With one small chess piece, the game begins… For archaeologist and TV host Annja Creed, a late-night phone call from the NYPD means one thing: there's been a murder and the police need her expertise. The only link between a dead body and the killer is a small elephant of white jade. An artifact that's gone missing. Once belonging to Catherine the Great of Russia, the elephant was key in a risky political gambit all those years ago. But there is another story attached to the artifact—a rumor of an ancient hidden treasure. And for a cruelly ambitious media mogul with a penchant for tomb-raiding, the elephant is nothing short of priceless. Annja must make her move quickly, traveling across several continents with only the assistance of her extraordinary sword—purportedly the same sword wielded by Joan of Arc—and a mysterious temple monk. It's a deadly battle of wits, and one wrong move could mean game over.

Swashbuckling, drinking, womanising... It's a tough life being an outlaw in the future... It's 2672 AD, in a future where the Russian revolution never happened, and Nikolai Dante is the most wanted man in the Empire. Fifty million roubles have been put up as reward for his capture. Any sensible man would be hiding off-world, but the swashbuckling rogue enjoys living dangerously! Fighting to stop a terrifying weapon being unleashed by a shadowy doctor, the only thing that stands between Dante and success is a finishing school full of beautiful young ladies. How can the carousing scoundrel resist the temptation?

As a young man, Paul Hoffman was a brilliant chess player . . . until the pressures of competition drove him to the brink of madness. In King's Gambit, he interweaves a gripping overview of the history of the game and an in-depth look at the state of modern chess into the story of his own attempt to get his game back up to master level -- without losing his mind. It's also a father and son story, as Hoffman grapples with the bizarre legacy of his own dad, who haunts Hoffman's game and life.

The security guard found the body of the vice president of marketing Stephen Jones at 6:39 a.m. Mr. Jones had signed in over twelve hours ago at the front desk and had not bothered to check in since. Although missing a check-in or even several check-ins was not unusual, missing check-ins for twelve hours was out of the ordinary, and therefore, the security guard was dispatched to find out if everything was in order. The first indication that something was amiss was that the door to Mr. Jones office was dead bolted from the inside of the office. After the discovery of the locked door, the fact that Mr. Jones was not responding and the fact that Mr. Jones would not answer his door or his telephone rang warning bells in the security guards brain. He had immediately contacted his supervisor who was next in line in the chain of command. The outer office was normally inhabited by the vice presidents no-nonsense secretary Rebekah Livingston, who, as part of her resume, had a black belt in more than a few martial art forms. She was also licensed to carry several different types of weaponry. Her weapon of choice was a wicked looking snub-nosed Colt .44 magnum with exploding dum-dum bullets. The security guard had never personally seen the exact location where the weapon was holstered but surmised that the short skirts that the young lady wore might have something to do with its hidden location. The security guard was sure of two things. The exact time of day and the fact that Stephen Jones was quite dead.

The Star King had bet on Colonel Bogaert's ability to survive...and the fate of Terra was at stake!

This book offers the first full-length study of the chess structures, motifs, and imagery in William Faulkner's Knight's Gambit . Wainwright looks at the importance of chess as a literary device and examines the structural analogy drawn between the game and linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure.

When legend becomes deadly reality... In Prague researching the legend of the Golem, a fantastical "living" creature made of clay, archaeologist Annja Creed is faced with an even bigger mystery on her hands when someone begins murdering the homeless. And every day there's a fresh corpse. As the suspicion that Golem is behind the deaths circulates quietly on the streets of the city, Annja cannot resist unraveling the thread that binds science to superstition. According to Czech history, these aren't new attacks. They're part of a greater pattern of murders that have gone unacknowledged over centuries. And now Annja is the next target. Unless she can find the real monster behind the myth...before it finds her.