Rich Shapero

Lyle is a young man who hates his life in the State of Salt, a cultural and literal desert. He vandalizes a State icon, then swallows a poison pill that transports him not to death, but to a liminal realm - blue, watery, and wholly alien. He's rescued and shepherded by henchmen of the Polyp, god of the oceanic world they call "heaven". A series of encounters unfolds between Lyle and the monstrous, seductive god, who gradually reveals his grandeur...

Zachary Knox, a sharpshooter known as "the Bull's-Eye Telepath," heads north in search of gold. On his way he meets Sephy, a magnetic woman on the trail of her lost brother. But on arrival, they find the mining camp is home to a cult. The mine boss, Trevillian, rules the camp like a despotic priest, and at the center of his faith is hope, an elusive goddess for whom the miners toil, enduring increasingly perilous trials as they pursue her into the...