Lo último que Lev Prakenskii recordaba era estar perdido en las procelosas corrientes del océano y ser engullido en la nada de un gélido remolino junto a la localidad costera de Sea Haven. Con la misma rapidez es salvado milagrosamente por una hermosa desconocida. Pero Lev no recordaba quién era… ni por qué parecía poseer el violento instinto de un asesino adiestrado. Lo único que sabía era que temía por su vida y por la de su inesperada salvadora. Su nombre era Rikki, una pescadora de erizos de mar en Sea Haven. Siempre había sentido afinidad con el océano y con el seductor influjo de las mareas. Y ahora sentía esa misma atracción por el enigmático hombre al que había rescatado. Pero pronto se encontrarán unidos por algo aún más fuerte y sus tentadores secretos los engullirán a ambos en un torbellino de embriagadora pasión e ineludible peligro

Light marks that fine writer M John Harrison's first return to the heartland of SF--including spaceships and hair-raising interstellar chases--since his apocalyptic anti-space opera The Centauri Device (1975). The heavy SF action begins in 2400. Space-going humanity is the latest of many civilizations to be baffled by the impenetrable Kefahuchi Tract; that vast stellar region where an unshielded singularity makes physics itself unreliable. Along its accessible fringe, the "Beach", solar systems are littered with crazy, abandoned devices used to probe the Tract since before life began on Earth. A whole dead-end culture is based on beachcombing this rubble of industrial archaeology... 25th-century characters include a woman who's sacrificed almost everything to merge with the AI "mathematics" of a crack military spacecraft; a former daredevil who once surfed black holes but has retreated into a virtual reality tank; the lady proprietor of the Circus of Pathet Lao, with an alien freakshow and a hidden agenda; and a variety of raunchy, smelly, gene-sculpted lowlife, some comic, some menacing. Many are not what they seem. Meanwhile in 1999 London, physicists Kearney and Tate--remembered in 2400 as the fathers of interstellar flight--are getting nowhere. Kearney's personal problems occupy familiar Harrison territory: urban paranoia, a seedily unreliable guru, bad sex, guilty rituals to propitiate a metaphysical-seeming threat called the Shrander--a pursuing image out of nightmare. In the lab, both Kearney and Tate fear the increasing quantum strangeness of their results. The cosmological wonders and hazards of the Beach form a backdrop to space pursuits and violent skirmishes whose duration is measured in nanoseconds, reported in tensely lyrical prose. Eventually everything comes together as it should--even that oppressive 1999 story strand--with revelations, transformation, transcendence, and ultimate hope. Harrison demands your full attention and rewards it richly. --David Langford

Published in 1917, "Light and Dark" is unlike any of Natsume Soseki's previous works and unique in Japanese fiction of the period. What distinguishes the novel as "modern" is its remarkable representation of interiority. The protagonists, Tsuda Yoshio, thirty, and his wife O-Nobu, twenty-three, exhibit a gratifying complexity that qualifies them as some of the earliest examples of three-dimensional characters in Japanese fiction. O-Nobu is quick-witted and cunning, a snob and narcissist no less than her husband, passionate, arrogant, spoiled, insecure, naive — yet, above all, gallant. Under Soseki's scrutiny, she emerges as a flesh-and-blood heroine with a palpable reality, dueling with her husband, his troublemaking friend, Kobayashi, and her sister-in-law, O-Hid?. Tsuda undertakes his own battles with Kobayashi, O-Hid? and the manipulative Madam Yoshikawa, his boss's wife. These exchanges explode into moments of intense jealousy, rancor, and recrimination that will surprise English-speaking readers who expect indirectness, delicacy, and reticence in Japanese relations. Echoing the work of Jane Austen and Henry James, Soseki's novel achieves maximal drama with minimal action and symbolizes a tectonic shift in literary form

A haunting, enigmatic, Kafkaesque modern fairytale, steeped in visual imagery and consolingly lyrical prose. The Times February is persecuting the townspeople. It has been winter for more than three hundred days. All forms of flight are banned and the children have started to disappear, taken from their beds in the middle of the night. The priests hang ominous sheets of parchment on the trees, signed "February". And somewhere on the outskirts of the town lives February himself, with the girl who smells of honey and smoke… In short bursts of intensely poetic language, this beautifully strange and otherworldly first novel tells the story of the people in the town and their efforts to combat the mysterious spectre of February. Steeped in visual imagery, this is a hauntingly enigmatic modern fairy tale in which nothing is as it seems

They say that madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results...but what happens when the very person that brought your heart back to life has the ability to shatter it with one confession? After an explosive affair left their hearts battered and scarred, Georgia and Tristan are trying for a fresh start. She is determined to take it slow and not repeat the mistakes of the past, while Tristan is willing to throw caution to the wind as long as he has his dark-haired girl in his life...and in his bed. But Georgia and Tristan can't shelter their love from the outside world, and the moments of exquisite passion they share aren't enough to sustain the relationship. When scars from the past resurface—will their hearts meld together as one? Or will outside forces tear them apart, leaving an empty shell where love and passion once thrived?

"Engrossing, thrilling and ultimately satisfying: each story has the weight of a novel." — The Economist This was the day after Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield’s ear. You remember that. It was a moment in history — not like Kennedy or the planes flying into the World Trade Center — not up at that level. This was something much lower, more like Ben Johnson, back when his eyes were that thick, yellow color and he tested positive in Seoul after breaking the world-record in the hundred. You might not know exactly where you were standing or exactly what you were doing when you first heard about Tyson or about Ben, but when the news came down, I bet it stuck with you. When Tyson bit off Holyfield’s ear, that cut right through the everyday clutter. — from Miracle Mile Two runners race a cargo train through the darkness of a rat-infested tunnel beneath the Detroit River. A drugstore bicycle courier crosses a forbidden threshold in an attempt to save a life and a young swimmer conquers her fear of water only to discover she's caught in far more dangerous currents. An auto-worker who loses his family in a car accident is forced to reconsider his relationship with the internal combustion engine. Alexander MacLeod is a writer of "ferocious intelligence" and "ferocious physicality" (CTV). Light Lifting, his celebrated first collection, offers us a suite of darkly urban and unflinching elegies that explore the depths of the psyche and channel the subconscious hopes and terrors that motivate us all. These are elemental stories of work and its bonds, of tragedy and tragedy barely averted, but also of beauty, love and fragile understanding

Double the firepower, triple the heat… Aiden Fortune’s orders are clear: Find the woman, claim her as a sexual sacrifice—and share her with his horndog twin brother. Distasteful as it is, the Drakoni council insists the ancient custom be honored. Or Aiden will be banished. One glance at Dana Cooper, and Aiden is thrown into the dragon version of a tailspin. Claim her? Hell, yes, he’ll claim her. Problem is, she has no idea her father signed away her destiny at birth. Dana has dated enough whack-a-doodles to fill an insane asylum. Two gorgeous men claiming to be dragons? Par for the course. Until they give her a tantalizing glimpse of their inner beasts, which makes her think she’s the one headed for a padded cell—for actually considering their offer of the hottest sex of her life, for life. Her resistance melts away under the onslaught of two men who pack enough heat to set off smoke alarms in a six-block radius. Especially when she realizes she’s falling for Aiden. But with a town full of dragon hunters and an enemy lurking in the shadows, surviving a week of Aiden and Jace’s double-teaming will be the least of her problems… Product Warnings: Contains two smokin’ hot dragons and their not-so-unwilling sacrifice. A few wardrobe malfunctions and inappropriate use of paintbrushes. You might want to have your local fire department on speed dial

Louisiana Sheriff’s Detective Dave Robicheaux and his longtime friend and partner Clete Purcel are vacationing in Montana’s spectacular Big Sky country when a series of suspicious events leads them to believe their lives — and the lives of their families — are in danger. In contrast to the tranquil beauty of Flathead Lake and the colorful summertime larch and fir unspooling across unblemished ranchland, a venomous presence lurks in the caves and hills, intent on destroying innocent lives. First, Alafair Robicheaux is nearly killed by an arrow while hiking alone on a trail. Then Clete’s daughter, Gretchen Horowitz, whom readers met in Burke’s previous bestseller Creole Belle, runs afoul of a local cop, with dire consequences. Next, Alafair thinks she sees a familiar face following her around town — but how could convicted sadist and serial killer Asa Surrette be loose on the streets of Montana? Surrette committed a string of heinous murders while capital punishment was outlawed in his home state of Kansas. Years ago, Alafair, a lawyer and novelist, interviewed Surrette in prison, aiming to prove him guilty of other crimes and eligible for the death penalty. Recently, a prison transport van carrying Surrette crashed and he is believed dead, but Alafair isn’t so sure

Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. But one night the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience…

This exquisite, resonant novel by PEN/Faulkner winner James Salter is a brilliant portrait of a marriage by a contemporary American master. It is the story of Nedra and Viri, whose favored life is centered around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends, and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But even as he lingers over the surface of their marriage, Salter lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it

Teenaged Wendy, who has the power to help souls cross over to their final destinations, falls in love with a ghost and discovers horrific, dark forces in the afterlife

A young woman is found hanging from a lamppost in a deserted area of the 87th Precinct. That same night, another woman is raped — for the third time in succession, by the same man each time. Not long after that, a second murder victim is found hanging from a lamppost in another part of the precinct. The murders are obviously linked. But how? And why are both murder victims female athletes and — more specifically — runners on the track teams of two different colleges? Why is someone, as it turns out, systematically raping different women twice, three times, sometimes four times in succession? Has the Deaf Man put in a return appearance, as the detectives of the 87th Precinct secretly suspect? Can Fat Ollie Weeks help the men of the 87th solve these crimes? Will Eileen Burke, working as a decoy for the Rape Squad, be forced into a confrontation that may change her life and her views about police work? Lightning can strike twice — and sometimes even more often. In his new 87th Precinct novel, Ed McBain once again shows how the patient, hard-working professionals with the golden shields cope with crime and killers, putting together the pieces of each difficult case with immense skill, intuition... and old-fashioned pounding of the streets... testing their expertise to the limit of endurance

A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere — the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later — another bolt of lightning — and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy. Was he the guardian angel he seemed? The devil in disguise? Or the master of a haunting destiny beyond time and space?

The Los Angeles Dana Spiotta evokes in her bold and strangely lyrical first novel is a land of Spirit Gyms and Miracle Miles, a great centerless place where chains of reference get lost, or finally don't matter. Mina lives with her screenwriter husband and works at her best friend Lorene's highly successful concept restaurants, which exploit the often unconscious desires and idiosyncrasies of a rich, chic clientele. Almost inadvertently, Mina has acquired two lovers. And then there are the other men in her life: her father, a washed-up Hollywood director living in a yurt and hiding from his debtors, and her disturbed brother, Michael, whose attempts to connect with her force Mina to consider that she might still have a heart — if only she could remember where she had left it. Between her Spiritual Exfoliation and Detoxification therapies and her elaborate devotion to style, Lorene is interested only in charting her own perfection and impending decay. Although supremely confident in a million shallow ways, she, too, starts to fray at the edges. And there is Lisa, a loving mother who cleans houses, scrapes by, and dreams of food terrorists and child abductors, until even the most innocent events seem to hint at dark possibilities. Lightning Field explores the language tics of our culture — the consumerist fetishes, the self-obsession and the Þeeting possibility that you just might have gotten it all badly wrong. In funny, cutting, unsentimental prose, Spiotta exposes the contradictions of contemporary lives in which "identity is a collection of references." She writes about overcoming not just despair but ambivalence. Playful and dire, raw and poetic, Lightning Field introduces a startling new voice in American fiction

In a desperate bid to save Lucy, Alex goes in search of the secret government facility on Apocalypse Island. If the scientists there created the virus, then surely they have a cure. Alex will go to any lengths to get it, even if it means risking his life in a building full of monsters. Even if it means facing patient zero…

A gripping and deftly plotted narrative of family and belonging, Lights All Night Long is a dazzling debut novel from an acclaimed young writer

Lights in a Western Sky is a collection of twenty short stories encompassing a wide variety of genres, settings and historical periods. With themes ranging from romance to horror, and with settings in the most exotic of locations, the tales contain twists and turns and plenty of unexpected denouements. This collection of short stories have human tribulation as a common theme. They include a sentimental love story, a tale of lost opportunity in the pursuit of a mythical beast in Africa, an account of an autistic boy’s tragic attempt to do good as he sees it, a simple ghost story, an act of terrorism in which an innocent party becomes implicated, and others that touch upon the supernatural and horror. Also included within Lights in a Western Sky is a trilogy of stories offering thought-provoking interpretations of some of the events surrounding the demise and crucifixion of the biblical Jesus. Inspired by Roald Dahl’s employment of terminal twists, this book will appeal to readers of short stories. It will also be enjoyed by fans of Roger’s previous literary works

Roaming from America to Europe to Australia, Lights Out is a trenchant examination of the tensions between a resurgent Islam and a fainthearted west — and of the implications for liberty in the years ahead. In 2007, the Canadian Islamic Congress brought three suits against Maclean’s, Canada’s biggest-selling newsweekly, for running an excerpt from Steyn’s bestselling book America Alone, plus other flagrantly Islamophobic columns by the author. A year later the CIC had lost all its cases and Steyn had become a poster boy for a worldwide phenomenon — the collision between Islam, on the one hand, and, on the other, western notions of free speech, liberty and pluralism. In this book, Steyn republishes all the essays the western world’s new thought police attempted to criminalize, along with new material responding to his accusers. Covering other crises from the Danish cartoons to the Salman Rushdie fatwa, he also takes a stand against the erosion of free speech, and the advance of a creeping totalitarian “multiculturalism”; and he considers the broader relationship between Islam and the west in a time of unprecedented demographic transformation. Roaming from America to Europe to Australia, Lights Out is a trenchant examination of the tensions between a resurgent Islam and a fainthearted west — and of the implications for liberty in the years ahead

A shy and apolitical herpetologist-in-training finds the weight of history bearing down on him as the effects of repression ramp up in his country. In an unspecified country that combines elements of Chile under its military regime, South Africa under apartheid, and Italy under fascism, fifteen-year-old Karel Roeder asks only to be left alone to learn from Albert, his mentor at the zoo’s reptile house, and to devote himself to his girlfriend, Leda. But both Leda and Albert lead him into increasingly proscribed areas of thought and speech, and thus into conflict with a newly ascendant party that intends to prosecute a border war against an officially despised ethnic group and criminalize dissent. Citizens have been disappearing and surveillance in the name of safety has become all-pervasive. When Kehr, a special assistant of the civil guard, billets himself at Karel’s house for unknown reasons, Karel finds his already tenuous hold on his own innocence crushed as Kehr — tribune, inquisitor, and metaphysician of terror — instructs his unwilling protégé in those moments when history is let off the leash. Lights Out in the Reptile House is at once a dystopian political parable, a meditation on totalitarianism, and a moving coming-of-age story, as its protagonist struggles to understand his own values and meaning even in the most extreme of crucibles

Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com) is the critically-acclaimed, online science fiction magazine edited by bestselling anthologist John Joseph Adams. Lightspeed publishes all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. Each month, Lightspeed features a mix of originals and reprints, from a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven't heard of yet. Now, in Lightspeed: Year One, you will find all of the fiction published in Lightspeed's first year, from new stories such as Nebula Award finalists, Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” and “Arvies” by Adam-Troy Castro, and Carrie Vaughn’s Hugo Award-nominee “Amaryllis,” to classic reprints by Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, and more

Džeks Londons KOPOTI raksti desmit sējumos SASTĀDĪJUSI TAMARA ZĀLĪTE NO ANGĻU VALODAS TULKOJUŠAS ROTA EZERIŅA UN HELMA LAPIŅA MĀKSLINIEKS ĀDOLFS LIELAIS Tulkojums latviešu valodā, -«Liesma», 1974