Orion S Outcasts

A Sci-Fi saga set in the “Retro Worlds” universe created by Julia Verlanger, one of the most celebrated French science fiction authors of the 1970s.

A Sci-Fi saga set in the “Retro Worlds” universe created by Julia Verlanger, one of the most celebrated French science fiction authors of the 1970s.

The much-anticipated continuation to Scions, the prequel to the Starcrossed series, the #1 international bestseller. Presumed dead, Daphne and Ajax try to steal away what happiness they can while living as Outcasts, when they discover that the Fates aren’t done with them yet. Ajax may have escaped death, but his fate is sealed. Like mice in a maze, both are led back to New York City, where Daphne must find a way to keep the Fates from killing Ajax. But returning to the city puts them both in grave danger, and they are forced to seek help in the unlikeliest of places -- from a reluctant Heir to the House of Athens, and from a Prince of the House of Rome. But their biggest challenge will come from Tantalus, Heir to the House of Thebes, who has been busy plotting to start the war he knows he is destined to win, but who tragically finds himself caught between his devotion to his brother, and his obsession with Daphne.

This book deals with the political history of Hungary in the mid 20th Century. It focuses on Hungary's Jewish population mass murdered by the Nazis in the 1940's leaving a gnawing emptyness in the center of the nation's fabric. The Nazi regime was followed by the brutality of communism. The story is told through the eyes of Mike - the husband of the author - who was brutalized by these two regimes, losing a part of his family, his personal liberty and every material possession he had. After immigrating to the States the difficulties of his life in the States is told; up until the day he finally found success in America even graduating Magna cum Laude from college at age 52.

This sea story from the bottom of the earth takes the reader on a philosophical voyage through many realms, religious and secular, mathematical and poetic, natural and mechanical. Something akin to a Scottish Bill Bryson, Amy Kernahan, who was born and grew up on the Isle of Lewis, the largest of the chain of islands off the northwest coast of Scotland, sets out with her travelling companion, her father, to journey in the Antarctic and follow her dreams of seeing, and even standing in, the places where Sir Ernest Shackleton had been. Casting Shackleton in the role of Virgil to her Dante, she follows his trail through the ice fields around the Antarctic Peninsula, a vision here on earth as hellish as the frozen Lake Cocytus at the centre of Dante's Inferno. Along the way, the might of the sea, and the glories of the Antarctic set Amy pondering themes of Judeo-Christianity, seeing Antarctica as a remnant of Eden, unpopulated by both mankind and sin. The mathematics of nature reveals itself to her, and she is awed by the prophetic soul of Coleridge and his Ancient Mariner. Amy has set out on her journey believing it to be a pilgrimage to Shackleton's grave, but as she sojourns beneath striking southern skies where even the familiar is alien, she realises that she is on another more spiritual pilgrimage, called by the ancient Christians of her homeland peregrinatio, the search for what they called 'the place of one's resurrection' or true home. The outcome, although perhaps not surprising, is not quite as clear cut as it might have been.

School misfit, social outcast Milo O'Ryan's life in 7th grade just got a lot worse. He has been abducted by aliens. And they do not like him either. Somehow he will have to survive terrible food, assassins and his sister's irritating friendliness in order to become a member of the crew.