Contact Information:
Email Address: parsina.press@gmail.com
Books By Stephen Goldin
Word Count: 110100
Summary: At first, expecting her new job to be easy, Jade Darcy is oblivious to the religious strife wracking the world of Restaapa. Jade and Megan Cafferty, her employer, discover that the Restaapans are in the process of choosing a new heir to the throne. During this process, the candidates hatch plots against anyone they see as a danger to their victory. Each one of them will go to any extreme, even murder, to assure his election as Restaapa’s heir. Jade and Megan are pegged as threats that must be eliminated. And Jade has the difficult task of restoring order to Restaapa as well as protecting her own life.
Word Count: 85500
Summary: For the past five years, Jade Darcy has not seen another human being. A computer-augmented mercenary, she lives on the planet Cablans, a stopover point for traders from hundreds of worlds -- and a good place to meet customers who need the services of a skilled warrior. She turns down what she considers a suicide assignment: traveling to an enslaved world to assassinate one of its military leaders. But then she learns there's another human being on Cablans -- a human being with the potential to expose Jade's mysterious past, with possibly fatal results. All of a sudden, a suicide mission looks positively appetizing....
Word Count: 73300
Summary: Hawker was a good soldier -- so good, in fact, that the Army asked him and his buddies to sign on for an extended hitch. What they couldn't know was that the extension would last forever. Century after century, war after war, Hawker and his comrades were re-animated over and over to fight on alien planets with ever more advanced weapons. The reasons for the wars were incomprehensible, but that didn't matter. All that counted was the fighting itself. From incarnation through incarnation, one goal remained in Hawker's mind. Somewhere, somehow, there had to be a way out of the loop. And he was determined to find it.
Word Count: 41000
Summary: Herodotus Shapiro has had an unbelievably bad week. His wife left him. The IRS is after him for thousands of dollars. His home/bookstore burned down. On his way to take refuge at his brother's place he got a speeding ticket. And now his car has broken down in the middle of the desert in front of a large mansion. What more can go wrong? But now his world takes a turn for the weird. The mansion has a snowman on the front lawn--in the desert in July. The house, which is bigger on the inside than on the outside, is owned by Polly, the most preternaturally beautiful young woman he's ever met. Polly is an acrobat, a gourmet chef, a psychologist, an international financial consultant, a physicist and a woman of who-knows how many other incredible talents. She has an unbelievable library, an art collection of all the world's great masterpieces and a print of a previously unknown Marx Brothers film. Her toilet paper is actually silk. And she seems to have some mysterious plans for him....
Word Count: 90500
Summary: Starting from the fabled holy city of Ravan, two paths diverge that will take their respective travelers to the farthest reaches of Parsina. The black-hearted thief Hakem Rafi comes into possession of the ultimate power of evil, while the storyteller Jafar al-Sharif and his daughter Selima begin a longer involuntary journey that will test the limits of their ingenuity. But first, they must fool the world's greatest wizard into believing that they, too, are practitioners of the mystic arts. Thus begins the Parsina Saga, a journey through a world of djinni, flying carpets and high adventure in exotic realms -- with the fate of the world at stake.
Word Count: 108100
Summary: Starting on his reluctant odyssey with a small party of friends, the storyteller Jafar al-Sharif must cope with treacherous nomads, a desert djinn, a king of an underground realm and an army of animated corpses as he attempts to save the life of his beloved daughter. This is Book 2 of the Parsina Saga, a journey through a world of djinni, flying carpets and high adventure in exotic realms -- with the fate of the world at stake.
Word Count: 115800
Summary: Continuing his reluctant odyssey, the storyteller Jafar al-Sharif must cope with fiendish assassins, a city of apes, the King of the Winds, the Isle of Illusions and a mysterious long-vanished underwater city as he attempts to save the life of his beloved daughter. This is Book 3 of the Parsina Saga, a journey through a world of djinni, flying carpets and high adventure in exotic realms -- with the fate of the world at stake.
Word Count: 96200
Summary: As the empire of evil sweeps across the land, the fate of Parsina rests on Jafar al-Sharif, the storyteller impersonating a wizard, and the exiled Prince Ahmad from the holy city of Ravan. But peril continues to dog their footsteps on the way to Mount Denavan and the final piece of the Crystal of Oromasd. They must confront the dangers of a mysterious island, the City of Faces, and the dragon demon who guards the fourth piece of the crystal. And even these threats pale before the betrayal by a trusted member of their company -- while within the heart of the dark enemy, Aeshma, king of the daevas, plots treachery against his own master to unleash an unimaginable tide of evil to engulf the world and destroy mankind. TREACHERY OF THE DEMON KING is the long-awaited conclusion to Stephen Goldin's Parsina Saga, a sweeping epic across an Arabian Nights world of imagination and wonder.
Word Count: 96100
Summary: The idle rich of galactic Society had little to do that was productive, so they loved to invent useless little games to keep themselves occupied--and the greatest was the Scavenger Hunt, held only once every 20 years. Visit different worlds, pick up hard-to-get items that can't simply be bought, and have a fine time. A clever way to pass empty hours. Tyla deVrie and her twin brother, Bred, follow the family tradition of entering the Scavenger Hunt. Their parents died during the last Hunt 20 years ago, and they mean to regain the family honor. But as they hop from planet to planet aboard Bred's decadent space yacht with its all-woman crew, fate seems to be making the Scavenger Hunt far more than just a game. It will irrevocably change their lives--that is, if it doesn't end them first.
Word Count: 60350
Summary: Starship captain Ardeva Korrell is used to fighting prejudice, both because she's a woman in what's normally a man's line of work and because she's from a world with a misunderstood religion. But now, on a trading mission to a backwater planet, she finds herself with another kind of fight on her hands; she and her small crew must battle an army of robots and defeat the tyrannical, god-like beings who have enslaved the native population. The task before them is straightforward: to storm the gates of Heaven itself!
Word Count: 70400
Summary: Tamara Ruben and ten of her high school classmates are on a field trip in the California desert when they stumble across a long-dormant spaceship. Without warning, the ship takes off with them aboard, stranding them alone in interstellar space with no idea where they're going or what they must do when they get there. Now they must figure out the ship's workings to keep themselves alive... and Tamara realizes her mind is being taken over by a set of alien Voices that may or may not be trying to help her. Can the inexperienced teenage crew learn to cooperate to solve the unprecedented challenges they'll face on their historic journey?
Word Count: 62300
Summary: The Quasiverse: A land that’s a combination of Oz, Wonderland, Discworld, and general surreality, where anything can happen and often does; a land of snow globe mines and french fries plantations; a land where bossy birds can have teeth and locks can be very particular about how you stick a key in them; a land where you never know what color the sky will be when you wake up in the morning and where murder victims can be only randomly dead. Martia Rosenthal is escaping from a bad love affair, and enlists for a diplomatic assignment in the Quasiverse. With the combination of her wealth and the position of sub-legate, she’s assured it will be a quiet post. But she reckons without the vagaries of this bizarre world, where the unusual nature of her friends, as well as her enemies, threatens to end her sanity, if not her very life. Quiet Post is an absurdist comedy with surprises around every turn and smiles never far from your lips.
Word Count: 87700
Summary: A lost science fiction classic! Birk Aaland is a political outcast from Earth's tyranny, and has been living for years on a planet inhabited solely by robots, ever since his ship crashed here.Now another ship has crashed, and there is again a single survivor -- a woman who's desperate to warn Earth of an alien invasion.But Birk is perfectly happy with his current exile -- until a twist of fate intervenes, causing each of them to re-evaluate their lives and their total existence.
Word Count: 77550
Summary: Alain Cheney is a spy who desperately needs to come in from the cold. Earth is able to maintain what control it can over its former colonies by using telepathic spies. But what even the spies don't know is that, once they reach their late thirties, they begin exhibiting mental instability and must be eliminated to protect the program as a whole. Alain Cheney is one of Earth's best telepaths, but this only makes him more susceptible. He has to battle not only his physical condition, but also his own organization in an attempt to survive.
Word Count: 59600
Summary: The exciting sequel to Mindflight. On the planet Iwagen, Richard and Mara Cheney have taken over their late parents' project, a hospice for telepausal Dur-ill telepaths, hoping to start a new telepathic generation. But someone else is interested in Dur-ill telepaths, too. A mind-being called the Mentad has been growing on Dur-ill worlds, absorbing Dur-ill telepaths into itself and becoming a collective consciousness with many bodies. It learns about the Cheneys' hospice and stages a deadly raid. When his sister is taken by the Mentad, Richard must seek the aid of the Terran Intelligence Agency, the very group responsible for trying to kill his parents. With Agency assistance,Richard will stop at nothing to free his sister and the others from the Mentad's clutches.
Word Count: 71370
Summary: Dream broadcasting is the latest entertainment medium. Wayne Corrigan and his colleagues at Dramatic Dreams can broadcast dreams directly into your mind as you sleep for the ultimate in personal adventure. But when a mysterious malfunction occurs, Wayne is called on to enter a Dream started by another Dreamer. Once inside, he finds a situation run wild and people enslaved by the original Dreamer--a genius bent on self-destruction. Now, tens of thousands of people--including the woman Wayne loves--are in danger of dying or going insane unless he can find some way to wrest control of the Dream away from a madman.
Word Count: 29600
Summary: Deborah Raboinowitz is a literary broker. She travels to alien worlds via virtual reality and sells the publishing rights to Earth books on other planets. But when an alien is murdered right before her eyes, there's no way she can keep from being involved and solving the murder herself. Then, when an old friend is accused of a murder on a different world, Deborah has to become a lawyer and defend her friend before a kangaroo court by solving that murder, too.
Word Count: 41600
Summary: A book in the tradition of the Heinlein juveniles. Young Alex Bredakoff always wanted to be a star trader. But it wasn't until his family moved to the Nexus space colony and he met Kasinda Venderling--daughter of a trader, and someone who's been plying the star lanes her entire life--that he realized how truly exciting--and dangerous--his life could become. But when you're in a runaway starship with a kidnapped alien prince, flying straight into a sun, it's a little late to re-evaluate your options.
Word Count: 63000
Summary: With humanity scattered across the galaxy on hundreds of worlds, the Empire is the only force for order across the stars. Without it, interstellar conflicts would bring chaos and billions of deaths. But the tsar has been in a coma for five years now, and his grand-niece, the only apparent heir, is only 14 years old. In this hour of crisis, the task of preserving the Empire falls to two untrained--but far from unskilled--agents of the Imperial Special Investigation Service. Can they make a difference against the vast forces arrayed against them?
Word Count: 53400
Summary: Hundreds of thousands of people have visited the pleasure moon Vesa and simply vanished without a trace. Is this part of some vast galactic conspiracy? To find out, the Imperial Special Investigation Service dispatches its two best agents to look into the matter--and the shocking truth they reveal leads to a chain of discoveries that eventually threatens the stability of humanity's entire interstellar Empire.
Word Count: 51000
Summary: By sheer accident, the Imperial Special Investigation Service stumbled across a fiendish plot against the Empire--using a time bomb to blow up the tsaritsa and throw the galaxy into chaos.Now, to learn the truth, its agents must infiltrate a hollow mountain, the lair of a mad robotic genius, while simultaneously protecting her majesty from a hidden assassin. And somewhere, a time bomb is ticking.
Word Count: 52800
Summary: The galaxy's top criminals have not only been getting away from police, they've disappeared from sight entirely. Suspecting something far more sinister than a mere crime wave, the top agents of the Imperial Special Investigation Service delve into the matter--only to discover this is the tip of a galaxy-spanning conspiracy that threatens to undermine the stability of the Empire itself.
Word Count: 51700
Summary: A hidden conspiracy is plotting to use the tsaritsa's wedding as the occasion to overthrow the true ruler and start a bloody revolt to take over the throne for themselves. Meanwhile, in the depths of interstellar space, a flotilla of space pirates is gathering. Is it mere coincidence, or a coordinated attack to topple the Empire and seize control of all human-occupied space? The Imperial Special Investigation Service must unravel the plots and thwart these plans before it's too late.
Word Count: 48000
Summary: An armed cadre of fundamentalist extremists threatens the security of the interstellar Empire, while uprisings of separatist traitors spark outrage on dozens of planets around the galaxy. The agents of the Imperial Special Investigation Service must find the common thread and de-fang these vipers before the wildfire of revolution engulfs the galaxy.
Word Count: 71300
Summary: Space pirates harass interstellar shipping. On the frozen world of Gulag--where, for centuries, the Empire's worst traitors have been exiled--dangerous plots are hatching. Time is running out for agents of the Imperial Special Investigation Service to save the Empire from the most serious revolt in its centuries-long history.
Word Count: 50750
Summary: Having had its plans thwarted too many times by the Imperial Special Investigation Service, the evil conspiracy declares war directly on the brave men and women who serve in the agency. Impostors sabotage the Service's work, and the Commissar himself falls under suspicion. ISIS must confront itself to prevent being torn apart from within.
Word Count: 60700
Summary: For centuries, now, humanity has expanded into space without encountering an alien civilization. Suddenly, the peaceful outlying planet Omicron is attacked by an ominous outside threat--and the Imperial Special Investigation Service finds itself joining forces with the conspiracy it's been battling for years to save mankind from external danger.
Word Count: 62300
Summary: Finally the evil conspiracy reveals itself in all its true power, bringing the Empire to its knees. Even the Imperial Special Investigation Service is helpless in the face of the unexpected, overwhelming attack. But the Empire strikes back with all the resources at its disposal--hoping against hope that will be enough to save humanity.
Word Count: 56250
Summary: GHOSTS, GIRLS, & OTHER PHANTASMS is a comprehensive collection of Stephen Goldin's solo short fiction, containing most of the stories from his earlier collection THE LAST GHOST AND OTHER STORIES. (The "Angel in Black" stories have been broken out into their own volume.) It includes some of his best-known stories, such as the Nebula Award finalist story "The Last Ghost" and the oft-anthologized "Sweet Dreams, Melissa." The complete Table of Contents lists:
- Sweet Dreams, Melissa
- The Girls on USSF 193
- Nice Place to Visit
- When There's No Man Around
- Xenophobe
- Grim Fairy Tale
- Of Love, Free Will, and Gray Squirrels on a Summer Evening
- Stubborn
- But As A Soldier, For His Country
- The World Where Wishes Worked
- Apollyon Ex Machina
- Prelude to a Symphony of Unborn Shouts
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young God
- The Last Ghost
- Haunted Houses
Word Count: 59500
Summary: Wesley Stoneham, an ambitious lawyer and politician, has just murdered his wife in a fit of rage. Now he's planning to frame an innocent man for the crime. But he doesn't realize there was a witness to the crime: an invisible alien who's visiting Earth via astral projection. Now the alien has two problems: Should he report the crime to the authorities...and if so, how?
