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May 1975. St. Louis. In a snow-swept street, a cop finds the body of a man who died fifty years ago. It's still warm.

July 1866, Lidice, Bohemia: A teenage girl calmly watches her parents die as another being takes control of her body.

August 2058, Prague: Three political rebels flee in to the past, taking with them a terrible secret.

As past, present, and future collide, one man holds the key to the puzzle. And if he doesn't fit it together, the world he knows will fall to pieces. It's just A Matter of Time.

For centuries, the legendary Protector, Jehrke Victorious, has kept safe the Crossroad of the World--Shasesserre. The City is kept guarded and blanketed from smaller-scale threats to dark magical anomalies. All was calm and peaceful for generations under the peaceful wizardry--until one day, a mysterious stranger brutally murders the Protector.

In this tale of Sung in Blood, responsibility now falls on Rider, the slain Protector's son. Presuming responsibilities as Protector of Shasesserre, he dedicates his duty to avenge his father's death. Joined by his loyal companions, Rider is not alone in his search for the killer. His companions are a diverse bunch, which include a shape-shifting imp, a northern barbarian, a wild philosopher, and many others.

Together, Rider and his companions battle against the vile minions of the brooding Kralj Odehnal. Soon they will face the ultimate evil, Shai Khe, the merciless sorcerer bent on ruling all of Shasesserre. The desperate mission will be a hard-fought one. They will utilize the sharpest of swords while facing the most powerful of spells.

For four thousand years, the Guardships have ruled Canon Space - immortal ships with an immortal crew, dealing swiftly and harshly with any mercantile houses or alien races that threaten the status quo.But now the House Tregesser has an edge: a force from outside Canon Space offers them the resources to throw off Guardship rule. This precipitates an avalanche of unexpected outcomes, including the emergence of Kez Maefele, one of the few remaining generals of the Ku Warrior race-the only race to ever seriously threaten Guardship hegemony.

Kez Maefele and a motley group of aliens, biological constructs, and scheming aristocrats find themselves at the center of the conflict. Maefele must chose which side he will support: the Guardships, who defeated and destroyed his race, or the unknown forces outside Canon Space that promise more death and destruction.

It is the time of the gathering and all nations must pay tribute -

WHY MUST THEY? Kurt wondered, as the decrepit destroyer JAGER wallowed through uncharted waters on its way to Gibraltar, the Gathering of the fleet, and the Final Meeting with the Enemy.

It was sad to think how far man had fallen from the days when such vessels as the JAGER had been built. Now the last men struggled on in isolated communities, maintaining machines they could no longer build, ruled over by the distant Political Office in the person of the much despised and universally feared Political Officers. These black phantoms ruled mankind, telling one how to think, how to act, and when to obey the call to the Gathering.

And now the call had come for Kurt to sail off to Gibraltar to the Gathering - the ritual massing of the fleet for the War, the Gathering from which no one had ever returned...

A young boy's dreams of glory and war turn into a bitter nightmare as his father's kingdom is overrun by an invading army. Lost and alone in the woods, he finds an ancient sword that promises him the ability to claim his vengeance. As he begins to take that vengeance, he comes to realize the price that the sword will demand of him. Enemies soon become allies and strange bedfellows abound as the prophesies of an age swirl into chaos.

The City of Qushmarrah is uneasy under the rule of the Herodians --short, balding men whose armies would never have conquered the city had not the great and evil wizard Narkar been killed and sealed in his citadel; had not the savage nomad Datars turned coat and sided with the invaders; had not some traitor opened the fortress to them.

Not many would welcome the return of the old religion, the bloody return of wizardry... but there are some patriots who would accept the return of the devil they know, if it meant the return of independence.

Glen Cook is, of course, best known for his enormously popular series fiction, which includes the Garrett P.I. and Dread Empire sequences, as well as the internationally acclaimed Chronicles of the Black Company. Readers familiar only with this aspect of Cook's career will find a great many pleasures--and an equal number of surprises--in his vibrant new collection, Winter's Dreams.

The fourteen standalone stories in Winter's Dreams range in length from vignettes ("Appointment in Samarkand") to novellas ("In the Wind"). Together, they encompass an astonishing variety of themes, tones, styles, and settings. Not one of these stories bears the slightest resemblance to the others. Each one manages to enchant, illuminate, and entertain in its own distinctive fashion.

• In the near future America of "Song from a Forgotten Hill," the nations' tragic racial history replays itself in an all too familiar form.
• "The Seventh Fool" recounts the comic misadventures of a charming con man who outsmarts both his gullible target--and himself.
• "The Waiting Sea" encapsulates the entire life history of a navy veteran haunted by the sea--and by the faceless voices only he can hear.
• In "Ponce," a poverty stricken St. Louis family encounters a mysterious blue-eyed dog--a dog that serves as a conduit to the undisclosed secrets of the universe.
• "The Recruiter" presents a powerfully disturbing portrait of an ultra-violent future and asks the question: How far will a man go in order to survive?

Equally suitable both for newcomers and for long-time Glen Cook fans, Winter's Dreams is something special, a consistently enthralling volume that claims new imaginative territory at every turn.

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive.... I am Murgen, Standard bearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead. One-Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end..."

So writes Murgen, seasoned veteran of the Black Company. The Company has taken the fortress of Stormgard from the evil Shadowlanders, lords of darkness from the far reaches of the earth. Now the waiting begins.

Exhausted from the siege, beset by sorcery, and vastly outnumbered, the Company have risked their souls as well as their lives to hold their prize. But this is the end of an age, and great forces are at work. The ancient race known as the Nyueng Bao swear that ancient gods are stirring. the Company's commander has gone mad and flirts with the forces of darkness. Only Murgen, touched by a spell that has set his soul adrift in time, begins at last to comprehend the dark design that has made pawns of men and god alike.

The wind whines and howls with bitter breath. Lightning snarls and barks. Rage is an animate force upon the plain of glittering stone. Even shadows are afraid. At the heart of the plain stands a vast grey stronghold, unknown, older than any written memory. One ancient tower has collapsed across the fissure. From the heart of the vastness comes a great, deep, slow breath like that of a slumbering world-heart, cracking the olden silence.

Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence. Stone cannot speak, but stone remembers.

So begins the next movement of Glittering Stone.... The tale again comes to us from the pen of Murgen, Annalist and Standard Bearer of the Black Company, whose developing powers of travel through space and time give him a perspective like no other.

Led by the wily commander, Croaker, and the Lady, the Company is working for the Taglian government, but neither the Company nor the Taglians are overflowing with trust for each other. Arrayed against both is a similarly tenuous alliance of sorcerers, including the diabolical Soulcatcher, the psychotic Howler, and a four-year-old child who may be the most powerful of all.

For years, Glen Cook's Black Company series has built a major audience among fantasy fans. Told from the "worm's-eye" view of the soldiers and functionaries who fight in the trenches of vast sorceress wars, this epic has riveted a generation of readers. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them. Now Cook brings the latest cycle of the Black Company saga to a major climax, as the survivors of the disaster at the end of She is Darkness regroup in Taglios.

Determined to free their fellow warriors held in stasis beneath the glittering plain, they journey there under terrible conditions, arriving just in time for a magical conflagration in which the bones of the world will be revealed, the history of the Company unveiled, and new worlds gained and lost...all at a major price. Wry, tough-minded, brilliantly imagined, and told with enormous flair, Water Sleeps is Glen Cook at the top of his game.

When sorcerers and demigods go to war, those wars are fought by mercenaries, "dog soldiers," grunts in the trenches. And the stories of those soldiers are the stories of Glen Cook's hugely popular "Black Company" novels. If the Joseph Heller of Catch-22 were to tell the story of The Lord of the Rings, it might read like the Black Company books. There is nothing else in fantasy like them.

Now, at last, Cook brings the "Glittering Stone" cycle within the Black Company series to an end... but an end with many other tales left to tell. As Soldiers Live opens, Croaker is military dictator of all the Taglias, and no Black Company member has died in battle for four years. Croaker figures it can't last. He's right.

For, of course, many of the Company's old adversaries are still around. Narayan Singh and his adopted daughter--actually the offspring of Croaker and the Lady--hope to bring about the apocalyptic Year of the Skulls. Other old enemies like Shadowcatcher, Longshadow, and Howler are also ready to do the Company harm. And much of the Company is still recovering from the fifteen years many of them spent in a stasis field.

Then a report arrives of an evil spirit, a forvalaka, that has taken over one of their old enemies. It attacks them at a shadowgate--setting off a chain of events that will bring the Company to the edge of apocalypse and, as usual, several steps beyond.

Glen Cook is the leading modern writer of epic fantasy noir, and Soldiers Live is Cook at his best. None of his legion of fans will want to miss it.

Darkness wars with darkness as the hard-bitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must. They bury their doubts with their dead.

Then comes the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more....

This omnibus edition comprises The Black Company, Shadows Linger, and The White Rose.

Marching south after the ghastly battle at the Tower of Charm, the Black Company is hounded by shadowy figures every inch of the way.

The game is on: the Company versus the Shadowmasters, deadly creatures that deal in darkness and sorrow.

When hope dies, there's still survival. And there's still the Black Company.

This omnibus edition collects Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel, and The Silver Spike.

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive...."

"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One–Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end...."

This omnibus volume comprises the novels Bleak Seasons and She is the Darkness.

"Let me tell you who I am, on the chance that these scribblings do survive...."

"I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost that standard in battle. I am keeping these Annals because Croaker is dead, One–Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I will be your guide for however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end...."

This omnibus volume comprises the novels Water Sleeps and Soldiers Live.

The soldiers of the Black Company don't ask questions, they get paid. But being "The Lady's favored" is attracting the wrong kind of attention and has put a target on their backs--and the Company's historian, Croaker, has the biggest target of all.

The one person who was taken into The Lady's Tower and returned unchanged has earned the special interest of the court of sorcerers known as The Ten Who Were Taken. Now, he and the company are being asked to seek the aid of their newest member, Mischievous Rain, to break a rebel army. However, Croaker doesn't trust any of the Taken, especially not ones that look so much like The Lady and her sister...

Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. Some feel she is evil itself. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead.

Until the prophesy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more.

There must be a way for The Black Company to find her...

Mercenary soldiers in the service of the Lady, the Black Company stands against the rebels of the White Rose. They are tough men, proud of honoring their contracts. The Lady is evil, but so, too, are those who falsely profess to follow the White Rose, reincarnation of a centuries-dead heroine. Yet now some of the Company have discovered that the mute girl they rescued and sheltered is truly the White Rose reborn. Now there may be a path to the light, even for such as they. If they can survive it.

She is the last hope of good in the war against the evil sorceress known as the Lady. From a secret base on the Plains of Fear, where even the Lady hesitates to go, the Black Company, once in service to the Lady, now fights to bring victory to the White Rose. But now an even greater evil threatens the world. All the great battles that have gone before will seem a skirmishes when the Dominator rises from the grave.

After the devastating battle at the Tower of Charm, Croaker leads the greatly diminished Black Company south, in search of the lost Annals. The Annals will be returned to Khatovar, eight thousand miles away, a city that may exist only in legend... the origin of the first Free Companies.

Every step of the way the Company is hounded by shadowy figured and carrion-eating crows. As they march every southward, through bug infested jungle, rivers dense with bloodthirsty pirates, and cities, dead and living, haunted by the passage of the Company north, their numbers grow until they are thousands strong.

But always they are watched--by the Shadowmasters--a deadly new enemy: twisted creature that deal in darkness and death: powerful, shadowy creatures bent on smothering the world in their foul embrace. This is the first round in a deadly game, a game that the Black Company cannot ea hope to win.

....embedded in the trunk of the scion of the godtree, it contains the essence of the maddest of the Ten Who Were Taken...The Dominator.

Defeated by the Lady and cast from this world, all that was left of him was a foul trace of lingering evil. But the graveyard that was once the Barrowland contains more secrets than dead. All who would possess the power of the Dominator are drawn to the spike. A foolhardy band of thieves is the first to reach it, and a rapacious and malign spirit is unleashed on an unwary world. The forces gather, sides are drawn, and mortal men can only die as the Dark Lords battle for domination.

Croaker has fallen and, following the Company's disastrous defeat at Dejagore, Lady is one of the few survivors--determined to avenge the Company and herself against the Shadowmasters, no matter what the cost.

But in assembling a new fighting force from the dregs and rabble of Taglios, she finds herself offered help by a mysterious, ancient cult of murder--competent, reliable, and apparently committed to her goals.

Meanwhile, far away, Shadowmasters conspire against one another and the world, weaving dark spells that reach into the heart of Taglios. And in a hidden grove, a familiar figure slowly awakens to find himself the captive of an animated, headless corpse.

Mercilessly cutting through Taglian intrigues, Lady appears to be growing stronger every day. All that disturbs her are the dreams which afflict her by night--dreams of carnage, of destruction, of universal death, unceasing...

The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth.

For Marika, a young pup of the Packstead, loyal to pack and family, times are dark indeed, for against these foes, the Packstead cannot prevail. But awakening within Marika is a power unmatched in all the world, a legendary power that may not just save her world, but allow her to grasp the stars themselves.

From Glen Cook, author of the Black Company and Dread Empire novels, comes Darkwar, collecting for the first time, the stunning science fantasy epic that originally appeared as Doomstalker, Warlock, and Ceremony.

The Grauken wakes. It was the dormant, loathsome instinct possessed by every beast of Ponath. An innocent pup of the Degnan Packstead, Marika thought it was just a tale to frighten the young. Then the Grauken-possessed, cannibalistic nomads swept down from the far north--and the winter of death began.

Marika's pack now has to fight for its life--even if it means calling upon the treacherous witchlike Silth who can slay by mind alone. But young Marika has powers, too... enormous, untamed mental energies. Can Marika be a weapon against their foes? Or will she become something far greater than the Silth, something fearfully whispered of only in legends Doomstalker.

THE POWER IN HER MIND brought young Morika at last to the great Maksche Cloister, where her already precocious silth witch-like powers could be honed to an awesome mental weapon.

To the tradermales fell the skills ot science and technology, while the female silth dominated the world with their mastery of the black arts. In the uneasy tradermale-silth truce, there could be no trust or friendship between the two races.

But proud, stubborn Marika was born to break all rulesù maybe even to be her worldÆs destruction. One tradermaIe was her friend already. And another, closer to her heart than any living being, held a power strong enough to challenge silth domination. Marika had a choice to make, a vow to keep, and a battle to fight with the one they called...

Was she their savior or a deadly menace? Now grown to her full psychic powers as Most Senior of the witchlike silth, Marika made a daring plan: to set solar mirrors in space that would end the Winter of the World, heralding a new age for all.

Then her old enemies, the rogue tradermales, raised up a champion against her, an alien power that threatened to destroy all that she had worked for. It was to lead Marika to her final battle--one against the forces of nature and the will of her own people. Before its end, she would have to pilot her darkship to touch another world, as she herself faced the final... Ceremony.

Across the mountains called Dragon's Teeth, beyond the chill reach of the Werewind and the fires of the world's beginning, above the walls of the castle Fangdred, stands Windtower. From this lonely keep the Star Rider calls forth the war that even wizards dread, fought for a woman's hundred-lifetime love. A woman called Nepanthe, princess to the Stormkings...

Cradled in swords, the war-child comes October. When the leaves turn blood and the wind turns bone: a time for doings dark and strange. The princess bears a child to the winged thing and the cries are heard far beyond the peaks of Dragon's Teeth, at the end of the world's Beginning, where Nepanthe and Mocker wait for the war that wizard's dread.

At empire's end war is not all hell. Mocker finds old friends in the halls of death, and Nepanthe new lovers in the fields of blood and bone. The war-child wields the sword of truth: the Star Rider's dread secret is at last revealed. And so it ends. Though "end" is but a wizard-word for new beginnings.

Once a mighty kingdom reigned – now all is chaos and darkness! In the vast reaches of the desert, a young heretic escapes certain death and embarks on a mission of madness and glory. He is El Murid – the Disciple – who vows to bring order, prosperity and righteousness to the desert people of Hammad al Nakir. But among the warriors, rebellion seethes as they plot to execute the justice of the desert on their evil leader. For after four long centuries, a sorcerer appears among them – a savior destined to build a new Empire from the blood of their enemies!

The holy wars had begun, his family was slaughtered by bandits. He was abandoned to die in the desert – but he survived, with the help of his god, and became El Murid, the Disciple. Against him rides Haroun ben Yousif, High Prince of sorcery. Their war will soak the desert with magic, and with blood.

An omnibus collection the first three Dread Empire novels: A Shadow of All Night's Falling, October's Baby and All Darkness Met.

This is an omnibus edition of The Fire in His Hands and With Mercy Toward None.

Once a mighty kingdom reigned, but now all is chaos. In the vast reaches of the desert, a young heretic escapes certain death and embarks on a mission of madness and glory. He is El Murid - the Disciple - who vows to bring order, prosperity and righteousness to the desert people of Hammad al Nakir. El Murid incites rebellion against the godless kingdoms and tribes as he plots to execute the justice of the desert. After four long centuries, El Murid is the savior who is destined to build a new empire from the blood his enemies. Or so it seems. El Murid has victory in his grasp, the desert tribes of Hammad al Nakir are rallying around him, and the last remaining thread of the royal lineage wanders the desert with only Heathens to help him. But all is not as it seems, and the sinister forces pulling the strings of empire come into the light. Who and what lies behind El Murid's vision of a desert empire?

The Dread Empire, a gritty world of larger-than-life plots, nation-shattering conflict, maddening magic, strange creatures, and raw, flawed heroes, all shown through the filter of Glen Cook's inimitable war-correspondent prose. The Dread Empire, spanning from the highest peaks of the Dragon's Teeth to the endless desert lands of Hammad al Nakir, from besieged Kavelin to mighty Shinshan, the Empire Unacquainted with Defeat, with its fearless, masked soldiers, known as the Demon Guard...

An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat collects all of Glen Cook's short fiction set in the vast world of the Dread Empire, from "The Nights of Dreadful Silence", featuring the first appearance of Bragi Ragnarson, Mocker, and Haroun bin Yousif, to the culture-clashing novella "Soldier of an Empire Unacquainted with Defeat"; from "Silverheels", Cook's first published work of fiction, to "Hell's Forge", a haunting tale of cursed pirates and strange lands, appearing here for the first time. Also including a detailed introduction and extensive story notes by Glen Cook, An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat charts the development of this influential American author and the massive, multifaceted world that he created.

It has ended. It begins again. In Kavelin, Lady Nepanthe's new life with the wizard Varthlokkur is disturbed by visions of her lost son, while King Bragi Ragnarson and Michael Trebilcock scheme to help the exiled Princess Mist re-usurp her throne - under their thumb. In Shinsan, a pig-farmer's son takes command of Eastern Army, while Lord Kuo faces plots in his council and a suicide attack of two million Matayangans on his border. But in the desert beyond the Dread Empire, a young victim of the Great War becomes the Deliverer of an eons-forgotten god, chosen to lead the legions of the dead. And the power of his vengeance will make a world's schemes as petty as dust, blown wild in the horror that rides the east wind.

King Bragi Ragnorson decides to join Chatelain Mist's coup against the Dread Empire. Varhlokkur — the King's wizard — tries to dissuade Ragnorson from this chosen path, but only the drum-beat of war is heard. The King's Spymaster Michael Trebilcock joins with the wizard to stave off The Ill Fate Marshaling, to no effect.

Many of the characters from past volumes take center stage, and the climatic events of this book shake the world of the Dread Empire to its very core, creating A Path to Coldness of Heart. Glen Cook's final Dread Empire novel was to have been published 20 years ago, but the manuscript was stolen, and the fate of The Dread Empire has been in Limbo — until now! Night Shade is proud to present the long delayed final Dread Empire Trilogy, of which An Ill Fate Marshalling is Volume 2.

At long last, the conclusion to Glen Cook's Dread Empire saga has arrived! King Bragi Ragnarson is a prisoner, shamed, nameless, and held captive by Lord Shih-kaa and the Empress Mist at the heart of the Dread Empire.

Far away in Kavelin, Bragia's queen and what remains of his army seek to find and free their king, hampered by the loss or desertion of their best and brightest warriors. Kavelina's spymaster, Michael Trebilcock, is missing in action, as is loyal soldier Aral Dantice. Meanwhile, Dane, Duke of Greyfells, seeks to seize the rule of Kavelin and place the kingdom in his pocket, beginning a new line of succession through Bragia's queen, Dane's cousin Inger. And in the highest peaks of the Dragona's Teeth, in the ancient castle Fangdred, the sorcerer called Varthlokkur uses his arts to spy on the world at large, observing the puppet strings that control kings and empires alike, waiting... For the time of the wrath of kings is almost at hand, and vengeance lies along a path to coldness of heart.

It should have been a simple job. But for Garrett, a human detective in a world of gnomes, tracking down the woman to whom his dead pal Danny left a fortune in silver is no slight task. Even with the aid of Morley, the toughest half-elf around, Garrett isn't sure he'll make it out alive from a land where magic can be murder, the dead still talk, and vampires are always hungry for human blood.

The Stormwarden's children have been kidnapped and Garrett, P.I. is on the case. But caught between the bewitching beauty of a half-elf and the fearsome power of a horde of ogres, Garrett has to think twice before sacrificing all for a fortune in gold-after all, even in this enchanted land, he's only human.

She was tall, blonde, and offering P.I. Garrett an irresistible fee to take a case that seemed open and shut. But in a town of elves and humans, thugs and swindlers, Garrett had learned to take a long, hard look before saying yes...

Someone? or something ?is murdering the employees of retired General Stantor. Now, this growing legion of the dead wants to add the general to their ranks. And it?s up to Garrett and the half-elf Morley Dotes to protect Stantor and find the killer...

Everyone wants to find it... a treasure so rich it makes even a hard-boiled detective like Garrett nervous. It's the legendary Book of Shadows, made of brass and holding secrets no mortal was ever meant to master and Garrett must make sure no one ever has the chance to work its spells on an unsuspecting and unprotected world.

Blood soaked blades had been taking their toll among the luscious lovelies in Garrett's home city of TunFaire. And though Garrett could be as civic-minded as the next guy - unless the next guy was Captain Block of the Watch - the private eye wasn't sure he really wanted to take on a serial killer psycho who did too good a carving job and never left any of the blood behind. Still, having Block pay him for his services with lots of ill-gotten government funds, and having his own partner, the Dead Man, strenuously urge him to take the case, proved an irresistible combination for Garrett.

And so the top - and only - private eye around found himself lining up his allies for a search that would take him from the lowest slums to the highest estates, from confrontations with butterfly-and-magic-spitting enemies to run-ins with the king of crime's wayward daughter to a final encounter with an ancient evil which had once again been loosed on his unsuspecting town...

Someone has barged in on Garrett, the hardboiled human detective in a fantasy world, with tales of sex, intrigue and murder. The mystery and danger come full force when a rich woman wants Garrett to find her missing daughter--or does she want him as a hitman? Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference....

Garet, P.I., is on the case

There are some new gods in the town of TunFaire, but temple real estate on the Street of Dreams is at a premium. So the big gods on the block issued a challenge-find the "key" to the one temple still available. When two rival pantheons try to hire Garrett, he knows he is in for it...

Riots between humans and trolls, elves, and other non-humans have plunged Tunfaire into near chaos. Garrett finds himself pulled into the game when a powerful gang of human rightists tries to shake down his employer?and ends up caught in a conspiracy of hate that pits man against? everybody!

Anyone else would have learned by now: when trouble comes knocking, don't open the door. But there's a reason why Garrett's still in the P.I. business after all these years-he's not one to learn his lessons. Maybe that's why he lets himself get roped into being a bodyguard for Kip Prose, an obnoxious kid being threatened by creatures that can't quite be described. But before Kip Prose has a chance to explain what he's done to get on the hit list of some nameless nasties, the precocious Prose is abducted, and the chase begins...

In TunFaire, a city of gorgeous women, powerful sorcerers and dangerous magic, the beautiful, criminally insane daughter of a comatose crime boss has some lascivious designs on private investigator Garrett-who now has to figure out why everyone is suddenly after him.

Garrett uncovers the dark side of the fantasy city TunFaire, where no-one is to be trusted especially beautiful woman. When a pack of gorgeous woman knock on his door, Garrett knows it's too good to be true. The leader of the group is Alyx Weider, the daughter of the largest brewer in town. Her father and friends are opening a new theater in TunFaire and the lovely ladies are there to persuade Garrett to help get rid of the paranormal parasites living in the new construction. Garrett agrees because after all, it means free beer and the company of these beautiful girls. What else could a man want? But Garrett doesn't realize the drama he's stepping into.

For Garrett, P.I., loyalty and love come a close second to survival...

Garrett's attempt at domestic bliss with the fiery Tinnie Tate is sidetracked when he waylays a pair of home intruders and learns they've been paid by an unknown source to kidnap Tinnie. But as Garrett rushes to find out who is trying to push his buttons, his best friend is attacked. Now, Garrett has to track down both malefactors.

Unless they're really one and the same-in which case Garrett might be next...

Garrett is a human detective in the fantastical city of TunFaire. And now he's getting tangled up in the worst sort of laws...

In-laws.

Garrett is set to stow his wandering heart with his fiancée, Strafa Algarda. But for Garrett, even true love comes with its share of headaches--namely, the Algarda family.

Strafa's family needs Garrett's unique skills in the worst way. Rumors are spreading that someone is organizing a Tournament of Swords--a brutal contest that magically compels the children of sorcerers to battle until only one is left alive. The winner will absorb the power from those he has killed and thus become a demigod.

Strafa and her family want to protect her daughter, Kevans, from being forced to take part in the lethal contest...and they've asked Garrett to find out who is organizing the tournament and nip it in the bud. The only problem is that finding the culprit is most likely impossible. But the Algardas are used to getting what they want....

The ongoing war between Humanity and the Ulant is a battle of attrition that Humanity is losing. Humans do, however, have one technological advantage -- trans-hyperdrive technology. Using this technology, specially designed and outfitted spaceships -- humanity's climber fleet -- can, under very narrow and strenuous conditions, pass through space undetected. Passage at Arms tells the intimate, detailed, and harrowing story of a climber crew and its captain during a critical juncture of the war.

The vendetta in space had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born with his grandfather's raid on the planet Prefactlas, the blood bath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree survived - the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill.

Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half- brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Death pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all - as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.

They are the dragons of the cosmos, Starfish; creatures of pure fusion energy, wise and ancient giants, drifting in herds along the edge of the galaxy. Producing the precious ambergris that allows mankind and Sangaree alike to travel between the starts, the Starfish herds are protected by the great harvestships of the High Seiners. Known as Starfishers, the Seiners defy Confederation rule and Sangaree attack alike to skirt the dangerous boundaries of Stars' End, gathering their priceless cargo.

It is with the Starfishers of the harvestship Danion that Confederation agents Mouse Storm and Moyshe benRabi now fly and fight, probing the mysteries and myths of Stars' End, a strange fortress planet beyond the galactic rim, bristling with automatic weapons programmed to slaughter anyone fool enough to come into range. And where benRabi, a man of many names, must surrender his dreams and his mind itself to the golden dragons of space.

At the edge of the galaxy lay the Fortress known as Stars' End, a mysterious planet bristling with deadly automated weapons systems, programmed to slaughter anyone fool enough to come within range. But who built this strange planet of death, placing it within view of the Milky Way's great lens... and tantalizingly close to the hydrogen-filled feeding grounds of the interstellar dragons known as Starfish and the priceless ambergris they create?

Should the harvestships of the High Seiners, known as Starfishers, gain control of that arsenal, they need never fear the Confederation's navy nor the armies of the human-like Sangaree again. But intelligent life everywhere now needs the might of Stars' End--and the expertise of agents Mouse Storm and Moyshe benRabi. For in the midst of the Sangaree wars, a far more sinister enemy approaches, coming from the depths of the galaxy, in hordes larger than a solar system.

From Glen Cook, the Master of Modern Heroic Fantasy, comes Stars' End, the final novel in the Starfishers Trilogy, a seamless blend of ancient myth, political intrigue, and scintillating futuristic combat action.

Welcome to the world of the Instrumentalities of the Night, where imps, demons, and dark gods rule in the spaces surrounding upstart humanity. At the edges of the world stand walls of ice which push slowly forward to reclaim the land for the night. And at the world's center, in the Holy Land where two great religions were born, are the Wells of Ihrain, the source of the greatest magics. Over the last century the Patriarchs of the West have demanded crusades to claim the Wells from the Pramans, the followers of the Written. Now an uneasy truce extends between the Pramans and the West, waiting for a spark to start the conflict anew.

Then, on a mission in the Holy Land, the young Praman warrior Else is attacked by a creature of the Dark--in effect, a minor god. Too ignorant to know that he can never prevail over such a thing, he fights it and wins, and in so doing, sets the terrors of the night against him.

As a reward for his success, Else is sent as a spy to the heart of the Patriarchy to direct their attention away from further ventures into the Holy Lands. Dogged by hidden enemies and faithless allies, Else witnesses senseless butchery and surprising acts of faith as he penetrates to the very heart of the Patriarchy and rides alongside their armies in a new crusade against his own people. But the Night rides with him, too, sending two of its once-human agents from the far north to assassinate him.

Submerged in his role, he begins to doubt his faith, his country, even his family. As his mission careens out of control, he faces unanswerable questions about his future. It is said that God will know his own, but can one who has slain gods ever know forgiveness?

It’s cold. The wells of power are weakening and the forces of Night grow strong. The gods are real, and still have some power, mostly to do harm. The Instrumentalities of the Night are the worst of these.

Piper Hecht, born Else Tage, survived a battle with the Instrumentalities. Now he’s Captain-General of the armies fighting a crusade for Patriarch Sublime V. Intrigues swirl around the throne of the Grail Empire, as the imperial family’s enemy Anne of Menand raises money to help the perpetually indebted Patriarch finance his crusades. To reduce his own vulnerability, sickly young Emperor Lothar assigns his two half-sisters—his immediate heirs—to their own realms.

Now Piper Hecht learns that the legendary sorcerer Cloven Februaren, referred to as the Ninth Unknown, is still alive, more than 100 years old, and on Piper’s side. As the dynastic politics of the Empire become even more convoluted, it’s clear that while the old gods may be fading, they’re determined to do everything they can to bend the doings of men to their own advantage.

Sieges, explosions, betrayals, Anti-Patriarchs, and suspicious deaths will ensue as the great chess game plays itself out, with Piper Hecht at the center of it all…

Piper Hecht's first and greatest secret is that he knows how to kill gods. What's not a secret is that he knows how to win wars

Piper Hecht's secrets make him dangerous, but his skill and his reputation put him in danger—from his enemies, who fear what he might do, or who want revenge for what he has already done; and from his friends, who want to use his military gifts for their own purposes. His sister Heris and his living ancestor Cloven Februaren, the Ninth Unknown, have made Hecht part of their fight against the return of the dark god Kharoulke the Windwalker. At the same time, the half-mad Empress Katrin wants him to lead the armies of the Grail Empire eastward on a crusade against his old coreligionists the Praman.

Meanwhile, all around them, the world is changing. The winters are growing longer and harder every year, and the seas are getting shallower. The far north and the high mountain ranges are going under the ice, and fast. The Wells of Power, everywhere, keep getting weaker. And the old evils, the Instrumentalities from the Time Before Time, have begun to ooze back into the world. As ever, the genius of Glen Cook's storytelling lies in his common touch: in soldiers who are like real soldiers, in men and women who love and laugh and sweat, with real hopes and real fears, united only in their determination to face the oncoming night.

Arnhand, Castauriga, and Navaya lost their kings. The Grail Empire lost its empress. The Church lost its Patriarch, though he lives on as a fugitive. The Night lost Kharoulke the Windwalker, an emperor amongst the most primal and terrible gods. The Night goes on, in dread. The world goes on, in dread. The ice builds and slides southward.

New kings come. A new empress will rule. Another rump polishes the Patriarchal Throne.

But there is something new under the sun. The oldest and fiercest of the Instrumentalities has been destroyed--by a mortal. There is no new Windwalker, nor will there ever be.

The world, battered by savage change, limps toward its destiny. And the ice is coming.