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  • Book cover of Second Chance

    A breathtaking novel of dark suspense and bittersweet nostalgia, Second Chance breaks new ground for a writer whose work critics have favorably compared to such disparate writers as Camus, Cheever, and Stephen King. In Second Chance, Chet Williamson defines a generation and gives readers the ride of their lives through a disquietingly different and threatened America. Thrills, romance, and nail-biting suspense combine to create a novel in which a Big Chill-like gathering of old friends could lead to the real "Big Chill" for every person on Earth. It all begins innocently enough. Woody Robinson, a successful musician, gathers his baby boomer friends and recreates an evening in 1969 out of nostalgia for his long dead love, Tracy. The party quickly becomes a wake for lost ideals, and then something more, as time and fate play wonderful and terrible tricks on the celebrants. By the evening's end, Tracy is back in Woody's life as though she had never left. But there is another change as well, a shocking one. His name is Pan. An environmental terrorist who wants to save the world by destroying humanity, he has the deadly viral ammunition to do just that. Pan will prove that the darker side of the sixties isn't dead -- it's only been sleeping. Now it's awake and furious. And only one man and one woman can stop the nightmare. With the swirling color and magic of a Fillmore West poster, the hallucinogenic impact of a Jim Morrison lyric, and the wistful voice of early Dylan, Second Chance is an unforgettable tale of love, loss, and redemption, an electrifying synthesis of past and present that will enchant its readers today and haunt them tomorrow. PRAISE FOR SECOND CHANCE: Publishers Weekly: "This time-travel thriller is great fun throughout, capped by an unexpected, but suitably quirky, finale." Time Tunnel: "...a novel of suspense and fantasy, but more than that, it is a piercing look at idealism unhinged, of the world-shattering power of love, hate, and zealous belief...one of the most unusual and moving books in a long time." Charles De Lint in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: "...there's a reason for my enthusiasm for Williamson's work: he has never let me down. And Second Chance is no exception." New York Review of Science Fiction: "Second Chance, quirky, time-traveling ghost story that it is, with all its dreams and nightmares blossoming out of the fertile soil of drugs and rock-and-roll, remains a wonderful and dreadful evocation of the way in which history and politics haunt us all."

  • Book cover of Robert Bloch's Psycho: Sanitarium

    The first original Psycho novel in 25 years!

  • Book cover of Murder Old and New

    An aged photograph of a dead man hanging from a tree... Deaths in a nursing home that may not be as natural as they appear... Clues showing a 70-year-old suicide could be murder... Sinister small-town secrets, decades old, finally revealed... Feisty Livy Crowe, single-and-loving-it owner of the nostalgia shop, Better Days, has to deal with all of these and more, including her mother's slow deterioration in a senior residence that might be a crime scene, a very awkward romantic triangle, and murders old and new that threaten even Livy herself... *** I was so engaged in this slick, clever mystery, I nearly burned the house down, having forgotten I had something cooking on the stove. Murder Old and New by Laurie and Chet Williamson is so riveting and swiftly paced you almost hate to arrive at the solution because you hate to lose the narrator's voice. Sharp writing, excellent characterization and a satisfying conclusion should put this at the top of your reading list. - Joe R. Lansdale

  • Book cover of Murder in Cormyr

    Tired of the political machinations of his egotistical fellow wizards, Benelaius retires from the College of War Wizards to take up residency in Cormyr, where he lives peacefully until he and his legman, Jasper, are forced to investigate the murder of a messenger from King Azoun.

  • Book cover of McKain's Dilemma

    Carlton Runnells is gay and has profited mightily from a marriage of convenience... he's become one of the richest men in his rural Pennsylvania area. Now his lover has disappeared and Runnells is afraid that something might have happened to him. McKain has dealt with domestic cases before; the sexes may be different, but the procedures remain the same. Until the lover turns up dead and McKain has every reason to believe that his client is responsible. McKain faces a dilemma in regards to the murder which ultimately slams into him when he makes one final discovery. As illness and guilt work at him, McKain finds the solution... if he can make it happen. McKain's Dilemma is a moving, compassionate and different private eye story, and the work of an expert craftsman.

  • Book cover of Hunters

    Deer season in northern Pennsylvania, when the woods explode with gunfire and bloody carcasses hang from cross-poles. Only this time, the carcasses aren’t just deer. The Wildlife Liberation Front, a bloodthirsty and radical animal rights group, has decided to turn the tables on hunters this year, with bullets, blades and bombs. And Ned Craig, a non-violent game warden, finds himself the target of not only the WLF, but another killer from his past with a more personal grudge. While bodies pile up as quickly as the snow in the most vicious storm in years, Ned and the woman he loves are finally trapped at a rusting fire tower on the edge of a cliff. Hunted by both a cadre of armed terrorists and a suicidal maniac, Ned has to confront them all, along with his own fears, or else become the final victim in the bloodbath...

  • Book cover of Blood Is Not Enough

    “An excellent collection” of vampire stories, from authors such as Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, and Fritz Leiber (Publishers Weekly). Renowned editor Ellen Datlow has gathered seventeen variations on vampirism ranging from classically Gothic to postmodern satire, from horrific to erotic. These stories reflect the evolution of vampire literature from Bram Stoker to Anne Rice and beyond, resulting in a deeper exploration of their inner lives. Expanding the concept of vampirism to include the draining of a person’s will or life force, Datlow’s collection transcends the traditional “black capes and teeth marks on the neck” to reinvent an eternally fascinating subgenre of horror. In Harlan Ellison’s “Try a Dull Knife,” an empath stumbles bleeding into a nightclub, on the run from emotional vampires. A Broadway actress steals the emotions of her fellow performers in “. . . To Feel Another’s Woe” by Chet Williamson. And in “The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be,” Gahan Wilson offers his own surreal twist on Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” as two strangers on a beach lure intoxicated picnickers to a different kind of picnic . . . Blood Is Not Enough includes contributions by Dan Simmons, Gahan Wilson, Garry Kilworth, Harlan Ellison, Scott Baker, Leonid Andreyev, Harvey Jacobs, S. N. Dyer, Edward Bryant, Fritz Leiber, Tanith Lee, Susan Casper, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, Chet Williamson, Joe Haldeman, and Pat Cadigan.

  • Book cover of Defenders of the Faith

    When Paul Blair's wife is killed by a young drunk driver, he decides to dedicate his life to keeping the youth of his church from bad influences. And if that means bringing down the wolves who tempt them, so be it. When Paul finds that one of his own "flock" has adopted and escalated his own murderous strategies, he joins forces with the boy in a bloody crusade of vengeance upon the unholy. But can he control this mindless, violent force he has unleashed, not only upon the guilty, but the innocent as well?

  • Book cover of A Little Blue Book of Bibliomancy

    Though primarily a writer of very accomplished fiction, Chet Williamson has also written non-fiction books, essays, plays, reviews, songs, and letters of complaint. What you’ll find in these pages is a grab-bag of his work that is largely unseen by his usual audience. There is one piece of fiction: “Returns.” And it is new to all but two readers. About ten years ago, Williamson began a secondary career as a playwright, having had a few produced—the most recent of which was He Comes For His Books, a roman a clef about Harold Pinter and first wife Vivien Merchant. There are two plays in his Little Blue Book—one a dramatic adaptation of one of his short stories, and the other of a novella. In the case of the novella, The Story of Noichi the Blind, Booklist said, "This extraordinary performance makes such comparably transgressive writing as the Marquis de Sade’s seem totally crude." The remaining pages contain reviews, tributes to four writers, and a handful of essays and blogs. A Little Blue Book of Bibliomancy promises to give readers new insights into one of our favorite writers.

  • Book cover of Pennsylvania Dutch Alphabet