Title: Timeline Author: Michael Crichton File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Thriller Description:Amazon.com ReviewWhen you step into a time machine, fax yourself through a quantum foam wormhole, and step out in feudal France circa 1357, be very, very afraid. If you arent strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, youll miss the quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat. Youll also have to dodge catapults that hurl sizzling pitch over castle battlements. On the social front, you should avoid provoking the butcher of Crecy or Sir Oliver may lop your head off with a swoosh of his broadsword or cage and immerse you in Miladys Bath, a brackish dungeon pit into which live rats are tossed now and then for prisoners to eat.This is the plight of the heroes of Timeline, Michael Crichtons thriller. Theyre historians in 1999 employed by a tech billionaire-genius with more than a few of Bill Gatess most unlovable quirks. Like the entrepreneur in Crichtons __, Doniger plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost world revived via cutting-edge science. When the projects chief historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, the boss man doesnt tell the younger historians the risks theyll face trying to save him. At first, the interplay between eras is clever, but Timeline swiftly becomes a swashbuckling old-fashioned adventure, with just a dash of science and time paradox in the mix. Most of the cool facts are about the Middle Ages, and Crichton marvelously brings the past to life without ever letting the pulse-pounding action slow down. At one point, a time-tripper tries to enter the Chapel of Green Death. Unfortunately, its custodian, a crazed giant with terrible teeth and a bad case of lice, soon has her head on a block. She saw a shadow move across the grass as he raised his ax into the air. I dare you not to turn the page! Through the narrative can be glimpsed the glowing bones of the movie that may be made from Timeline and the cutting-edge computer game that should hit the market in 2000. Expect many clashing swords and chase scenes through secret castle passages. But the book stands alone, tall and scary as a knight in armor shining with blood. --Tim AppeloFrom Publishers WeeklyAnd the Oscar for Best Special Effects goes to: Timeline! Figure maybe three years before those words are spoken, for Crichtons new novelAdespite media reports about trouble in selling film rights, which finally went to ParamountAis as cinematic as they come, a shiny science-fantasy adventure powered by a superior high concept: a group of young scientists travel back from our time to medieval southern France to rescue their mentor, whos trapped there. The novel, in fact, may improve as a movie; its complex action, as the scientists are swept into the intrigue of the Hundred Years War, can be confusing on the page (though a supplied map, one of several graphics, helps), and most of its characters wear hats (or armor) of pure white or black. Crichton remains a master of narrative drive and cleverness. From the startling opening, where an old man with garbled speech and body parts materializes in the Arizona desert, through the revelation that a venal industrialist has developed a risky method of time-travel (based on movement between parallel universes; as in Crichtons other work, good, hard science abounds), theres not a dull moment. When elderly Yale history prof Edward Johnston travels back to his beloved 15th century and gets stuck, and his assistants follow to the rescue, excitement runs high, and higher still as Crichton invests his story with terrific period detail and as castles, sword-play, jousts, sudden death and enough bold knights-in-armor and seductive ladies-in-waiting to fill any toystores action-figure shelves appear. Theres strong suspense, too, as Crichton cuts between past and present, where the time-travel machinery has broken: Will the heroes survive and make it back? The novel has a calculated feel but, even so, it engages as no Crichton tale has done since Jurassic Park, as it brings the past back to vigorous, entertaining life. Agent, Lynn Nesbit. 1,500,000 first printing; Literary Guild nain selection; simultaneous large-print edition and audiobook. (Nov. 16) br 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Title: The Illuminatus! Trilogy Author: Robert Shea File Type: Mobi Subject:Science-Fiction Description:The biggest sci-fi cult novel to come along since Dune.--The Village Voice. From the PublisherFilled with sex and violence--in and out of time and space--the three books of The Illuminatus are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the coverups of our time--from who really shot the Kennedys to why theres a pyramid on a one-dollar bill.