At 30 years old, Phil is an unemployed gamer who struggles to make ends meet. His only source of income is freelance writing (when he feels inspired enough to add another article to his less-than-popular blog). His wife has just walked out on him, leaving him without money, purpose, or food in the fridge. On the day his wife dumps him, Phil receives a mysterious piece of wetware. A game interface seems to have been implanted in his brain, which allows him to see the world through the eyes of an RPG player. Now that Phil discovers his real-life stats, he can see they're below average.

It was a day like any other when suddenly the world changed. The universe reached a threshold humanity didn’t even know existed, and it was time to finally be integrated into the vast multiverse. A place where power is the only thing anyone can truly rely on.

Zac was alone in the middle of the forest when the world changed... The whole planet was introduced to the multiverse by an unfeeling System... or God. A universe where an endless number of races and civilizations fought for power and dominion. Zac finds himself stuck in the wilderness surrounded by deadly beasts, demons, and worse. Alone, lost and without answers, he must find the means to survive and get stronger in this new cut-throat reality.

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

It’s not easy making the career jump from office-supplies-store middle manager to heroic interdimensional adventurer. At least, Jason tries to be heroic, but it's hard to be good when all your powers are evil. He’ll face off against cannibals, cultists, wizards, monsters...and that’s just on the first day. He’s going to need courage, he’s going to need wit, and he’s going to need some magic powers of his own. But first, he’s going to need pants.

An inn is a place to rest, a place to talk and share stories, a place to find adventure, or a starting ground for quests and legends. It is in this world, at least. To Erin Solstice, an inn seems like a medieval relic from the past. But here she is, running from Goblins and trying to survive in a world full of monsters and magic. She’d be more excited about all of this if everything wasn’t trying to kill her. But an inn is what she’s found, and so that’s what she becomes; an innkeeper, who serves drinks to heroes and monsters. Mostly monsters. But it’s a living, right?

The decision to start a new life is never an easy one, but for Joe the transition was far from figurative. Becoming a permanent addition to a game world, it doesn't take long to learn that people with his abilities are actively hunted. In fact, if the wrong people gained knowledge of what he was capable of, assassins would appear in droves.

Arthur lives with his father, a fallen but proud former noble, in Border Village #49, along with the other good folks condemned to toil in service to the Baron. But Arthur has an edge: a stolen heart card that secretly fell into his possession, thanks to a dragon. It’s a priceless source of power for the Baron and the tyrant will kill to get it back. Invaluable, too, to a young man of spellcasting ambitions.

Accidentally murdered by a cleric in another universe during a botched resurrection, Arnold, a semi-pro gamer, wakes upon an altar to find himself incarnated into the overweight body of a farmer who could have been his fatter twin. He’s not the hero. He’s not the villain. He’s certainly not the chosen one who is there to save the world. He’s a clerical error. It could be a bad joke, but apparently, it happens so often that they have a standard procedure for returning you.

Matt plans to delve the rifts responsible for the monsters that destroyed his city and murdered his parents. But his dreams are crushed when his Tier 1 Talent is rated as detrimental and no guild or group will take him. Working at a nearby inn, he meets a mysterious and powerful couple. They give him a chance to join the Path of Ascension, an empire-wide race to ascend the Tiers and become living legends. With their recommendation and a stolen Skill, Matt begins his journey to the peak of power. Maybe then, he can get vengeance he seeks.

He thought it was the end, and his gun sat ready to make sure. But an oddball offer from his last friend comes at the literal last second. Curiosity gets the best of him, and he finds himself sucked into iNcarn8, a game claiming to be a whole new life. Now, as Montana, the larger-than-life tank warrior, he has one more last time to get his life right.

A world on the precipice of the apocalypse. A secret forged in the flames of war. A chance to start over. For John Sutton, only one of those three things matters. Retired from a decade of brutal war, he wants nothing more than a quiet pastoral life while he does his best to stem the steady increase of his Doom Points before they hit 100, signaling the start of the end. He’s been given a small farm on the outskirts of the empire as thanks for his service, but no matter how far he travels, it's impossible to escape the war's devastating effects on the world.

Marc's home from college on break, spending his time laughing about some of the crazy news stories he's found online, and gaming. When a message appears in his line of sight, blocking out absolutely everything else, he nearly freaks out. The message warns that the world has been in a variant Natural Laws beta test for millennia and that it's about to revert to the norms.

What would the world be like if video game rules suddenly applied? Marcus is about to find out. After a freak accident, he finds himself stuck between a game and the real world. He’ll need to fight his way through football hooligans, carnies, and the dreaded RNG to get to the final boss and save the world. Anything less means it’s game over for good. Along the way, he’ll learn new skills, chase epic loot, and, most importantly of all, level up!

Jack Rust was a disillusioned biologist with a PhD—almost. When an extraterrestrial AI calling itself the System invaded Earth and thrusts it into a world of aliens and violence, the least Jack hoped for was gaining access to magic.

Hit me. Kick me. Hurt me. Hate me. There’s nothing that the students of Raleigh High can do to Silver Parisi anymore. Over the past year, she’s had to endure more pain and suffering than most people are asked to bear in their lifetimes. She’s a pariah, an outcast, a ghost. She’s also never been one to take shit lying down, though...despite what half the football team might say. With only 168 days left of the school year, it won’t be long until graduation, and Silver’s planning on skipping town and leaving Raleigh firmly in her rearview mirror. Until he comes along....

The days of traveling martial artists and mountaintop masters are over. Power is controlled by corporations, modernized martial arts sects, and governments. Those at the bottom of society struggle as second class citizens in a world in which power is a commodity. Rick is a young fighter in this world. He doesn't dream of immortality or becoming the strongest, just of building a better life for himself and his sister, who suffers from a spiritual illness. Unfortunately, life isn't that easy.

Jackson Hunt wants nothing more than to be a professional monster tamer - skilled trainers who raise and battle magical creatures called Djinn. He longs for the day when he comes of age and can leave home to pursue his dreams of taming Djinn. Unfortunately for Jackson, dreams and reality don’t always coincide. To help his grandmother make ends meet, Jackson spends his days doing manual labor on a breeder’s ranch - just about as far removed from the bright lights and roaring crowds of the DBL (Djinn Battle League) as it gets.

An attack in the dark. The loss of a love. Waking up hung over in a ditch. These are the things that make a hero, especially if that hero is Quincy Harker, immortal wizard, snarky bastard, and general badass. Histories collects two short stories and one short novella giving a peek behind the curtain at the man, the myth, the legend that is Quincy Harker, as well as the origin story of one of his most popular cohorts, Jo Henry.

The first time somebody tried to kill him was an accident. The second time was deliberate. Now Paul Mulchrone finds himself on the run with nobody to turn to except a nurse who has read one-too-many crime novels and a renegade copper with a penchant for violence. Together they must solve one of the most notorious crimes in Irish history. Or else they’ll be history.

Dear Diary...Bess, George, and I are actually in Alaska! Everywhere you look, there are massive mountains and sparkling, deep-blue waters. We're on the maiden voyage of the Arctic Star luxury cruise ship, and my old friend, Becca Wright, the assistant cruise director, needs our help. She received threatening emails before even setting sail; then a bloody body turned up in the swimming pool.

As a Retriever, Wren Valere specializes in finding things gone missing - and then bringing them back, no questions asked. Normally her job is stimulating, challenging and only a little bit dangerous. But every once in a while....

In a world invaded by demons, it's up to Katie and her Killers to restore order while also evading enemies - and friends - who want her in the worst way.

Chris Gethard has often found himself in awkward situations most people, including you, probably would have safely avoided. The good news is now, thanks to this book, you can enjoy the painfully funny consequences of his unfortunate decisions at a safe distance. A Bad Idea I'm About to Do invites listeners to join Chris as he navigates an adolescence and adulthood mired in hilariously ill-fated nerdom, and to take comfort in the fact that - as his experiences often prove - things could always be much, much worse.

Mysterious billionaire Cameron Crayton is a household name from televised spectacles in which prison inmates fight to the death, but his old shows pale in comparison to his new event, The Crucible, a gladiatorial tournament anyone can enter. The winner is promised unimaginable wealth and glory...if they’re able to survive a series of globally broadcast fight-to-the-death matches with medieval weaponry against the world’s most fearsome fighters.

At 30 years old, Phil is an unemployed gamer who struggles to make ends meet. His only source of income is freelance writing (when he feels inspired enough to add another article to his less-than-popular blog). His wife has just walked out on him, leaving him without money, purpose, or food in the fridge. On the day his wife dumps him, Phil receives a mysterious piece of wetware. A game interface seems to have been implanted in his brain, which allows him to see the world through the eyes of an RPG player. Now that Phil discovers his real-life stats, he can see they're below average.

There are whole anthologies of stories out there about what humankind does when a game enters their world. But what about when they're living in one where a game arrived thousands of years before? What if they're the survivors of a bloody struggle, having fought for and earned their place on the planet? Tailyn Vlashich was a young nobody far away from all those grander issues. All he cared about was one thing: making his way through a harsh world where the emperor, evil foes, and an impartial god held sway.

The days of traveling martial artists and mountaintop masters are over. Power is controlled by corporations, modernized martial arts sects, and governments. Those at the bottom of society struggle as second class citizens in a world in which power is a commodity. Rick is a young fighter in this world. He doesn't dream of immortality or becoming the strongest, just of building a better life for himself and his sister, who suffers from a spiritual illness. Unfortunately, life isn't that easy.

The body of young, paralyzed Luca, a boy killed by cruel bullies, becomes home to an interdimensional traveler. This is the 99th world for this traveler who has spent an entire life in each of his previous worlds. And now, he is out of lives, his previous misdeeds leaving him with a negative balance of points and preventing him from reincarnating anew. Once he realizes that he must spend his final life in a poverty-stricken family in a backward world, he awakens the consciousness of the deceased Luca and ends his own physical existence, leaving all his abilities to his heir.

Would you be prepared to work for free? How would you like to bust your hump for a large corporation 60-plus hours a week without a wage or a single day off for the vague promise of some mysterious perks in the distant future? You'd refuse point blank, wouldn't you? But what if the job in question was playing a state-of-the-art fantasy MMORPG game? And what if this was the only thing you're really good at? Especially considering that your in-game partner is someone really special to you - and this person already lives a virtual life?

Maulkin didn't know dying would mean a new eternity of dungeon delving, monster slaying, and glory hunting. If he had, he wouldn't have been so worried about kicking the bucket on a date gone even more wrong than usual. Reborn in the wild world of Amaranth, Maulkin finds himself in a hulking demi-human body with a sword of a size to match. Marked as an Eternal, a fledging immortal of boundless potential, Maulkin soon discovers he's been given a mission by the elder pantheon of this new realm.

He is a cyber dweller. A gamer who's grown up in the web of virtual illusion woven from hundreds of phantom worlds. His biggest dream is to dump the real world for good. His desperate hunger for new experiences forces him to take a risk and become one of the first proud owners of a neuronet implant. The new gadget becomes part of him, but soon it's not enough. If only he could finally burn all his bridges and make a step beyond the real world....

When the shattered fragments of the Black Moon collapsed onto planet Earth, splitting continents apart and flooding them with raging oceans, Darkness descended onto our world. The eruptions of hostile energy from behind the Edge distorted the laws of the physical world, creating new life forms which now threaten to take over the planet. The last remaining vestiges of humankind, too desperate for their own survival, have nothing to offer against their advance. So it's time to activate Incarnation: the last instruction issued by Project Stellar.

2044. The world of games changed long ago. "Ascension" has become one of the most popular VRMMO games. It is a huge world divided into a hundred Floors, with each Floor a boundless location with its own countries, tribes, and millions of players. The object of the game is to unlock all the gates and conquer the top. Having joined the game, Will Thomson doesn't realize that he is all by himself. Then he accepts the first quest...Cursed Rat: level 46....

Zach grew in power and thrived in the post-Framework world. He became a respected leader, a shining example of what it meant to be good. But as the world ended, he had only one thought: to punish the monster that had killed the world long before the Framework ended it. Yet not even with his incredible power was he able to stand against the World Ender. His arrival in the new realty, the Infinite Realm, gives him the chance to grow stronger, to find the monster again-and make it pay.

Paralyzed in a workplace accident, Lox's life is looking bleak. He can't even use the cutting-edge hardware that would allow him to play in the full-immersion games that have become so popular. This all changes when he hears from New Universal Frontiers, the company with the best game out there: World of Magic. They offer him the ability to use their hardware despite his injuries, but at a cost...he can never leave the game.

The Singularity - the merger of man and machine into a greater whole - is finally within humanity's grasp. When programmer Jeff Lawing gets the opportunity to join Singularity Online, the world's first realistic VRMMO and the testing ground that will lead to the Singularity, he leaps to accept. Singularity is much more realistic and darker than Jeff had imagined, though.

Includes Class-A Threat, Apostle of the Sleeping Gods, The Destroying Plague, and Resistance.

Will refused to admit to the HR lady at Radical Interactive that he'd never played their debut virtual reality MMORPG The Realm. With the company's failed attempt at entering the gaming industry, they switched their sights to focus on smaller scale educational programs. Being a beta tester for Radical Interactive was not the dream job that Will had envisioned, but he had hoped it would get his foot in the door to one day becoming a graphic designer for the company. He never realized that he was literally signing his life away.

This is the story about how I died. Not really.... I mean, I don't remember most of it, thank goodness. Long story short, I was betrayed. Some people I thought I could trust invaded my sky palace, stole my women, and enslaved my pet shadow hounds. I was destroyed, utterly. Or so they thought. Somehow, mana, the source of my previous power, brought me back. The backstabbing weasels think they are safe, barricaded in their strongholds. Here's the horrible part. They willingly sacrificed their own flesh and blood for security. And they had the nerve to call me evil?