Dramatized Adaptation Fantasy

It's become the fastest - and surest - way to get from here to eternity. Somebody is playing the railroads like a giant train set, causing high-speed derailments that strew the rails with headless victims from coast to coast. And could the repeated sightings of a ghostly samurai swordsman be fact or mass hysteria? As the carnage continues unchecked and the body count mounts, Dr. Harold Smith suspects the train terror is merely a decoy for the real target.

The loyalties that united the Cerberus warriors have become undone, as a bizarre messenger from the future provides a look into encroaching horror and death. Kane and his band have one option: Fix two fatal fault lines in the time continuum — and rewrite history before it happens. But first they must restore power to the barons who dare to defy the greater evil: the mysterious new Imperator.

Time hasn't stopped after the apocalypse. After the long nuclear winters, a few continue the struggle for survival in the irradiated wastelands. Then, a new order emerges, with a directive to destroy whatever freedom remains in its fortified enclaves and the surrounding Outlands. Kane, once its trusted and feared warrior, is now a fugitive driven to fathom the past and unravel the future.

World War III was only the beginning. Inevitable death now awaits every soul who lived through the holocaust as the earth's atmosphere is about the explode into a searching blaze of fire. But one man refuses to die, refuses to accept the horror: John Thomas Rourke, the ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert and survival authority.

A dark and unfathomable power governs post-nuclear America. Its tentacles reach from the heart of the garrison - ruled cities to the lawless Outlands where a last bid for freedom remains. A former warrior of the secretive regime, Kane has become a fugitive of the order he once served, racing to expose the blueprint of a power that's immeasurable evil. Kane's quest allies him with fellow outcasts Brigid Baptiste and Grant, all willing to risk the peril of seeking the truth.

Emerging relatively unscathed from the apocalyptic rebirth of North America, Canada hides a trove of Cold War-era secret government installations known as Diefenbunkers, filled with caches of weapons, wags, and food. Ryan Cawdor and his companions agree to ride sec for a convoy headed west across the remnants of the old Trans-Canada Highway to retrieve the ultimate prize: four portable nuclear reactors. It's enough power to light up a ville for years, a bright beacon for a new tomorrow. But they have death on their trail.

A former enforcer for the new lords, Kane found shelter in Cerberus Redoubt, along with the archivist Brigid and fellow magistrate Grant. They know that unseen forces guard an ancient secret, which has thrown a dark shroud over the future. Behind them stands the impenetrable past. But all that changes when they are suddenly catapulted into another reality - and here, as they attempt to remake the future, the enemy races to turn time into a weapon of destruction.

FBI Agent Lily Yu is living at Nokolai Clanhome with her fiancé, lupi Rule Turner, when an intruder penetrates their territory, stealing the prototype of a magical device the clan hopes will be worth a fortune - if a few bugs can be worked out.... But the protoytpe can be dangerously erratic, discharging a bizarre form of mind magic - and it looks like the thief wants it for that very side effect. Worse, whoever stole the device didn’t learn about it by accident. There’s a Nokolai traitor in their midst.

In a world where evil will not die, Nazis dream of world domination. Soviet land forces count on their reborn particle beam weapons to gain the advantage, while their undersea brethren weigh the nuclear option; an option that will leave the planet a desolate rock in space. Albert Einstein once observed, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former." John Thomas Rourke and the forces of freedom couldn't agree more.

Civil Icon John Rourke must come to terms with his new status as a god among men. He is the ever reluctant hero of legend, and now must battle a completely new retinue of villains in the futuristic new world. Along with the rest of the Rourke family, he will fight to gain supremacy over the one man who has the ability to save Sarah Rourke's life.

Logan Gyre is king of Cenaria, a country under siege, with a threadbare army and little hope. He has one chance - a desperate gamble, but one that could destroy his kingdom. In the north, the new Godking has a plan. If it comes to fruition, no one will have the power to stop him. Kylar Stern has no choice. To save his friends - and perhaps his enemies - he must accomplish the impossible: Assassinate a goddess.

Thanks to the mindspeech lessons she’s receiving from the black dragon, Lily is temporarily benched from Unit Twelve - until her brain acclimates and the risk of total burnout passes. At least she has her new husband, lupi Rule Turner, to keep her occupied. But when her mentor calls in a favor and sends Lily to a murder scene, she’s suddenly back on active status - despite the hallucinations she can’t keep at bay. With one touch, Lily knows the man was killed by magic, but her senses don’t warn her how far the conspiracy goes....

Picking up exactly where Playing Gods 1: Isolation left off, Playing Gods 2: Adaptation brings the zehuderan warriors Xriah and Vylis to the world of Gravios. A far cry from the last plane where the two battled, Gravios is an ocean world of cybernetically augmented humans and post-apocalyptic sea vessels. All land on Gravios has been completely submerged into the depths, the sea level elevated by the planet-swallowing marine creature known as the Grava.

In her chrysalis state, Baroness Beausoleil was a betrayer, a murderer, an arch foe of mankind. Now, her metamorphosis into Overlord Lilitu poses a far greater menace. But she needs human help in a plot to overthrow her brethren and seize control of the last remaining Anunnaki stronghold on Earth. Buried deep in the sands of the Sinai, a secret port can unleash the dangerous mysteries of an alien race — unless the Cerberus rebels can outwit a she-god with an army at her disposal...and the cunning and cruelty to wrest Earth for herself.

Crawling out of the ruins of a nuke-shattered America, a new reality shapes an unpredictable terrain of human resilience and unabated savagery. Born and bred in Deathlands, Ryan Cawdor has seen the pulsing of its dark heart. And he understands more than most that tomorrow is certain to arrive. But to see it means surviving today — any way he can.

Post-nuclear America has changed little since the primal leveling of the 21st century. Warrior survivalists Ryan Cawdor and his band live by a code that honors the kind of absolute freedom only a raw frontier can provide. Until rumors of a wider, more prosperous world than the Deathlands thriving deep in Mexico, untouched by the nukecaust, lure them into uncharted waters....

R. S. Belcher's debut novel, The Six-Gun Tarot, was enthusiastically greeted by critics and listeners, who praised its wildly inventive mixture of dark fantasy, steampunk, and the Wild West. Now Belcher returns to Golgotha, Nevada, a bustling frontier town that hides more than its fair share of unnatural secrets.

Compassion is a luxury in a brutal land where life is cheap, but Dr. Mildred Wyeth holds fast to her physician's oath to show mercy. Now she's stricken by a plague that brings on a deep craving for human flesh. Unwilling to lose one of their own to this pervasive pestilence without a fight, the companions follow the trail to Cajun country, where the mysterious queen of the Cannies is rumored to possess the only antidote to the grim fate that awaits Mildred...and perhaps her warrior friends.

The mysterious barons — either hybrids of another race or genetic evolution gone mad — are dying. Kane, once a keeper of law and order in the new America, is part of the driving machine to return power to the true inheritors of the Earth. California is the opening salvo in one baron's savage quest for immortality—and a fateful act of defiance against earth's dangerous oppressors. Yet their sanctity is grimly uncertain as an unseen force arrives for a final confrontation with those who seek to rule, or reclaim, planet Earth.

Wayson Harris was one of thousands of clones born and bred to be the ultimate soldiers. But as an outlawed model, he was different from the rest - possessing independent thoughts and an addiction to violence. Stranded on a frontier planet, Harris is desperate to get back to civilization - and back into the fight. But the rebel factions are warring among themselves, and Harris is contacted by a group that wants to return to the Unified Authority's command.