Facilitator Joseph has outlasted entire civilizations during his twenty-thousand years of service to Dr. Zeus, the twenty-fourth century Company that created immortal operatives like him to preserve history and culture. The year is 1699 and Joseph is now in Alta California, to imitate an ancient Native-American Coyote god, and save the native Chumash from the white Europeans.He has the help of the Botanist Mendoza, who hasn't gotten over the death of her lover Nicholas, in Elizabethan England. Lately though, Joseph has started to have a few doubts about The Company. There are whispers about the year 2355, about operatives that suddenly go missing. Time is running out for Joseph, which is ironic considering he's immortal, but no one ever said that it was easy being a god.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

It is in fact a very simple story, with a simple plot and unexceptional writing (from a writer who can write exceptionally well when she wants to), but for people like myself who are fans of the series, it is an irresistible read. The story follows one of two sisters (who reads like an urban, mortal version of Mendoza) who is apparently being stalked by some kind of psychopath. The psychopath does nasty things and leaves cryptic messages like: "Wouldn't it be useful to live forever? Think of the things you could save." Happily, her long lost uncle (Porfirio) arrives to help her just as you are figuring out that the psychopath really comes from the disgruntled underbelly of The Company and that his real target is Porfirio...

SUMMARY: Imagine a world where interplanetary travel isn’t just possible—it’s commonplace. Human beings have terraformed Mars. You can reach into another dimension through a wormhole. The virtual world can be the only place where you exist, because you don’t have a body. The possibilities are endless. Escape from Earth, inspired by Robert Heinlein’s “juveniles,” featuring stories by Orson Scott Card (Ender’s Game), Elizabeth Moon (the Vatta books), and Joe Haldeman (The Forever War), among others, will take you places beyond your imagination.

From Publishers WeeklyThis steampunk novella, set in 1844 London, follows the exploits of the harlots of the exclusive establishment known as Nell Gwynne's, where they gather intelligence for the shadowy Gentlemen's Speculative Society, a predecessor to the Company featured in several of Baker's novels (most recently 2006's The Machine's Child). Lord Basmond hires the ostensibly blind madam, Mrs. Corvey, and some of her girls to entertain his wealthy foreign guests at an odd party, where it quickly becomes clear that Basmond is selling a mysterious item to the highest bidder. Things heat up when someone goes missing and two people end up dead. The beautifully drawn Victorian era is neatly spiced up with futuristic technology such as mechanical eye implants. Baker's fans will delight in this slight, bawdy and funny confection. Illus. by J.K. Potter not seen by PW. (July) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Product DescriptionLady Beatrice was the proper British daughter of a proper British soldier, until tragedy struck and sent her home to walk the streets of early-Victorian London. But Lady Beatrice is no ordinary whore, and is soon recruited to join an underground establishment known as Nell Gwynne's. Nell Gwynne's is far more than simply the finest and most exclusive brothel in Whitehall; it is in fact the sister organization to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, that 19th-century predecessor to a certain Company... and when a member of the Society goes missing on a peculiar assignment, it's up to Lady Beatrice and her sister harlots to investigate.

From Publishers WeeklyThe ninth Company novel (after 2007's The Sons of Heaven) introduces Edward Bell-Fairfax, a child of mysterious origins who gradually discovers that he's not quite like ordinary people. Born to an unmarried aristocratic mother, raised by distant foster parents, and spirited away to boarding school by the sinister Dr. Nennys, Bell-Fairfax serves an unhappy stint in the military and afterward is inducted into the Company of scientists and spies. Using messages from the future and Charles-Babbage-meets-Maxwell-Smart technologia, Bell-Fairfax travels Europe with his mentor, Ludbridge, attempting to swing the Crimean War in England's favor and learning in the process that achieving utopian goals requires a great deal of dirty work. Plenty of cloak-and-poison-dart action gets the reader through the exhausting Victorian nomenclature (the Aetheric Transmitter, the Ascending Chamber) and discourses on the evils of misused technology. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistReturning to the worlds of the Company novels, Baker delves into the history of a young man whose name has come up before. Edward Bell-Fairfax is an idealist ideally suited to the life of intrigue and derring-do that Redking’s Club provides. One Dr. Nennys grooms him, then delivers him to a residential place at Redking’s. In a Europe layered with secret societies and intrigue, riddled with astonishingly advanced technology, where the great powers are trembling at the brink of war, Bell-Fairfax and three other young men are trained to work as a team of spies and assassins. Then they are sent on a grand tour across Europe, where they experience marvels, and Bell-Fairfax proves that he was born for the work. Baker builds a fantastic alternate Europe with a deft historical touch and spins an excellent spy story around it. Not Less Than Gods is a satisfying addition to the annals of the Company that is also an engaging stand-alone novel. --Regina Schroeder

The Best of Kage Baker is exactly what the title proclaims: the best short work of a gifted and irreplaceable writer.

This is the third novel in what has become one of the most popular series in contemporary SF, now back in print from Tor. In the 24th century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life, for profit, of course. It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr. Zeus. One of these is Mendoza the botanist. The death of her lover has been followed by centuries of heartbreak. She spends a period of time in early twentieth century Hollywood in the days of D.W. Griffith, and then Mendoza is in the midst of the Civil War, and runs into a man that looks disturbingly similar to her lost love. She is about to find love again, and be in more trouble than she could ever have imagined.

The Ladies of Nell Gwynne's are not your run-of-the-mill demi-mondaines. They are refined and educated ladies all, engaged in the more elegant and expensive forms of carnal delight in order to make their way in a hard world. But they also serve the Queen and the Empire, as the invaluable Ladies' Auxiliary of the technocratic Gentlemen's Speculative Society.