Bloody Knuckles And Other Tales

A Fixer faces the most challenging Fix of his life as he heads to the frozen north to meet a holiday staple, but can he actually complete the task? A bounty hunter in the remote fringes of the galaxy finds that blaster bolts and boots to the chest aren't all they are cracked up to be. The gallant Knight Justice and his cowardly (yet trusty) talking steed Byron face off against their greatest foe: Baleful the Black Knight. In a realm torn apart by war, a deserter seeks to make a better life for himself, only to find himself drawn back into the fray against his will to protect his lover. Plus five other science fiction and fantasy tales to sink your teeth into. Bloody Knuckles (and other tales) is a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories from T.W. Anderson, author of Echoes of the Past, Volume I in the Saga of Lucimia.

Finalist, 2021 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award For John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, there was one simple rule in politics: “You’ve got to bloody your knuckles.” It’s a maxim that applies in so many ways to the state of Texas, where the struggle for power has often unfolded through underhanded politicking, backroom dealings, and, quite literally, bloodshed. The contentious history of Texas politics has been shaped by dangerous and often violent events, and been formed not just in the halls of power but by marginalized voices omitted from the official narratives. A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles traces the state’s conflicted and dramatic evolution over the past 150 years through its pivotal political players, including oft-neglected women and people of color. Beginning in 1870 with the birth of Texas’s modern political framework, Bill Minutaglio chronicles Texas political life against the backdrop of industry, the economy, and race relations, recasting the narrative of influential Texans. With journalistic verve and candor, Minutaglio delivers a contemporary history of the determined men and women who fought for their particular visions of Texas and helped define the state as a potent force in national affairs.

In his four-volume series Return to Neveryeon, Hugo and Nebula award-winner Samuel R. Delany appropriated the conceits of sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization. Wesleyan University Press has reissued the long-unavailable Neveryeonvolumes in trade paperback. The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Neveryeon's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission -- or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.

Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Samuel R. Delany’s epic fantasy—the first in a series—explores power, gender, and the nature of civilization. A boy of the bustling, colorful docks of port Kolhari, during a political coup, fifteen-year-old Gorgik, once his parents are killed, is taken a slave and transported to the government obsidian mines at the foot of the Faltha mountains. When, in the savagely primitive land of Nevèrÿon, finally he wins his freedom, Gorgik is ready to lead a rebellion against the rulers of this barely civilized land. His is the through-story that, now in the background, now in the foreground, connects these first five stories, in Tales of Nevèrÿon—and, indeed, all the eleven stories, novellas, and novels that comprise Delany’s epic fantasy series, Return to Nevèrÿon, where we can watch civilization first develop money, writing, labor, and that grounding of all civilizations since: capital itself. In these sagas of barbarism, new knowledge, and sex, you’ll find far more than in most sword-and-sorcery. They are an epic feat of language, an ironic analysis of the foundations of civilization, and a reminder that no weapon is more powerful than a well-honed legend. This “eminently readable and gorgeously entertaining” (The Washington Post Book World) novel reads “as if Umberto Eco had written about Conan the Barbarian” (USA Today). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Samuel R. Delany including rare images from his early career.

Such a man was Captain John Scarrow, of the ship Morning Star, and yet he breathed a long sigh of relief when he heard the splash of the falling anchor and swung at his moorings within a hundred yards of the guns of the citadel of Basseterre. St. Kitt's was his final port of call, and early next morning his bowsprit would be pointed for Old England. He had had enough of those robber-haunted seas. Ever since he had left Maracaibo upon the Main, with his full lading of sugar and red pepper, he had winced at every topsail which glimmered over the violet edge of the tropical sea. He had coasted up the Windward Islands, touching here and there, and assailed continually by stories of villainy and outrage....FROM THE BOOKS.

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) was an English writer best known for his detective stories about Sherlock Holmes. This volume includes a collection of entertaining short stories like “The Green Flag,” “The Lord of Chateau Noir,” “Craddock,” and many more.