"A grand and glorious visionary epic."-Robert Silverberg *** Set in the artificial planetary system of Chalco-Doror, which is no more and no less than a vast cosmic machine, The Last Legends of Earth is a love story, a gripping saga of struggle against alien control, and an examination of the machinery of creation and destruction. Above all, it is world-building of the highest and grandest order, on a scale rarely seen in science fiction since the great works of Olaf Stapledon.

Fire and Water are outlawed. Sophia Orenda Academy has changed. Familiars are going missing, and a mysterious plague has taken over the school. Someone in the castle is behind it, but the culprit is out of reach. I don’t even know who I am anymore. To find out, I’ve started searching for the family I never knew. Finding myself is the only way to continue this journey. Lives have already been lost. If we don’t find the next piece of the prophecy soon, it’ll be impossible to save the tribe. Liam Last semester, I was betrayed by everyone I love. Months have gone by, and I still don’t know who to trust. Sophia and I are both broken. There’s no fixing the damage that was done. Friends have become enemies, and enemies have become major threats. Now our relationship is being put to the ultimate test. If the Elders find us guilty, we’ll fail to stop what’s coming. Answers to the prophecy are just out of reach, and we’re running out of time to change the future... ** Orenda Academy teeters between darkness and light in the heart-stopping third installment of the Academy of Magical Creatures series. Love and friendship are put on trial in this shocking sequel that’ll keep you on the edge of your seat. Fans of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games will fall for this fantasy romance saga! This series takes place in the Hidden Legends Universe, along with the University of Sorcery series, the College of Witchcraft series, and the Prison for Supernatural Offenders series. The Hidden Legends universe features college-aged protagonists attending magical academies, dual points-of-view, disabled and diverse main characters, and steamy, empowering romances. Each series stands on its own and can be read in any order. This is a full-length novel over 400 pages. Recommended reading age 18+ Stand your ground and order today!

Seven billion years from now, long after the Sun has died and human life has become extinct, alien beings reconstruct homo sapiens from our fossilized DNA drifting as debris in deep space. We are reborn to serve as bait in a battle to the death between the Rimstalker, humankind's re-animator, and the zōtl, horrific creatures who feed vampire-like on the suffering of intelligent lifeforms.The resurrected children of Earth are told: "You owe no debt to the being that roused you to this second life. Neither must you expect it to guide you or benefit you in any way." Yet, humans choose sides, as humans will, participating in the titanic struggle between Rimstalker and zōtl in ways strange and momentous.Set in the artificial planetary system of Chalco-Doror, which is no more and no less than an enormous cosmic machine, The Last Legends of Earth is a love story, a gripping saga of struggle against alien control, and an examination of the machinery of creation and destruction.Above all, it is world-building of the highest and grandest order, on a scale rarely seen in science fiction since the great works of Olaf Stapledon."A wondrously complex novel."-The Philadelphia Inquirer"Few novels have ever had a broader scope."-The Denver Post"A wonderfully realized, richly-detailed and cohesive novel." -People

One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer spontaneously combusts! His body transforms into light, mysteriously snatched from his banal life by an alien intelligence 130 billion years in the future. There, all spacetime is collapsing into a cosmic black hole, the Big Crunch - and a bold, cosmic destiny awaits Carl. Rebuilt from the remnants of his light by extraterrestrials for a cryptic purpose, he awakens in time's last world, the strangest of all - the Werld. At the edge of infinity, Carl discovers the Foke, nomadic humans who travel among the floating islands of the Werld. The Foke teach him how to live - and love - at the end of time, and he loses his heart to his plucky guide, the beautiful Evoë. Their life together in this blissful kingdom that knows no aging or disease brings them to rapture - until Evoë falls prey to the zotl, a spidery intelligence who hunt the Foke and eat the chemical by-products of their pain. In order to save his beloved from a gruesome death, Carl must return to Earth - 130 billion years earlier - where he is shocked to discover that the Earth he's come back to is not the one he left. Can he meet the harsh demands of his task before the zotl find him and begin ravishing the Earth? Author's Note: The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual observations of science fiction's sub-genre: "space opera," which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."

“The longtime chronicler of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula . . . gives eloquent expression to death and the grieving process.” —Booklist Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a master . . . who makes the ordinary extraordinary, the unnamable unforgettable,” beloved author Jim Harrison returns with a masterpiece—a tender, profound, and magnificent novel about life, death, and finding redemption in unlikely places. Donald is a middle-aged Chippewa-Finnish man slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His condition deteriorating, he realizes no one will be able to pass on to his children their family history once he is gone. He begins dictating to his wife, Cynthia, stories he has never shared with anyone as around him, his family struggles to lay him to rest with the same dignity with which he has lived. Over the course of the year following Donald’s death, his daughter begins studying Chippewa ideas of death for clues about her father’s religion, while Cynthia, bereft of the family she created to escape the malevolent influence of her own father, finds that redeeming the past is not a lost cause. Returning to Earth is a deeply moving book about origins and endings, making sense of loss, and living with honor for the dead. It is among the finest novels of Harrison’s long, storied career, and confirms his standing as one of the most important American writers. “A deeply felt meditation on life and death, nature and God, this is one of Harrison’s finest works.” —Library Journal

The slower geologic processes are represented by myths associated with natural landforms, rocks and minerals, rivers and mountains, and other outstanding features of the landscape. Examples are also given to show some minor ways in which folklore and geology impinge on one another: misconceptions about geologic phenomena, such as earthquakes, which are so prevalent as to constitute a form of modern folklore, and conversely, ideas long considered to be pure folklore which may prove to have some basis in scientific fact. The most dramatic example of geomythology so far discovered is the theory the origin of the lost continent of Atlantis may be found in the Minoan civilization of Crete, which suddenly disappeared from view around 1450 B.C., about the time of a tremendous eruption know to have occurred in the nearby volcano, Santorin. This theory, variously developed by Marinatos and Galanopoulos, is examined in the light of new evidence gathered in Crete by Mrs.