“I tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “The stage won’t be no good to me until Powder Keg amounts to somethin’ . . . I’ll bet a coach and team against what’s on the table, draw and show down.” His offer was a sufficient warning of his strength. However, I still liked my aces. A pair of them pack a lot of power in a two-handed game, and I had the feeling that my luck had not run out . . . I counted my aces as casually as pounding pulses would permit. “Can you beat ’em?” His face showed me he could not . . . “How about loanin’ me your pony?”

From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes an epic tale of unspeakable horror. It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

They branded Martha first,for no particular reason; she just happened to be the adolescent girl child closest and within easy reach of the smiling slave who was doing the branding. She was sobbing and crying, terrified and near panicking. Speaking softly in the singsong dialect of the Wolof tribe, the huge slave doing the branding tried to reassure her that the pain was mild and only temporary. He pointed to his own brand that stood out distinctly on his right shoulder. The brand was the Christian symbol of the cross where Jesus was crucified and murdered. Still smiling, he approached the girl holding the smoking red-and white-hot branding iron. Martha could see small heat waves and light smoke coming off the branding iron and disappearing in the light wind. The pain was horrendous; Martha passed out and her tiny body was eased down to the dirt floor by two slaves helping with the branding. There were four other brands of different designs smoldering in the white-hot flames and the brander would brand thirty slaves today. After years of slavery and hardship, Jason would tell her as they carefully planned their escape.“There is a place in Florida where the slavers are afraid to go.”

Badger is about two young brothers who loose their family farm and are taken in by a Frontiersman who takes them west to the far mountains to trap for the winter. One brother becomes injured and the Frontiersman is forced to leave them at an Indian village. Tragedy strikes and the Indians name one brother Badger. The young man learns how to survive in the harsh land from his Indian friends. Following the Frontiersman into the mountains, he learns how to trap beaver and other furs while trying to stay alive. Slowly he surpasses his teacher and becomes the Mountain Man of his dreams.

History is written by victors, but the vanquished also have a powerful tale to tell. In 57 BC the Druidic men and women of ancient Gaul banded together to battle against Julius Caesar’s campaign to rule the world. Though the Gauls also faced hostile and bloody conflicts within their own tribes, they worked together to fight against the Roman invasion. Remarkably, though war was an integral part of their everyday life, they found ways to celebrate their Druidic traditions and act on their most tender passions for life.

SILVERLOCK is one of the all-time great fantasy classics. In this richly picaresque story of a modern man's fruitful adventurings in legendary realms of gold, John Myers Myers has presented a glowing tapestry of real excitement and meaning. In essence, this is the tale of Silverlock's wanderings in the Commonwealth, the land of immortal heroes real and imagined, in search of his true destiny. In form, it is sheer headlong narrative, with occasional clangorous verses woven into its fabric. In content, it is something between a many-peopled, incident-studded story of high emprise, and a morality for our time. Always it is fresh and bold in concept, superb in its execution ... How A. Clarence Shandon came to the Commonwealth, exchanging his everyday name and Chicago-bound life for that of a traveler beyond time; what great ones of old legend and modern story he encountered, and to what purpose; what loves he knew and what fights he fought; what trials befell him in the Pit, and what truth he discovered when at last he won to the Hippocrene Spring--these are matters of such crowding variety and implicit significance as the reader must discover for himself ... And in the discovering, the literate reader will have a wonderful time. He will be amused by the wicked wit that illumines the vast panorama, and intrigued by the challenge it offers his own learning. Most of all, he will be impressed by its profound knowledge, of our cultural heritage, and stirred by its vital interpretations