But as the Spacers arrive on Earth to begin the conference that will reconcile decades of mistrust, assassins strike down Eliton and Humadros and their staffs.

     In the chaotic aftermath, Derec Avery--one of the few positronic specialists on Earth--and Ariel Burgess--Auroran liaison from the prestigious Calvin Institute to Earth--join forces with the lone human survivor of Eliton's party, Special Agent Mia Daventri, to penetrate an insidious conspiracy that sprawls across Earth, Spacer, and Settler worlds and threatens to bring them all to the brink of war.
 

"Dialogue and plot are crisp and tight, and the characters are distinct and multilayered. This is superior franchise fiction, designed for adults with a taste for mystery and rigorous logic. An ambiguous ending hints at future installments." --Luc Duplessis

From Mark W. Tiedemann, bestselling author of Issac Asimov's Mirage, comes a thrilling new robot mystery set in the world of the late SF Grand Master and beloved author, Issac Asimov.

Coren Lanra is the head of security for DyNan Manual Industries. A former Special Service Agent, he's never cared for bureaucracy, piracy, or deception. And he hates mysteries.

Lanra's troubles begin with the death of Nyom Looms, daughter of DyNan president Rega Looms, during an ill-fated mission to smuggle illegal immigrants from Earth to the colony Nova Levis -- all were apparently murdered, but why? The only clue might be contained within the positronic brain of a robot that had accompanied the victims, but it has been deactivated, and Lanra is denied access to its memories.

To Make matters even worse, he is soon confronted with a puzzling complication: a possible connection between the murders and twenty babies who were snatched from an orphanage over two decades ago.

With the help of roboticist Derec Avery and Auroran ambassador Ariel Burgess -- whom the security chief had aided in exposing an anti-robot conspiracy of Earth a year before -- Lanra searches for answers to a twenty-five-year-old mystery . . . and for the identity of a killer, before more lives are lost.

You can share your thoughts about Issac Asimov's Chimera in the new ibooks virtual readers' group at www.ibooksinc.com.

Cool cover art by Ed Cox

"Nathan Frazier nearly died in the sleeper unit."

    In a future dominated by oligarchic corporate families, Nathan and his brother Damon can look forward to lives carefully laid out and predetermined, taking their respective places within the corporate structure.
    An unlikely accident, however, unites them in a way neither they nor their family nor their world can understand or accept and sets them on separate paths to the stars.

PUBLISHED BY YARD DOG PRESS

Fargo owes nothing to the Pan Humana. He turned his back on them long ago, when he was stripped of his identity, his class, his position, and all the other ties to human civilization enjoyed by its billions upon billions of citizens. Fargo joined the ranks of the freeriders. To themselves, freeriders are interstellar gypsies, the disinvested and therefore the truly free. To most of the rest of society, to the Invested, they are parasites, freeloaders, bums.

But now Fargo finds himself caught up in events that are dragging him back into the folds of human culture and forcing him to choose sides in a struggle to determine the future of humanity in the galaxy. The aliens have come to make treaties, to interact with a paranoid humanity, to bridge the gaps that separate them. They do not understand the resistance they encounter and enlist aid where they can. Among those they pick, Fargo is their most unlikely choice. He is also their most dangerous choice.

To the humans opposed to embracing the new future offered, Fargo is representative of everything they reject, a threat to everything they hold important and fear to lose. He is an outsider, unwanted, unwelcome, in many ways a barbarian, yet indispensable to both sides.

For himself, Fargo has his own reasons for going all the way to Sol, to Earth, into the heart of power.

Fargo has touched an alien mind.

Published by Meisha Merlin.

Cool cover design by J. Vita

"Mark Tiedemann is science fiction's secret weapon: a shrewd and intelligent storyteller, flying in just under the radar"
- Allen Steele

From Mark W. Tiedemann, the bestselling author of the Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries Mirage and Chimera, comes a thrilling new mystery!

America in 2050 is a very different place. In the wake of a triumphant isolationist movement and a massive depression, states' rights supersede federal authority on all levels, and in the subsequent balkanization of economy, class, and politics, getting anything done in the "national interest" is a tortuous, nearly impossible task.

For Grant Vozcek and Reva Cassonare, working for different, normally uncooperative agencies, overcoming these barriers takes on a personal edge when a Treasury agent is found murdered in St. Louis. They must work together to find the killers - and the reason behind the killing. What they discover leads them through a maze of political and corporate collusion involving currency fraud, graft, and the systematic harvesting of people who cannot defend themselves because they do not legally exist. For Grant and Reva, failure would not be simply unacceptable - failure would be a felony of conscience.

iBooks has finally posted the e-chapter from Realtime. You can read it at: www.ibooksinc.com/realtime.

In Mirage and Chimera, Mark W. Tiedemann explored the fear and hatred toward robots -- and their offworld owners  -- held by the people of Earth, and the animosity toward Terrans expressed by all Spacers. Now, all the plot threads of Tiedemann's epic story come together in this exciting conclusion to the Issac Asimov's Robot Mysteries cycle.

After the diplomatic failures of the Spacer mission on Earth -- which began with the assassinations of key diplomats and politicians, and culminated with the uncovering of a vast plot to create cyborgs from terminally-handicapped human infants -- Ambassador Ariel Burgess and roboticist Derec Avery are recalled to their home planet, Aurora. Unfortunately, their situation only worsens when they arrive, as they become suspects in yet another murder -- one that, based on the evidence, could only have been committed by a non-human.

On a world with a 20-to-1 robot-to-human population, is it possible a robot could have violated the Three Laws governing its behavior -- and if so, why? Or is something far more sinister at work . .  . ?

Then the Secession happened and she found herself on a carrier heading for the Distal colonies to carry out a suppression of other humans, humans who had apparently chosen to cast their fortunes with nonhumans in defiance of the Pan Humana edicts severing all contact with the seti races. And when she ended up the sole survivor of the entire fighter contingent of her task force, grounded on Finders during the worst days of the chaos of open rebellion, living precariously for the day the Armada returned to reclaim Finders, the last thing she expected was to be betrayed by the very service for which she had given up everything else. 

For Alexan Cambion, volunteering for combat duty seemed the ideal way to justify his father's faith in him, fighting to preserve the Pan Humana. But when he returns to his homeworld--Finders--shot down and captured in the first open engagement of the Secession, he learns to his dismay that every action he has taken since leaving Finders for Armada service has been exactly the opposite of what his father intended, and the welcome he expects becomes a nightmare. 

Sean Merrick did not start his career as a double agent, but as the Secession began he found his sympathies siding more and more with the secessionists. As the battle of Finders rages and he travels the boundary between the Distals and the Pan, he learns how impossible it is to stay aloof and uncommitted. 

In the end, all of them must decide between loyalty and morality, family and integrity, duty and truth. 

This is the cover painting for the next volume in the Secantis Sequence "Metal of Night". Due out in May 2002. Ed Cox rendered this, as well as the cover of "Compass Reach" -- you should check out his website at www.edcox.com.

David Brin, author of the UPLIFT Series and KILN PEOPLE
"Mark Tiedemann is a writer of genuine ability and talent, who explores his cosmos with verve and sense of wonder!" 

Robert A. Metzger, author of Picoverse
"In the tradition of Asimovís Foundation, echoing with the intrigue of Herbertís Dune, Peace and Memory is not to be missed." 

Book Description
Decades after the Secession, humanity is still split. The isolationist Pan Humana and the expansionist Commonwealth Republic live on either side of their mutual boundary, the Secant. Crossing the Secant is illegal, no matter which side you start from. 

Trade Tamyn Glass is on a well-paying and mostly legal run when she is contacted by Benajim Cyanus--a man she doesn't know, piloting a ship that isn't his, pursued by people who intend him harm. He carries a plea from an old friend that Tamyn can't ignore. Sean Merrick, richest of the early founders of the Commonwealth, is dying, and his last wish is to be buried on Earth. That means crossing the Secant and breaking the law. 

But that's only the start of Tamyn's problems. Merrick is trying to live beyond his natural lifespan: he has loaded his persona into his ship, the Solo, and turned it over to Benajim--a man who has no memory of his past and owes his present to Sean Merrick. One man has placed them all in a moral, ethical, and legal dilemma that threatens everything they know, and there's no time to consider. They have to decide, and decide now. Their choice will have profound consequences. For everyone.

Order Your Copy Now!

Sharon Shinn
"Perfectly balanced between speculative science and authentic emotion."

Mike Resnick
"Tiedemann is on the brink of becoming one of the Big Names in the field of science fiction."

Corporate Security Officer Mace Preston is at the end of his rope. When his wife dies in what appears to be a construction accident on Mars, he takes it upon himself to figure out what happened, an investigation that eventually costs him his job. Convinced the accident was sabotage, Mace's search for the truth is thwarted at every turn, and his quest becomes an obsession.

Nemily Dollard is a cyberlink struggling to fit into society on the orbital Aea. Finally adapting to her new life, she is completely unaware of the dangerous data tucked away in the depths of her augmented mind.

When the two meet, they are immediately attracted to each other, and Nemilly joins Mace in his investigation. Soon they are caught in a tangled web of interplanetary politics and terrorism, a web that persists in connecting Nemily with Mace's long-dead wife.

One year after the Great Sack, Protector General Ril Cowel took what remained of the fleet of Camrus and set out after the empire responsible for hammering his home into oblivion, the Empire of B'Nan.  Cowel chased the mythic emperor for fifteen years.  At last, fate seemed to hand him his chance, and in a swift strike Cowel damaged the imperial fleet and killed B'Nan.  The terror now over, he intended to dismantle the empire, to take it apart so that it could no longer destroy worlds like his own. 

But the more Ril Cowel tries, the harder it seems to be rid of the vast machinery B'Nan had constructed over a thousand years or more.  For the emperor was reputed to have lived the entire time his empire grew.  Cowel never gave credence to such stories...until he becomes emperor himself.

YARD DOG PRESS