

FICTION · SCIENCE FICTION
Linnea Sinclair
"Isth you my momma?"
— from Finders Keepers, 1998
Most acclaimed

Songs of love & death
Presents a collection of original tales that explores crossover themes of romance, fantasy, and science fiction, with contributions by such genre authors as Tanith Lee, Jo Beverly, Jim Butcher, and Neil Gaiman.

Shades of Dark
Can love alone save the day? Award-winning author Linnea Sinclair returns with a vibrant interstellar thriller of romance and adventure in which two lovers are tested in the crucible of deep space, where there are only...Before her court-martial, Captain Chasidah "Chaz" Bergren was the pride of the Sixth Fleet. Now she's a fugitive from the "justice" of a corrupt Empire. Along with her lover, the former monk, mercenary, and telepath Gabriel Ross Sullivan, Chaz hoped to leave the past light-years behind--until the news of her brother Thad's arrest and upcoming execution for treason. It's a ploy by Sully's cousin Hayden Burke to force them out of hiding, and it works.With a killer targeting human females and a renegade gen lab breeding jukor war machines, Chaz and Sully already had their hands full of treachery, betrayal--not to mention each other. Throw in Chaz's Imperial ex-husband, Admiral Philip Guthrie, and a Kyi-Ragkiril mentor out to seduce Sully, and not just loyalties but lives are at stake. For when Sully makes a fateful choice, changing their relationship forever, Chaz must also choose--between what duty demands and what her heart tells her she must do.From the Paperback edition.

Finders Keepers
1998
From Publishers Weekly Childs (The Animal Dialogues) intermingles personal experiences as a desert ecologist and adventurer with a journalistic look at scientists, collectors, museum officials, and pot hunters to explore what should happen to ancient artifacts. Questioning whether artifacts should be left in place, Childs argues that although surface surveys and electronic imaging permit study of buried objects without digging, that reliance on technology risks the loss of the "physical connection to the memory of ancient people." Yet he mourns the loss of context that comes from removing, say, the Temple of Dendur from its natural environment. On the other hand, he scrutinizes the "stewardship" of past archeologists who removed sacred objects when "o one thought indigenous cultures would survive to start demanding their things back," returns now required by U.S. law. Childs is critical of museum facilities inadequate to protect items that archeologists removed from their sites precisely to preserve them from destruction. He is also unhappy with the legal sale of relics to collectors, which he believes led to "more digging and smuggling." His own "collection" consists of finds he has left in place across the Southwest. But, he says, artifacts that cannot safely be left in place should go to museums. This is an engaging and thought-provoking look at one of the art and artifacts' world's most heated debates. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Childs treks the canyon-incised Colorado Plateau in search of pre-Columbian artifacts. Their legal regulation collides with collectors’ obsessions to possess them. Childs, though, does not remove what he finds, an ethic that vies with other precepts for the proper preservation of antiquities. For every stand he takes on archaeological morality in this narrative mix of his backcountry experiences and conversations with collectors, curators, dealers, and an occasional looter, Childs engages their justifications for taking custody of ancient objects. As if to underscore ethical fuzziness, Childs relays a personal story of when he absconded with a publicly displayed pot and secreted it in the desert––a theft in the service of righteous restoration? Or is it better to entrust cultural legacies to museums, which are overwhelmed with stuff already? Perhaps, then, private collections have a role in saving objects? Not to the professional archaeologists with whom Childs speaks; they’re horrified by amateurs’ destruction of information when they pry things from their physical context. Alternating romantic and practical moods, Childs hunts virtue as much as baskets in this engaging discourse. --Gilbert Taylor