Search Results for: trade-secrets

It was definite – Dumery had no magical talent at all. He could never fulfill his dream to become a wizard’s apprentice. Hurt, angry, and mortally disappointed, he despaired of ever choosing a trade.

But then Dumery spied a so-called great wizard humbling himself before a man selling dragon’s blood – the precious stuff that made difficult spells work. If Dumery couldn’t be a wizard, maybe he could become a dragon-hunter and have all those scornful wizards crawling to him.

So, leaving his family, city, and comfortable home, Dumery began trailing Kensher, the man in brown – even though Kensher said he didn’t need a dragon-hunting apprentice. But when Dumery finally caught up with Kensher, he would discover Kensher’s great secret of how the precious fluid was obtained – a secret from which only Kensher’s kin could profit.
Once again, Dumery would be left without career or future.

Unless . . .

Great Norne is a small harbour town in East Anglia that once flourished with trade. Now the quiet community is being terrorised by a series of murders: the vicar, Reverend Torridge is found dead on the quayside; then Colonel Cherrington is shot in his study. A third death follows.

The last person to die violently in Great Norne was young Ellen Barton, who killed herself twenty years ago.

But there are secrets in this close-knit, religious town – secrets that might provoke someone to bloody revenge. The local police, under Chief Inspector Myrtle, must uncover those secrets, digging into the past, to solve the murders . . .

A frontier world on the back end of nowhere is the sort of place people go to get lost. And some of those people have secrets worth hiding, secrets that can change the future-assuming there is one. . .

André Deschênes is a hired assassin, but he wants to be so much more. If only he can find a teacher who will forgive his murderous past-and train him to manipulate odds and control probability. It’s called the art of conjuring, and it’s André’s only route to freedom. For the world he lives on is run by the ruthless Charter Trade Company, and his floating city, Novo Haven, is little more than a company town where humans and aliens alike either work for one tyrannical family-or are destroyed by it. But beneath Novo Haven’s murky waters, within its tangled bayous, reedy banks, and back alleys, revolution is stirring. And one more death may be all it takes to shift the balance . . .

Usually, Crosstime Traffic concerns itself with trade. Our world owns the secret of travel between parallel continuums, and we use it to trade for much-needed resources with the worlds next door; preferably without letting them know about any of that parallel-worlds stuff. But in one parallel world, Crosstime Traffic is present, not to trade, but to study what went wrong.

In a Los Angeles where nuclear war broke out back in 1967, survival is a matter of neighbourhood versus neighbourhood. When the Westsiders block Sepulveda Pass, the inhabitants of the San Fernando Valley are forced to fight back. With the help of some prewar machine guns, the Valley prevails, and their forces occupy the Westside.

In this brutal world, Liz and her family are undercover Crosstime Traffic agents living near the ruins of UCLA. Dan is a soldier in the occupying Valley army. Dan thinks Liz is the most impressive woman he’s ever met. Liz thinks she’d better avoid Dan if she wants to protect the mission.

To complicate matters, when Dan catches Liz in the UCLA library, he fears she may be a spy for the Westsiders. After all, what reason could anyone have for reading about the Old Times, if not to figure out how to reconstruct old weapons systems?

Then a real spy for the Westside government-in-exile shows up at Liz’s house…

Ralph Ember, owner of a shady drinking club, is playing a dangerous game. Someone knows of his plans to set up his own drugs syndicate. And that someone is not keen on the competition.

But who are Ralph’s trade rivals? The ambitious Keith Vine? Cultured villain Mansel Shale? Perhaps even Detective Chief Constable Colin Harpur and his superior Desmond Iles, about whom there are rumours.

And Harpur is developing his own plan – one so secret it could cost him his job, so dangerous it could cost him his life . . .


‘Extraordinary and electrifying’ Val McDermid

Amazonia had a reputation for strangeness even among the zany worlds of the United Federation of Planets. It was a spartan planet ruled by a fearsome military caste – made up exclusively of women. The males of Amazonia usually wound up in some warrior’s harem.

When Guy Thomas arrived he was allowed the privilege of landing only because he offered the government profitable trade agreements, but it wasn’t long before his real plans were fulfilled by his secret meetings with the male-liberationist revolutionary group, The Sons of Liberty. They needed a lot of help.

The more he got involved, however, the more he got the feeling that something was wrong with the whole setup. Guy Thomas was soon to learn that there was more to Amazonia than met the eye – and he wasn’t going to like the truth at all.

The Collected Stories Volume 6: Multiples (1983 – 1987)

Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Robert Silverberg is one of the all time greats of science fiction. A professional writer for more than half a century, his short story output has been prolific and exceptional in quality.

This series of nine volumes will collect all of the short stories and novella-length that SF Grand Master Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf.

Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. The author has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.

Contents:
Tourist Trade
Multiples
Against Babylon
Symbiont
Sailing to Byzantium
Sunrise on Pluto
Hardware
Hannibal’s Elephants
Blindsight
Gilgamesh in the Outback
The Pardoner’s Tale
The Iron Star
The Secret Sharer
House of Bones

Nick Foley is on the run. The KGB and CIA are both after him. Not suprising, since he’s a Soviet sleeper whose cover has been blown, but Nick has more than state secrets to hide. If he tells a stranger to drive him a thousand miles, it’ll happen; if he tells a pusher to OD on his own heroin, the pusher will do it.

Nick’s strange power is vital to both sides, and neither of them intend to let him keep it to himself, but neither the CIA nor the KGB can imagine Nick’s final, desperate throw of the dice.