Dramatized Fantasy

My name is Zachary Nixon Johnson. The year is 2057, and after a handful of species-altering upheavals, Earth-shattering cataclysms, history-changing extraterrestrial contacts, and pop-culture disasters, the world is now a pretty safe place. But, of course, as in times past, people still run the shades-of-gray gamut from good to evil. There are still cops and robbers, saints and sinners, voters and politicians. And every once in a while some crazy thing happens that threatens all of society, all of humanity, even the entire space-time continuum. And it always happens on my watch.

For years, like millions of other Americans, John Thomas Rourke had planned for what seemed inevitable — the destruction of civilization. There were various possible causes: global economic collapse, some uncontrollable pestilence, a world famine — or nuclear war. And the rumbling signaling the coming of Total War was becoming increasingly strong as Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert, and survival authority, made his last desperate gambit to save his estranged wife and two children before the button was pressed.

When the world blew out in 2001, the secrets locked in its darkest corridors became the answer to humanity's survival. Now, more than two centuries later, a mysterious Imperator prepares to seize his birthright from the nine hybrid barons fighting each other for domination of the planet. All that stands between freedom and extinction is a renegade force of exiles who are prepared to challenge the ancient warring entities thrusting mankind into a horrifying future....

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

San Francisco's only PI with an eye into the supernatural, is having one of those months. His bad mood drives him to his local pub where he encounters his latest client, a Leprechaun who's lost his adopted niece, a runaway Dryad, and that's where the problems begin. Some days it pours and when Landau Bain, the city's crankiest wizard, arrives on Tony's doorstep, he knows what's coming down isn't rain.

For Ky, it’s not just about liberating the star systems subjugated by Turek and defending the rest of the galaxy’s freedom. There’s also a score to be settled and payback to be meted out for the obliteration of the Vatta Transport dynasty...and the slaughter of Ky’s family. But the enemy have their own escalation efforts under way - including the placement of covert agents among the allies with whom Ky and the surviving Vattas are collaborating in the war effort.

The Gemini Cell has taken everything from former Navy SEAL James Schweitzer: his family, his career, his life. Schweitzer knows the only way he can stop running, the only way to keep his son safe, is to destroy the Cell once and for all. But out of control and fighting a secret war against the government it once served, the Cell will not be destroyed easily. Its Director has been sent to the far reaches of the subarctic to search for a secret that could allow the Cell to seize control of the country.

The passage of time hasn't healed the ravages of the nukecaust, but where once there was only the Deathlands, new centres of power loom above the domain of the unwanted, the hell zones of the Outlands. Though the outlanders distrust and hate the rulers of the fortified villes, even they wouldn't dare imagine the megalithic power guiding their destiny.

Ryan Cawdor has been narrowly rescued from a harrowing, uncontrolled plummet through the maelstrom of time, only to find himself stranded in a place outside of the reality he knows, his savior not quite the man he appears to be. At the Cawdor family home of Front Royal, the companions meet Ryan’s long-lost son, who is no longer who he once was. They learn Front Royal has fallen to invaders, forces under the command of a longtime bitter enemy and constant nemesis.

The conspiracy of secrecy manipulating post-nuclear Earth takes a terrifying new turn as the mysterious oligarchy becomes something far more sinister. No longer shrouded in the cloaks of hybrid-human divinity, the nine barons have evolved into their true incarnation of ancient overlords, their avaricious scope expanded to reclaim the world they were forced to abandon and with it, the final subjugation of the human race.

World War III was just practice for what's coming. And even those who survived the original firestorm — like John Thomas Rourke — won't have a chance when the next round of carnage begins. But Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons specialist, and survival expert didn't struggle to stay alive in this brutal world only to die in a final holocaust of fire and blood.

Following the events of Deathlands 133: Grim Choices, Ryan Cawdor and his companions find themselves far from their intended destination of the surviving redoubt on the outskirts of what once was the capital of a mighty nation. The gateway they’ve arrived through has planted them in the geographic middle of the Deathlands, and they soon find themselves in a violent struggle between multiple warring factions for the spoils of a legendary stockpile, buried in a former military installation somewhere in the region.

Hiring on as crew to a merchant's wag-train, Ryan and his companions anticipate trouble as they head west toward what was once Montana. The terrain is treacherous, but the company is worse as anger, jealousy, and male rivalry erupt into chaos and death. But as they get closer to their destination, the true nature of the journey unfolds. There's a map to a mysterious valley rich with predark stockpiles. But is it the promised land they've been seeking...or the dead end they never saw coming?

Trials, persecutions, false accusations, the Inquisition - for archaeologist and TV host Annja Creed, the current episode they're taping for her show is a fascinating one. But while Annja is filming the last segment in France, a vicious "accident" nearly kills her. It looks to be unintentional...until a man calling himself Cauchon claims responsibility.

As a warrior, Kane served the lords of the villes, but on a punitive expedition he'd caught a forbidden glimpse of the future that made him an outcast. In exile with him are Brigid Baptiste, golden keeper of the archives, and Grant, an only friend in a hostile land. Together, they've sworn to uncover the secrets of the world's fate...as written in its dark past.

Xriah and Vylis, two avatars, both empowered with differing superhuman abilities, are repeatedly thrust into wildly varying worlds to do battle on behalf of their respective deities. Though the nature of their deities is shrouded in mystery, both avatars' faith in their purpose is strong and unwavering. On each successive world they seek one another out, and then it is a battle to the death, despite the fact that both the defeated and victor alike are reborn and plunged into yet another world, to begin the fight all over again.

When John Rourke's daughter is kidnapped by a Russian agent, Rourke follows their trail across a frozen Arctic wasteland - and stumbles upon a small pocket of humanity living in a tropical paradise surrounded by ice and snow. The community of Icelandic descendants has flourished in seclusion during the long years following the fiery holocaust, unaware of the fierce and bloody struggle in the outside world between the forces of freedom and Communist tyranny.

The fate of humanity remains ever uncertain, dictated by the obscure forces that have commandeered mankind’s destiny for thousands of years. The plenipotentiaries of these ancient oppressors - the nine barons who have controlled America in the 200 years since the nukecaust - are now falling prey to their own rabid desire for power. Their imposed doom is aided by a handful of intrepid men and women in a bitter fight to destroy the self-proclaimed new humans and deliver humanity from the yoke of the interminable slavery....

The nine hybrid barons — mysterious oligarchs who ruled the fortified cities that emerged after Armageddon — are no more. Gone, not by the civil war fought by a courageous band of exiles, but trapped in a web of evil 4000 years in the making. As Tiamat, a living, sentient ship, hovers in orbit over Egypt, the nine Overlords of an ancient civilization are reborn. The planet Nibiru will live again on Earth and humanity will be enslaved, or die. He is a being of inhuman evil: a melding of dragon, myth, and machine.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. moves deep into Recluce's past to chronicle the founding of the Empire of the Legend, the almost mythological domain ruled by women warriors on the highland plateau of the continent of Candar. He tells the story from the point of view of Nylan, the engineer and builder whose job it is to raise a great tower on the plateau known as the Roof of the World. Here the exiled women warriors will live and survive to fulfill their destiny.