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Title: The Ionian Mission Author: Patrick O'Brian File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Historical Description: Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans now of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But a sudden turn of events takes them off on a hazardous mission to the Greek isles, where they are soon involved in fierce and thrilling action. Patrick OBrians Aubrey-Maturin tales are widely acknowledged to be the greatest series of historical novels ever written. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of their beginning, with Master and Commander, these evocative stories are being re-issued in paperback with smart new livery. This is the eighth book in the series. Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, veterans of many battles, return in this novel to the seas where they first sailed as shipmates. But Jack is now a senior Captain commanding a line-of-battle ship sent out to reinforce the squadron blockading Toulon, and this is a longer, harder, colder war than the dashing frigate action of his early days. A sudden turn of events takes him and Stephen off on a hazardous mission to the Greek islands. All his old skills of seamanship, and his proverbial luck when fighting against odds, come triumphantly into their own. The book ends with as fierce and thrilling an action as any in this magnificent series of novels.

Title: The Big Thaw Author: Donald Harstad File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Detective Description:Amazon.com ReviewDon't let the title of this dry suspense novel fool you. It's very cold in January in Iowa, the setting for Donald Harstad's third outing in his series featuring Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman and his partner Hester Gorse. The only thing mild is the humor in this spare procedural, which involves the usual turf battle between the white hats (local law enforcement) and the black hats (the FBI) as a sidebar to the main plot. Instead of the mean streets and criminal underclass of urban thrillers, we get the militant extremists who frequent the vast, empty reaches of the Midwest. In this case, the black hats are onto the crazies, and the local good guy, Deputy Carl, is caught in the crossfire. The crazies want enough money to blow the heartland (who wouldn't, in January?), and to get it, they're prepared to blow up Iowa's biggest economic asset, a riverboat casino on the Mississippi. They're being manipulated by a chief crazy (or maybe an arch crazy) named Gabriel, and (naturally) the feds have been a few steps behind Gabriel for a while now. Deputy Carl is a nice guy, but irony is not his strong suit, and he's not particularly fast on the uptake, either. Eventually he does save the day in this somewhat pedestrian and slow-motion regional mystery. If you liked the movie Fargo, you'll love The Big Thaw. --_Jane Adams_From Publishers WeeklyAnthony Award nominee Harstad (Eleven Days and Known Dead) makes a third foray to the town of Nation County, Iowa, in this compelling police procedural. One cold winter night, Deputy Sheriff Carl Houseman gets a call to join the pursuit of a burglary suspect who's leading the police on a merry car chase. When the suspect drives into a snowy ditch, Houseman digs him out and recognizes him as Fred Grothler, a bored kid who's committed petty crimes in the past. Fred confesses that he and his two cousins, Dirk and Royce Colson, have been responsible for a spate of recent break-ins into the homes of wealthy residents staying warm in Florida. Two nights earlier he dropped his cousins off at Cletus Borglan's palatial farmhouse, but they never came out. Maybe they froze? Houseman visits the farm and indeed finds Dirk and Royce frozen stiffAafter having been shot dead. Hardly any of the characters in this busy novel are what they seem. Upstanding citizen Borglan keeps a library whose contents betray his extreme antigovernment views. Even the FBI special agent who takes charge of the case has some strange associates for a lawman. A retired deputy sheriff, Harstad writes cop talk that's not only believable but often (intentionally) funny. He also supplies plenty of interesting trivia. For instance, half a million quarters, stacked, stretch 4.2 miles and weigh 25,000 pounds. That's what Houseman and Hester Gorse, his second in command, have to secure on the Beauregard, Nation County's floating casino and scene of the book's spectacular finale. (Aug.) br 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Title: Omnitopia Dawn Author: Diane Duane File Type: Mobi Subject:Science-Fiction Description: **A near-future techno-thriller from *New York Times* bestselling author Diane Duane. ** It's the first quarter of the twenty-first century, and massively multiplayer on-line games have been around for a couple of decades. In an increasingly wired and computer-friendly world they've become a form of entertainment so popular they're giving television and films a run for the money. And the most popular gaming universe of all is Omnitopia, created by genius programmer Dev Logan. For millions of people around the world, Omnitopia is an obsession, a passionate pastime, almost a way of life. Omnitopia is a virtual place where dreams come true-players can create their own universes within the game's structure, and participate in the profits if their piece of the universe is a hit. Ten million players routinely play in Omnitopia, and at any given time, nearly a million of them are on-line, living in a world more real to them then their own. Worldwide, Omnitopia is now as much a culture as a game. Participants can become involved in it in a hundred different ways. Some game as if their lives depended on it, spending thousands of hours, or thousands of dollars, or both, on quests in search of game glory among their fellow players. Some game only to acquire sufficient in-game value to become entitled to become subcreators themselves, able to build new levels and start raking in the so-called one percent of infinity which is the leveler's share of the profits. But there are also people who don't game at all, preferring to use the massive platform simply to explore its worlds, or to interact with other participants. Some people do nothing but design on-line weapons and other items for Omnitopia gamers, and sell them-or act as brokers, buying and selling game artifacts to order. Some subcreators do the same kind of design and creation, but for tailored Microcosms or slices of them: these are the unreal estate dealers. Some players speculate in game gold on the success or popularity of Microcosms, rather than actually playing in them. And of course there are thieves and swindlers, cheaters who live to find the loophole in the game that will outside it in the real world. Now Dev and his people are preparing to rollout a major new expansion to the Omnitopia system. And even as players, staff, the media, and the heavy hitters on the world financial scene wait eagerly for this fast-approaching and momentous event, there are others preparing to play a very different game-one that is meant to strike at the heart of Omnitopia and bring the entire system crashing down....