Assassins Dawn

In this prequel novella from Ward Larsen, Assassin's Dawn, we go where it all began . . . the origin of the perfect assassin! Recruited out of university, Slaton has excelled in training, and is proving highly effective in the operational world. The motivation behind his success is clear to those who know the truth: three years earlier, the two people he held dearest fell victim to a terror attack. The killer responsible, Ramzi Tayeb, has proved maddeningly elusive. Then a chance: a Mossad operation in Central Europe aims to steal information from Ramzi’s brother, a terrorist financier who could lead to the shadowed extremist. Slaton takes the lead, but a mission to hack the man’s laptop goes horribly wrong, and soon the police are investigating a murder. Slaton is withdrawing his team to safety when new information arises. Ramzi himself may soon appear—a rare moment of vulnerability. And so a new mission is born, one that is run not by Mossad, but by the most lethal operative it has ever created—an assassin destined to become a legend. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Neweden is a world whose gods are death and fate, and it’s here that the Hoorka have arisen: a guild of assassins, whose single law is that the victim must always retain a tiny but finite chance of escape. If the victim can survive until dawn, they may go free. But the rich and powerful don’t care to have their will thwarted, and so the Hoorka must deal with the consequences of their own ethics. Gyll, the leader of the Hoorka, also has dreams of taking the guild offworld into the growing society of the Alliance, which is trying to reconstruct a shattered, worlds-spanning empire. Is that dream a genuine possibility, or will exposure to other cultures doom the Hoorka entirely? Gyll must confront internal struggles within his own people, the dangerous politics of Neweden, and the twinned threat and promise of the Alliance. The Hag of Death dances around them, mockingly. Can the Hoorka survive to see the dawn of their own success, an Assassins’ Dawn?

The killing of Osama bin Laden spotlighted Pakistan’s unpredictable political dynamics, which are often driven by conspiracy theory, paranoia, and a sense of betrayal. In Pakistan, the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto famously declared, there is “always the story behind the story.” In The Pakistan Cauldron, James P. Farwell explains what makes Pakistani politics tick. Farwell has advised the Department of Defense on terrorism, sovereignty, and the political issues in the Middle East, Africa, and Pakistan. Here he reveals how key Pakistani political players have inconsistently employed the principles of strategic communication to advance their agendas and undercut their enemies. Pakistan is an enigma to many. Only by understanding the complex forces that shape Pakistani leaders can we uncover their shifting political agendas and how they affect America and the West. Farwell explains how and why former president Pervez Musharraf clamped down on nuclear scientist A. Q. Kahn and isolated him. He assesses Benazir Bhutto’s unique legacy and analyzes how Musharraf handled the aftermath of her assassination. He explains Pakistan’s current instability and demonstrates how the country’s emotional reaction to bin Laden’s death is best understood as the outcome of long-standing political dynamics. The Pakistan Cauldron is for anyone who needs to know why Pakistan continues to pose increasingly difficult challenges for the United States and the West.

Abraham Lincoln watched a play. James Garfield walked through a train station. William McKinley shook hands with his public. John Kennedy smiled and waved from a motorcade. In these moments shots rang out and four presidents suffered mortal wounds. Some say their assassins were calculating killers. Others say they were madmen guided by strange notions of the world. Assassins’ America examines the lives of each killer and his victim. Their stories are full of twists and mysteries, and even today Americans live with lasting effects of these terrible crimes.

The son of a government scientist must be found at any cost in this taut political thriller that “starts off explosively and keeps on rolling” (Joe Hartlaub, BookReporter). Deep in the American Heartland, a team of assassins goes to work. In short order, a Chechen scientist and double agent for the U.S. government is dead. But the team didn’t exactly finish the job. The man’s teenage son is still alive. In possession of crucial and potentially lethal information, he’s now on the run—and off the grid. The feds know who to call: Jonathan Grave and his elite rescue team at Security Solutions. Their mission is simple: find the boy and keep his information out of the wrong hands. But simple doesn’t mean easy. The boy has a bodyguard with unusual talents, and she's not giving up without a fight. Only by bringing them both back alive can Grave expose the traitor in the highest levels of power—and prevent an all-out nuclear war.

Find Your Path * Detailed maps for every part of the world and every major city, plus special maps for every key section of the main quest. * Specific chapters on how to create your character and maximize your abilities and skills. * Over 300 full-color pages packed with information on everything you need to know about the massive gameworld of Oblivion. * Walkthroughs for every quest in the game, including the main quest, all faction quests, as well as miscellaneous and freeform quests. * Sections on various gameplay systems including stealth, combat, magic, enchanting, alchemy, and more. * Detailed bestiary chapter to help you best deal with the denizens of Tamriel and Oblivion.

Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life. But don’t despair! This new anthology of sixteen original stories by some of science fiction’s best writers—edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois—turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Join our cast of award-winning contributors—including Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, Mike Resnick, Eleanor Arnason, Allen M. Steele, and more—as we travel back in time to a planet that never was but should have been: a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries. FEATURING ALL-NEW STORIES BY Eleanor Arnason • Elizabeth Bear • David Brin • Tobias S. Buckell • Michael Cassutt • Joe Haldeman • Matthew Hughes • Gwyneth Jones • Joe R. Lansdale • Stephen Leigh • Paul McAuley • Ian McDonald • Garth Nix • Mike Resnick • Allen M. Steele • Lavie Tidhar And an Introduction by Gardner Dozois