Gaslight & Steam

In the same vein as What Color is Your Parachute, this book takes a broad view of careers and the world of work. Viewed through the lens of Zen Buddhism, the reader is invited to think about what work means to them, what satisfies them, and to develop a career that fits them spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.

From the publisher:
What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier?

Fabian Socialists from Great Britain join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from the Belgian Congo’s “owner,” King Leopold II. This land, named Everfair, is set aside as a safe haven, an imaginary Utopia for native populations of the Congo as well as escaped slaves returning from America and other places where African natives were being mistreated.

Shawl’s speculative masterpiece manages to turn one of the worst human rights disasters on record into a marvelous and exciting exploration of the possibilities inherent in a turn of history. Everfair is told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Everfair is not only a beautiful book but an educational and inspiring one that will give the reader new insight into an often ignored period of history.

From the publisher:
Complete in one volume for the first time: Three novels making up a saga of the distant future, when the Earth and its inhabitants have transformed almost beyond recognition, science has all but become sorcery, and humanity is threatened by creatures out of the past’s darkest legends.

Lords of the Starship: The spaceship Victory was to be seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter, and have a wingspread of three and a half miles. It would have been a daunting undertaking even for the high-tech civilization that had collapsed centuries ago, but the heroic project had caught the imagination of a decadent nation, becoming an almost religious obsession. But who were the shadowy figures behind the project, and what was the real goal of the herculean project?

Out of the Mouth of the Dragon: The prophets agreed that the world, with its decaying cities and hopelessly corrupt people, was doomed. But then came the call to the final Armageddon, in which the forces of Good and the forces of Evil would meet in the final battle and decide whether Creation would either be renewed or end, like a dying candle flame. And Amon VanRoark knew he must follow that call.

The Siege of Wonder: For centuries, the crumbling civilization built on science had battled the opposing realm of wizardry without victory. Then the Special Office sent Aden, with an electronic eye in place of his own, to plant a spy transmitter in a legendary unicorn, the talisman of the most powerful wizard, to spy upon the highest councils of sorcery itself.

A critically-praised epic trilogy of science and sorcery and the twilight realm between them.

From the publisher:
November, 1936. Kim Tavistock is in Berlin for her first Continental mission for SIS, the British intelligence service. Her cover: a sham marriage to a handsome, ambitious British consul. Kim makes a diplomatic party circuit with him, hobnobbing with Nazi officials hoping for a spill that will unlock a secret operation called Monarch. Berlin is a glittering city celebrating Germany’s resurgence, but Nazi brutality darkens the lives of many. When Kim befriends Hannah Linz, a member of the Jewish resistance, she sets events in motion that will bring her into the center of a vast conspiracy.

Forging an alliance with Hannah and her partisans, Kim discovers the alarming purpose of Monarch: the creation of a company of enforcers with augmented Talents and strange appetites. Called the Progeny, they have begun to compel citizen obedience with physical and spiritual terror. Soon Kim is swept up in a race to stop the coming deployment of the Progeny into Europe. Aligned against her are forces she could never have foreseen, including the very intelligence service she loves; a Russian woman, the queen of all Talents, who fled Bolsheviks in 1917; and the ruthless SS officer whose dominance and rare charisma may lead to Kim’s downfall.

To stop Monarch and the subversion of Europe, Kim must do more than use her Talent, wits, and courage. She must step into the abyss of unbound power, even to the point of annihilation. Does the human race have limits? Kim does not want to know the answer. But it is coming.