Now in paperback, look for Janet's action-adventure thriller Artifact cowritten with her friends Kevin J. Anderson, Matthew J. Costello, and F. Paul Wilson. Read how they came up with the story on M.J. Rose's Backstory Blog.

MeishaMerlin Publishing released a compendium edition of the Madagascar Manifesto series. You can order it from your local bookstore or on-line retailer.

Janet Berliner is the author or co-author of six novels, including the critically acclaimed Rite of the Dragon and the Bram Stoker award-winning Children of the Dusk, the third book of the Madagascar Manifesto series. Janet also created the storyline for The Unicorn Sonata, which her friend Peter S. Beagle wrote.

Artifact (Co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson, Matthew J. Costello, and F. Paul Wilson. Forge Books, hardcover, May 2003; paperback December 2005. eBook edition available from FictionWise.com.)

The first novel of the adventures of the Daredevils Club. Based on a concept by Janet Berliner, and coauthored with her best-selling friends Kevin J. Anderson, Matthew J. Costello, and F. Paul Wilson. Read the Backstory on M.J. Rose's Backstory Blog.

Are you ready for life on the edge?

That's the question asked by award-winning and best-selling authors Kevin J. Anderson, Janet Berliner, Matthew J. Costello, and F. Paul Wilson. The four have combined their talents to create a novel of action and adventure that Clive Cussler calls "A fascinating page-turner with enough spellbinding intrigue to last until the authors' next tale." To be released by Forge Books in May 2003, Artifact tells the stories of a group dedicated to living life on the edge. Calling themselves the Daredevils Club, they meet every New Year's Eve to tell their most daring tales from the preceding year.

When one member discovers a strange artifact that could change the way the world uses energy, and another member is killed hours before their annual meeting, the club decides that they'll take part in a treasure hunt for the missing pieces of the device, and hopefully discover the other member's killer in the process. Traveling the Western Hemisphere, from New York to Venezuela to Trinidad and Grenada to Las Vegas, the members risk death at every turn, be it jungle battles with ecoterrorists, diving into deep undersea caverns, or facing off against each other. All of the twists led best-selling author Larry Bond to say, "Artifact is fun, exotic, and fast. The only part of the ending you'll guess is that it's good."

Janet Berliner started the project after a chance meeting with fellow Las Vegas resident Evel Knievel. Beginning with a thought to do an anthology of stories about daredevils, Janet contacted several of her best-selling friends, but when she, Kevin, Matt, and Paul put their heads together, they decided that the stories would work better as a novel. Thus Artifact was born.

The result is a book of which New York Times bestseller Richard Steinberg said, "Written spectacularly, Artifact is thrilling, gloriously surprising, compelling entertaining fiction at its best ... the kind of book you'll be talking about with your friends for weeks."

 
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The Madagascar Manifesto (Co-authored with George Guthridge. Meisha Merlin Publishing, hardcover and trade paper, 2002.)

This is the compendium edition of the three book Madagascar Manifesto series. The text is slightly modified from earlier editions to remove duplication which was necessary when the three were separate books.

 
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Child of the Light (Co-authored with George Guthridge, Hardcover, St. Martin's Press, 1992. Part I of The Madagascar Manifesto series. Revised edition in paperback from White Wolf Books, January 1996.)

Peter S. Beagle called this book "truly remarkable," and went on to say, "It has been said by South American writers that such magical realism is the only way to deal fictionally with the brutal history of this continent; perhaps Child of the Light will open similar avenues into Hitler's Germany."

The book follows the lives of three friends, Solomon Freund, a Jew, Erich Wiesser, his Catholic neighbor and "brother in blood", and Miriam Rathenau, whom both boys love, and who happens to be niece of Germany's foreign minister Walther Rathenau. From their youth helping at their parents' co-owned tobacco shop, the boys find their relationship strained, as was all of Germany, by the growth of the National Socialist party and the descent of Germany into a Nazi hell.

 
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Child of the Journey (Co-authored with George Guthridge. Part II of The Madagascar Manifesto series. White Wolf Books, August 1996.)

Picking up three years after the end of Child of the Light, Journey begins with Miriam now married to Erich, and Sol safe in Holland. However, Erich has told Miriam that Sol is in a camp, and her only hope of keeping him safe is to remain Erich's faithful wife. When Solomon learns of the deception, he returns to Berlin to try to bring Miriam out with him. Instead, he ends up in the very Hell that Erich had been telling her he was in. But now Miriam knows the truth. Through her own contacts, she arranges for Solomon to be part of a mission to form a new Jewish homeland on the island of Madagascar, and for Erich to be the leader of that mission.

 
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Children of the Dusk (Co-authored with George Guthridge. Part III of The Madagascar Manifesto series. White Wolf Books, June 1997.)

 

Concluding the saga of Solomon, Erich, and Miriam, Dusk begins as they land on Nosy Mangabé, a small island off the coast of Madagascar, in the midst of one of the most dense rainforests on Earth. Along with their mysterious Malagasy guide Bruqah, 144 Jews, 40 heavily armed Nazis, and Erich's crack canine unit, the three fight to find a place in this strange new world, while also fighting to stay alive.

Upon reading Dusk, internationally best-selling author Larry Bond said, "What a story! Švivid, almost magical, set in an alien place with unique characters embarked on equally alien and divergent goals. I think it's a real winner." Peter S. Beagle concurred, stating, "Rounded off so splendidly in Children of the Dusk, the Manifesto should now take its place among the very few works of our time that truly deserve the title epic."

 
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Exotic Locals (Co-authored with George Guthridge. Introduction by Paul Di Filippo. Lone Wolf Publications, January 2000.)

 

Exotic Locals, containing ten stories by Janet and co-author George Guthridge and a phenomenal introduction by Paul Di Filippo, is available now on CD-ROM. The retail price of this CD, limited to 300 signed and numbered copies, is just $15.95, including shipping! (US destinations only. Shipping outside the US may be slightly higher.) To order your copy, just visit the Lone Wolf Publications Exotic Locals site or for more information email lwpub@aol.com.

Wondering what else you get on the CD? How about Janet Berliner's spoken introductions to the stories? That's right, you can hear Janet's voice, recorded extemporaneously as she spoke about each of the stories in the collection.

Exotic Locals collects four novellas and six short stories from the award-winning team of Janet Berliner and George Guthridge, including one never before published story. In his introduction, acclaimed alternities author and reviewer for Asimov's SF Magazine Paul Di Filippo says, "Exotic Locals is your bridge to glaciers and deserts, permafrost and rainforests, where people as real as you or I do battle with evil and either triumph or go down swinging." He compares the collaboration of Berliner and Guthridge to those of de Camp and Pratt, Niven and Pournelle, and Barton and Capobianco. To read more from his introduction, click here.

The stories included in Exotic Locals are:

• "The I of the Eye of the Worm" (previously published in Poppy Z. Brite's Love in Vein II)
• "Notes Toward a Rumpled Stillskin" (previously published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
• "Inyanga" (previously published in 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories)
• "A Case For Justice" (solo story by Janet previously published in Alternate Generals)
• "Song of the Shofar" (previously published in Bizarre Bazaar)
• "The Quiet" (solo story by George previously published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine)
• "Fantsilotra" (previously published in 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories)
• "Maskal" (previously published in the Amazing Stories Anthology)
• "Something's Got To Give" (previously published in Marilyn: Shades of Blonde)
• "Mainliner" (original to this collection)

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The Unicorn Sonata by Peter S. Beagle (Created by Peter S. Beagle and Janet Berliner, Turner Publishing, hardcover, October 1996.)

 

On a hot summer day in Los Angeles, thirteen-year-old Josephine "Joey" Rivera--a misfit in junior high but a born musician--meets a disquieting young man named Indigo who plays ghostly, haunting music on a horn the hue of a conch shell. The sound of his music stays with her, distant and beguiling, until she follows it down an ordinary street and across an unseen border into a magical world called Shei'rah. There, satyrs, water nymphs, and six-inch-long dragons live side by side with phoenixes and two-headed serpents and the Eldest--the unicorns whose music is the soul of Shei'rah. There are dangers, too--from swarms of tiny, terrible flying creatures called perytons, and from a strange disease that is blinding the Eldest.

To Joey, Shei'rah feels like home--but she already has a home across the Border, in our world. She has a school, and a family, and a fiesty, beloved grandmother, Abuelita, whom she visits every Sunday in a nursing home. There's also gruff old John Papas, whose dusty instrument repair shop Joey cleans in exchange for music lessons, and who may know something about the Eldest himself.

Within these two worlds whose borders merge mysteriously, Peter S. Beagle spins a tale of one girl who can make a difference. The Unicorn Sonata also tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes--and our ears--to find it.

 
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Rite of the Dragon (Donning hardcover, 1981. Leisure Books paperback, 1982. UK edition W.H. Allen, 1983. Twentieth Anniversary Edition Wildside Press trade paperback, 2001. eBook edition available from FictionWise.com.)

Political intrigue meets mysticism in South Africa as an Oxford-educated witch doctor puts into motion a plan to remove the White power structure. Caught in the middle are Jake Prescott, the nephew of an American senator, Reina Parker, his mulatto lover, and Tom Sibanda, her adopted brother, a Black reporter.

Set in Berliner's native South Africa, Alex Haley, author of Roots, called Rite of the Dragon, "Robust action and tension and passion set amidst South African political intrigue."

 
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The Execution Exchange (Co-authored with Woody Greer. Leisure Books, paperback, 1981.)

What happens when two men who feel that they have not received justice at the hands of our legal system apply the theory of a chain letter to the desire for revenge? Find out in this fast-paced thriller. ...if you can find it. Unfortunately, The Execution Exchange has been out of print for over 15 years. As with any paperback of that vintage, if you can find it, it's usually not in very good shape.

It's also important to note, if you ever do find an original Leisure Books paperback of EE, it was typeset by a slightly intoxicated man, and the publisher rushed the book to press before entering the corrections. It's one of those apocryphal stories of publishing, but in this case, it's true.