IN A STRANGE NEW WORLD HE FINDS FRIENDSHIP, TREASURE… AND DANGER. Life has not been easy for "Fitz" Fitzgilbert. He has survived the battlefield, personal tragedy, and economic hardship; now all he wants is peace. He moves into and isolated, ramshackle house built—oddly—on an earthen mound. Then he uncovers a hidden stone passageway beneath the house—and falls through an invisible doorway into another world! Except for the bizarre beasts that crawl its shoreline, the "sand world" seems deserted. Yet Fitz is not alone. First he is visited b y an old friend, who reveals that Fitz has a mission in this strange new world. Then he is supplied with traveling companions: a Norman knight, transported from the 11th century via unexplainable magic; and a 1950s jazz musician trapped in a most unusual new body. Together they will surmount incredible dangers—and reap incredible rewards!

FOR A POOR, DOWN-ON-HIS-LUCK EX-MARINE, FITZ WAS DOING OKAY It all started when "Fitz" Fitzgilbert tumbled down a certain STAIRWAY TO FOREVER—and found himself in another world. At first it had seemed a world that offered only infinite loneliness, a world of nothing but ocean, sand, and inland desert. But before long this "empty" world had granted Fitz incredible wealth, the love of a beautiful soulmate, godlike telepathic and telekinetic powers-in short, a life of pure and joyful adventure. But the time of play is ending now. The Elder Gods who called him to this world grow impatient for Fitz to take up the burdens of kingship for which they have summoned him. And though he loves the life he has been living, and does not want to be a king, Fitz learns that for him there is no choice: he must live as a king if he is to live at all.