Now in paperback! From microchips and iPods to robots in the human bloodstream, Cool Stuff and How It Works takes the reader on an eye-opening journey through the world of modern technology. Tech-savvy kids will love learning all about today's most innovative inventions-where they came from, how they do what they do, and where they might take us in the future.

Captain Pausert thought his luck had finally turned-but he did not yet realize it was a turn for the worse. On second thought, make that a turn for the disastrous! Pausert thought he had made good with his battered starship, successfully selling off odd-ball cargoes no one else could sell. And then he made the mistake of freeing three slave children from their masters (who were suspiciously eager to part with them). No good deed goes unpunished, and those harmless-looking young ladies were just trying to be helpful, but those three adorable little girls quickly made Pausert the mortal enemy of his fiancée, his home planet, the Empire, warlike Sirians, psychopathic Uldanians, the dread pirate chieftain Laes Yango-and even the Worm World, the darkest threat to mankind in all of space. And all because those harmless-looking little girls were in fact three of the notorious and universally feared Witches of Karres. A rollicking novel from the master of space adventure.

The story of the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scrolls has become a part of Western lore. Who has not heard about the Bedouin shepherd who threw a rock into a cave, heard a crash, went in to explore, and found the scrolls? The story in that form may be accurate, but it turns out to be something of a simplification. As a matter of fact, much remains unknown about the exact circumstances under which those scrolls were discovered. The story of the discovery at first deals with just one cave; the other ten were located at later times.

Hurtled back in time into the Thirty Years War by an unknown force, Mike Stearns and his fellow West Virginia coal miners join forces with the king of Sweden to form the Confederated Principalities of Europe and take on the scheming Cardinal Richelieu as they struggle to rescue Mike's wife from war-torn Amsterdam and his sister from the Tower of London. Reprint.

A powerful xenotelepath and a crack shot have separately fought crime for most of their lives, but when an evil force threatens the "Hub" civilization, they team up to save the galaxy. Original.