An original novel set in the widely popular Wild Cards world created by science fiction scion George R.R. Martin. Edited by Hugo award winning and New York times bestselling author, George R.R. Martin. It's really quite simple. Mr. Nobody wants to do his job. The Midnight Angel wants to serve her Lord. Billy Ray, dying from boredom, wants some action. John Nighthawk wants to uncover the awful secret behind his mysterious power. Fortunato wants to rescue his son from the clutches of a cryptic Vatican office. John Fortune just wants to catch Siegfried and Ralph's famous Vegas review. The problem is that all roads, whether they start in Turin, Italy, Las Vegas, Hokkaido, Japan, Jokertown, Snake Hill, the Short Cut, or Yazoo City, Mississippi, lead to Leo Barnett's Peaceable Kingdon where the difference between the Apocalypse and Peace on Earth is as thin as a razor's edge and where Death himself awaits the final terrible turn of the card. Wild Cards: Death Draws Five is an original novel set in this shared world utilizing characters from other Wild Card adventures. John J. Miller Splitting his life between the Empire State and The Land of Enchantment, John J. Miller currently resides in Albuquerque, NM, with his wife Gail, five cats, two dogs, two goldfish, and too many books to count, approximately ten of which he's written. He's contemplating getting more goldfish, and, probably, books. George R. R. Martin was born in 1948 in Bayonne, NJ. Four-time winner of the Hugo Award, two-time winner of the Nebula and editor of over two dozen novels and anthologies, and the writer of numerous short stories. His New York Times bestselling novel, A Storm of Swords (the third volume in his epicfantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" (was published in 2000. Martin lives in Sante Fe, New Mexico

An anthology of stories “Martin has assembled an impressive array of writers… Progressing through the decades, Wild Cards keeps its momentum to the end… I’m looking forward to the next episodes in this saga of mutant Americana.” – Locus “Well written and suspenseful and a good read… The authors had a lot of fun rewriting recent American history.” – Aboriginal Science Fiction “Commendable writing… a zany premise… narrated with rueful humor and intelligence.” – Publishers Weekly *** The first fifteen volumes of the Wild Cards series concerned themselves primarily with aces (those given superhuman powers by the Wild Cards virus) and jokers (those whom the virus transformed into freaks and monsters). But in this all-new collection of Wild Cards stories, Deuces Down will focus on some characters less often in the spotlight: the deuces. In Wild Card slang, a deuce is an ace whose superpower is tiny, trivial, sometimes silly. As with the other books in the series, Deuces Down is set in an alternate, shared-world universe. It's here that you'll find the never-before-told tales of the exciting 1969 World Series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; the first moon landing, when the whole world wasn't watching; the Great New York City Blackout of 1977; and Grace Kelly's mysterious disappearance during the filming of The French Lieutenant's Woman

In 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed ninety percent of those it infected. Nine percent of those who survived mutated into tragically deformed creatures. And one percent gained superpowers. The Wild Cards shared-universe series, created and edited since 1987 by New York Times #1 bestseller George R. R. Martin along with Melinda Snodgrass, is the tale of the history of the world since then—and of the heroes among that one percent. Originally begun in 1986, long before George R. R. Martin became a household name among fantasy readers ("The American Tolkien"—Time magazine), the Wild Cards series earned a reputation among connoisseurs for its smart reimagining of the superhero idea. Now, with Inside Straight, the Wild Cards continuity jumps forward to a new generation of major characters, entirely accessible to Martin's hundreds of thousands of new readers, with all-original stories by Martin himself, along with Daniel Abraham, Michael Cassutt, and Stephen Leigh, among others

From International Thriller Writers comes WATCHLIST: two powerful novellas featuring the same thrilling cast of characters in one major suspenseful package. THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT and THE COPPER BRACELET are collaborations of some of the world’s greatest thriller writers, including Lee Child, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, and Jeffery Deaver, who conceived the characters and set the plots in motion. The other authors each wrote a chapter and Deaver then completed what he started, bringing both novellas to their startling conclusions. In the first novella, THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT, former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a previously unknown score by Frederic Chopin. But he is unaware that, locked within its handwritten notes, lies a secret that now threatens the lives of thousands of Americans. As he races from Poland to America to uncover the mystery of the manuscript, Middleton will be accused of murder, pursued by federal agents, and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat will come from a shadowy figure from his past: the man known only as Faust. Harold Middleton returns in THE COPPER BRACELET -- the explosive sequel to THE CHOPIN MANUSCRIPT -- as he’s drawn into an international terror plot that threatens to send India and Pakistan into full-scale nuclear war. Careening from Nice to London and Moscow to Kashmir to prevent nuclear disaster, Middleton is unaware that his prey has changed and that the act of terror is far more diabolical than he knows. Will he discover the identity of the Scorpion in time to halt an event that will pit the United States, China, and Russia against each other at the brink of World War III?