A War Game Called on Account of War

War games are essential to simulating battle conditions without anyone getting hurt. In order to test the U.S. Special Operations Command's ability to respond swiftly to a threat by China, a computer genius simulates a retaliatory strike. But a political crackdown in China so enrages the programmer that he converts his simulation to the real thing. To forestall a massive US attack on the People's Republic, Dragon Team leader Dave Riley must infiltrate China's borders and execute a treacherously dangerous mission.

That's the premise of Dragon Sim 13 by Bob Mayer, a West Point graduate, Special Forces veteran and author of numerous thrillers. He wrote Dragon Sim 13 before the "Sleeping Giant," as China was known in the 20th century, awakened. It awakened with a vengeance in the 21st century, and today Mayer's scenario is almost too frighteningly real to contemplate.

- Richard Curtis

Dan Simmons Tops the 2007 Charts

Amazon has just posted its list of best science fiction and fantasy books of 2007 and Dan Simmons's The Terror is the top-rated book in the category. If you haven't read this masterpiece I can't imagine what you're waiting for. Simmons's recounting of the doomed Franklin expedition in search of the Northwest passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific will freeze your blood. Bad enough that two ships lay icebound for several years, but the lurking presence of a malevolent and unnameable predator takes the book into the territory of Melville and Conrad.

E-Reads is proud to carry two earlier novels by Dan Simmons, Song of Kali and Phases of Gravity.

- Richard Curtis

Quantico by Greg Bear

We’ve got a legitimate ebook bestseller here at E-Reads with Quantico by Greg Bear. The trade hardcover was published in April 2007 and we finally caught up to things with the ebook edition released about two weeks ago. Since we released Quantico, we’ve sold in those two weeks about fifteen times the number of copies that the average ebook title sells in a month. It’s not quite to the point yet where we need to bug the New York Times about starting a new bestseller list for ebooks but we’ve clearly tapped into some pent-up demand so we thought we should tell the world and try to keep those sales numbers moving up.

Greg Bear is the author of more than thirty books of science fiction and fantasy, including Blood Music, The Forge of God, and Darwin's Radio. He has won two Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards for his fiction, and is one of two authors to win a Nebula in every fiction category. Bear has been called the "best working writer of hard science fiction" by The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Bear has served on political and scientific action committees and has advised Microsoft Corporation, the U.S. Army, the CIA, Sandia National Laboratories, Callison Architecture, Inc., and other groups and agencies. His last few books, while continuing to use the technological extrapolation and imagination that Bear has always demonstrated, have moved in the story and setting direction toward a more thriller-oriented feel and presentation and Quantico has demonstrated that Bear is taking giant steps in developing a more mainstream, popular audience for his work and this latest examination of bioterrorism in a near-future world gone mad with ever-escalating acts of terror, is a gripping read, a tour-de-force of imagination and a thrill-ride of a story.

Quantico has garnered enthusiastic praise from a broad spectrum of sources:

Entertainment Weekly said: “Far from the typical FBI procedural, Bear’s latest is a dark look at the near future. Quantico confidently delivers a mix of forensic handiwork, bureaucratic insight, and futuristic speculation.”

Bestselling author (The Watchman) Robert Crais said: "Quantico is a terrifying glimpse into the nightmare of global bio-terror. Greg Bear combines real-world science, headline news, and five-minutes-from-now extrapolation into an adrenaline-amped thriller that will scare the hell out of you.”

Publishers Weekly said: "Bear’s near-future science is, as always, eerily plausible…"

Bear’s hardcover publisher, Vanguard Press, has launched a special website just for the book and it’s worth checking out since, among other things, Bear has compiled an interesting timeline history of terrorism through the centuries, an extensive bibliography, a Q&A about his work in conceiving and writing the book and numerous related articles. And, while you’re checking out websites, you should look at Bear’s own website which has information on all of his titles, a number of which are also available as E-Reads ebooks.

Save a tree, buy an ebook. All the excitement of this thriller is available at a price that beats that hardcover edition by a considerable margin (Amazon lists the book, cover price $24.95, for $16.47 but the ebook price is only $8.99. Buy it today!