Mysteriously flung across the void to the distant planet Mars, Captain John Carter of Virginia finds himself a captive of giant, four-armed green savages. But when he meets fellow prisoner Dejah Thoris, the beautiful alien princess of the City of Helium, he realizes the only way to protect her from the cruel green barbarians is to escape. With sword and superhuman strength born of the lesser gravity of Mars, John Carter sets out to cross the exotic and dangerous alien world and return her home, with the fate of two kingdoms and the future of the entire planet at stake The original Science...

A legion of elite, monastic fighting men, the Knights Templar were the most fearsome warriors of the Crusades, writing their legend in the gory sands of the Middle East with the blood of their enemies and their own. It was they who took the Holy Land, and they who held it. Answering only to the Pope, they bowed before no king or crown. Returned from the Crusades and stationed in Paris, Brother William has grown disillusioned with the Order and plans to leave it. But as their Paris stronghold is seized by royal troops, William leads a small band of Templars in a desperate escape, fleeing with...

A tradition for over half a century at Avery Elementary School in Webster Groves, Missouri, the Avery Play is an annual spring production put on by parents for the community and featuring an original story, song-and-dance musical numbers, and laughs for the schoolchildren and their families. For four years, author Patrick Dorsey (God's Forge, The Champion Sky) took on the role of playwright for the annual show, writing four plays featuring his characteristic mix of parody, adventure, fantasy, and fun. The plays are easy to produce and suitable for any community group to put on, no matter how...

A TRADITION OF CHRISTMAS STORIES THAT CHILL NOT FROM THE COLD, BUT FROM FEAR Forgotten today, for centuries winter stories-tales of the fantastic and macabre-were a requisite of the holiday season, and ghost stories by the fireside on Christmas Eve were as much a part of traditional celebrations as festively decorated trees and joyous carols. Yuletide ghost stories have grown to be forgotten, remembered now only dimly through annual retellings of the tribulations of Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge at the hands of four Christmas ghosts. Yet in the season when dark nights are their longest and...