An arson investigator uncovers a conspiracy with  world-shattering consequences in the explosive first book of a classic trilogy set in the Wild Cards universe created by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Game of Thrones . Now featuring a stunning new cover and an all-new short story! An alien virus ravages the world, with effects as random as a hand of cards. Those infected either draw the black queen and die, draw an ace and receive superpowers, or draw the joker and are bizarrely mutated. The uninfected are known as nats. When a fire destroys a Jokertown church, killing and injuring more than a hundred jokers, nat arson investigator Hannah Davis suspects foul play. Following leads throughout Jokertown, she stumbles on the Card Sharks conspiracy: a decades-spanning plot to eradicate the wild card virus—and everyone affected by it. But Hannah’s findings alone won’t be enough to expose the Sharks; it’s her word against that of powerful and well-connected government figures, who don’t much care about a threat that affects only jokers. She’ll need to trace the Sharks’ conspiracy all the way back to humanity’s first exposure to the virus, learning from those whose lives were forever altered by the Card Sharks. And she’ll need to do it quickly, before the Sharks’ plans come to fruition—and bring about the end of all wild carders forever. Book One of the Card Shark Triad CARD SHARKS • MARKED CARDS • SHOWDOWN George R. R. Martin is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including those of the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire— A Game of Thrones , A Clash of Kings , A Storm of Swords , A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons —as well as related works such as Fire & Blood , A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , The World of Ice & Fire, and Rise of the Dragon (the last two with Elio M. García, Jr., and Linda Antonsson). Other novels and collections include Tuf Voyaging , Fevre Dream , The Armageddon Rag , Dying of the Light , Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle), and Dreamsongs Volumes I and II . As a writer-producer, he has worked on The Twilight Zone , Beauty and the Beast , and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with his lovely wife, Parris, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Ashes of Memory Stephen Leigh 1 How did I get involved in all this? I’m not surprised at your question, given what I’m asking you to believe. Quasiman—you know him? He knows of you, but then I think everyone in Jokertown can say that. Anyway, Quasiman gave me his tale. That’s the real beginning, after all. With that and my background, I can visualize that horrible moment, but I wasn’t there. I wasn’t part of it. Not yet, anyway. But I can see it. I can . . . Evening mass in Our Lady of Perpetual Misery on September 16, 1993, was packed. Christmas, Easter, and Black Queen Night: those were the three times each year that Father Squid could count on a full house. Half of Jokertown seemed to be pressed shoulder to shoulder in the pews or standing in the aisles, giving the interior a look not unlike that of a Bosch painting. Many of them were families, with children entirely normal or as misshapen as the parents. Imagine a shape, anything vaguely human or even not so human, and there it would be somewhere in the crowd; a lipless frog’s mouth open in the group prayer, tentacles folded in some imitation of praying hands, slimy shoulders adorned with a new dress or faceted eyes gleaming as they watched Father Squid at the altar, raising a chalice to the congregation. Swelling chords filled the nave, a subsonic bass trembling the floor: that was Mighty Wurlitzer. MW, as he was called, looked anything but human. He had once been the choir director for All Saints’ parish in Brooklyn; now he was a ten-foot-long, thick tube of knobby, sand-colored exoskeleton from which dozens of hollow spines jutted out. A vestigial head capped one end of the tube: two frog-like bumps of eyes, a slit nose, but no mouth. Mighty Wurlitzer couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, but the bellows of his lungs inside that confining sheath were powerful and inexhaustible. He could vent air through the natural pipes of his immobile body, creating a sound like a demented bagpipe on steroids. Modifications had been added since MW had been “installed” in the choir loft. Flexible plastic tubing connected some of his spines to a rack of genuine organ pipes, allowing Mighty Wurlitzer to produce a truly awesome racket. It might not have been great music, but it was loud and energetic, and no joker in the congregation would ever fault another for doing the best he could with what the wild card had given him. Mighty Wurlitzer trumpeted and a wild music sounded, a breathy orchestra. The jokers below joined in after the eight bar introduction. “Holy, holy, deformed Lord, God of Hosts . . .” Afterward, no one was certain who first noticed. Someone in the congregation must have been gifted with a k