Bøker av Gilbert Reid

Volume 7 in the Adventures of V series Determined to rescue the human race from annihilation and the Boy's Cult of Death, V races to save Elysium, the capital of the Cosmos Empire, the last bastion of humanity's earthly rule.As the zombie-bats and the Boy - an incarnation of Evil - and his True Believer zombie-bats sweep eastward towards Elysium City - the capital of Cosmos, a domed city built over the flooded ruins of Manhattan and the last bastion of civilization - V and her tiny crew race to Elysium to defend it from the Boy and his fanatical zombies. But ruin has already arrived. The Boy has seized control of the World Mind. The dome protecting the domed city begins to collapse.Electricity fails. All the machines go crazy. Human minds, linked to the World Mind, go mad, explode, or become zombies.Winged zombie-bats sweep into the city, followed by gigantic super tornadoes, hail storms, and dust storms. Murderous mutant ghouls rise from the sewers.In a parody of the Rapture, the dead rise from their graves, and go on a rampage, massacring the living. Out in the Burbs, an ecological crusader inadvertently releases a super-powerful lethal version of the Bubonic plague.It spreads from the Burbs into Cosmos Elysium. Panic is everywhere. V and her team engage in mortal combat, on multiple levels, above ground and below ground, with the evil forces of the Boy. The boy seizes control of the very fabric of reality, twisting it into a thousand horrifying scenarios. As everything collapses, even the mighty Cosmos are brought to their knees.Humanity faces extinction. Only a few will survive. To save the human race and our universe, V must confront the Boy and vanquish him.Is it too late for humanity? Has the Apocalypse come, or the Rapture? Is this the end of the Anthropocene?Is this the end of the human race.

As the Cult of Death sweeps across the desert, V and Kat race to Terminus concentration camp, where V's fellow hybrids and human dissidents are locked in an inferno a mile underground.

V heads into the Great Central Desert to rescue her fellow alien-human hybrids who disappeared in the Great Culling 14 years ago, finds a lost girl, and faces a threat to the survival of the human species.

Volume 4 in the Adventures of V seriesA fearless sheriff, a pregnant art historian, a mad scientist, a shackled prisoner, a zombie reporter, an orphaned boy, a zombie film star, a gung-ho colonel, an ancient goddess, a reptilian secret service agent, a gorgeous Synthetic Individual, a stubborn ship''s captain, an adoring zombie, are all caught up - with V - in a tsunami of chaos when the zombie virus overwhelms Miami, and spreads, like wildfire, through Florida and beyond. The great luxury liner, the Eden of the Seas, steered by zombies - directed by an invisible central mind, the Puppet Master - has crashed into the Miami seafront, unleashing the zombie pandemic which now rages out of control on the mainland, overwhelming Miami, Fort Lauderdale, much of Florida, and heading for New York City and Houston, Texas. Leaping from the Eden before it crashed, V had kidnapped the US president, Katherine du Bois Hughes, and had gotten her to safety on the research ship, Andromeda II. On Andromeda II, Andromeda Corp CEO Sabrina Jacobs and V arrange to get the president back to Washington so Katherine can reverse a coup d ├⌐tat, carried out by the fundamentalist vice president, Joseph Humility Ebenezer Jackson, and seize back control of the government. While the president heads for Washington, V plunges deep into the Florida Everglades to rescue from lobotomy by a mad scientist a kidnapped young woman, Monica Fabritz, who, manacled down in a secret government installation, is about to give birth to a human-alien hybrid, perhaps the prophesized zombie anti-Christ.Just as V arrives, US Marines storm into the installation with instructions to kill everybody, a horde of zombies converges on the site, and Freddy, the lethal hybrid that kidnapped and raped Monica smashes his way into the building to kidnap his alien-hybrid son.   Returning to Andromeda II with Monica and her baby, V, accompanied by a beautiful Marine sergeant and a handsome Navy captain, sets off to meet the Puppet Master. On the terrorist yacht, A Flight of Fancy, she travels through a shimmering space-time gateway into an alternative universe. There V and her fellow castaways - and their guide, a teenage goddess, Isis - find themselves on a lush, primitive, paradise-like island. Here, in this strange alternate world, the natives worship V as a long-absent goddess who has returned to them. V must perform endless ceremonies, accepting one human sacrifice after another, emptying her victims of their blood. Getting spoiled, the worshippers clamor for more spectacular performances.Finally, one day, V, helped by young Isis, travels deep underground, into the bowels of the earth, under a volcano, and confronts the source of the pandemic, the Puppet Master. He is none other than a grotesque reincarnation of the handsome sadistic Russian oligarch, Dmitry Pavlov, himself an emanation of the eternal Evil Force, V''s constant foe and nemesis.Meanwhile, other refugees from the virus, Alex Wolf, chief scientist of Andromeda Corporation, Marie-Jos├⌐, the beautiful  French SIN, the two Chinese acrobats, Fei and Fang, actress Virginia Lily -  who has become a charming zombie - and Virginia''s sidekick, 11-year-old Jake, struggle to survive, to contain the virus, and to discover an antidote and a vaccine, while holed up in a laboratory just outside Miami, besieged by rampaging zombies and by murderous anti-science militias inspired by the fundamentalist anti-science vice president.In the alternative universe, under the volcano, V faces the ultimate test, risking her soul - and her body - to save the world from eternal enslavement to the Puppet Master. 

Volume 2 in the Adventure of V series. A beautiful half-mad billionaire, a mischievous half-alien vampire, a handsome disheveled scientist, a brainy stripper, a diabolical Russian oligarch, and a graceful wild-eyed Clone, take us on an epic journey across America and deep into the treacherous paradise of the South Seas. When naughty, mischievous, witty vampire V discovers that her ultra-dangerous, half-alien DNA has been used by billionaire scientist Sabrina Jacobs to create a clone, she realizes that the human race is in mortal danger.To nip the alien DNA contagion in the bud, she must kill Sabrina and the 14-year-old Clone. Having just escaped from Sabrina''s bounty-hunters, stunned and half-naked, V staggers out of the desert onto a lonely endless strip of road.She flags down a handsome yummy scientist, Alex Wolf. Later, out hunting for human fodder, she picks up a beautiful stripper, Helen Guerrera. Together, the trio set off on a rollicking chaotic chase across the ruins of a dystopian America - searching for Sabrina and the Clone - and then, still in pursuit of Sabrina and the Clone, they sail deep into the South Pacific, searching the Sulu Sea and the Philippines.While V hunts Sabrina, Sabrina hunts V.Sabrina'' dream is to lobotomize beautiful V, to enslave her, and to exploit her DNA to create a race of immortal superhumans. But, while V and Sabrina hunt each other, Sabrina''s sadistic ex-lover, Russian billionaire, Dmitry Pavlov, stalks Sabrina.He plans to capture and sink Sabrina''s marvelous research ship, Andromeda, to kidnap the Clone and transform gorgeous brilliant Sabrina into a grotesque freak - an animal to be kept in a cage. At the center of all this, is the Clone, a tragic, failed experiment, and Sabrina''s greatest regret. Perpetually imprisoned by Sabrina in an armored glass cage, the exquisite but utterly insane 14-year-old Clone has never breathed the open air. Just as V closes in on Sabrina and the Clone, Dmitry springs his trap, and, at the same time, a huge tropical typhoon closes in, threatening everyone and everything. In the chaos of overlapping struggles, will V succeed in saving the world from the plague of her alien DNA, will she eliminate Sabrina and the Clone - or will she fail?  

Volume 1 in the Adventures of V series.When massive earthquakes ripple, simultaneously, all over the world, bringing chaos, scientists are puzzled - what is happening?V, the half-alien ancient vampire goddess, knows.Cardinal Xavier Ambrosiano, the leader of a secret satanic cult nested deep in the Vatican, has triggered a giant alien device buried deep in North Africa.The Crystal - and V is its custodian - is also known as the World-Destroyer.  By twisting Earth''s gravitational field, it can tear the planet apart.  Since before the time of Augustus Caesar, V has protected the CrystalSince the time of Augustus Caesar, V has fought the satanic cult, and its ritual sacrifice of young women. Even now, monkish figures, disguised as Latin lovers, stalk the streets of Rome, hunting for ideal victims - young women to incarnate the goddess - who must be sacrificed in a black Mass, exorcising the feminine principle, casting women out of divinity, robbing them of their divine luster and power.To defeat the Cardinal, V needs allies. Father Patrick Michael O''Bryan, an Irish Jesuit and famous exorcist, dithers - V is a demon, obviously, but she is a flirtatious - and possibly good - demon. Should he cast her out, and kill her, or join her mission? Don U Pizzu, a dapper handsome Mafia Don and ruthless killer, is entranced. What to do? Gun the charming vampire down, or offer her roses and champagne?Kate Thornhill, a brilliant young scientist, is hypnotized by V''s beauty - and her sleek silky warrior outfit - a temptation for a girl of Kate''s martial temper. Time presses. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis sweep around the world.Tourists, caught in Rome, flee from dangerous buildings to the open spaces of the Roman Forum, which becomes the stage for a giant bacchanal, celebrating the end of the world. Vesuvius and Yellowstone erupt. Superstorms rage; cities collapse; chaos and terror spread. The end is nigh. At the last moment, just as Earth teeters on the edge of annihilation, just as Rome, the Eternal City, collapses into ruins, V faces off against Cardinal and the Intergalactic Evil Force he has welcomed into our universe. If V fails, humanity''s great adventure comes to an end.If V fails, nothing will be left of Earth but a cold dead asteroid belt, circling around the sun.  A mad Cardinal, scheming prelates, human sacrifice, Mafia plots, Vatican scandals, a dying Pope, a damsel in distress, theological debates, a persnickety Jesuit, a gorgeous vampire, a sleek warrior woman, a galaxy of characters, a dying Earth, and an impending Apocalypse, all add up - to a sexy whirlwind adventure, for fans of Dan Brown, of the Exorcist, of the Godfather movies, and of dystopian and apocalyptic fiction. 

In nine dramatic, vividly etched stories, SO THIS IS LOVE explores love and hate, the tangle of fascination, perversity, ambivalence, and power at the heart of intimacy. In "Pavilion 24," set in the Yugoslav Civil War of the 1990s, a Muslim militiaman, his leg amputated above the knee, finds himself lying, helpless, next to his deadly enemy, a beautiful young Serb, her warm body pressed against his. The girl is blind; without him, she will die; without her, he will die. Blindness returns - metaphorically - in "Soon We will be Blind." Sitting in the dark on the porch of a sprawling farmhouse on a hot rainy summer night, drinking beer with her father, a young woman is swept back to the distant past, to a childhood rape. She remembers, too, how, in that same summer, she met the most unique and beautiful person ever to enter her life. In "After the Rain," it is April in Paris, in the 60s or 70s. A jaded diplomat, who is with the woman he truly loves, decides to have sex - out of curiosity or just for the hell of it - with an exotic and beautifully fragile golden-skinned girl. Can he defy the gods? In "Irony is ..." a cynical professor of literature is marooned on an isolated beach on a volcanic island, with an alluring, androgynous French literary theorist. As she weaves her intricate cerebral spell, he finds himself playing a starring role in her perverse erotic theatre. But, is he a star, or merely an extra, merely part of the décor? "Hey, Mister!" plunges us into a bloody civil war in Africa. Can a daring, white photo-journalist, famous for her exclusives on human suffering, pluck one small boy - amid millions - from certain death and bring him home to a new life in Paris? "The Champion" sweeps us into the twilight of the Italian dolce vita. A cynical white writer and his exquisitely beautiful offbeat young black friend search the beaches of the Mediterranean coast, looking for a violent deadbeat, a man once nicknamed "the champion." With disabused cynical eyes, the duo delves the depths of toxic love and sexual addiction. In "Lollipop," among flirtations and bottles of wine, a voluptuous young woman, her mind frozen in the past after an automobile accident and with a scarred, half-shattered face, bets she can learn the lyrics of "Lollipop." When she fails, she walks naked into the sea, a wounded goddess disappearing into a blaze of wintery sunlight. In "Bevete del Vino," set in Rome's Left Bank, Trastevere, a world-weary 50-year-old international civil servant in his fifties finds himself sharing his life with a young Englishwoman who reads Kant and Wittgenstein in bed. She, he realizes, is infinitely more mature and subtle than he. In "The Road out of Town" what was once a real farm village has become a tinsel-like facade, a tourist attraction, surrounded by endless featureless suburbs, a stage set where everything is false and everyone a stranger. It is to this Ontario village that an economist who has long lived in Paris, returns. Seeing the village as it has now become, he remembers the village as it was. He is swept into his own childhood. Suddenly, in the luminous world of memory, he realizes what it was - the world that has been lost, the life he never lived, the person he never became. And, at the core of this life-long betrayal and forgetfulness, he remembers too, who she was, the most beautiful, tender, fragile, brave girl he ever knew. Yes, it was love. But he didn't know it at the time. Only now does he realize ... It is strange, he thinks, how easily

LAVA AND OTHER STORIES anatomizes desire, death, and fracturing sexual identities. In the first section of the book, La Dolce Vita, the title story "Lava" ushers us into a sultry night of sex, nihilism, and transcendence. It is the eve of a prestigious film festival in Taormina, an ancient Sicilian hilltop seaside town, a renowned sexual and gay paradise, once frequented by Nietzsche, Goethe, and D H. Lawrence. Etna erupts. In the smoky Sicilian night, a 10-mile-long string of lava glows like an insidious worm. A drunk journalist, spiraling towards nihilistic self-annihilation, argues Zen metaphysics with an 11-year-old girl - she is life, hope, the temptation of redemption. A blond French film star plunges into shamanistic sexual abandon. A renowned aging gay playwright pirouettes his jaded cynicism before a handsome young man. "You are a worm, an embryo, nothing more!" The young man shatters into a firestorm of sexualities, a polymorphous vortex, a tapestry of lust. An adulterous couple pushes passion to its limits, flirting with the end of their affair. In "That was the Summer That" sex spins like a merry-go-round: a group of young women spends a steamy Roman summer trading sex partners like baubles, while around them terrorists murder, maim, and kidnap. In "Hi, I'm back!" a jaded screenwriter returns to a Roman beach, remembers a beautiful woman, a failed love affair, and an idyllic winter in an isolated farmhouse on a sleepy canal between Rome and the sea. Glimpsing a stranger in the twilight, he wonders if he can reignite the passions of yesteryear. The second section of the book, Shattered, tells of broken lives, emptied out human shells, the husks left behind. In "It must have been the Rain," the childlike hulking inmate of an insane asylum, who has no idea a fellow inmate loves him, catches a glimpse of the toxic murderous man he once was. In "A Universe of Smiles," a cynical Hollywood producer - a virtuoso of charm - relives the moment he shattered the love of his life. Now, he yearns for a new, impossible love. In "What Time is it on the Moon," a man sits with his son in a cafe at twilight. There is nothing to say. It is impossible to communicate with a child. Having lost the child he once was, this father has lost himself; when you lose yourself, you lose everyone else too. In "Blossoms" a paralyzed, dying man observes a woman drinking coffee on a rooftop terrace. Dreaming of the rich sensuality of life, he weaves fantasies around the unknown woman who has no idea he exists. In "Now We Dance" a young girl confronts the death of her friend, the daughter of the man her mother was about to marry: What is left when the living person is gone? In "Like an Angel," a young man - a powerful bomb in his backpack - boards a rural commuter train in the English countryside and gazes at the passengers as the train hurdles towards the climactic moment which will occur in a tunnel - where, as the imam explained, the blast will be total, there will be no survivors. In the final story, "I Hate Hats," the narrator reflects on the tragic destiny which will one day overtake him. One day, like his father, he will be bald, and "not have a curl to his name." Life is tragic. There are so many ways to fail at that continuous unending exam which is life - so many ways to fail to fully live - and many of them are cataloged in Lava and Other Stories.