A Mars of the imagination, like no other, in a colorful, witty SF novel; Taking place in the kaleidoscopic future of Ian McDonald’s Desolation Road , Ares Express is set on a terraformed Mars where fusion-powered locomotives run along the network of rails that is the planet’s circulatory system and artificial intelligences reconfigure reality billions of times each second. One young woman, Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim 12th, becomes the person upon whom the future — or futures — of Mars depends. Big, picaresque, funny; taking the Mars of Ray Bradbury and the more recent, terraformed Marses of authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson and Greg Bear, Ares Express is a wild and woolly magic-realist SF novel, featuring lots of bizarre philosophies, strange, mind-stretching ideas and trains as big as city blocks.

The Moon wants to kill you. Whether it's being unable to pay your per diem for your allotted food, water, and air, or you just get caught up in a fight between the Moon's ruling corporations, the Five Dragons. You must fight for every inch you want to gain in the Moon's near feudal society. And that is just what Adriana Corta did. As the leader of the Moon's newest "dragon," Adriana has wrested control of the Moon's Helium-3 industry from the Mackenzie Metal corporation and fought to earn her family's new status. Now, at the twilight of her life, Adriana finds her corporation, Corta Helio, surrounded by the many enemies she made during her meteoric rise. If the Corta family is to survive, Adriana's five children must defend their mother's empire from her many enemies... and each other.

Ian McDonald weaves a love story across an endless expanse with his science fiction novella *Time Was*A love story stitched across time and war, shaped by the power of books, and ultimately destroyed by it.In the heart of World War II, Tom and Ben became lovers. Brought together by a secret project designed to hide British targets from German radar, the two founded a love that could not be revealed. When the project went wrong, Tom and Ben vanished into nothingness, presumed dead. Their bodies were never found.Now the two are lost in time, hunting each other across decades, leaving clues in books of poetry and trying to make their desperate timelines overlap.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.**Review"With echoes of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine and replete with the inimitable scent of used bookstores, Time Was weaves an exquisite spell of love, war and quantum physics that is timeless in its appeal. A scientific romance in the most evocative sense of the word." ―Nina Allan About the Author IAN McDONALD was born in 1960 in Manchester, England, to an Irish mother and a Scottish father. He moved with his family to Northern Ireland in 1965. He is the author of Luna: New Moon and Luna: Wolf Moon. He has won the Locus Award, the British Science Fiction Association Award, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. He now lives in Belfast. 

ALSO FORTHCOMING AS A KINDLE EDITIONEverett Singh has escaped with the Infundibulum from the clutches of Charlotte Villiers and the Order, but at a terrible price. His father is missing, banished to one of the billions of parallel universes of the Panoply of All Worlds, and Everett and the crew of the airship Everness have taken a wild Heisenberg jump to a random parallel plane. Everett is smart and resourceful, and from the refuge of a desolate frozen Earth far beyond the Plenitude, where he and his friends have gone into hiding, he makes plans to rescue his family. But the villainous Charlotte Villiers is one step ahead of him. The action traverses three different parallel Earths: one is a frozen wasteland; one is just like ours, except that the alien Thryn Sentiency has occupied the Moon since 1964, sharing its technology with humankind; and one is the embargoed home of dead London, where the remnants of humanity battle a terrifying nanotechnology run wild. Across these parallel planes of existence, Everett faces terrible choices of morality and power. But he has the love and support of Sen, Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, and the rest of the crew of Everness as he learns that the deadliest enemy isn't the Order or the world-devouring nanotech Nahn—it's himself.Review"[An] exciting first sequel to outstanding series opener Planesrunner... . Smart, clever, and abundantly original, with suspense that grabs your eyeballs, this is real science fiction for all ages. More! More!"--KIRKUS REVIEWS, Starred ReviewPraise for Planesrunner"Smashing adventure fiction that spans the multiverse without ever losing its cool or its sense of style... . [Planesrunner] is everything you could hope for: romantic, action-packed, wildly imaginative, and full of heart."--CORY DOCTOROW, Author of For the Win"Lovers of sci-fi, adventure, and steampunk won't be able to put it down! Not to be missed! 5/5."--MY BOOKISH WAYS"Chock-full of awesome... . Airship-dueling, guns-blazing fantasy... ."--PAOLO BACIGALUPI, Author of Ship Breaker"I am totally into this book. It's cool, it's fun, and it's exciting. Hanging out with this book makes me feel a little cooler and a little smarter. Plus, I feel like I'm dating the kind of book I always want to date."--FOREVER YOUNG ADULT"McDonald writes with scientific and literary sophistication, as well as a wicked sense of humor. Add nonstop action, eccentric characters, and expert universe building, and this... . is a winner."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, Starred Review"One of those novels that grabs hold of you from the very beginning and then just never lets go... . It's rare when a book is more or less exactly what you hoped it would be, but Planesrunner is just that. I can't wait for the next book in the Everness series." --TOR.COMAbout the AuthorIan McDonald is the author of Planesrunner, the first book of the Everness series. He has written thirteen science fiction novels—including the 2011 John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner for Best Novel, The Dervish House—and has lost count of the number of stories. He's been nominated for every major science fiction award, and he's even won some. McDonald also works in television and in program development—all those reality shows have to come from somewhere—and has written for screen as well as print. He lives in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast, and loves to travel. Visit him online at facebook.com/Infundibulum and on Twitter@iannmcdonald.

In a far-future city where happiness and stability are law, a group of rebels will fight for what it means to be humanThe Compassionate Society was designed as a utopia, where people's genetic predispositions and aptitudes—rather than random choice—guide their lives, and pain of any kind is illegal. In the self-contained city, happiness is the most cherished value, and the Ministry of Pain swiftly prosecutes anyone who interferes with the contentment of another. For many of its citizens—who were matched to their jobs, spouses, and friends—the Compassionate Society is perfect. But to Courtney Hall, a political cartoonist, it is a place of stifling mediocrity. When her satirical work makes her a target of the government, Courtney goes on the run, only to discover an entire underground network of dissidents, each fighting against the stagnation imposed by the Compassionate Society—a struggle that could stand as humanity's last chance for growth,...

Nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award!It all began 30 years ago on Mars, with a greenperson. But by the time it all finished, the town of Desolation Road had experienced every conceivable abnormality from Adam Black's Wonderful Travelling Chataqua and Educational Stravaganza (complete with its very own captive angel) to the Astounding Tatterdemalion Air Bazaar. It's inhabitants ranged from Dr. Alimantando, the town's founder and resident genius, to the Babooshka, a barren grandmother who just wants her own child grown in a fruit jar; from Rajendra Das, mechanical hobo who has a mystical way with machines to the Gallacelli brothers, identical triplets who fell in love with and married the same woman.From Library Journalea. vol: Spectra: Bantam. Feb. 1988. sf Founded by accident in the Martian desert by a scientist obsessed with the nature of time, the town of Desolation Road grows from a whistle stop on the Bethlehem Ares Railroad to a stronghold of freedom ranged against the ROTECH bureaucracy. The loves, hates, and intrigues of the town's residents come to life and build to a vivid climax in this compellingly executed novel. In Empire Dreams , McDonald's craft as a storyteller takes on smaller dimensions but remains intact. Ranging from the inner torment of Vincent Van Gogh ("Unfinished Portrait of the King of Pain by Van Gogh") to a young boy's private battle for life in modern Belfast ("Empire Dreams"), the author finds evidence of the fantastic in unlikely settings. Both books are highly recommended. JCCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review"Flavoured with a voice that blends the delightful prose of Jack Vance with the idiosyncratic stylings of Cordwainer Smith, this novel is, most of all, about the dusty town of Desolation Road in the middle of the red Martian desert. Episodic in scope, it would also work as short stories. An elderly couple get lost in the infinite space of their garden, a baby growing in a jar is stolen and replaced with a mango, a man called The Hand plays electric guitar for the clouds and starts the first rain for one hundred and fifty thousand years." --SFSite"Ian McDonald's Desolation Road is one of the books that has influenced me the most as a writer. Funny and sad and wildly imaginative... What a book!" --Cory Doctorow"This is the kind of novel I long to find yet seldom do. Desolation Road is a rara avis... Extraordinary and more than that!" --Philip José Farmer