Kristine Kathryn Rusch0.0 His name: Miles Flint. His occupation: Retrieval Artist. His job: Hunt down the Disappeared--outlaws on the run, wanted for crimes against alien cultures. The catch: Flint isn't working on the side of the law.
In a universe where humans and aliens have formed a loose government called the Earth Alliance, treaties guarantee that humans are subject to alien laws when on alien soil. But alien laws often make no sense, and the punishments vary from loss of life to loss of a first-born child. Now three cases have collided: a stolen spaceyacht filled with dead bodies, two kidnapped human children, and a human woman on the run, trying to Disappear to avoid alien prosecution. Flint must enforce the law-giving the children to aliens, solving the murders, and arresting the woman for trying to save her own life. But how is a man supposed to enforce laws that are unjust? How can he sacrifice innocents to a system he's not sure he believes in? How can Miles Flint do the right thing in a universe where the right thing is very, very wrong? This Endeavor Award-winning novel is Flint's first adventure, the story that turns him from a police detective in the Armstrong Dome on the Moon into a Retrieval Artist. "Rusch has created an entertaining blend of mystery and sf, a solid police drama that asks hard questions about what justice between cultures, and even species, really is." -Booklist "It feels like a popular TV series crossed with a Spielberg film-engaging." -Locus "The Disappeared is a very readable, very thought-provoking novel that lives up to every expectation we have of Rusch and her considerable talents. Buy and enjoy." -Analog
Steven Barnes0.0 In the year 1863, a primitive village is raided, the men killed, and the women and children captured. The survivors find themselves chained in the dark, filthy hold of a ship crossing the ocean to the New World, where they are sold into slavery. The powerful master of a vast Southern plantation purchases the 11-year-old Irish lad Aidan O'Dere. Yes, you read that right--in this alternate America, the South was colonized by black Africans, and the North by Vikings, who sell abducted Celts and Franks to the Southerners. Through his brilliant inversion of our history, author Steven Barnes examines the complex evils of slavery in a new light with Lion's Blood, an intelligent and exciting novel of freedom and bondage, battle and intrigue, sex and love, set in an America threatened by total war as Aztecs, Zulus, Moors, and whites clash.
In the final few years of the 21st century, life in Paris is quiet for Ebriel Serique and her family. They live protected by the glass walls of their skyscraper apartment, safe from the poverty-stricken countries just over the Line of Partition. Until one day, her husband and daughter go sailing, and are murdered by terrorists who claim their yacht had crossed the Line.
Driven by grief and justice, Ebriel ventures beyond the confines of her charmed life to confront the truth about the way the world is run. And while she never would have suspected it, Ebriel discovers that she has the courage for anything-even violence.
Since the moment she came into the world, Ren "Jackal" Segura has been treated differently. As a hope, she is a symbol of the highest principles of human society and is guaranteed a position of influence in the global government once she comes of age. But two months before she is to assume the role she has been preparing for her entire life -- when she will leave her home to represent the massive corporate entity that houses, feeds, and employs her and everyone around her -- Jackal discovers that everything she believes, everything she is, is a lie.
Saddled with a crushing burden she dares not share with anyone -- not even Snow, her closest web mate, her dearest heart -- she must live as if nothing has changed. But on a recreational outing with the others in her web, she inadvertently finds herself at the center of a maelstrom of terror and catastrophe ... and in a single instant, Jackal Segura is a Hope no longer. In the collective eyes of the society that once revered her, she has become someone else: a pariah...and a murderer.
Now she must suffer a terrible punishment. Agreeing to participate in a "rehabilitation" experiment, she surrenders to a virtual solitude, imprisoned alone in a cold gray box in her mind, where months will seem like years and the demons of her psyche will be allowed free rein. But Jackal's history as a Hope has given her strengths and skills other prisoners lack -- powers she will need to endure the tormenting loneliness; to survive, branded and despised, back in a world she doesn't know; to uncover the truth about her cruel betrayal; and to rediscover her life, her love, and her soul -- in a strange place of shattered hopes and new beginnings, called Solitaire.
In a near future where almost everyone on earth is connected to a worldwide net, Jasmine Reese discovers the existence of an intelligence called Gestalt-a self-aware entity generated by the collected consciousness of eight billion networked people. And only Jaz can stop it from controlling the world.
"Mitchell is a rare author-as equally deft with special relativity and biochemistry as she is with sculpting real characters and delivering a ripping good read." (Eric S. Nylund, author of A Signal Shattered)
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