The end of the world affords a restless everyman the chance to be a fearless warrior in this exciting apocalyptic adventure filled with magic and monsters.James Robard was a risk-taking con artist and thief before he turned over a new leaf as a loving husband and a dull suit in a law firm. He's never felt so unadventurous. That is, until the System descends upon Earth and he's initiated into a thrilling game world of magic and mayhem, training for exhilarating chal...

The Orientation may be over, but on a postapocalyptic Earth, the beastly games and humanity's fight for survival are just beginning.James Robard returns to a System-integrated Earth a changed man in a world of ruin and disorder. A conquering hero of the Orientation, rewarded with the ruling title of Fisher King, he has a duty to rebuild civilization. It might look like Florida, but it's the Fisher Kingdom now.The good news is that James is reunited with his...

A hero and his family fight to survive and reunite in a strange and terrifying new reality in the propulsive second installment of this epic LitRPG series.A System apocalypse has ripped humanity away from its home planet, Earth-73, firing the starting pistol on a marathon race for survival against beastly odds. And in the violent magical worlds of the System's "Orientation," it's getting harder to tell the monsters from the savage humans.Mina and her younge...

There can be no peace as long as a single warlord remains alive…Elliot, Her Majesty's Warlord, has been riding high. The coup against Queen Helen has been foiled, the New Model Army is readying itself for the coming war, and his lover is pregnant. But the warlords have been preparing too and now, they're on the march, ready to crush the kingdom and put the uppity commoners to the sword. Facing a war on three fronts, Elliot embarks on a desperate gamble to win the w...

Julie Cromwell is a selfish, manipulative, insecure woman, and those are her best qualities. She sets up a fake kidnapping to see if her husband will pay a million dollars for her safe return. Something goes wrong and she winds up dead. This is the first plot twist, but certainly not the last. Enter lead detective Karl Larkin and his partner, Ted Cramer. They are a team who refuses to let sleeping dogs lie. They begin rattling the skeletons in the family's closets. Larkin finds himself bre...

What lengths would you go to avenge your fathers death?Would you take on a billion dollar empire?What if that empire was the music industry?In this new crime thriller fiction series, the vivid imagination of Phillip J Kriz brings the elusive backstage concert experience to life. The Roadie Cartel keeps you on the edge of your seat with a story that combines America's love of going to concerts with its odd obsession with the lavish...

Pundits have long predicted the end of conventional warfare but for the foreseeable future,it is here to stay. Counterinsurgency, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, peace enforcement, policing.All these forms, like conventional warfare, are as old as mankind. Modern militaries claim to beprofessional bodies, responsible for the education, control, and discipline of their members. But at least one aspect of this claim is poorly executed: tactics are not taught to junior lea...

A manager's guide to winning on the business battlefield from one of Fast Company's Fast 50 Innovative LeadersFor the US Army, grace under fire isn't an ideal. It's standard operating procedure. In Winning Under Fire, managers discover Army techniques for managing stress in the heat of battle, and learn how to put them to work in their organizations. Written by a retired Army major who was one of Fast Company's Fast 50 Innovative Leaders ...

MORE GRIPPING, NO-HOLDS-BARRED LRRP ACCOUNTS FROM THE FRONT LINESDuring the Vietnam War, few combat operations were more dangerous than LRRP/Ranger missions. Vastly outnumbered, the patrols faced overwhelming odds as they fought to carry out their missions, from gathering intelligence, acting as hunter/killer teams, or engaging in infamous "Parakeet" flights—actions in which teams were dropped into enemy areas and expected to "develop" the situation.Pha...

In recent years, the theological—and, more specifically, Roman Catholic—question of the supernatural has made an astonishing return from seeming oblivion. David Bentley Hart's You Are Gods presents a series of meditations on the vexed theological question of the relation of nature and supernature. In its merely controversial aspect, the book is intended most directly as a rejection of a certain Thomistic construal of that relation, as well as an argument in favor of a model of nat...

A deadlier sequel to 9/11—and the race inside the CIA, FBI, and pentagon to stop itIn 2003, United States intelligence uncovered evidence that al Qaeda had acquired nuclear materials, plotting to smuggle them into American ports. The "Second Wave" threat triggered one of the most urgent and secretive manhunts in United States history.With the cinematic intensity of Zero Dark Thirty and the investigative depth of The Looming Tower, Michael ...

During World War II, Michigan became a temporary home to six thousand German and Italian POWs.At a time of homefront labor shortages, they picked fruit in Berrien County, harvested sugar beets in the Thumb, cut pulpwood in the Upper Peninsula, and maintained parks and other public spaces in Detroit. The work programs were not flawless and not all of the prisoners were cooperative, but many of the men established enduring friendships with their captors. Author Grego...