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Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. This anthology includes brand-new stories by: Tommy Moore, Jessica Breheny, Naomi Hirahara, Calvin McMillin, Liza Monroy, Elizabeth McKenzie, Jill Wolfson, Ariel Gore, Jon Bailiff, Maceo Montoya, Micah Perks, Seana Graham, Vinnie Hansen, Peggy Townsend, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Lou Mathews, Lee Quarnstrom, Dillon Kaiser, Beth Lisick, and Wallace Baine.

New York Times Notable Book author Charles Yu wrote the best-selling novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. In his stunning, often humorous, collection Sorry Please Thank You, Yu draws on pop culture and science to make incisive observations about society - and offer touching insight into the human condition. In two of Yu’s remarkable stories, he focuses on a big-box-store night-shift employee with girl trouble and a company that outsources grief for profit.

For Ky, it’s not just about liberating the star systems subjugated by Turek and defending the rest of the galaxy’s freedom. There’s also a score to be settled and payback to be meted out for the obliteration of the Vatta Transport dynasty...and the slaughter of Ky’s family. But the enemy have their own escalation efforts under way - including the placement of covert agents among the allies with whom Ky and the surviving Vattas are collaborating in the war effort.

Desperate to find water and shelter on the barren plains of former Oklahoma, Ryan and his team come upon a community that appears, at first, to be peaceful. Then the ville is attacked by a group of its own inhabitants — people infected with a parasite that has turned them into slave warriors for an unknown overlord. The companions try to help fend off the enemy and protect the remaining population, but when Ryan is captured during a second ambush, all hope seems lost. Especially when he launches an assault against his own crew.

Emerging relatively unscathed from the apocalyptic rebirth of North America, Canada hides a trove of Cold War-era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags, and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride sec for a convoy headed west across the remnants of the old Trans-Canada Highway to retrieve the ultimate prize: four portable nuclear reactors. It's enough power to light up a ville for years, a bright beacon for a new tomorrow. But they have death on their trail.

Thanks to Chiun's "emptying basin" technique, past U.S. presidents remember nothing about CURE, America's most secret defense organization. Now a former head of state believed to have lost his mind suddenly finds it - and calls Dr. Harold Smith to say hi. But before Remo and Chiun can redo their amnesia trick, the old guy is kidnapped by bumbling eco-terrorists eager to sell him to a desert despot with a grudge.

King Malcom of the kingdom of Redhart is dead. The kingdom has been overrun by the forces of the Unreal. Statues live, corpses walk and nothing is as it seems. One of Malcom's three sons may assume the throne, but two will have to die. Jordan, the great actor, is hired to impersonate Prince Viktor, who is ill, but can't be seen in public as weak.

So he buys a failing movie studio and dispatches the Mideast's top lethal terrorist to hire Tinseltown's most clueless producers to create the greatest battle epic ever. Thing is, the army of extras are real, the guns are loaded and the California freeway is jammed with camels and tanks. On the other side of the world, Omay is poised to light the powder keg that will spell disaster. The Destroyer races to save Hollywood, not for the sake of the free world, but because Chiun has just penned his screenplay and nothing is about to keep him from the glory of an Oscar.

The Lord Protector of Portland has continued to press his rule into every corner of the Willamette. Both Juniper and Havel know that war is coming, but their allies in the Free-state of Corvallis are less convinced. Sir Nigel continues his escape from mad King Charles with the aid of his new found Tasmanian allies, having to out race the legendary sailing ship the Cutty Sark and battle pirates off the coast of Africa.

Freedom is on the march as the rebellion against the Kurian Occupation of Earth takes the offensive. David Valentine has recruited an ad hoc company of former Quisling soldiers and puts them through a trial by fire with a successful raid against an enemy armory. Now, they're ready to join forces with a guerilla army planning to establish a new freehold in the Appalachian Mountains. Valentine knows that a permanent outpost near the East Coast would provide a strategic victory over the Kurians - and he believes that only his old ally Ahn-Kha could be leading the guerillas.

World War III is now a bloody page in American history. With nuclear holocaust killing more than a quarter-billion people worldwide and the United States just a memory, John Thomas Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert and survival authority is enduring the ultimate test. Soviet Occupation Forces have landed and must begin the "pacification" of America. They will start by liquidating any prominent Americans who could become a rallying point for armed resistance.

On the blood-stained battlefields of a divided nation, Dr. Samuel Knight used his surgical skills to treat wounded Confederate soldiers. In the brutal prison camps of the Union Army, he offered his healing services to fellow captives who’d given up hope. But now, with the war over and the South in ruins, the good doctor faces his hardest challenge yet: to save himself.

It is 1944. A message from Paris warns Allied Intelligence of something big in the works - something which might have serious implications for D-Day. The only way to get more information from the agent in Paris - now closely watched by the Gestapo - is to send in a personal courier. Russian émigré Michael Gallatin is picked for the job. In retirement as a secret agent since a grisly episode in North Africa, Gallatin is parachuted into occupied France, on a mission which will take him to the festering heart of the Third Reich on the scent of doomsday.

In post-Civil War Texas, Andy Pickard, once known to his Comanche "family" as Badger Boy, is now in his mid-20s and riding with the Texas Rangers. While delivering a prisoner for trial, he becomes entangled in a feud between the Landon and Hopper families. Andy works to help Jayce Landon, while at the same time keeping the boy Scooter Tennyson from being pulled into a life of crime. Lives are at stake, loyalties tested, and the worst aspects of human nature are exposed, in Texas Vendetta.

The Darkwood and its demons are encroaching on the Forest Castle, creating a path of destruction and leaving behind a plague. Within the castle, the royal heir, Prince Harald, creates intrigue in a plot to overthrow King John - a plot that would put Harald on the throne and change the Forest Kingdom forever. His brother Rupert risks losing his home, Princess Julia and his life, as he braves the minions of the Demon Prince in order to find the exiled High Warlock.

The Doomsday Warrior, Ted Rockson, barely escapes from Moscow in a hijacked MIG fighter and crash-lands in the Midwest of America. But this is a post-apocalyptic 2089 AD America, and he must traverse the deadly wasteland to return to one of the last outposts of freedom in the Rockies, Century City. In the meantime, the Soviet Empire is preparing their most devastating attack on the American freefighters.

Seeking insights into the Gaia Force, Krysty travels with Ryan to the hidden island enclave of the Sisters of Mother Earth. While there, Ryan reaches some much-needed inner peace, while Krysty gains new insights into her connection with Gaia. But the Sisters are unprepared for a raid by an invader who can channel Earth powers with a ferocity unseen before, burning through earth witches like the Sisters and Krysty in his quest for absolute power... unless the companions can defeat him and his mercenary army.

Overlords and humanity battle to claim Earth in a war as old as the alien domination of the planet. Yet with each new offensive comes stunning new revelations — exposing mysteries that were unfathomable before Skydark but are now quite real and quite deadly. Still, hope lies in the brilliant counteroffensive led by the Cerberus rebels, for whom success means nothing less than returning Earth to mankind.

A six-part BBC Radio 4 crime drama set in 19th-century London. It is 1830, a year after Sir Robert Peel’s creation of the Metropolitan Police, known as the 'Peelers'. As the brand-new bobbies patrol the beat in their smart blue uniforms, armed only with truncheons and rattles, they form the first line of defence against crime. But as this thrilling series opens, the fledgling detective force is proving unpopular, sparking deep political unrest and public protests. Rioters take to the streets of London, and the police struggle to contain the violence.

The Blue Moon is full, the Darkwood has overtaken the land and demons are being fought off at the very gates of Forest Castle. The return of the exiled High Warlock reveals long-hidden secrets about the past. As the Warlock battles the wild magic of the Demon Prince, his hopes of assistance from the enchanted Sword of Compulsion known as the Curtana are crushed by the sword’s disappearance, but there may be other, more powerful weapons hidden in the Royal Armory.