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Max Gladstone


A Kiss With Teeth

Max Gladstone

Vlad has grown distant from his wife. His son has trouble at school. And he has to keep his sharp teeth hidden.

This story can also be found in the anthologies The New Voices of Fantasy (2017), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Big Thrull and the Askin' Man

Max Gladstone

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 9, March-April 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Crispin's Model

Max Gladstone

A contemporary Lovecraftian tale of art, obsession, and elder gods.

This story can be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Drona's Death

Max Gladstone

The story first appeared in the anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths (2013) edited by Kate Bernheimer.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Empress of Forever

Max Gladstone

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider--until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride--a ravening horde of sentient machines--and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

Last Exit

Max Gladstone

Ten years ago, Zelda led a band of merry adventurers whose knacks let them travel to alternate realities and battle the black rot that threatened to unmake each world. Zelda was the warrior; Ish could locate people anywhere; Ramon always knew what path to take; Sarah could turn catastrophe aside. Keeping them all connected: Sal, Zelda's lover and the group's heart. Until their final, failed mission, when Sal was lost. When they all fell apart.

Ten years on, Ish, Ramon, and Sarah are happy and successful. Zelda is alone, always traveling, destroying rot throughout the US. When it boils through the crack in the Liberty Bell, the rot gives Zelda proof that Sal is alive, trapped somewhere in the alts.

Zelda's getting the band back together--plus Sal's young cousin June, who has a knack none of them have ever seen before. As relationships rekindle, the friends begin to believe they can find Sal and heal all the worlds. It's not going to be easy, but they've faced worse before. But things have changed, out there in the alts. And in everyone's hearts.

Late Nights at the Cape and Cane

Max Gladstone

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue One, November-December 2014.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

The Angelus Guns

Max Gladstone

During a celestial civil war, an angel-like soldier searches for her missing brother.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Iron Man

Max Gladstone

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Grimm Future (2016), edited by Erin Underwood, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 108, May 2019. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom

Max Gladstone

A stranger claiming knowledge of realms beyond the known world attempts to stop a war.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Witch Who Came in from the Cold

Lindsay Smith
Michael Swanwick
Ian Tregillis
Max Gladstone
Cassandra Rose Clarke

Spies and sorcerers face off during the Cold War, with the fate of the world in balance in this print edition of a hugely popular serial novel from five award-winning and critically acclaimed authors.

The Cold War rages in back rooms and dark alleys of 1970s Prague as spies and sorcerers battle for home and country. The fate of the East and the West hangs in the balance right along the Iron Curtain--and crackling beneath the surface is a vein of magic that is waiting to be tapped.

This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar
Max Gladstone

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters--and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future.

Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?

Bookburners

The Complete Season: Book 1

Max Gladstone
Mur Lafferty
Brian Francis Slattery
Margaret Dunlap

The critically acclaimed urban fantasy about a secret team of agents that hunts down dangerous books containing deadly magic--previously released serially online by Serial Box, now available in print for the first time!

Magic is real, and hungry. It's trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, and only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. She joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad--Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum--and together they stand between humanity and the magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don't like the label.

Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in a fast-paced, kickass character driven novel (previously published serially at SerialBox.com/Serials/Bookburners) chock-full of magic, mystery, and mayhem, written collaboratively by a team of some of the best writers working in fantasy.

Three Parts Dead

The Craft Sequence: Book 1

Max Gladstone

A god has died, and it's up to Tara, first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring Him back to life before His city falls apart.

Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without Him, the metropolis's steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot.

Tara's job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in. Her only help: Abelard, a chain-smoking priest of the dead god, who's having an understandable crisis of faith.

When Tara and Abelard discover that Kos was murdered, they have to make a case in Alt Coulumb's courts -- and their quest for the truth endangers their partnership, their lives, and Alt Coulumb's slim hope of survival.

Two Serpents Rise

The Craft Sequence: Book 2

Max Gladstone

Shadow demons plague the city reservoir, and Red King Consolidated has sent in Caleb Altemoc -- casual gambler and professional risk manager-to cleanse the water for the sixteen million people of Dresediel Lex. At the scene of the crime, Caleb finds an alluring and clever cliff runner, Crazy Mal, who easily outpaces him.

But Caleb has more than the demon infestation, Mal, or job security to worry about when he discovers that his father -- the last priest of the old gods and leader of the True Quechal terrorists -- has broken into his home and is wanted in connection to the attacks on the water supply.

From the beginning, Caleb and Mal are bound by lust, Craft, and chance, as both play a dangerous game where gods and people are pawns. They sleep on water, they dance in fire... and all the while the Twin Serpents slumbering beneath the earth are stirring, and they are hungry.

Full Fathom Five

The Craft Sequence: Book 3

Max Gladstone

On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren't conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods — perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World.

When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she's grievously injured — then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear — which will crush her, if Kai can't stop it first.

Last First Snow

The Craft Sequence: Book 4

Max Gladstone

Forty years after the God Wars, Dresediel Lex bears the scars of liberation-especially in the Skittersill, a poor district still bound by the fallen gods' decaying edicts. As long as the gods' wards last, they strangle development; when they fail, demons will be loosed upon the city. The King in Red hires Elayne Kevarian of the Craft firm Kelethres, Albrecht, and Ao to fix the wards, but the Skittersill's people have their own ideas. A protest rises against Elayne's work, led by Temoc, a warrior-priest turned community organizer who wants to build a peaceful future for his city, his wife, and his young son.

As Elayne drags Temoc and the King in Red to the bargaining table, old wounds reopen, old gods stir in their graves, civil blood breaks to new mutiny, and profiteers circle in the desert sky. Elayne and Temoc must fight conspiracy, dark magic, and their own demons to save the peace -- or failing that, to save as many people as they can.

Four Roads Cross

The Craft Sequence: Book 5

Max Gladstone

The great city of Alt Coulumb is in crisis. The moon goddess Seril, long thought dead, is back -- and the people of Alt Coulumb aren't happy. Protests rock the city, and Kos Everburning's creditors attempt a hostile takeover of the fire god's church. Tara Abernathy, the god's in-house Craftswoman, must defend the church against the world's fiercest necromantic firm -- and against her old classmate, a rising star in the Craftwork world.

As if that weren't enough, Cat and Raz, supporting characters from Three Parts Dead, are back too, fighting monster pirates; skeleton kings drink frozen cocktails, defying several principles of anatomy; jails, hospitals, and temples are broken into and out of; choirs of flame sing over Alt Coulumb; demons pose significant problems; a farmers' market proves more important to world affairs than seems likely; doctors of theology strike back; Monk-Technician Abelard performs several miracles; The Rats! play Walsh's Place; and dragons give almost-helpful counsel.

The Ruin of Angels

The Craft Sequence: Book 6

Max Gladstone

The God Wars destroyed the city of Alikand. Now, a century and a half and a great many construction contracts later, Agdel Lex rises in its place. Dead deities litter the surrounding desert, streets shift when people aren't looking, a squidlike tower dominates the skyline, and the foreign Iskari Rectification Authority keeps strict order in this once-independent city -- while treasure seekers, criminals, combat librarians, nightmare artists, angels, demons, dispossessed knights, grad students, and other fools gather in its ever-changing alleys, hungry for the next big score.

Priestess/investment banker Kai Pohala (last seen in Full Fathom Five) hits town to corner Agdel Lex's burgeoning nightmare startup scene, and to visit her estranged sister Lei. But Kai finds Lei desperate at the center of a shadowy, and rapidly unravelling, business deal. When Lei ends up on the run, wanted for a crime she most definitely committed, Kai races to track her sister down before the Authority finds her first. But Lei has her own plans, involving her ex-girlfriend, a daring heist into the god-haunted desert, and, perhaps, freedom for an occupied city. Because Alikand might not be completely dead -- and some people want to finish the job.

Dead Country

The Craft Wars: Book 1

Max Gladstone

Since her village chased her out with pitchforks, Tara Abernathy has resurrected gods, pulled down monsters, averted wars, and saved a city, twice. She thought she'd left her dusty little hometown forever. But that was before her father died.

As she makes her way home to bury him, she finds a girl, as powerful and vulnerable and lost as she once was. Saving her from raiders twisted by the God Wars, Tara changes the course of the world.

Dead Country is the first book in the Craft Wars Series, a tight sequence of novels that will bring the sprawling saga of the Craft to its end, and the perfect entry point to this incomparable world.

Wicked Problems

The Craft Wars: Book 2

Max Gladstone

A deadly force has been unleashed into the world. With apocalypse on the horizon, a girl and a god have joined in order to turn back the coming end. Young, brash, and desperate, they are willing to destroy anything and everything that stands between them and their goals. The structures of the Craft are theirs to overturn, with billions of lives in the balance. And it is all Tara Abernathy's fault.

The battle for the world of the Craft is heating up. A dead god will rise. A mountain will fall. Ancient fire will be stolen. And while Tara races to stop Dawn's plans, the end draws ever closer, skittering across the stars to swallow the world.

The Craft Wars enter their second stage in Wicked Problems.

Fitting In

Wild Cards Stories: Book 12

Max Gladstone

Robin Ruttiger tries--he really does--but his lot in life falls way shorter than his expectations. A failed contestant of the superhero reality TV show, American Hero, he now works as a high school guidance counselor to reluctant students. Things change, however, when a favorite bakery in Jokertown becomes a target of vandalism, and Robin realizes he can play the hero after all.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

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