Avery Cates: The Kendish Hit, Paperback

In this thrilling prequel to The Electric Church, a young Avery Cates finds himself trying desperately to survive in the newly-established System of Federated Nations. When a hit on a Joint Council Undersecretary falls into his lap, Cates determines he'll fulfill the contract, even if the people hiring don't know it yet. As Cates learns the ropes, he meets someone who will one day be an old friend and struggles with the reality of what he's about to do. Killing a man for money, he's told, is a great and terrible thing. Contains the previously-released Avery Cates short stories "This Was Battle. This Was Joy," "The Golden Badge," "The Oldest Bastard on the Block," "This Was Education," "all orphans, at least," and "The Sewer Rat."

Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. His feeble memory makes every day a joyous adventure of discovery and adventure even as it destroys personal relationships, and his weakness for adorable furry creatures leaves him with many cats. He has published nine novels, including the Avery Cates Series of noir-science fiction novels from Orbit Books (www.avery-cates.com), the darkly hilarious crime novel Chum from Tyrus Books, and most recently tales of blood magic and short cons in the Ustari Cycle, including the novel We Are Not Good People and the novellas Fixer, The Stringer, Last Best Day, and The Boom Bands from Pocket Gallery (www.wearenotgoodpeople.com). He has published over thirty short stories, including "Ringing the Changes," which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, "Sift, Almost Invisible, Through," which appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight edited by Charlaine Harris, and "Three Cups of Tea," which appeared in the anthology Hanzai Japan. He also writes about books for Barnes and Noble and About.com and about the craft of writing for Writer's Digest. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.