Order of the Air

Written with Jo GrahamIn 1929 archeologists began draining Lake Nemi in search of the mysterious ships that have been glimpsed beneath its waters since the reign of Claudius. What they awakened had been drowned for two thousand years. For a very good reason.Veteran aviator Lewis Segura has been drifting since the Great War ended, fetched up at last at the small company run by fellow veterans and pilots Alma Gilchrist and Mitchell Sorley, assisted by their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard, an archeologist who lost his career when he lost part of his leg. It's a living, and if it's not quite what any of them had dreamed of, it's better than much that they've already survived. But Lewis has always dreamed true, and what he sees in his dreams will take them on a dangerous chase from Hollywood to New York to an airship over the Atlantic, and finally to the Groves of Diana Herself.The world is full of lost treasures. Some of them are better off not found.ADVANCE PRAISE FOR LOST THINGS:Scott and Graham avoid the pitfalls of conventional occult adventure thanks to their clean, well-crafted prose and their embrace of unconventional characters in unorthodox relationships. What could have been a mundane collect-the-plot-tokens supernatural thriller becomes a pleasantly intriguing story in their talented hands. -- Publishers WeeklyThe story is equally spent between action and quiet character moments, introducing us to these people and this world while simultaneously moving the story forward. The end result is a vibrant and utterly believable world peopled by characters you can't wait to see in action again. -- Geek Speak MagazineABOUT THE AUTHORS:Melissa Scott is from Little Rock, Arkansas, and studied history at Harvard College and Brandeis University, where she earned her PhD in the Comparative History program. She is the author of more than twenty science fiction and fantasy novels, and has won Lambda Literary Awards for Trouble and Her Friends, Shadow Man, and Point of Dreams, the last written with her late partner, Lisa A. Barnett. She has also won Spectrum Awards for Shadow Man and again in 2010 for the short story "The Rocky Side of the Sky" (Periphery, Lethe Press) as well as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She can be found on LiveJournal.Jo Graham worked in politics for fifteen years before leaving to write full time. She is the author of the Locus Award nominated Black Ships and the Spectrum Award nominated Stealing Fire, as well as several other novels, including the Stargate Atlantis Legacy series. Her next book, The General's Mistress, is highly anticipated from Gallery Books. She lives in North Carolina with her partner and their daughter. She can be found online at Live Journal.THE ORDER OF THE AIR is an original series, created by Melissa Scott & Jo Graham, loosely tied in to the past of the O.C.L.T. series books. Watch for the next volume in the series, STEEL BLUES, sometime in early 2013. Find many more Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, and other genre titles from CROSSROAD PRESS - featuring bestselling authors like John Farris, John Skipp & Craig Spector, Joe R. Lansdale, Neal Barrett Jr., Steven Savile, David Niall Wilson and many others. If you enjoyed LOST THINGS you might like our other original series, O.C.L.T. set in modern times. Simply search CROSSROAD PRESS to locate our more than 500 available titles.

A Deadly ParadiseIt's the summer of 1935, and Gilchrist Aviation's owner Alma Gilchrist Segura has brokered a deal that will take herself and fellow pilots Lewis Segura and Mitchell Sorley to Honolulu to test a new seaplane. It pays well enough to take their families along for a working vacation including the children of the company's part time handyman, whose father has abandoned them. Better still, archeologist Jerry Ballard is already there supervising a dig investigating whether Hawaii was actually discovered by the Chinese. It's a crackpot idea, but it's his only chance to prove that he can still handle field work after losing his leg at the end of the Great War, and he's determined to restart his career.However, not all is as it seems. The dig is funded by anonymous sources who seem to have far too much influence on its management, including the hiring of German archaeologist Willi Radke, and who seem to know exactly what they want to find. The seaplane's testing is plagued by mysterious mechanical problems and rumors of a curse spread through the hangar. Can you murder someone by magic? And who would want to kill a middle aged Army officer who belongs to an allied lodge? Alma, Jerry, Mitch, Lewis and Stasi are determined to defend themselves, but the power arrayed against them is greater than they imagined. It will take everything they have as flyers, scholars, and magicians to survive this deadly paradise.

In this sequel to Lost Things, when the Gilchrist Aviation team tries to win the money to keep the business going by placing first in a coast-to-coast air race, things get complicated! A stolen necklace, a runaway Russian countess, and a century-old curse seem like trouble enough, but then there's New Orleans, and the unsolved murders of the New Orleans Axeman. But what if the murderer is one of them?This digital Edition features an excerpt from LOST THINGS, the first book in the series, as well as an excerpt form THE PARTING - a Novel of the O.C.L.T. by David Niall Wilson.FIND MORE TITLES by MELISSA SCOTT & Crossroad Press, including Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence in Solitude, The Kindly Ones, and more by searching Melissa Scott and Crossroad Press. Also available Jo Graham's The Ravens of Falkenau, and the unabridged audio of her classic historical fantasy - Hand of Isis, narrated by Gigi Shane.CROSSROAD PRESS offers many SCI-FI and FANTASY books, including the original series properties O.C.L.T., Tales of The Scattered Earth, The DeChance Chronicles, and more.

This OMNIBUS edition contains the first three novels in THE ORDER OF THE AIR - Lost Things, Steel Blues & Silver Bullet. Book IV of The Order of the Air - Wind Raker - will be available as of February, 2015. This is your chance to catch up on a wonderful series at a bargain price. Also Included: Chapter One of The Parting, the first novel in the modern day O.C.L.T. series (the two tie-in to one another).LOST THINGS: In 1929 archeologists began draining Lake Nemi in search of the mysterious ships that have been glimpsed beneath its waters since the reign of Claudius. What they awakened had been drowned for two thousand years. For a very good reason.Veteran aviator Lewis Segura has been drifting since the Great War ended, fetched up at last at the small company run by fellow veterans and pilots Alma Gilchrist and Mitchell Sorley, assisted by their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard, an archeologist who lost his career when he lost part of his leg. It's a living, and if it's not quite what any of them had dreamed of, it's better than much that they've already survived. But Lewis has always dreamed true, and what he sees in his dreams will take them on a dangerous chase from Hollywood to New York to an airship over the Atlantic, and finally to the Groves of Diana Herself.The world is full of lost treasures. Some of them are better off not found.STEEL BLUES: In this sequel to Lost Things, when the Gilchrist Aviation team tries to win the money to keep the business going by placing first in a coast-to-coast air race, things get complicated! A stolen necklace, a runaway Russian countess, and a century-old curse seem like trouble enough, but then there's New Orleans, and the unsolved murders of the New Orleans Axeman. But what if the murderer is one of them?SILVER BULLET: Mad Science and MagicA series of mysterious plane crashes in the Rocky Mountains in the midst of a Depression winter call Air Corps reservists Mitch Sorley and Lewis Segura out to fly search and rescue, but it's more than just a simple navigational hazard. Fortunately Mitch and Lewis are more than just pilots. With Lewis' wife Alma and their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard they're members of an esoteric Lodge dedicated to the protection of the world.The Silver Bullet Mine is haunted -- or is it? Can ghosts bring down aircraft? And are the small-time crooks who are interested in the Mine simply looking to make a buck -- or the vanguard of something more evil and deadly? Aided by their former con artist office manager Stasi Rostov, they've got to get to the bottom of what's happening at the Silver Bullet Mine before more lives are lost.It may be that Jerry holds the key not only to Silver Bullet, but to an even more dangerous secret, one that men have killed to gain for two thousand years. The Lodge is in deep, and there is only one man who can help them, the legendary scientist Nikola Tesla!