Stefan Rudnicki

Orson Scott Card returns to his best-selling series with a new Ender novel, Ender in Exile.
At the close of Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin – called Ender by everyone – is told that he can no longer live on Earth, and he realizes that this is the truth. He has become far more than just a boy who won a game: he is the Savior of Earth, a hero, a military genius whose allegiance is sought by every nation of the newly shattered

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Collected here are the stories, poems, and religious writings that preceded and helped form the science fiction and fantasy genres. The collection explores the key imaginative roots and their later literary permutations. The author list alone reads like a literary who's who and includes many writers not primarily known for their forays into the fantastic. Organized by topic rather than simple chronology, this volume allows the listener to trace the...

"A dazzling debut novel about a Russian immigrant family living in Brooklyn and their struggle to learn the new rules of the American Dream. In this account of two decades in the life of an immigrant household, the fall of communism and the rise of globalization are artfully reflected in the experience of a single family. Ironies, subtle and glaring, are revealed: the Nasmertovs left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a huge sense of finality,...

Peter Willems is down on his luck. The Dutch clerk has been fired for embezzlement from his job in the Indonesian port city of Makassar, and his scornful wife has abandoned him. Willems' despair lifts after an encounter with Tom Lingard, a sea captain who operates a remote trading post. Lingard hires the drifter to act as his agent, entrusting Willems with knowledge of the secret route across dangerous waters to the post. Once installed in his new...

Advised by his doctor to become more sociable, Golyadkin, a low-level bureaucrat, arrives uninvited at a birthday party his office manager is having for his daughter. After a number of socially awkward and increasingly uncomfortable moments, Golyadkin is asked to leave and flees the party. While making his way home through a snowstorm, an extraordinary thing happens: Golyadkin meets his double. At first the two are friendly, but it quickly becomes...

Alvina Houghton is bored by her little town, and feels trapped after her plans to elope with her lover falls through. Though she had previously dreamed of training as a nurse, Alvina is unsure what to do with her life. Alvina comes of age as her father, James, faces the failure of his business. She has a difficult relationship with her father. He is a man who never fully indulged in his passions, but has made eccentric financial decisions. In attempt...

On April Fool's Day in 1856, a shape-shifting grifter boards a Mississippi riverboat to expose the pretenses, hypocrisies, and self-delusions of his fellow passengers. The con artist assumes numerous identities - a disabled beggar, a charity fundraiser, a successful businessman, an urbane gentleman - to win over his not-entirely-innocent dupes. The central character's shifting identities, as fluid as the river itself, reflect broader aspects of human...

America's power is in decline, its allies alienated, its soldiers trapped in a war that even generals regard as unwinnable. What has happened these past few years is well known. Why it happened continues to puzzle. Celebrated Slate columnist Fred Kaplan explains the grave misconceptions that enabled George W. Bush and his aides to get so far off track, and traces the genesis and evolution of these ideas from the era of Nixon through Reagan to the...

This is an exciting, atmospheric work that works on several levels: partly a story of tropical adventures, partly a melodramatic novel, partly a psychological thriller, partly a criticism of the empire. Axel Heist lives on an island in present-day Indonesia with a Chinese aide Wang. Heist visits a nearby island when a women's group plays in a hotel owned by Mr. Schomberg. Schomberg tries to impose himself sexually on one of the band members, Alma,...

To solve his lover's murder, a spy must investigate his own checkered past in a thriller that spans from Weimar Germany to Cold War Vietnam. CIA Agent Paul Christopher is used to the feeling of dread. So he doesn't think much of Molly Benson's concerns as he leaves her bed in Paris for a quick trip to Vietnam. But minutes after Christopher boards the jet, his lover falls victim to a vehicular homicide. To explain this seemingly senseless murder,...