<P><B>From the author of <I>Pavane</I>, this omnibus includes<I> The Chalk Giants</I>,<I> Kiteworld</I>, and <I>The Grain Kings</I></B></P><P><I>The Chalk Giants</I>: After the apocalypse the hazardous evolution of mankind continues. Humanity's solutions to catastrophe carve the harsh new world in violent patterns of magic and myth, rite and religion. Brave images scar the ancient hills, and the clash of swords and the ageless power of sexuality sign-post another, bloodsoaked path to civilization. <I>Kiteworld</I>: Powerful churches have long kept their grip with a theology of fear making formidable demons out of the poor, weak mutants of the surrounding badlands. To ward off these specters, elaborate, tradition-encrusted kites with hex signs or armed observers fly over the realm. The men of this Kite Corps, performing hazardous duty to sustain a myth, are driven to find a separate peace, to transform, if they can, disillusionment into enlightenment, to move forward from an assumption of guilt to an assumption of responsibility. <I>The Grain Kings</I>: They call them The Grain Kings—gigantic mechanical monarchs of the wheat-bearing plains that were once the frozen Alaskan wastes. Whole ecosystems in themselves, they can supply the food so desperately needed by our overpopulated planet. But as the whole world waits in hungry suspense, the great powers battle for control of the prairies and two competing combine harvesters find they are heading on a course of collision.