thriller of a world unknowingly gripped in conflict by the emergence of dark uses of nano technology and the amazing nano based devices and weaponry it brought with it, a new era of hybrid soldiers and warfare. Nano Technology had been introduced into society with much fanfare, specifically in the medical field and had generated new levels of investments in medical companies utilizing such technology based procedures. However, as the nano based procedures were made available, their costs proved to be too costly for the masses. This caused a tremendous tremor in nano companies as they scrambled to reinvent themselves or close operations. This tremor caused a severe crack in morality, out of which was born a new form of espionage and warfare. Any force armed with this technology is invisible to their enemy, able to kill hundreds, thousands, in seconds and can penetrate any facility at will. The problem, this technology was introduced by the wrong side and it is DATIS’s job to recreate itself, fast. DATIS is scrambling to meet this challenge by creating a new hybrid army molded out of new soldier classifications and weapons, but time is short and the world is hanging in the balance.
(1 votes, average: 9 out of 10)
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In an alternate present the minds of teen offenders are uploaded into computers for rehabilitation—a form of virtual wilderness therapy. Zach is a homo cognoscens, one of the new humans who can navigate the Fulgrid. Though still a high school student, he is indentured to the Fulgur Corporation as a counsellor. Laura is a homo sapiens. Their story is part odyssey, part tragedy, part riff on the nature of consciousness.
The novel is being serialised in weekly instalments, a chapter each Friday. Podcasts (audiobook) are also available, read by the Welsh actor Ioan Hefin.
(5 votes, average: 7.6 out of 10)
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