Distant Star

A chilling novel about the nightmare of a corrupt and brutal dictatorship. The star of Roberto Bolano's hair-raising novel Distant Star is Alberto Ruiz-Tagle, an air force pilot who exploits the 1973 coup to launch his own version of the New Chilean Poetry, a multimedia enterprise involving sky-writing, poetry, torture, and photo exhibitions. For our unnamed narrator, who first encounters this "star" in a college poetry workshop, Ruiz-Tagle becomes the silent hand behind every evil act in the darkness of Pinochet's regime. The narrator, unable to stop himself, tries to track Ruiz-Tagle down, and sees signs of his activity over and over again. A corrosive, mocking humor sparkles within Bolano's darkest visions of Chile under Pinochet. In Bolano's world there's a big graveyard and there's a big graveyard laugh. (He once described his novel By Night in Chile as "a tale of terror, a situation comedy, and a combination pastoral-gothic novel.") Many Chilean authors have written about the "bloody events of the early Pinochet years, the abductions and murders," Richard Eder commented in the The New York Times: "None has done it in so dark and glittering a fashion as Roberto Bolano."

Seventeen-year-old Emma was the only one who hadn't given up on her boyfriend, Lucas. Everyone else--his family, his friends, his doctors--was convinced that any moment could be his last. So when Lucas miraculously returns from the brink of death, Emma thinks her prayers have been answered. As the surprised town rejoices, Emma begins to question whether Lucas is the same boy she's always known. When she finds an unidentifiable object on his family's farm--and government agents come to claim it--she begins to suspect that nothing is what it seems. Emma's out-of-this-world discovery may be the key to setting things right, but only if she and Lucas can evade the agents who are after what they have. With all her hopes and dreams on the line, Emma sets out to save the boy she loves. And with a little help from a distant star, she might just have a chance at making those dreams come true.

Light from a Distant Star is a gripping coming-of-age story with a brutal murder at its heart and a heroine as unforgettable as Harper Lee’s "Scout." It is early summer and Nellie Peck is on the cusp of adolescence--gangly, awkward, full of questions, but keenly observant and wiser than many of the adults in her life. The person she most admires is her father, Benjamin, a man of great integrity. His family’s century old hardware store is failing and Nellie’s mother has had to go back to work. Nellie’s older half-sister has launched a disturbing search for her birth father. Often saddled through the long, hot days with her timid younger brother, Henry, Nellie is determined to toughen him up. And herself as well. Three strangers enter Nellie’s protected life. Brooding Max Devaney is an ex-con who works in her surly grandfather’s junkyard. Reckless Bucky Saltonstall has just arrived from New York City to live with his elderly grandparents. And pretty Dolly Bedelia is a young stripper who rents the family’s small, rear apartment and becomes the titillating focus of Nellie’s eavesdropping. When violence erupts in the lovely Peck house, the prime suspect seems obvious. Nellie knows who the real murderer is, but is soon silenced by fear and the threat of scandal. The truth, as she sees it, is shocking and unthinkable, and with everyone’s eyes riveted on her in the courtroom, Nellie finds herself seized with doubt. No one will listen. No one believes her, and a man’s life hangs in the balance. A stunning evocation of innocence lost, Light from a Distant Star stands as an incredibly moving and powerful novel from one of America's finest writers.

Award-winning director and author Makoto Shinkai offers a romantic sci-fi tale about young love and space adventure, based on his animated film. This new novel gives readers more insight into Mikako and Noboru's relationship. Fans of the original series will again be immersed in the beautiful world of Shinkai. The word, “world”... I vaguely thought it meant anywhere there was cell phone reception. It’s the year 2046. Mikako Nagamine and Noboru Terao are middle school classmates, tentatively sharing an unspoken first love—but unbeknownst to him, Mikako has been recruited into the UN Space Force, and instead of going on to high school, will join the spacecraft Lysithea to search for alien Tarsians. As she travels further and further to the outer reaches of the solar system, the time it takes for a text message to reach the Earth grows longer and longer. Back on Earth, time passes normally for Noboru, but as the years pass he still can’t forget the voice on the other side of the cell phone… Steeped in nostalgia and memory, Arata Kanoh brings to the page the award-winning OVA by acclaimed filmmaker Makoto Shinkai, director of She and Her Cat, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, Garden of Words, 5 Centimeters per Second, and the highest-grossing anime film of all time, Your Name. Arata Kanoh is a writer who has produced novelizations of Makoto Shinkai’s other works, including 5 Centimeters Per Second (also available from Vertical).

Exiled from Earth, forty thousand people make a seven-generation trek to a new star, a new planet and a new home. Along the way they encounter technical difficulties, mysterious aliens, new diseases and dissention within their own ranks.

This book approaches in novel form what steps Humanity needs to take to become a more than single planet species so we humans don’t become extinct. The dinosaurs didn’t have a Space Program. Picture a Tyrannosaurus in a space suit. It uses current and projected developments to advance into low Earth orbit, the Moon and the Lagrangian balanced gravity points. A small dedicated crew of explorers advance beyond earth orbit to Mars, the Asteroid Belt and dwarf planet Ceres. On an exploration of Jupiter’s Trojan points in search of geologic resources they discover something that leads them eventually to a Star Gate. Established Scientists keep telling them what they are doing can’t be done, but then take credit for their accomplishments.

About the Book Tales from a Distant Star is a short story anthology following a crew and their seemingly never-ending journey through space, which it very well could with the ever-expanding size of the universe. Using real science, the tales within stay as true as possible to the current understanding of space and space travel, and how it may look hundreds of years from now. Raymond Hardcastle’s years of studies in physics and engineering and his love for storytelling are now combined into one fascinating collection. About the Author Raymond Hardcastle spent his childhood in orphanages and foster homes until his teenage years, and attended one-room schoolhouses, where he would learn from the higher grades. He went on to take courses at vocational school to learn a trade. Until he was seventeen, he worked mowing lawns, shoveling snow, shining shoes, and as a store clerk until he could join the navy. At twenty-one, he was discharged and practiced his trade while attending college. He now holds a BS in physics and an MBA. He has worked as an engineer on a space shuttle and as an administrator of a scientific research laboratory, and taught technical college classes until his retirement.

The Question Is Answered! We are not alone! "Execute!" A single voice and a single command setting in motion a vast war machine. One word signaling the destruction of a hundred worlds. The death of trillions. An order that was issued two thousand years ago, yet one that would reach across time and impact 21st Century humanity in a most devastating way. A command that will reset the path of destinies, both for an unsuspecting Earth, and a planet much nearer the galactic core. A world called Mith-Sul-Anroth, or, as the humans who come to know it, Myth! This is the story of events great and small, global and personal. Follow the radiant streams of light from distant and alien suns as they illuminate adventure in the new series, Unknown Country! Vist www.gregoryjsaunders.com