Forced to leave his home, a boy learns magic from a mysterious traveling old man. When a boy's family is killed, and his home destroyed by marauders, he begins a journey with a traveling old man. As time and distance takes him further from his home, the boy strives to learn everything he can from the old man before he dies. What will he do if the old man dies, despite his best efforts?

More than a hundred years after baseball's color barrier is broken, there's still another prejudicial hurdle to overcome. When the first artificially created human joins a minor league baseball team, he has to deal with the negative reactions of both fans and teammates. But, despite his origins, this "androne" is human in every sense of the word. The question is, will his skills and character take him to the big leagues, or will those all too human foibles hold him back?

"Flame Tree Publishing continues to publish excellent fiction with their Gothic Fantasy series of anthologies offering themed compendiums of both classic and modern fiction. By doing so, the series lets readers note similarity, differences and trends of subgenres over time." - Kirkus The promise and the threat of technology, of humankind replaced by its own mechanical creation has long enticed the SF and fantasy imagination. This fabulous mix of new and established writing brings together the top talents of today with classic and essential authors, including L. Frank Baum, Ambrose Bierce, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Jerome K. Jerome and more. New, contemporary and notable writers featured are: Roan Clay, George Cotronis, Deborah L. Davitt, Jeff Deck, Christopher M. Geeson, Bruce Golden, Rob Hartzell, Nathaniel Hosford, Rachael K. Jones, Rich Larson, Monte Lin, Trixie Nisbet, Chloie Piveral, David Sklar, Claire Allegra Sorrenson, Sara L. Uckelman, Holly Lyn Walrath, Nemma Wollenfang, and Eleanor R. Wood.

This book presents state-of-the-art research and practice in optimization routing, specifically the vehicle routing problem (VRP). Since its introduction in the late 1950s, the VRP has been a very significant area of research and practice in operations research. Vehicles are used to make deliveries and for pick-ups every day and everywhere. Companies such as Amazon, UPS, FedEx, and DHL use route optimization to reduce mileage, fuel use, number of trucks on the road, and carbon dioxide emissions. The authors compile and analyze 135 survey and review articles on vehicle routing topics published between 2005 and 2022 in an effort to make key observations about publication and trend history, summarize the overall contributions in the field, and identify trends in VRP research and practice. The authors have compiled published research on models, algorithms, and applications for specific areas, including: alternative and multiple objectives; arc routing and general routing; drones, last-mile delivery, and urban distribution; dynamic and stochastic routing; green routing; inventory routing; loading constraints; location-routing; multiple depots; pickup and delivery and dial-a-ride problems; rich and multi-attribute routing; routing over time; shipping; two-echelon, collaborative, and inter-terminal problems; specific variants, benchmark datasets, and software; and exact algorithms and heuristics. In addition, the book discusses how vehicle routing problems are among the most widely studied problems in combinatorial optimization due to the mathematical complexity and practical significance.

Hunting down his partner's killer and investigating a pair of seemingly unrelated murders, SF Police Inspector Noah Dane stumbles onto a conspiracy that threatens all humanity. Chastity Blume, a celebrated talk show host known as "America's Favorite Virgin" discovers the sinister plot while searching for the mother she never knew. Along with Noah's new crime-fighting partner-a Marilyn Monroe celebudroid-they lead a cast of quirky characters towards a climax of comically sexy proportions, where all the clues point to an insanely popular new virtual reality experience that's "Better Than Chocolate."

Mortals All is a unique love story set against a future where economic and social changes have led to the creation of andrones, a caste of artificial persons assigned to Earth's more menial tasks. Mary is one such androne. Zach, meanwhile, is all too human. He's an expert on lust but a novice when it comes to love. Mary goes rogue, and with Zach's help, attempts to aid an underground group of drones. But standing in her way are the police, bounty hunters, a senatorial candidate haunted by a dark secret, and her own evolving humanity. On top of everything else, someone is trying to kill her. It's not long before she discovers Zach is right. Freedom isn't all it's cracked-up to be. --amazon.com.

Ancient aliens seed the primordial oceans of Earth with protoplasmic material found on other worlds, then return millennia later to see what they have wrought. They not only observe the human civilizations they find, they contact some of them, conducting investigative studies. When they leave, they decide to cull large groups of humans and their environs, which they convey across the galaxy and transplant onto another world to continue their study. Ultimately this great speciation experiment will have unexpected and dire consequences for the experimenters. Meanwhile, on this new world, a group of Vikings evolve over the centuries into a cutthroat corporate culture of racial purists in an early industrial society. They have designs on the lands of a nearby continent where tribes of Sioux still cling to their old ways. And they may not be the only forced immigrants on this planet. War ensues, and at the core of the conflict is a native herb which may be the cure for a disease that ravages the corporatocracy, as well as being the secret to longevity.

Thirty-three mind-bending tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror and humor by award-winning author Bruce Golden. Journey into other worlds, other dimensions and other times to meet an alien musician, an apocryphist, a hideous sun demon, a bedeviled baseball player and an old woman resigned to living out her last days cared for by a machine. See what happens when a Native American shaman sends the government a bill for making it rain, and a 119-year-man drives his classic automobile into the middle of an insurrection, chased by flying cars. Discover a missing planet, lust potions, the color of silence, the wonders of phasing, the horrors of the withering, and the riddle of the whales.