Ever wish things were different? Ivy Velasquez did, so she became someone else. In the 3D virtual world Marionette City, you can be anything you want - but everyone still knows who you are. Driven by her desire for a new life, Ivy takes her future in her hands when she makes another identity for herself. A brilliant designer, Ivy works for one of the huge multi-national firms which control the online system the world relies upon for both business and pleasure.

From best-selling author Neal Stephenson and critically acclaimed historical and contemporary commercial novelist Nicole Galland comes a captivating and complex near-future thriller combining history, science, magic, mystery, intrigue, and adventure that questions the very foundations of the modern world.

Lydia works as translator for the Logi cultural attaché to Earth. They work well together, even if the act of translating his thoughts into English makes her somewhat wobbly on her feet. She’s not the agency’s best translator, but what else is she going to do? She has no qualifications and no discernible talent in any other field. So when tragedy strikes and Lydia finds herself at the center of an intergalactic incident, her future employment prospects look dire—that is, if she can keep herself out of jail!

Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why... Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist - and the daughter of his latest kill.

When fifteen-year-old American Hailey Portman goes missing in Switzerland, her desperate parents seek the help of their neighbor, Finn Harrington, a seemingly quiet historian rumored to be a former spy. Sensing the story runs deeper than anyone yet knows, Finn reluctantly agrees to make some enquiries. He has little to go on other than his instincts, and his instincts have been wrong in the past - sometimes spectacularly wrong.

What if life as we know it was just a game? What if instead of traditional schools, children learned by participating in a virtual reality simulation, one that allowed them to experience "life" from birth to death - multiple times? What if one player, on his final play, could change the world forever?

Katie Chandler had always heard that New York is a weird and wonderful place, but this small-town Texas gal had no idea how weird until she moved there. Everywhere she goes, she sees something worth gawking at and Katie is afraid she's a little too normal to make a splash in the big city. Working for an ogre of a boss doesn't help. Then, seemingly out of the blue, Katie gets a job offer from Magic, Spells, and Illusions, Inc., a company that tricks of the trade to the magic community. For MSI, Katie's ordinariness is an asset.

There is more in our world than you know. Deep in the darkness of a government building, one man needs to find the perfect solution to a vampire’s request that the government satisfy the debt of honor owed him. If he falls short, the failure will be paid in the blood of the military. He needs three uniquely qualified individuals. He can find only one. One woman, dying, might be the ace-in-the-hole he needs to appease the Vampire. But then, she might also be the one person needed to save humanity. If she is accepted, will she willingly change?

Mackenzie "Mack" Dalton is a Milwaukee bar owner with a nose for trouble - literally. A neurological glitch has left her with extra-perceptive senses. So when she stumbles upon a dead body in the alley behind the bar - the same spot where her own father was shot eight months earlier - she can tell right away there's something fishy in the air. The lead detective thinks there's a link between the two deaths, and he'll need Mack's help to sniff out the murderer. But when all the evidence points to her as the most likely culprit, it could be an early last call for Mack.

When reformed dream hacker Nix Nighthawk's sleep chip malfunctions, he is forced to seek help from a world he is trying to avoid - his old friends in the pirate dream network. But that world has changed, and Nix soon finds himself at the center of a complex plot to overthrow the vast corporation that controls every aspect of society.

He’s seen something that could get him killed. But what? Freddie Makin is a spy for hire. For a year he’s been watching Jiang Cheng, an academic whose life seems suspiciously normal. To Freddie it’s just a job: he never asks who’s paying him and why - until the day someone is sent to kill him, and suddenly the watcher becomes the watched. On the run from whoever wants him dead, Freddie knows he must have seen something incriminating. The only trouble is, he has no idea what. Is the CIA behind all this - or does it go higher than that? Have his trackers uncovered his own murky past?

Nine years ago terrorists hijacked a plane in Vienna. Somehow a rescue attempt staged from the inside went terribly wrong, and everyone onboard was killed. Members of the CIA stationed in Vienna during that time were witness to this terrible tragedy, gathering intel from their sources during those tense hours, assimilating facts from the ground with a series of texts coming from one of their agents inside the plane.

Heather Bailey has been in charge of Silver Arches, the prestigious London shopping center, for several years. Financial turmoil brings a new investor to secure the future, and Heather finds herself playing office politics with the notoriously difficult entrepreneur Leo Flynn. When Leo demands that his daughter get a job at Silver Arches, things become even harder. Scarlett Flynn has never fit in. Not in the army, not in her father’s firm, not even in her own family. So starting work at Silver Arches won’t be any different, will it?

Rudolph "Rudy" Dersch is the newly minted CEO of the world's largest, multi-trillion-dollar corporate conglomerate. But the job comes with an unexpected twist - an invitation to join the Consortium, a small, secretive group of global elites who effectively decide what's best for the rest of humanity. How does Rudy's struggle to reconcile business and family impact the world's future? And who, if anyone, can break the Consortium's iron grip on the status quo?

In need of a good adventure, Delaney Nichols takes the leap and moves to Edinburgh, Scotland, to start a job at The Cracked Spine. She doesn't know much about what she's gotten herself into other than that the work sounds exciting and that her new boss, Edwin MacAlister, has given her the opportunity of a lifetime.