Books by Tim Powers

Strange Itineraries

by Tim Powers

Strange Itineraries takes you on an unforgettable excursion into the strange and dangerous worlds of Tim Powers. Vengeful and cooperative spirits, mutant tomatoes, and the ever-mysterious Ether Bunnies roam these pages, treading paths both frightening and droll. This fully retrospective Powers collection also features three collaborations with James Blaylock, author of The Paper Grail and The Last Coin.

What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick

by Philip K. Dick, Tim Powers, Gwen Lee, Doris Elaine Sauter

In the field of science fiction, the work of Philip K Dick is unparalleled. His novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became the classic science-fiction film Blade Runner. His short story, "The Minority Report," was adapted for the screen by Stephen Spielberg and stars Tom Cruise. Dick’s appeal and influence has reached the world over, creating the standard for the literary science fiction novel. In November of 1982, six months before the author's death, journalist Gwen Lee recorded the first of several in-depth discussions with Philip K. Dick that continued over the course over the next three months. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the field of science fiction.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories

by Tim Powers

2012 World Fantasy Award Winner

In his first new collection since 2005, Tim Powers, the master of the secret history, delves into the mysteries of souls, whether they are sacrificed on the pinnacle of Mount Parnassus or lodged in a television cable box.

With two new stories and short fiction only previously available in limited editions, the cornerstone of the collection is a postscript to his harrowing novel of the haunting of the Romantic poets, The Stress of Her Regard. After Byron and Shelley break free of the succubus that claimed them, their associate, Trelawny, forges an alliance with Greek rebels to reestablish the deadly connection between man and the nephilim.

Meanwhile, in a Kabbalistic story of transformation, the executor of an old friend’s will is duped into housing his soul, but for the grace of the family cat. A rare-book collector replaces pennies stolen from Jean Harlow’s square in the Hollywood Walk of Fame?and discovers a literary mystery with supernatural consequences. In a tale of time travel between 2015 and 1975, a tragedy sparked by an angel falling onto a pizza shop is reenacted?and the event is barely, but fatally, altered.

Alternate Routes (1) (Vickery and Castine)

by Tim Powers

NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A New Novel From Award-Winning Master of Fantasy and Science Fiction Tim Powers. A modern ghost story as only Tim Powers can write it.

THE WILD RIDE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH HAS BEGUN!

Something weird is happening on the Los Angeles Freeways—phantom cars materialize, lanes appear from nowhere, and unmarked offramps lead into another world known as the Labyrinth of Forever. As a driver for a supernatural-evasion car service, it’s Sebastian Vickery’s job to avoid these anomalies. But when a secret government agency tries to have him killed for knowing too much, Vickery must plunge headlong into that plane of ghosts, myths, and legends. There he’ll discover that he has much more to fear than death: something lurks in that otherworldly realm—and it has designs on our world.

About Alternate Routes:
“Powers continues his run of smashing expectations and then playing with the pieces in this entertaining urban fantasy. . . . this calculated, frenetic novel ends with hope for redemption born from chaos. Powers’ work is recommended for urban fantasy fans who enjoy more than a dash of the bizarre.”—Publishers Weekly

“Alternate Routes is both a thrilling mash-up of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and a work of startling moral sophistication. The horror packs a wallop, and there’s as much in the way of suspense and tension as the reader can bear. Powers takes us on one hell of a ride.”—The Federalist

"Tim Powers is always at the top of the list when folks ask about my favorite authors. His weaving mythology and legend into modern stories that revolve around secret histories of our most mundane landmarks never ever disappoints. This introduction to his new characters Sebastian Vickery and Ingrid Castine is wonderful."—BoingBoing

About Tim Powers:
"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card

"Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers."—The Orlando Sentinel

". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World

“Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford

"On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert

“Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

"Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision."—Science Fiction Chronicle

"The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original."—San Francisco Chronicle

More Walls Broken

by Tim Powers

When three professors attempt to raise the ghost of a former colleague, using a device the late professor invented, they unintentionally access a different reality.

Down and Out in Purgatory

by Tim Powers

Twenty tales of science fiction and fantasy from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides.

POWERS OF THE IMAGINATION!

Twenty-one pulse-pounding, mind-bending tales of science fiction, twisted metaphysics, and supernatural wonder from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award-winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides.

A complete palette of storytelling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale “The Bible Repairman,” in which a psychic handyman who supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients finds the remains of his own broken soul on the line. Time travel takes a savage twist in “Salvage and Demolition,” where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco where he must prevent an ancient Sumeric inscription from dooming millions in the future. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in “Down and Out in Purgatory,” where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life.

Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending—these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy.

Praise for Down and Out in Purgatory:

"Powers creates tales of dark, thought-provoking drama that are just frightening enough to make you keep the lights blazing but not enough to give you nightmares. . . . This is a treat for fans and newbies alike; hand it to readers who enjoy genre-blending authors as varied as Jim Butcher, Dean Koontz and China Mieville."—Booklist

“Powers is a writer whose senses and soul are attuned to a cosmic symphony most of us would not hear without his deft channeling of the music.”—Paul di Filippo, Locus

About Tim Powers:

"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card

". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World

“Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford

"On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert

“Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

Expiration Date

by Tim Powers

A heart-stopping supernatural adventure from one of fantasy fiction's most original talents—back in print!

THE GHOSTS OF THE L.A. FREEWAYS ARE RISING

Ghosts can be caught, and bottled, and sold. What’s more, a network of covert dealers services the addicts who inhale the things. And when a young boy named Kootie accidentally inhales the ghost of Thomas Edison, he finds that all the factions of Los Angeles’ occult underground are after him, determined to kill him and get Edison’s powerful ghost for themselves.

Aided by Edison’s confused and irascible ghost, Kootie flees—and finds himself dodging perils natural and supernatural in the gritty alleys and trainyards of a Los Angeles that tourists never see.

From the slums of the L.A. River, to the abandoned Houdini mansion in the Hollywood Hills, to a final dramatic confrontation on the haunted ocean liner Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, Expiration Date is a heart-stopping supernatural adventure from one of fantasy fiction’s most original talents.

About Tim Powers:

"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card

". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World

“Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford

"On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert

“Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

Expiration Date

by Tim Powers

A heart-stopping supernatural adventure from one of fantasy fiction's most original talents—back in print!

Ghosts can be caught, and bottled, and sold by covert dealers to addicts who inhale the things—and when a young boy named Kootie accidentally inhales the ghost of Thomas Edison, he finds that all the factions of Los Angeles' occult underground are after him, determined to kill him and get Edison's powerful ghost for themselves.

Aided by Edison's confused and irascible ghost, Kootie flees—and finds himself dodging perils natural and supernatural in the gritty alleys and trainyards of a Los Angeles that tourists never see.

From the slums around the L.A. River, to the abandoned Houdini mansion in the Hollywood Hills, to a final dramatic confrontation on the haunted ocean liner Queen Mary docked in Long Beach, Expiration Date is a heart-stopping supernatural adventure from one of fantasy fiction's most original talents.

About Tim Powers:

"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card

". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World

“Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford

"On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert

“Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

Alternate Routes

by Tim Powers

NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A New Novel From Award-Winning Master of Fantasy and Science Fiction Tim Powers. A modern ghost story as only Tim Powers can write it.



Something weird is happening to the Los Angeles freeways—phantom cars, lanes from nowhere, and sometimes unmarked offramps that give glimpses of a desolate desert highway—and Sebastian Vickery, disgraced ex-Secret Service agent, is a driver for a covert supernatural-evasion car service. But another government agency is using and perhaps causing the freeway anomalies, and their chief is determined to have Vickery killed because of something he learned years ago at a halted Presidential motorcade.

Reluctantly aided by Ingrid Castine, a member of that agency, and a homeless Mexican boy, and a woman who makes her living costumed as Supergirl on the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater, Vickery learns what legendary hell it is that the desert highway leads to—and when Castine deliberately drives into it to save him from capture, he must enter it himself to get her out.

Alternate Routes is a fast-paced supernatural adventure story that sweeps from the sun-blinded streets and labyrinthine freeways of Los Angeles to a horrifying other world out of Greek mythology, and Vickery and Castine must learn to abandon old loyalties and learn loyalty to each other in order to survive as the world goes mad around them.

About Alternate Routes:
“Powers continues his run of smashing expectations and then playing with the pieces in this entertaining urban fantasy. . . . this calculated, frenetic novel ends with hope for redemption born from chaos. Powers’ work is recommended for urban fantasy fans who enjoy more than a dash of the bizarre.”—Publishers Weekly

“Alternate Routes is both a thrilling mash-up of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and a work of startling moral sophistication. The horror packs a wallop, and there’s as much in the way of suspense and tension as the reader can bear. Powers takes us on one hell of a ride.”—The Federalist

"Tim Powers is always at the top of the list when folks ask about my favorite authors. His weaving mythology and legend into modern stories that revolve around secret histories of our most mundane landmarks never ever disappoints. This introduction to his new characters Sebastian Vickery and Ingrid Castine is wonderful."—BoingBoing

About Tim Powers:
"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."—Orson Scott Card

"Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers."—The Orlando Sentinel

". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger.”—Washington Post Book World

“Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form.”—The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

“On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."—David Langford

"On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . .”—legendary game designer Ron Gilbert

“Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural.” Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Powers’ work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt.”—SF Site

"Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision."—Science Fiction Chronicle

"The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original."—San Francisco Chronicle

Medusa's Web: A Novel

by Tim Powers

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.
In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.
Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time—to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years—an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.
As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

Medusa's Web A Novel

by Tim Powers

From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.

In the wake of their Aunt Amity’s suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline’s return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted “House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills” that is a conduit for the supernatural.

Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time—to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient “spiders” which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years—an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.

As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat’s spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family’s past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?

My Brother's Keeper

by Tim Powers

THE TRUE STORY OF THE BRONTË SISTERS AS ONLY TIM POWERS COULD WRITE IT.

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.

But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat.

In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.