When Jamie and Ramsay answer a summons to return to Altair, accompanied by Ramsay's cousin Brian, they learn that the Witch Queen wants to capture the Salmon from them and use it to transport her people from that dying planet to Earth--and that Jamie's beloved Wishaway has agreed to marry someone else.

Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic "Slaughterhouse-five" introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes "unstuck in time" after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden. "Slaughterhouse-five" is...