For this week’s excerpt, we’ve cooked up something special. STAR WARS: RED HARVEST is centered around Hestizo Trace, a Jedi with a gift for plants. But little does she know that a rare plant she’s cultivating will be the last ingredient to a deadly virus that not only kills its victims, but reanimates them once they’re dead! Del Rey Spectra editor, Shelly Shapiro tells us more about Schreiber’s latest, terrifying Star Wars tale.

“Scary Star Wars? Well, why not? Darth Vader was pretty scary all by himself. And so many of us loved DEATH TROOPERS, so doing another Star Wars “horror” novel felt like a no-brainer. Joe Schreiber is an expert at scaring the pants off his readers, and once he proved he could do the same in the Star Wars universe, we asked him to do it again. This time, though, we decided to go in a slightly different direction. Instead of a story of zombies, desperate heroes and no Force users, we thought it would be fun to see how the zombie infection might affect Force users–from both the light and dark sides. That’s how RED HARVEST came about: a tale set in the long-ago days of the Old Republic, where Sith and Jedi both existed in relative abundance, trained in their separate academys, and kept the light vs. dark fight alive. Only now a plague has been unleashed among the students at a bastion of Sith learning, at the same time that the local dark lord’s insane ambitions bring an unsuspecting Jedi into the mix… If you like zombies, Jedi heroism against the odds, and Sith power set on having it all, grab a copy of STAR WARS:RED HARVEST, by Joe Schreiber.”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra. Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra

Please enjoy this excerpt of STAR WARS: RED HARVEST, now in paperback!

STAR WARS: RED HARVEST by Joe Schreiber, Excerpt

This week’s excerpt comes from the latest installment of the Mass Effect series based on the BioWare video game of the same name. MASS EFFECT: DECEPTION brings back all your favorite characters from the game and series in an all new adventure where the universe is once again under attack by the Reapers.

The author had a blast writing this novel. As a long-time fan of the game, William Dietz was very excited when the opportunity to become an official part of the series presented itself. But let’s hear directly from him:

“One of the things that makes the MASS EFFECT universe so special is that it’s fully imagined. So when I was given the opportunity to write a MASS EFFECT novel I knew I would have more than a dozen different races, hundreds of planets, and a rich history to work with. And a ready-made cast too. Characters like David Anderson, Kahlee Sanders, Gillian Grayson, the Illusive Man, Kai Leng, and Aria T’Loak. Each of whom plays an important role in the struggle between good and evil that makes the MASS EFFECT universe so compelling. What more could an author ask for?”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra. Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra

Please enjoy this excerpt of MASS EFFECT: DECEPTION, on sale January 31!

MASS EFFECT: DECEPTION by William C. Dietz, Excerpt

Today is the first of a few throwback weeks here on the 50 Page Fridays front, where we will examine a title from the rich Del Rey Spectra back catalogue. This week we’re offering a nice chunk of Magic Kingdom For Sale: Sold!, the first book in Terry Brooks’s awesome Landover series.

So let’s get right to it. Here’s editor Betsy Mitchell:

“When the annual holiday gift catalogs start clogging up my mailbox, I can’t help but flash back to the first few pages of Terry Brooks’s Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold!, which begins in the Christmas season. You can’t help but feel sympathy for Chicago lawyer Ben Holiday, who is feeling anything but the holiday spirit. He hasn’t finished grieving for his wife, Annie, and unborn child, who died two years earlier in a car accident. When he receives a gift catalog that was a favorite of his wife’s, he can’t help but page through it in a melancholic fashion—and his eyes stop on an ad reading MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE! Tired of corporate life, tired of life without Annie, Ben decides to believe in the ad’s promise to “Escape into your dreams!”–but Landover is not the enchanted idyll he expected.

What Ben does find is adventure, magic, new friends and dangerous challenges. How would you handle a Magic Kingdom for sale? Click here to read the first 50 pages of Terry’s classic novel.”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, our “five-tools” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra .

Again, please enjoy this extensive excerpt of Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold!, available now in eBook, paperback and in volume 1 of the Magic Kingdowm of Landover omnibus.

MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE–SOLD! by Terry Brooks, Excerpt

And be sure to check back on Monday, December 12, for details on how you can win a chance to read THE GATHERING STORM before anyone else!

The Katerina Trilogy, Vol. I: The Gathering Storm (Excerpt)

I know you all have been waiting for a treat of something for a week now so I’ll turn it over to DRS editor and all around cool guy Dave Pomerico (the twitter maven), who personally edited today’s title, STAR WARS: SHADOW GAMES. Here we go…

“Imagine having parents who are big nerds.  That was me and my brothers—and I say that my parents are nerds lovingly.  Because if they hadn’t been into science fiction and fantasy, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be where I am today: an associate editor at Del Rey Spectra.

More importantly, if they weren’t big nerds, they might not have gone to see a little film called Star Wars, and I wouldn’t have been introduced to one of the great loves of my life.

Like so many people who have been born in the past 40 years, Star Wars has helped define my life.  No, I don’t dress up like a Sith on Casual Fridays.  But the fact is, I could, and I don’t think I’d get strange looks (or, rather, stranger looks than I already receive—the son of big nerds is going to be a little weird).  Because, as luck would have it, that early exposure to science fiction and fantasy has turned into my livelihood.

How cool is that?

Even cooler, though, was when Shelly Shapiro—the editor in charge of the Del Rey Star Wars publishing program—asked if I wanted to work on my own Star Wars book.  I think I only hesitated out of shock.  Of course I want to edit it! my mind screamed.  When she asked me to lower my voice, I realized I had probably actually screamed it out loud.

What I ended up with was the manuscript for Shadow Games, by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.  It’s got everything you love about Star Wars: adventure, action, Han Solo being Han Solo, the Millennium Falcon, the Empire.  But it’s also something new: a suspenseful thriller, in which every move has the threat of a deadly stalker looming.  It’s a great stand-alone novel, and if you’ve never read a Star Wars book, I couldn’t recommend this one highly enough.

And for those of you who have been reading the Star Wars books for the past 20 years (yes—it’s been 20 years!), I’m sure you’ll love the return of Dash Rendar and the skill and fun you’ve come to expect from a Michael Reaves book.

Below are the first 50 pages.  Enjoy!”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven and “five-tool” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra . And join in on the Star Wars conversation at our Star Wars books Facebook page: Like us at www.facebookcom/starwarsbooks .

Again, please enjoy this extensive excerpt of Star Wars: Shadow Games available now in eBook and paperback.

STAR WARS: SHADOW GAMES by Michael Reaves and Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Excerpt

This week we’re featuring author Alan Dean Foster, a member of the DRS stable for quite some time and a fan favorite who’s produced excellently written tie-ins (the Aliens tie-ins are amazing) and original material.

Which leads us to the 2 books we are featuring today. The first is For Love of Mother-Not, Alan’s first book in his classic Pip & Flinx series and the other is The Human Blend, the first in Alan’s latest sci-fi series.

For more on both titles, here’s DRS editor Mike Braff:

“Pip and Flinx are two of the most iconic and well-loved characters in all of science-fiction and fantasy, and they got their start in For Love of Mother-Not.  Although this novel came out some years after the series had already started, it is an origin story of sorts, bringing us the earliest days of Philip Lynx (Flinx) and his winged-serpentine companion, Pip.  Purchased from slavers, the orphan Flinx is raised by Mother Mastiff on the planet of Moth.  When Mastiff is captured by a seedy group of scientists, Pip and Flinx must overcome huge obstacles to save her, and shed some light on Flinx’s empathetic powers.

The novel is an early look at a theme that Alan Dean Foster explores more fully in his current series, The Tipping Point Trilogy.  In the first book in this series, The Human Blend, we are introduced to a world of extreme “melding”, which is the surgical and genetic alteration of human structure and appearance for either aesthetic or occupational advantage.  Foster forces us to consider both the positive and negative aspects of science (specifically genetics) and its affect on the human population.  Unlike most SF, where science proves to be the savior, Foster treats the subject in a much more objective and neutral way: sometimes the thing we are relying on to save us is only bringing us closer to destruction.

So enjoy our 50 Page Friday excerpt of For Love of Mother-Not and then check out The Human Blend and the subsequent Body, Inc. for a dosage of awesome science-fiction that makes you think!”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, our “five-tools” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra .

Again, please enjoy these extensive excerpts of Love of Mother-Not and The Human Blend, available in eBook and paperback (The Human Blend in paper back is on-sale 11/22).

That’s right – there are 2 – TWO excerpts below!

FOR LOVE OF MOTHER NOT by Alan Dean Foster, Excerpt

THE HUMAN BLEND by Alan Dean Foster, Excerpt

It seems like the hype for Bioware’s long awaited Star Wars MMORPG The Old Republic has been building, and building, and building. For a few years now. Thankfully, the wait will be over soon. One of the most highly anticipated games ever finally goes live on 12/20/2011. If you’re a Star Wars fan, Star Wars gamer, or both, you already know this.

But what you probably don’t know is what actually happened after the end of Bioware’s Knights of the Old Republic games. As in all Star Wars lore, the story continued. And our book, Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, tells that story. For more on the book, here’s Star Wars editor Shelly Shapiro:

“I’m a gamer, and I played–and loved–the two Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic videogames.  So I’ve been among the myriad fans who’ve been wondering what happened to the Jedi-turned-Sith-turned Jedi called Revan (though my Revan was female!).  I’m also excited about the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic mmorpg, and I’m happy to know that Revan is going to make an appearance in that game.  But in the meantime,  the waiting is almost over for those countless of us who are dying to know the rest of Revan’s story: It’s told in Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, by bestselling Star Wars author and Bioware writer Drew Karpyshyn.  Actually, my waiting is over–I’ve read the book!  And now you can read 50 pages of it, to tide you over while you wait just a few more days for the actual book.  Enjoy!”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven and “five-tool” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra . And join in on the Star Wars conversation at our Star Wars books Facebook page: Like us at www.facebookcom/starwarsbooks .

Again, please enjoy this extensive excerpt of Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan, available Tuesday, November 15, 2011 in eBook and hard cover.

STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC: REVAN by Drew Karpyshyn, Excerpt

By now I imagine that many of you have read A Dance with Dragons and are now eagerly awaiting GRRM’s next installment like the rest of us. I bet several of you have already finished The Wise Man’s Fear by Pat Rothfuss. And so the question resides:

Now what?

Well, for the what you’ll once again have to listen to excellent DRS editor Anne Groell discuss a book that is dear to her heart, Lord of Snow and Shadows by Sarah Ash. Take it away Anne:

“Let me posit a scenario.  You have completed A Dance With Dragons—hopefully months ago by now—and maybe have also devoured The Wise Fan’s.  (And no, we don’t publish Rothfuss, but not for lack of trying.  I was the underbidder.) So what next?  How can you feed the fantasy monster that grips you?

Well, I have an answer for you.  Welcome to Lord of Snow and Shadows by Sarah Ash—the first book in one of my favorite fantasy series going.  Sarah’s world is modeled very much after 18^th Century Europe, but is also very much its own thing.  It is a world rich and deep and vibrant with history and twisted politics, and—like George R.R. Martin—the  milieu she has created feels, in many ways, as intensely real as our own world.  Providing, of course, that our world had magic.

In it, we meet a young artist who—upon his father’s death—becomes the unwitting inheritor of his father’s deep and terrible powers.  It is a power which can save his nation—and maybe even stop a world war—but it comes with a deadly price.  For each time he employs it, he must feast on the blood of an innocent to renew his strength; and not to feed is to die.  For a young man whose only dream was to create objects of beauty, this is a living nightmare—and a constant moral quandry.  Is the ability to save thousands worth the loss of a few?

This is the Russian novel of fantasy—compelling, dark, operatic and wonderful.  And I hope you fall as deeply in love with it as I did.  I first published it eight years ago, in 2003, and it is a novel that still resonates with me to this day. So enjoy!”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, our “five-tools” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra .

Again, please enjoy this extensive excerpt of Lord of Snow and Shadows, available now in eBook and paperback.

LORD OF SNOW AND SHADOWS by Sarah Ash, Excerpt

Kirsten Imani Kasai

CHEN
by Kirsten Imani Kasai

“Help me,” my father said. “Pick up the legs.”
I complied. Each thin leg, detached from the trunk, weighed no more than a short stack of bricks, two bags of flour or a money bag for the bank’s night deposit slot. It didn’t fit in the barrel though, I recall that clearly—a foot sticking up over the rim, a stiff white flag of surrender.

Forty-three years old and already on his fifth wife, my father’s appetite for matrimony, and its dissolution, was insatiable. I didn’t even know her name. I met her once, at father’s Haymaz fête. She struck me then as the weakest of the lot, more runty and insubstantial than any of her predecessors, and I foresaw the brevity of her reign. It seemed he had dispensed of her almost before the clerk finished penning her name on the marriage certificate, blowing on the wet ink and scattering droplets across the vellum.

My father whistled a jaunty tune as he snapped tendons and broke the fragile bones of a woman to whom he had professed “love and forever.” The disposal was conducted at night, darkness to hide his crime if not his shame, slogging through Neubonne’s waste pits. The Telec river coughed up its vapors and sputum. The air smelled of rotted eggs, burnt hair and flesh, and the eddies of green-black filth that clogged the shore and plastered the hulls of boats. Tankers clanged in the harbor. Somatic scavengers pushed leather skiffs down the river, fishing up bits of stuff to reclaim and sell: clothing, stripped from that woman’s body and tossed into the water; her rings, sacrificed to the river bottom’s silt.

Arms crunched and crumpled inside. Torso stuffed down, and lastly, her head, childlike and small, its curling brown hair sticky with blood and fluid. It occurs to me now that my father always chose small women, perhaps to make their vanishings easier. Was my own mother tucked inside one of those refuse barrels, bones swimming in lye, her body chemically boiled down into soup?

In a rare and startling show of affection, my father had said, “Son, learn this lesson early. Women aren’t worth the trouble.” He laughed, amused by his own quixotic folly. “I don’t know why I keep trying.” He leaned upon the barrel’s edge, pounding in the pieces.

The way he shoved and wrestled those broken limbs into submission so evocative of his approach to life, his refusal to bear resistance or insubordination from anyone, even a corpse. I remember how the wan moonlight illuminated his face and spilled stark shadows in the hollows beneath his eyes. How he tugged a clump of satiny hair from the rusted barrel lip and set it free on the wind. “I must be a hopeless romantic.” He’d grinned at the notion, fancying himself a soldier of love.

We celebrated my father’s regained freedom with a visit to the Teatro Antiqua, one of his favorite retreats. “You’re thirteen now, my boy. It’s time you became a man—start growing calluses on your heart and your balls!”

The Teatro Antiqua is a beautiful place hidden up in the hills above Tarquin Bay on Plein Eire’s west coast. You can’t hear or see any sign of it as you approach on the unpaved single lane crisscrossing the hillside. But suddenly, canopies of metal flowers surround you and hang over the road, their curled petals baked in cracked enamel. There are tents and curtains and panels of heavy white linen that hide crimson interiors where sinful things take place on red cushions and carpets, where stolen girls in white lace dresses dance and flash their deformities, kicking up legs clad in red-and-white striped stockings and tattered red high heels. We had our own cottage there, a permanent construct of wood and plaster to rival the main theater with its ornate swags and flourishes. We remained for a week, him in the bed and me on a pallet on the floor beside the gangly teenage maiden assigned to serve us.

Her name was Althaira because of the large, star-shaped birthmark on her left cheek. Althaira was my first love, shy and tender, quiet and sweet. She was fifteen and had been at the Teatro since she was six and sold to the gray lady and her traveling caravan of somatic children. She had round ears like a dormouse that she hid beneath her long, thick hair, a quarter-inch split that shot upward through her top lip, and a pronounced cupid’s bow. She would lie next to me on the pallet at night while my father slept, and I’d run my fingertip over the split, faintly fuzzed with the softest down. We spoke softly and endlessly but did not kiss. We lay face-to-face exchanging breath, Althaira’s slightly sweet and nutty air whistling between her teeth and split lip, an innocent offering that I would draw down over my tongue and into my lungs, keeping her close to me.

My father caught the fondness in my gaze and set out to destroy that childish, limpid joy of first love. Althaira danced in the chorus line and sat naked in the salons, a living adornment, but being a favorite of the gray lady’s, she was not yet broken into service. I told my father that I should like the honor of being her first, and asked him to buy her bride-night for me. He’d chortled and slapped my back, gloating with pleasure at my blushes. The exchange was made, the papers signed, and Alhtaira bathed in aromatic oils, her hair curled and plaited with bright red ribbons and flowers—it was a mark of favor to be chosen by the son of Matuk Morigi. She came to our cottage wearing a white lace gown and wooden sandals with tall risers. I reached up to rub the familiar spot on her lips and she nipped my finger between her teeth, took my hand, and led me inside. “I’m glad it’s you,” she whispered, her temperate young voice the only comfort I had ever known.

But my father waited in the bed. He took my love and banished me to the corner. I was not permitted to flee the room or Althaira’s sobs, or to cast my eyes from her suffering. When it was over, Althaira lay naked and silent while my father snored beside her, one of her plaits twisted around his fist, its crimson petals crushed and dark. I slept slumped over my knees, my arms wrapped around my body to hold in the last of her warmth. Althaira was my starlight. She dwelt inside me with the grace of a soap bubble, beautiful and airy. She was the sun and sky, but my father spoiled her for me. His voice filled the darkened cottage. “You’ll thank me someday. Love is a terrible weakness, and I’ve spared you its pain.”

I know what it’s taken for me to become my father’s gravedigger and cemetery man. I know what I’ve given up and all the things I can’t give back, like the feel of waterlogged dead flesh, the smell of shit and piss that stains the bed beneath a body when he wraps his tie around its neck and pulls it tight. The cuts on my fingers from rusted oil barrels or the stinking river slime that coats my boots and rots the leather. I know that all of these things have eaten into my soul like tapeworms, that they drift around inside my body and chew away at it, making the little holes into big ones. We left the morning after Althaira’s bride-night and I never saw her again. She took her light and heat with her, and left me cold.

Tattoo by Kirsten Imani Kasai

Snow is on the docket for NYC this weekend, which is odd considering that at the moment many of the shops and storefronts and homes have put up cobwebs, toilet paper ghosts, and pumpkins galore. All Hallows Eve is Monday, you see, though it seems that Old Man Winter is not listening to Autumn’s annual fun faire of goblins, ghouls, parties, treats, mischief, and horror movie marathons. And tales of terror, of course…

So the DRS crew decided to do a little research to find a book that combines the frights of the season with the cold blast of the upcoming early nor’easter…

Which brings us to today’s excerpt; THE MYTH HUNTERS by Spectra stalwart Christopher Golden. For more on the book, here’s amazing Spectra editor Anne Groell:

“Halloween: the season of chills and ghosts and ghouls…and horror-writers turned fantasists who still like to add a little shiver into the mix.  So when we thought about our Halloween offering, one enormously talented author sprang instantly to mind: Christopher Golden.  As did one particular book: THE MYTH HUNTERS, the first book in his acclaimed trilogy The Veil.

Oliver Bascombe once believed in magic, but magic holds no place in his world any more. He has abandoned his dream of being an actor to join the family law firm.  But on the eve of his marriage to a woman he genuinely loves and yet who represents everything in the world that has come to trap him, magic finds Oliver.  Magic in the form of a wounded Jack Frost, who begs Oliver’s aid in escaping the creatures that pursue him.  For as Oliver soon learns, across the Veil lies a world where all humanity’s myths and legends reside.  But it is a world under siege, and Oliver may be the one man able to save both their world…and his own.

“A chillingly suspenseful tale of nightmares and childhood legends come to life,” raves Library Journal. And Horror-Web calls it: “The most innovative and spellbinding novel I have read this year.  A Grimm Brothers wet dream…Original and creative, Golden’s tale integrates characters from fairy tales, urban folklore, and world mythology…This, people, is Golden at his best.”  And The Agony Column adds: “In the world of speculative fiction, writers cross the line every day. But when Christopher Golden crosses over, it’s time to get on board…Golden’s now going about rebuilding everyone’s notions of the OtherWorld, the land of Faerie, of Legends. But he’s not just re-inventing the wheel, Golden is also writing a throat-gripping monster adventure.”

We hope you love this book as much as we do.  So Happy Halloween.  And enjoy!”

As always, feel free to give us feedback in the comments. Or let us know on Twitter via a direct message to our esteemed Twitter maven, our “five-tools” editor David Pomerico: www.twitter.com/delreyspectra . Or write on the wall of our Facebook page: Like us at www.facebook.com/delreyspectra .

Again, please enjoy this extensive excerpt of The Myth Hunters, available now in eBook and paperback.

THE MYTH HUNTERS by Christopher Golden, excerpt