At the age of eight, Michael survives an act of violence so horrific that the local press dubs him 'The Miracle Boy.' And orphan now, and no longer able to speak, Michael soon discovers the one thing he can do better than anyone else. Whether it's a locked door with no key, a padlock with no combination, or even an 800-pound safe.Michael can open them all. It doesn't take long for him to become a hot commodity, and the best 'boxman' in the business. But like any valuable commodity, there are people who will do whatever it takes to own him. And once they see what Michael can really do, they're not about to llet him walk away. Traveling all across the country, always on the run.If there's a heist in the works and a group of criminals with the right phone number, then Michael is their man. And he is always successful. Always. Until one day, when a seemingly simple job turns into a nightmare, and everything falls apart. With nothing left to lose, he decides to go back home to find the only person he ever loved. And to finally face his bigger secret – the secret that has kept him silent for all these years. Best-known for his Edgar-and Shamus-winning Alex McKnight series, Steve Hamilton delivers a knockout standalone that will bowl over both his diehard fans and anyone looking for a bold, one-of-a-kind thriller

Locked Room Mystery is dead! Can you work out the culprit in this witty short story by Jasper Fforde, author of the popular Thursday Next mystery novels?

The citizens of Swedish Haven, Pennsylvania wonder why on earth George Lockwood is building an eight-foot brick wall around thirty acres of land

Set during the 19th century when emigrants were leaving England to settle in Australia, and of a young man, Jim Robbins, who set out on the ship, the Sardis, which founded in the estuary of the Thames River. Jim was one of the few survivors of the wreck, and only he knew that the navigational tool, a patent log, was damaged, as he had accidentally done so, and gave incorrect data as to where the ship's position was. How Jim learns to accept his guilt and to reclaim his life is told in a vigorous and compelling story

The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically

Gavin Sasaki is a promising young journalist in New York City, until he’s fired in disgrace following a series of unforgivable lapses in his work. It’s early 2009, and the world has gone dark very quickly; the economic collapse has turned an era that magazine headlines once heralded as the second gilded age into something that more closely resembles the Great Depression. The last thing Gavin wants to do is return to his hometown of Sebastian, Florida, but he’s drifting toward bankruptcy and is in no position to refuse when he’s offered a job by his sister, Eilo, a real estate broker who deals in foreclosed homes. Eilo recently paid a visit to a home that had a ten-year-old child in it, a child who looks very much like Gavin and who has the same last name as Gavin’s high school girlfriend Anna, whom Gavin last saw a decade ago. Gavin — a former jazz musician, a reluctant broker of foreclosed properties, obsessed with film noir and private detectives — begins his own private investigation in an effort to track down Anna and their apparent daughter who have been on the run all these years from a drug dealer from whom Anna stole $121,000. In her most ambitious novel yet, Emily Mandel combines her most fully realized characters with perhaps her most fully developed story that examines the difficulty of being the person you'd like to be, loss, the way a small and innocent action (e.g., taking a picture of a girl in a foreclosed house) can have disastrous consequences. The Lola Quartet is a work that pays homage to literary noir, is concerned with jazz, Django Reinhardt, economic collapse, love, Florida’s exotic wildlife problem, crushing tropical heat, the leavening of the contemporary world, compulsive gambling, and the unreliability of memory. This is literary fiction with a strong detective story element

Paul lives in the Welsh countryside with his wife Elise, and their two young children. The day after his mother dies he learns that his eldest daughter Pia, who was living with his ex-wife in London, has gone missing. He sets out in search of Pia. But the search for his daughter begins a period of unrest and indecision for Paul

When it was first published in 1993, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven established Sherman Alexie as a stunning new talent of American letters. The basis for the award-winning movie Smoke Signals, it remains one of his most beloved and widely praised books. In this darkly comic collection, Alexie brilliantly weaves memory, fantasy, and stark realism to paint a complex, grimly ironic portrait of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. These twenty-two interlinked tales are narrated by characters raised on humiliation and government-issue cheese, and yet are filled with passion and affection, myth and dream. Against a backdrop of alcohol, car accidents, laughter, and basketball, Alexie depicts the distances between Indians and whites, reservation Indians and urban Indians, men and women, and, most poetically, modern Indians and the traditions of the past

The Masked Man in a brand-new adventure! From out of the past comes a mysterious killer systematically murdering anyone with a connection to the Masked Rider of the Plains former identity. When all signs point to Butch Cavendish, a man long dead, The Lone Ranger finds himself trapped in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the life of his faithful Indian companion hanging in the balance!

Despite his precarious position as a hunted fugitive on the wrong side of the law, Buck Duane puts his life and freedom on the line for a damsel in distress

Three days after arriving in Galveston, newly widowed Sage McMurray finds herself taken hostage in a robbery. She fears she may never see Whispering Mountain again when the outlaws decide to auction their pretty captive off to the highest bidder, until a tall stranger offers twice the highest bid

Irene is thirty-seven years old and just out of prison after a four-year sentence for terrorist involvement. On her first night of freedom, she wanders from bar to bar, picks up a stranger, and spends the night with him in a hotel. He treats her badly; she attacks him and escapes. She decides to return to her native Bilbao, and while waiting at the bus stop in Barcelona, she is approached by a man she believes to be a plainclothes policeman. By attaching herself to two nuns, she manages to board the bus without him, and her journey begins.Other passengers on the bus include another plainclothes policeman, who is joined by the first farther down the line. Conversations strike up, and there begins an intricate game of hide-and-seek between strangers as they open up a little, make advances and diversions, and sidestep nimbly. As the bus continues across Spain and the travelers come increasingly into focus, Atxaga builds up tensions that can be resolved only after their arrival in Bilbao

Emily is delighted her lively new tabby kitten, Charlie, is settling in so well – if only he would just wear a collar! Then Emily is picked to join her school football team and suddenly she hardly has any time for entertaining a kitten. Charlie is bored now Emily has no time to play with him, so he ventures over the back wall to explore. There he meets a new friend, a cat-loving lady who makes lots of fuss over him. But Emily soon starts to notice that Charlie keeps disappearing and one night he doesn’t come back at all. What if he doesn’t want to be her kitten any more? A new story from best-selling author Holly Webb, perfect for animal-loving children

Penny is sick of boys and sick of dating, so she vows: No more. She’s had one too many bad dates, and has been hurt by one too many bad boys. It’s a personal choice…and soon everybody wants to know about it. It seems that Penny’s not the only girl who’s tired of the way girls change themselves (most of the time for the worse) in order to get their guys…or the way their guys don’t really care about them. Girls are soon thronging to The Lonely Hearts Club (named after Sgt. Pepper’s band), and Penny finds herself near legendary for her non-dating ways – which is too bad, since the leader of The Lonely Hearts Club has found a certain boy she can’t help but like… 

A collection of riveting tales of the sea including the story that launched his writing career and the account of the epic battle to sink the German battle ship, Bismarck. THE MASTER STORYTELLER IN HIS ELEMENT… Alistair MacLean has an unmistakable and unrivalled skill in writing about the sea and its power and about the men and women who sail it, and who fight and die in it. His distinctive voice was evident from his very first prize-winning story, The Dileas, and has been heard time and again in his international career as the author of such bestsellers as HMS Ulysses and San Andreas. The Lonely Sea starts where MacLean’s career started, with The Dileas, and collects together his stories of the sea. Here is a treasury of vintage MacLean, compelling and brilliant, where the master storyteller is in his element

HELL ON FRISCO BAY Conrad Browning is The Loner, a man on a mission, crossing the country—and crossing a lot of bad men—to rescue his kidnapped young twins. The trail has led him all the way to San Francisco’s perilous red light-district, where a crime lord is the proud father of newly adopted twins. The Loner knows his children when he sees them. But they’re hostage to a brutal, violent mob feud. Then, just when he needs it most, The Loner is no longer alone: he is joined by his own father, Frank Morgan—the most notorious gunman in the West. A family’s pain. A woman’s betrayal. A city exploding in violence… The Loner has come to the right place to save his children. But will they get out of Frisco alive?

In the 11th book of "USA Today"-bestselling author Johnstone's Loner series, Conrad Morgan turns his back on the past as he drifts into New Mexico Territory, riding up on a wagon train of pioneers--and straight into an inferno of death and revenge

The Los Angeles police department has often suspected that private detective Otis Beagle is not above making “business” to bring in a profitable client. And they are quite right. But not even Otis and his hired hand, Joe Peel, would have meddled in the affairs of the Iowa Lee Lonely Hearts Club had they realized it would mean murder, blackmail, and the old-fashioned badger game. However, there are compensations in the shape (or shapes) of three lovely ladies — Iowa Lee herself; the perfect secretary, Linda Meadows; and her roommate, Susan, whom everyone is trying to find. Joe pays a call on one of the ladies in posh Hillcrest Towers — and almost at once the first corpse turns up. There’s plenty of action and lots of humor in this fast-moving and ingenious thriller

Winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize

The Loney is a superb new slow-burn British horror novel in the tradition of The Wicker Man. Exploring issues of faith and the survival of older beliefs, Andrew Michael Hurley’s beautifully atmospheric and moving novel has at its heart the relationship between two London Catholic boys, Smith and his mute, mentally disabled brother Hanny. The discovery of the remains of a young child during winter storms along the bleak Lancashire coastline leads Smith back to the Saint Jude’s Church Easter pilgrimage to The Loney in 1976. Not all of the locals are pleased to see the Catholic party in the area, and some puzzling events occur. Smith and Hanny, the youngest members of the party, become involved with a glamorous couple staying at a nearby house with their young charge, the heavily pregnant Else. Prayers are said for Hanny at the local shrine, but he also inadvertently becomes involved in more troubling rites. Secrets are kept, and disclosed. After the pilgrimage, a miracle — of one kind or another — occurs. Smith feels he is the only one to know the truth, and he must bear the burden of his knowledge, no matter what the cost

When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame the usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even the British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn't actually anything to do with them at all. No rational cause could be found for the explosion - it was simply designated an act of God. But, thinks Dirk Gently, which God? And why? What God would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport, trying to catch the 15.37 to Oslo?

Waking up early to check the cattle, Gareth notices one of the calving cows is missing and sets off to find her before the sun gets too strong. What follows is a search through memory and anxiety about losing what he has as Gareth walks the land looking for the missing cow. Increasingly, the narrative is disturbed by arresting and often brutal imagery as things chip away at Gareth's patience and the need to find the cow becomes more pressing. The day unfolds, and the cow's behaviour emerges as a metaphor for the relationship between Gareth and his wife Kate as they stumble on desperately in their changing care for each other. Only the reader is aware of the tragedy that awaits the family a few days down the line, throwing the story into shadow with a terrible poignancy

The UK's bestselling fantasy writer and a giant of British SF combine forces to write an astonishing, mind-bending new series… The Long Earth. 2015: Madison, Wisconsin. Junior cop Sally Jansson is called out to the house of Willis Lynsey, a reclusive scientist, for an animal-cruelty complaint: the man was seen forcing a horse in through the door of his home. Inside there is no horse. But Sally finds a kind of home-made utility belt. She straps this on – and 'steps' sideways into an America covered with virgin forest. Willis came here with equipment and animals, meaning to explore and colonise. And when Sally gets back, she finds Willis has put the secret of the belt on the internet. The great migration has begun… The Long Earth: our Earth is but one of a chain of parallel worlds, lying side by side in a higher space of possibilities, each differing from its neighbours by a little (or a lot): an infinite landscape of infinite possibilities. And the further away you travel, the stranger the worlds get. The sun and moon always shine, the basic laws of physics are the same. However, the chance events which have shaped our particular version of Earth, such as the dinosaur-killer asteroid impact, might not have happened and things may well have turned out rather differently. But only our Earth hosts mankind

Not every writer has the stamina to set words on paper with one foot in a cast and one arm in a sling; but there is at least one who has, and that one is a member of what we are taught to think of as the frailer sex, by name Miriam Allen deFord. And not every writer, too, has the talent to find a delightful explanation, in science-fiction terms, for one of the grislier riddles of the Decade of the Mobster. But, here again, it is this same Miss deFord who has done it; and the story she has done it in is

Smooth talking. Ambitious. Loyal. Twenty-year-old Shay Reilly has proven himself to his Irish-American Gypsy clan on small-scale cons, but now the clan leader has a bigger mission for him: playing the long game. To rake in the big score he’s after, he needs to con coed Spencer into falling in love with him. He knows he should see Spencer as a mere means to an end, but that’s easier said than done when there’s a witty, attractive girl in your arms. Now the only thing that can keep them apart is the thing that brought them together: Shay’s plans of revenge against someone who wronged his clan and family years before—Spencer’s father

The Long Goodbye (1953) is a milestone in the genre. This novel demonstrated for the first time that hard-boiled fiction could serve as a vehicle for social comment and critique. While the apparent plot is slower paced and less metaphoric than Chandler's previous novels, the revealed plot shows him using his own life as a material, an autobiographical turn that prepared the way for Ross Macdonald. Marlowe meets and befriends English expatriate Terry Lennox, a drunk who has been abandoned by his ex-wife Sylvia, at The Dancers Club. Months later he spots Lennox drunk again, runs him home, and sobers him up, giving him traveling money to Las Vegas. Lennox sends repayment and re-marries Sylvia, after which Marlowe shares an occasional drink with him: during one, Lennox accuses Sylvia of infidelity. He next appears at Marlowe's door in flight to Tijuana, apparently because he has killed her. Marlowe drives him there and stonewalls policemen Green and Dayton when he returns, spending time in jail. He refuses to cooperate with a lawyer sent by Sylvia's millionaire father, local magnate Harlan Potter. Marlowe won't talk even after the D.A. says that Lennox wrote a full confession before shooting himself in Mexico. A reporter suggests to him that there is a cover-up, which is confirmed by calls from the lawyer and warnings from gangster Mendy Menendez, an old friend of Lennox, who explains that Lennox was captured by the Nazis during World War II. Marlowe gets a letter from Lennox, which waffles on his role in the murder and contains a $5,000 bill. A second apparent plot begins when Howard Spencer, a publisher's representative, hires Marlowe to baby-sit hack novelist Roger Wade (Chandler's self-portrait). The alcoholic writer can't finish his novel and is missing, but his stunning blonde wife Eileen provides a note about "Dr. V" and details of Wade's stays at drunk farms. Marlowe gets information on these places from an old friend in a big agency and narrows his list to three suspects. None pan out except Dr. Verringer, who is about to sell out so that he can support a manic-depressive named Earl. Spying Wade through a window, Marlowe saves him from crazy Earl. For this he collects a kiss from Eileen, and he learns that she knew Sylvia Lennox, which links the two plots. A lull follows, during which Marlowe meets Sylvia's sister Linda Loring and her insufferable doctor husband. They argue about Sylvia's murder and whether Harlan Potter wants the case closed, but a respectful friendship ensues. Marlowe sees the Lorings again at Roger Wade's cocktail party, where the doctor accuses the novelist of sleeping with his wife. A scene follows, but Wade handles the blow-up well. Marlowe, however, won't accept $1,000 to nanny the author through his novel. He doesn't like the writer's ego or his wife, who tells him her own story of true love lost. A week later Wade calls for help, and Marlowe arrives to find him collapsed in front of his house, with Eileen sitting nearby smoking. He and the house-boy put Wade to bed, and Marlowe walks away from an opportunity with Eileen. Instead he collects Wade's drunken notes to gain insight into his problems. Then there's a shot. Marlowe finds husband and wife struggling over a gun, the novelist claiming he attempted suicide. Dosed with drugs, he finally sleeps. Eileen invites Marlowe into her bed, but he declines. Linda Loring introduces Marlowe to Harlan Potter, who wants the Lennox murder closed. Marlowe demurs. Now information develops that Lennox used to call himself Paul Marston, and that Roger Wade had an affair with Sylvia. Marlowe, at the Wades with Eileen, finds the writer dead. His old friend Lt. Ohls treats the case as a suicide, but Eileen accuses Marlowe. More comes out about Lennox's former life: he was married to Eileen and presumed dead in World War I, so she married Wade. But then he reappeared and she panicked. In the revealed plot, she killed both Sylvia and Roger. Lennox' name is cleared. Linda Loring divorces her obnoxious husband and asks Marlowe to marry her; he refuses to be a kept man, but does spend a night with her, the only woman Marlowe ever beds (aside from Helen Vermilyea in Chandler's better-off-forgotten swan song, Playback. There's a final detail to check and it's supplied by Senor Maioranos ("Mr. Better-years"), who is Terry Lennox in disguise. He and Marlowe talk, but the old affection is gone. As Marlowe said of Linda Loring's departure, "to say goodbye is to die a little." As he had in the preceding The Little Sister (1949), Chandler engaged in pointed social criticism in The Long Goodbye, stretching the genre. The brunt of his attack is born by the rich: Marlowe sees their enterprises – business, the press, gambling interests, lawyers, and the courts – forming a monolith that disenfranchises the average citizen. "Money tends to have a life of its own, even a conscience of its own," says villain Harlan Potter, who is the ironic spokesman for many of Chandler's views (190-91). The roots of crime lie not with nymphomaniacs (as in The Big Sleep) or in economic climbing (Farewell's Velma Valento), but in big money's exploitation of the lowest-common-denominator effect of mass institutions and democracy. This, Chandler finally decided, rather than some inherently debilitating effect of the setting, robs immigrants to L.A. of the admirable independence that drew them there. More interesting still is the way Chandler used the novel, which he wrote as his wife lay dying, to analyze and comment on his own life. Like Terry Lennox, Chandler was a soldier scarred by World War I, whose young days at Dabney Oil were full of big cars and illicit affairs. Like Roger Wade, he had become a middle-aged, childless, self-hating, alcoholic, celebrity writer. Like Philip Marlowe, Chandler clung in conscience to early ideals, belief in character, fidelity, and respect for creation. The novel detests the very self-pity that propels it. Can Chandler integrate the parts of his life? Marlowe's last words to Lennox are "So long, Senor Maioranos. Nice to have known you – however briefly" (311). The final answer is no. It is no accident that Terry Lennox and Roger Wade never appear together, but rather a psychological impossibility. That a woman undoes both is Chandler's old saw, but secondary here. "Your husband is a guy who can take a long hard look at himself and see what is there," says Marlowe to Eileen. "Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had" (153). Not until Ross Macdonald would the hard-boiled novel again be exploited for autobiographical insight so sharply

“The Fuhrer is dead – long live the Fuhrer.” Adolf Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt lie dead, but the war goes on, nearly two years since Britain was moved back in time to 1940. As 1942 dawns, all of the powers know that the final reckoning is about to begin. From the deserts of the Middle East to the cold of the Far East, from Russia to Europe, even within America to the icy deaths of space, the fighting expands until it seems that it will never end. With Allied armies preparing to invade Europe, all who have collaborated with the Nazis know that their time is running out. As the Allies and Axis prepare for the final round, there is one last horror to be unleashed… for Himmler, Stalin and Tojo won’t go out without a fight. Bleeding their counties to the last drop of blood, they prepare their final stand against democracy, developing new and terrible weapons. The fate of the world remains in the balance… and dark secrets wait to be revealed…

In a literary voice that is both original and powerfully unsettling, William Gay tells the story of Nathan Winer, a young and headstrong Tennessee carpenter who lost his father years ago to a human evil that is greater and closer at hand than any the boy can imagine — until he learns of it first-hand. Gay's remarkable debut novel, The Long Home, is also the story of Amber Rose, a beautiful young woman forced to live beneath that evil who recognizes even as a child that Nathan is her first and last chance at escape. And it is the story of William Tell Oliver, a solitary old man who watches the growing evil from the dark woods and adds to his own weathered guilt by failing to do anything about it. Set in rural Tennessee in the 1940s, The Long Home will bring to mind once again the greatest Southern novelists and will haunt the reader with its sense of solitude, longing, and the deliverance that is always just out of reach

The story takes place following a nuclear holocaust which wipes out every major city east of the Mississippi and leaves the survivors permanently infected with plague. To prevent the plague from spreading, the army sets up a cordon sanitaire along the Mississippi. The story follows one survivor, Russell Gary, as he attempts to get back across the river

In the blaze of a Carolina summer, among the poison ivy and loblolly pines, eight Marines are killed almost casually by misfired mortar shells. Deciding that his battalion has been “doping off”, Colonel Templeton calls for a 36-mile forced march to inculcate discipline. The Long March is a searing account of this ferocious ordeal—and of the two officers who resist

2040-2045: In the years after the cataclysmic Yellowstone eruption there is massive economic dislocation as populations flee Datum Earth to myriad Long Earth worlds. Sally, Joshua, and Lobsang are all involved in this perilous work when, out of the blue, Sally is contacted by her long-vanished father and inventor of the original Stepper device, Willis Linsay. He tells her he is planning a fantastic voyage across the Long Mars and wants her to accompany him. But Sally soon learns that Willis has ulterior motives ... Meanwhile U. S. Navy Commander Maggie Kauffman has embarked on an incredible journey of her own, leading an expedition to the outer limits of the far Long Earth. For Joshua, the crisis he faces is much closer to home. He becomes embroiled in the plight of the Next: the super-bright post-humans who are beginning to emerge from their 'long childhood' in the community called Happy Landings, located deep in the Long Earth. Ignorance and fear are causing 'normal' human society to turn against the Next - and a dramatic showdown seems inevitable

Everything that lives contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It was the fate of the Assyrians and the Hittites, the Greeks and the Romans, the British and the Americans. And so it was for the Polesotechnic League and the Terran Empire. Conception, birth, growth, aging, death: This is the law of life, true for nations, worlds and stellar empires no less than for organisms. For the greatest and the smallest it is the same, differing on it in this: the greater the heights conquered, the greater the fall, the longer and darker the night that follows… The stories contained herein were first published as follows: “The Star Plunderer,” Planet Stories, 1952. “Outpost of Empire,” Galaxy, 1967. “A Tragedy of Errors” Galaxy, 1967. “The Sharing of Flesh,” Galaxy, 1968. Won Hugo and nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette in 1969. “Starfog,” Analog, 1967

In her first story for Asimov’s, Emily Devenport takes us on a wild and woolly adventure where the fate of the Earth hinges on the outcome of…

The End was just the beginning of the new world… Only six weeks have passed since a super-EMP attack devastated the United States, but already, life has changed dramatically. Most of America has become a wasteland filled with starving bands of people, mobs and gangs. Millions are dead and millions more are suffering, with no end in sight. For Gordon, Samantha, Sebastian, Cruz and Barone, the turmoil and chaos they dealt with in the early weeks after the attack will seem trivial in comparison to the collapse of society that plays out before their eyes. Uncertainty abounds as they all travel different paths in search of a safe place to call home. The only thing that is definite is that The Long Road will take its toll on all of them

The world has just found out that it’s going to end, with a huge unstoppable asteroid hurtling towards the planet. Claire is in Toronto with her two young sons. Her husband, Tom, is on the other side of the country and must find his way home in an increasingly chaotic landscape. This is a parallel novella to The Last Day on Earth that follows Lucy’s sister and brother-in-law. A short novel of 50,000, or approx. 220 pages. Available in e-book and paperback

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile, shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.” —Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment Two generations after the Destruction, rumors persist about a secret desert hideaway where scientists worked with dangerous machines and where men plot to revive the cities. Almost a continent away, Len Coulter has heard whisperings that fired his imagination. And then one day he finds a strange wooden box…

2045-2059. After the cataclysmic upheavals of Step Day and the Yellowstone eruption humanity is spreading further into the Long Earth, and society, on a battered Datum Earth and beyond, continues to evolve. Now an elderly and cantankerous AI, Lobsang lives in disguise with Agnes in an exotic, far-distant world. He’s convinced they’re leading a normal life in New Springfield – they even adopt a child – but it seems they have been guided there for a reason. As rumours of strange sightings and hauntings proliferate, it becomes clear that something is very awry with this particular world. Millions of steps away, Joshua is on a personal journey of discovery: learning about the father he never knew and a secret family history. But then he receives a summons from New Springfield. Lobsang now understands the enormity of what’s taking place beneath the surface of his earth – a threat to all the worlds of the Long Earth. To counter this threat will require the combined efforts of humankind, machine and the super-intelligent Next. And some must make the ultimate sacrifice

Gentle Reader: You’ve probably never been suspected of embezzling a bank of two hundred thousand bucks, or of murdering a D.A., and I sure hope you never have been. I was suspected of having done both. That was six years ago, in Lyncastle, a small town in the Middle West. It was too much for me at the time and, while nothing was ever proved either way, I lit out of town for the West and wound up in the oil fields of Oklahoma. At least that’s the way Johnny McBride told it to me, and we became great buddies. The funny thing about it was that we looked exactly alike — nobody could tell us apart. It was pretty confusing for a while, but it was sort of run, too. We had some great rimes together, and I decided I’d come back to Lyncastle to see what I could find out about this mess. Knowing Johnny as well as I did, I was pretty sure Johnny wasn’t guilty. Well, I found our all right. I found out plenty! It’s a good thing I can take it because by the time I got through I had taken just about everything chat Lyncastle could hand out. But it wasn’t altogether one-sided on char score; I can dish it our, too! If you like things rough and tough The Long Wait is for you. You won’t have as long a wait to get your satisfaction as I had to get mine. Signed, Johnny

Slavomir Rawicz was a young Polish cavalry officer. On 19 November 1939 he was arrested by the Russians and after brutal interrogation he was sentenced to 25 years in the Gulags. After a 3-month journey to Siberia in the depths of winter he escaped with 6 companions, realising that to stay in the camp meant almost certain death. In June 1941 they crossed the trans-Siberian railway and headed south, climbing into Tibet and freedom 9 months later in March 1942 after travelling on foot through some of the harshest regions in the world, including the Gobi Desert. First published in 1956, this is one of the world's greatest true stories of adventure, survival and escape