Tim Powers

Step into the extraordinary with L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41—an anthology that promises the unexpected, the thought-provoking, and the unforgettable. Celebrating the best new voices in speculative fiction, this collection offers gripping tales of science fiction, fantasy, and beyond. Discover Distant Worlds Explore alien landscapes, futuristic technologies, and hidden realms. From time-traveling adventures to battles for survival in dystopian societies, these stories transport you far beyond the limits of imagination. Meet Extraordinary Heroes Follow protagonists who face impossible odds—from a young constable on a harsh alien frontier to a reclusive writer sharing a ride with a sentient car. These characters redefine courage, resilience, and what it means to be human. Experience Visual Wonder Every story is brought to life with breathtaking original illustrations. These commissioned works add depth, color, and vibrancy to the collection, making it a visual and literary masterpiece. Learn from the Legends Gain inspiration from essays by L. Ron Hubbard, Robert J. Sawyer, and Tom Wood, offering rare insights into storytelling and creative mastery. Discover Tomorrow's Stars This volume continues the legacy of Writers of the Future, the competition that has launched myriad bestselling authors. These rising talents are reshaping speculative fiction as we know it. Whether you love heart-pounding action, thought-provoking “what ifs,” or stories that blur the line between science and magic, Volume 41 is your gateway to new dimensions. With tales and illustrations that linger long after the final page, this anthology invites you to take the leap into worlds uncharted. Push Beyond the Ordinary. Explore the Extraordinary. Grab your copy of L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 41 and discover the next generation of visionary storytellers and artists.

The spirits of the dead have walked among our legends, myths, and stories since before recorded history. Ghostly visitations, hauntings, unquiet souls seeking the living, vengeful wraiths, the possibility of life beyond the grave that can somehow reach out and touch us are some of literature’s most enduring icons. Now, in the twenty-first century, we are no less fascinated with phantoms than our cave-dwelling ancestors or our Victorian-age forebears. Thirty modern masters of fright and fantasy fill this anthology with shivers, chills, and spooky explorations of both sides of the veil. Be prepared to keep a light on all night!

A HARROWING SUPERNATURAL ADVENTURE, FULL OF COLOR, DRAMA, AND ROMANCE, AS ONLY TIM POWERS CAN DELIVER PARIS, 1925 HARRY NOLAN is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god--because a centuries-old French brotherhood, the sauteurs, are determined to suppress the story the article tells. The sauteurs have burned the magazine's office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named ERNEST HEMINGWAY, who--at first--tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences. VIVI CHASTAIN is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races--aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional "stepfather" who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and the sauteurs are now aware of the story--and of her. The SAUTEURS maintain their identities past death through controlled reincarnation--when members die and are reborn, the brotherhood finds their newborn incarnations, kidnaps them, and raises them in special nurseries, where they can fully resume their previous lives. Vivi escaped from one of these nurseries when she was six years old, and so her previous identity has not yet consummated his possession of her. The sauteurs want that consummation to happen--soon. GERTRUDE STEIN is the hub of literary and artistic Paris, and knows many of the city's supernatural secrets. She has written a book that appears to be nonsense but which can be used to deflect the kind of psychic assault that threatens Vivi, and she becomes a Merlin-like mentor to Vivi and Nolan-- --who find themselves reluctantly thrown together as hunted fugitives. Their struggles to evade the murderous sauteurs and free Vivi from her increasingly intrusive previous self lead the pair to a mysterious hermit who lives in the towers of Notre Dame cathedral, and the haunted catacombs under Paris, and a confrontation with the Roman goddess Cybele in an other-worldly temple on an island in the Seine. In pursuit of a secret painting by PABLO PICASSO, they learn that the god whose death the Hemingway manuscript describes is Moloch, the child-devouring Phoenician god mentioned in the Bible--and that the sauteurs make sacrifices to Moloch to maintain their reincarnations. From the narrow streets and rooftops of post-war Paris to, finally, a supernatural battle between gods in a remote village in Spain, Nolan and Vivi contend with forces natural and supernatural, enemies living and dead, and ultimately find themselves pitted against the god Moloch himself--at peril of their eternal souls. The Mills of the Gods is a harrowing supernatural adventure, full of color, drama, and romance, as only Tim Powers could tell it.

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world. When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat. In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.

2024 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST, BEST FANTASY NOVELHawarth, 1846.In a parsonage at the edge of the moors, a widowed rector lives with his family: three daughters and their dissolute brother, Bramwell.Though the future will celebrate Charlotte, Emily and Anne, right now they are unknown, their genius concealed. In just a few short years they will all be dead, and it will be middle sister Emily’s chance encounter with a grievously wounded man on the moor that sets them on the path to their doom.For there is an ancient pagan secret haunting the moors, a dark inheritance in the family bloodline and something terrible buried under an ogham-inscribed slab in the church. Not only are their lives at stake, but their very souls. My Brother’s Keeper is an atmospheric gothic novel that mixes diabolical hatred and vengeance with the supreme power of love to conjure dark magic from the tragic fate of the Brontë sisters.

2024 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST, BEST FANTASY NOVELHawarth, 1846.In a parsonage at the edge of the moors, a widowed rector lives with his family: three daughters and their dissolute brother, Bramwell.Though the future will celebrate Charlotte, Emily and Anne, right now they are unknown, their genius concealed. In just a few short years they will all be dead, and it will be middle sister Emily’s chance encounter with a grievously wounded man on the moor that sets them on the path to their doom.For there is an ancient pagan secret haunting the moors, a dark inheritance in the family bloodline and something terrible buried under an ogham-inscribed slab in the church. Not only are their lives at stake, but their very souls. My Brother’s Keeper is an atmospheric gothic novel that mixes diabolical hatred and vengeance with the supreme power of love to conjure dark magic from the tragic fate of the Brontë sisters.

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world. When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England. But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat. In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.

Sebastian Vickery has learned something about UFOs that he shouldn’t have—and Naval Intelligence, desperate to silence him, orders his old partner, Agent Ingrid Castine, to trap him. But Castine risks career, liberty, and maybe even life, to warn Vickery—and now they’re fugitives on the run from both the U.S. government and agents of the Russian GRU Directorate, which has its own uses for the UFO intelligence. With the unlikely aid of a renegade Russian agent, a homeless Hispanic boy, and an eccentric old Flat-Earther, Vickery and Castine must find an ancient relic that spells banishment to the alien species, and then summon the thing and use it against them—in a Samson-like confrontation that looks likely to kill them as well. Sweeping from the Giant Rock monolith in the Mojave Desert to a cultist temple in the Hollywood Hills, from a monstrous apparition in the Los Angeles River to a harrowing midnight visitation on a boat off Long Beach Harbor, Stolen Skies is an alien-encounter novel like no other. About Forced Perspectives: “One book I’ve been hugely excited about is Tim Powers’ latest, Forced Perspectives, set in the magical underbelly of modern-day Los Angeles. Powers may be the master of the secret history novel (and one of the originators of steampunk), but his recent work has really explored the history and magic of Tinseltown in a way no one else can.” —Lavie Tindhar, The Washington Post “. . . frenetic urban fantasy that playfully blends Egyptian mythology, alternate Los Angeles history, and modern technology. . . . A cast of unusual side characters . . . add color and complexity. This labyrinthine tale of the bizarre and fantastic will grip urban fantasy enthusiasts until the end.”—Publishers Weekly “. . . moves at jet speed, along unpredictable paths, and resolves in a fully gratifying melee involving almost every major character, living or dead.”—Locus Magazine About Alternate Routes: “Powers continues his run of smashing expectations and then playing with the pieces in this entertaining urban fantasy. . . . This calculated, frenetic novel ends with hope for redemption born from chaos. Powers’ work is recommended for urban fantasy fans who enjoy more than a dash of the bizarre.”—Publishers Weekly “Alternate Routes is both a thrilling mash-up of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and a work of startling moral sophistication. The horror packs a wallop, and there’s as much in the way of suspense and tension as the reader can bear. Powers takes us on one hell of a ride.”—The Federalist “Tim Powers is always at the top of the list when folks ask about my favorite authors. His weaving mythology and legend into modern stories that revolve around secret histories of our most mundane landmarks never ever disappoints.”—BoingBoing Praise for Tim Powers: “Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all.”—Orson Scott Card “Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers.”—The Orlando Sentinel “. . . immensely clever stuff. . . . Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character’s appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded.”—David Langford “On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [The book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—Legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers' strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers’ descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site “Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision.”—Science Fiction Chronicle “The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious. . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Sebastian Vickery has learned something about UFOs that he shouldn’t have—and Naval Intelligence, desperate to silence him, orders his old partner, Agent Ingrid Castine, to trap him. But Castine risks career, liberty, and maybe even life, to warn Vickery—and now they’re both fugitives, on the run from both the U.S. government and agents of the Russian GRU Directorate, which has its own uses for the UFO intelligence. With the unlikely aid of a renegade Russian agent, a homeless Hispanic boy, and an eccentric old Flat-Earther, Vickery and Castine must find an ancient relic that spells banishment to the alien species, and then summon the things and use it against them—in a Samson-like confrontation that looks likely to kill them as well. Sweeping from the Giant Rock monolith in the Mojave Desert to a cultist temple in the Hollywood Hills, from a monstrous apparition in the Los Angeles River to a harrowing midnight visitation on a boat off Long Beach Harbor, Stolen Skies is an alien-encounter novel like no other. About Forced Perspectives: “One book I’ve been hugely excited about is Tim Powers’s latest, Forced Perspectives, set in the magical underbelly of modern-day Los Angeles. Powers may be the master of the secret history novel (and one of the originators of steampunk), but his recent work has really explored the history and magic of Tinseltown in a way no one else can.” —Lavie Tindhar, The Washington Post “. . . frenetic urban fantasy that playfully blends Egyptian mythology, alternate Los Angeles history, and modern technology. . . . A cast of unusual side characters . . . add color and complexity. This labyrinthine tale of the bizarre and fantastic will grip urban fantasy enthusiasts until the end.”—Publishers Weekly ". . . moves at jet speed, along unpredictable paths, and resolves in a fully gratifying melee involving almost every major character, living or dead.”—Locus Magazine Alternate Routes: “Powers continues his run of smashing expectations and then playing with the pieces in this entertaining urban fantasy. . . . This calculated, frenetic novel ends with hope for redemption born from chaos. Powers’ work is recommended for urban fantasy fans who enjoy more than a dash of the bizarre.”—Publishers Weekly “Alternate Routes is both a thrilling mash-up of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and a work of startling moral sophistication. The horror packs a wallop, and there’s as much in the way of suspense and tension as the reader can bear. Powers takes us on one hell of a ride.”—The Federalist "Tim Powers is always at the top of the list when folks ask about my favorite authors. His weaving mythology and legend into modern stories that revolve around secret histories of our most mundane landmarks never ever disappoints."—BoingBoing About Tim Powers: “Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all.”—Orson Scott Card “Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers.”—The Orlando Sentinel “. . . immensely clever stuff. . . . Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character’s appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded.”—David Langford “On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [The book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—Legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review “[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers’ descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site “Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision.”—Science Fiction Chronicle “The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious. . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original.”—San Francisco Chronicle

The magical King of the West has been killed in California, and his assassin is one of the multiple personalities in the head of Janis Cordelia Plumtree—but which one? One of them is a streetwise pickpocket. Another is dead, and can only speak in quotes from Shakespeare. And another seems to be the unquiet ghost of her father. And there are many others. Sid Cochran is a one-time winemaker who blames his wife's suicide on the wine-god Dionysus, and believes that Dionysus is now pursuing him. Cochran and Plumtree escape together from a mental hospital in Los Angeles, and—pursued by ghosts, gangsters, and a crazy psychiatrist—set out for San Francisco and the wine country to try to restore the dead King of the West to life. But the god Dionysus himself is a player in this perilous game—and not on their side. About Tim Powers: "Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card "Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers."—The Orlando Sentinel ". . . immensely clever stuff. . . . Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [The book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site "Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision."—Science Fiction Chronicle "The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious. . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original."—San Francisco Chronicle

Twenty pulse-pounding, mind-bending tales of science fiction, twisted metaphysics, and supernatural wonder from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides. A complete palette of story-telling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale “The Bible Repairman,” where a psychic handyman who supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients finds the remains of his own broken soul on the line when tasked with rescuing the kidnapped ghost of a rich man’s daughter. Time travel takes a savage twist in “Salvage and Demolition,” where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco where he must prevent an ancient Sumeric inscription from dooming millions in the future. Humor and horror mix in “Sufficient unto the Day,” when a raucous Thanksgiving feast takes a dark turn as the invited ghosts of relatives past accidentally draw soul-stealing demons into the family television set. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in “Down and Out in Purgatory,” where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life. Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending—these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy. Praise for Down and Out in Purgatory: “Powers is a writer whose senses and soul are attuned to a cosmic symphony most of us would not hear without his deft channeling of the music.”—Paul di Filippo, Locus About Tim Powers: "Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card ". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

Ghosts can be caught, and bottled, and sold by covert dealers to addicts who inhale the things—and when a young boy named Kootie accidentally inhales the ghost of Thomas Edison, he finds that all the factions of Los Angeles' occult underground are after him, determined to kill him and get Edison's powerful ghost for themselves.Aided by Edison's confused and irascible ghost, Kootie flees—and finds himself dodging perils natural andsupernatural in the gritty alleys and trainyards of a Los Angeles that tourists never see.Fromm the slums around the L.A. River, to the abandoned Houdini mansion in the Hollywood Hills, to a finaldramatic confrontation on the haunted ocean liner Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, Expiration Date is aheart-stopping supernatural adventure from one of fantasy fiction's most original talents.

Collects fantasy master Tim Powers’ complete stories together for the first time in one volume! Sixteen pulse-pounding, mind-bending tales of science fiction, twisted metaphysics, and supernatural wonder from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides. A complete palette of story-telling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale “The Bible Repairman,” where a psychic handyman who supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients finds the remains of his own broken soul on the line when tasked with rescuing the kidnapped ghost of a rich man’s daughter. Time travel takes a savage twist in “Salvage and Demolition,” where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco where he must prevent an ancient Sumeric inscription from dooming millions in the future. Humor and horror mix in “Sufficient unto the Day,” when a raucous Thanksgiving feast takes a dark turn as the invited ghosts of relatives past accidentally draw soul-stealing demons into the family television set. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in “Down and Out in Purgatory,” where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life. Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending—these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy. About Tim Powers: "Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card ". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger”—Washington Post Book World “Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction “On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert “Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted "House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills" that is a conduit for the supernatural.Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time--to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient "spiders" which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years--an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat's spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family's past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby south of Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this old house that is a conduit for the supernatural. Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time - to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat's spell, Scott must fight to protect her. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family's past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

The WORLD FANTASY AWARD-winning novel from the author of THE ANUBIS GATES and DECLARE.

From multi-award-winning fantasy writer Tim Powers: a secret history of 19th-century London.'Tim Powers is a brilliant writer... Wonderfully original' William GibsonLondon, 1862: a city of stinking fog and dark, winding streets. Adelaide McKee, a former prostitute, arrives on the doorstep of veterinary doctor John Crawford, a man she met once seven years earlier and the father of her only child, long presumed dead. She has recently learned that the girl lives - but her life and soul are sought by a ghostly vampire. And this is no ordinary spirit; the bloodthirsty wraith is that of John Polidori, Lord Byron's doctor... Sweeping from high society to grimy slums, from elegant West End salons to the pre-Roman catacombs beneath St. Paul's, Hide Me Among the Graves blends the historical and the supernatural in a unique and dazzling novel.

As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from postwar Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest draws him into international politics and gritty espionage tradecraft--and inexorably drives Hale, the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, and Kim Philby, mysterious traitor to the British cause, to a deadly confrontation on the high glaciers of Mount Ararat, in the very shadow of the fabulous and perilous Ark.