The Thrall's Gambit


Book Description

“Are you prepared to pay the price for power?” After standing trial in the Summer Court, James is sent on a quest to kill the Cait Sidhe, the monstrous faery cat who manipulated him into betraying the Seelie faeries and destroying the magical barrier that protected them. When the time comes to kill the beast, James decides to trick him into helping undo his mistake. But the man beneath the beast, Cecil Morris, is just as dangerous, and his manor, Heatherfield, is full of wild and deadly magic. In trying to reach Cecil, James risks being pulled into the darkness with him. Cai, accompanying James to Heatherfield, escapes from the Cait Sidhe’s prison and fights for his life against Heatherfield’s deadly magic, determined to keep his oath to kill the beast even if it means making James his enemy. Kallista and Alan, also captives in the manor, face a fight of their own as Alan’s Unseelie magic slowly consumes him. Meanwhile, newly-appointed Noble Faery Deirdre and her human champion, Iain, head into an ancient tomb to find her drachma, an item that will help her control her powerful magic and save the Summer Court from destruction. She must undergo a trial to earn her drachma, but dark forces lurk inside, waiting to use her magic against her and against all she loves. The Thrall's Gambit is book five in the seven-book Winter's Blight series.




Quinn's Gambit


Book Description

An unregistered human con wizard and a duty-bound, straight-laced elf cop. As New York explodes with dangerous creatures, their passion goes nuclear. After a terrible magical accident at Berkeley created unpredictable holes between realities, all manner of non-human creatures started popping into our world. These displacements, called Random Anomalous Reality Events or RARE, have taken magic out of fiction and relocated it firmly in reality, resulting in a great deal of chaos and confusion. Displaced elf Valerian works with AURA, the Agency of Unnatural Resettlement and Assimilation, to intercept these beings as they appear in the human world, helping the peaceful ones and subduing the violent, malevolent ones. It's good, satisfying work, and Val would be happy if he wasn't so lonely. Quinten is a young mage just trying to get by, but New York isn't the easiest city to make a living in. If his methods are sometimes morally dubious, his heart is still in the right place. Of course, for Quinn, the right place means firmly locked away, protected at all costs. Living by his wits and sometimes magically induced luck, he works as a &‘freelance magic user', or unregistered mage and small-time con, according to the authorities. The last thing Quinn wants is to draw the cops' attention, but when an Event happens right on top of him, he's forced to turn to AURA for help. Valerian isn't at all what he'd expected in an AURA cop, and he certainly wasn't expecting to join forces with the sexy elf, a snarky drow and a bitter incubus, when certain individuals in power try to stop the RARE by any means necessary. Things are not all what they seem at AURA headquarters, and a greater evil lurks at the top than anyone could have imagined.




The Queen's Gambit


Book Description

Netflix’s most watched limited series to date! The thrilling novel of one young woman’s journey through the worlds of chess and drug addiction.​ When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident, she’s placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more—and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother’s tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted. At thirteen, Beth wins the chess tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the US Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie in The Hustler, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the US champion—and Russia awaits . . . Fast-paced and elegantly written, The Queen’s Gambit is a thriller masquerading as a chess novel—one that’s sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. “The Queen’s Gambit is sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years—for the pure pleasure and skill of it.” —Michael Ondaatje, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The English Patient




Saving Solace


Book Description

Solace is booming out of control. An important temple dedication is bringing merchants, dignitaries, and a host of ne’er-do-wells and surprise visitors to the fabled tree-top town. And lately there have been a series of mysterious incidentsÉ. Palin has sworn off magic and nowadays acts as town mayor. He desperately needs a new sheriff, as the last one has just been murdered by malefactors unknown. Fortunately, Gerard has quit the knighthood after a quarrel with his father, and arrives just in time to don a sheriff’s badge. Douglas W. Clark reunites two of the most popular characters from the War of Souls epic in this new novel set in the best-selling Dragonlance¨ world.




On Being Blue


Book Description

On Being Blue is a book about everything blue—sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things—and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do. Gass writes: Of the colors, blue and green have the greatest emotional range. Sad reds and melancholy yellows are difficult to turn up. Among the ancient elements, blue occurs everywhere: in ice and water, in the flame as purely as in the flower, overhead and inside caves, covering fruit and oozing out of clay. Although green enlivens the earth and mixes in the ocean, and we find it, copperish, in fire; green air, green skies, are rare. Gray and brown and widely distributed, but there are no joyful swatches of either, or any of exuberant black, sullen pink, or acquiescent orange. Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life. Whether slick light sharp high bright thin quick sour new and cool or low deep sweet dark soft slow smooth heavy old and warm: blue moves easily among them all, and all profoundly qualify our states of feeling.




Rational Intuition


Book Description

What is intuition? What constitutes an intuitive process? Why are intuition concepts important? After many years of scholarly neglect, interest in intuition is now exploding in psychology and cognitive science. Moreover, intuition is also enjoying a renaissance in philosophy. Yet no single definition of intuition appears in contemporary scholarship; there is no consensus on the meaning of this concept in any discipline. Rational Intuition focuses on conceptions of intuition in relation to rational processes. Covering a broad range of historical and contemporary contexts, prominent philosophers, psychologists, and cognitive scientists explore how intuition is implicated in rational activity in its diverse forms. In bringing the philosophical history of intuition into novel dialogue with contemporary philosophical and empirical research, Lisa M. Osbeck and Barbara S. Held invite a comparison of the conceptions and functions of intuition, thereby clarifying and advancing conceptual analysis across disciplines.




Shadows Rising (World of Warcraft: Shadowlands)


Book Description

An all-new official prequel novel to Shadowlands, the next expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s legendary online game World of Warcraft “The Horde is nothing!” With those infamous words, Sylvanas Windrunner betrayed and abandoned the Horde she vowed to serve. The Dark Lady and her forces now work in the shadows as both the Horde and Alliance, including her own sister, Alleria, race to uncover her next move. Struggling to shoulder the crushing weight of leadership, King Anduin entrusts the void elf and High Exarch Turalyon to uncover Sylvanas’s whereabouts. The Horde now stands at a crossroads. The various factions form a council, leaving the mantle of warchief to rest. Thrall, Lor’themar Theron, Baine Bloodhoof, First Arcanist Thalyssra, and many other familiar faces rise to this new challenge. But the threats are numerous, and the distrust runs too deep. When the council is derailed by a failed assassination attempt on Talanji—the Zandalari queen and a key ally—Thrall and the rest of the Horde leaders are forced into action. They empower the young troll shaman Zekhan, still grieving the loss of Varok Saurfang, with a critical mission to aid Talanji and help uncover the rising threat against her. Meanwhile, Nathanos Blightcaller and Sira Moonwarden have been tasked by the Dark Lady with a terrifying gambit: to kill the troll loa of death himself, Bwonsamdi. As Zekhan and Talanji work to save Bwonsamdi, their journey will be a key turning point in bolstering the Horde against the coming darkness and finding themselves along the way. Failure to save their allies and the trickster god will surely doom them—but through success, they may rediscover what makes the Horde strong.




Battlemaster's Gambit


Book Description

Resurrected to dominate or die again Andric was much like anyone else, further along in his life than he wanted to be. Much further along, and waiting to finally become the main character of his own story. Fate had a funny joke for him, though. He died. Unexpectedly he was given the strangest of plot developments. He resurrected in what seemed to be a GACHA game Being given another chance on another world. One where he could redefine himself, starting with an unknown class of all things. Andric can only roll with it since there really isn't any other choice. It's time to start again and this time he'll have to get risky, take chances, and let luck play a part. Regardless if it's good or bad. First up for that new life motto is his class and he's definitely taking a risk. Unknowingly, he's given up on a typical RGP character development in favor of an unconventional class where his powers hinge on the luck of the draw. Disclaimer: This book contains copious amounts of sex, violence, cursing, and stats. There are strange cultures in a fantasy land that have very murky morals and do not adhere to any kind of human ideal of decency. This book also contains unconventional relationships and questionable moral choices.




Dance With The Gods


Book Description

Life at New Earth is hard and unforgiving. Only the strongest, smartest and most spiritual can survive. Following a trail hidden eons ago, five young spiritual scientists have set out to find four keys needed to complete a prophecy delivered to the too-young concubine, Ussa, and her beautiful daughters. Journeying in a great ship through the universes, they will learn not only how the universes exist but why they exist. The third journey, the real journey, has begun; from a place called Eden.




Mr. And Mrs. X Vol. 1


Book Description

Collecting Mr. & Mrs. X #1-6. Their wedding shocked the world — now Gambit and Rogue are husband and wife, and their honeymoon will be uncanny! In their extraordinary lives, Gambit and Rogue have faced nearly every challenge imaginable. But now that the Marvel Universe’s hottest couple has tied the knot, how will they cope with married life, X-Men-style? By going interstellar! Being tasked with protecting a mysterious package everyone in the galaxy seems to want makes for a pretty bizarre honeymoon, but could anything be worse than Deadpool crashing the party? Yes! The Technet crashing it, too! Not to mention the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, Deathbird, the Starjammers and a whole Empire in turmoil! What the heck is in this package, anyway?! And will Gambit and Rogue ever make it home?