Mars Armor Forged
The tiny colony at Mars launched during an Earth emergency sits uneasy, starved and hopeless until an astonishing chain of political intrigue lands it the Twenty-Eighth Winter Olympics in 2038. The risky venture nearly works until terrorists gain a formula to reignite the dormant volcano. Olympian skier Yves Loitte and skater Terri Finney find themselves in the middle of a power struggle that may end in the destruction of all they hold dear.
MARS ARMOR FORGED is a near-future techno thriller for those who love a hard SF showcase and the rich Mars subgenre.
Drastic Measures Volume One
An anthology of short fiction
GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON (Ocean’s Eleven, Logan’s Run) joins the print edition of Drastic Measures anthology of short fiction, volume I, to help spin tales of where the human mind goes when its cornered. New discovery MELISSA LYONS is the most powerful new voice in suspense since Dean Koontz with her story, “Snow.” Editor BEN PARRIS adds two stories of his own edited by Fantasy & Science Fiction contributor KEN ALTABEF. In “Murder in Songjiang”: All Brian wanted to do was teach English in China. All the U.S. State Department wanted of the CIA was a quiet investigation of how Brian got killed there. Espionage trainee Mike Spoto stood in the middle and cared about his training case too much for his own good.
ROBERT HORSEMAN presents “Déjà vu”: There are two kinds of déjà vu: The kind where you remember things that never happened, and the kind Daniel has; BRAD POST gives us “The Trees”: Sharon had second thoughts about her new husband Johnny. Her father detested the man, and the trees didn’t like either of them.
Those tales and more by new discoveries SUSAN DAVID, CATHY DOUGLAS, KATE LARKINDALE, MICHELLE D KEYES, and GERALD VINCENT. DAVID MACK (The 4400), who wrote the foreword for this volume, says, “You’re in for a wild ride.”
Wade of Aquitaine
Deep in the Dark Ages, with Vikings to the north and Aghlabid pirates to the south, a small flicker of the Roman Empire has been nurtured as an island of high civilization. Defeated Longobards scheme to bring it down from within. If Byzantium falls 600 years too soon, nothing of western civilization will survive to spark the Renaissance. Enter Wade Linwood of the 21st Century. Suffering of crossed senses where scents can conjure objects and sights can call up tastes, he wants nothing but the ordinary life of an insurance underwriter. When a trip to the acupuncturist opens an unused portal in his synesthete’s brain, a plea from the past draws him to a time when he must save the remaining shreds of history to preserve his own.
“Wade of Aquitaine is wonderfully well-written and exciting, an interesting and insightful volume that makes you say to yourself we’ve got a smart guy writing this. Ben Parris understands the challenge that a writer has, to write sentences that nobody ever wrote before.”
–George Clayton Johnson (Oceans Eleven, Twilight Zone Movie, Logan’s Run)