Search Worlds Without End

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August 1990. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Nebula Awards 26 (1992), edited by James Morrow.

The land has been divided up to suit the wave of new inhabitants - and finding a home and making a living is increasingly difficult. Many are simply homeless, and at a loss as to what their future holds. What would you do if all you thought was precious was suddenly stripped from you? How would you live - and more importantly - where do you belong?

The apocalypse begins on the day Rabi, Miguel and Joe are practicing baseball near their town's local meatpacking plant and nearly get knocked out by a really big stink. Little do they know the plant's toxic cattle feed is turning cows into flesh-craving monsters... ZOMBIES!!!

The boys decide to launch a stealth investigation into the plant's dangerous practices, unknowingly discovering a greedy corporation's plot to look the other way as tainted meat is sold to thousands all over the country. With no grownups left they can trust, Rabi and his friends will have to grab their bats to protect themselves (and a few of their enemies) if they want to stay alive... and maybe even save the world.

When readers first encounter science fiction, they find adventures on other planets and in future worlds, explorations of future technology and its implications, and extrapolations of social trends and warnings of where they may lead--but they also encounter concepts heretofore undreamed of, and the impact on the readers' thinking does nothing less than turn their world upside down.

Now, David Drake, Jim Baen and Eric Flint gather together some of the greatest science fiction ever written in one volume, with each story chosen for a startling breakthrough concept which left readers stunned and changed the course of science fiction.

In the Golden Age of science fiction, the science fiction magazines weren't given titles such as Astounding, Amazing, Startling, etc., for nothing! Pick up this generous serving of the very best of science fiction and prepared to be astounded, amazed, startled--and entertained.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - essay by Eric Flint
• Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Menace from Earth - (1957) - shortfiction by Robert A. Heinlein
• Code Three - (1963) - novella by Rick Raphael
• Hunting Problem - (1955) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• Black Destroyer - (1939) - novelette by A. E. van Vogt
• A Pail of Air - (1951) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Thy Rocks and Rills - (1953) - novelette by Robert E. Gilbert
• A Gun for Dinosaur - (1956) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• Goblin Night - (1965) - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• The Only Thing We Learn - (1949) - shortstory by C. M. Kornbluth
• Trigger Tide - (1950) - shortstory by Wyman Guin
• The Aliens - (1959) - novelette by Murray Leinster
• All the Way Back - (1952) - shortstory by Michael Shaara
• The Last Command - (1967) - shortstory by Keith Laumer
• Who Goes There? - (1938) - novella by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Quietus - (1940) - shortstory by Ross Rocklynne
• Answer - (1954) - shortstory by Fredric Brown
• The Last Question - (1956) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• The Cold Equations - (1954) - novelette by Tom Godwin
• Shambleau - (1933) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• Turning Point - (1963) - shortstory by Poul Anderson
• Heavy Planet - (1939) - shortstory by Milton A. Rothman
• Omnilingual - (1957) - novelette by H. Beam Piper
• The Gentle Earth - (1957) - novella by Christopher Anvil
• Environment - (1944) - shortstory by Chester S. Geier
• Liane the Wayfarer - (1950) - shortstory by Jack Vance
• Spawn - (1939) - novelette by P. Schuyler Miller
• St. Dragon and the George - (1957) - novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• Thunder and Roses - (1947) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 1998. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Armageddons (1999), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

When an ultra-rich space tourist visits the orbiting International Space Station, NASA expects a $100 million win-win: his visit will bring in much needed funding and publicity. But the tourist venture turns into a scheme of terror. Together with an extremist cosmonaut, the tourist slaughters all the astronauts on board the million-pound ISS--and prepares to crash it into New York City at 17,500 miles an hour, causing more devastation than a hundred atomic bombs. In doing so, they hope to annihilate the world's financial system.

All that stands between them and their deadly goal is the lone survivor aboard the ISS, Kimberly Hasid-Robinson, a newly divorced astronaut who has barricaded herself in a secure area.

The year is 1969, and in the British city of Randelwyck, racial tensions are simmering, the situation made worse by an acute housing shortage. Legendary architect Sir George Strand has a solution: two new state-of-the-art high-rise apartment towers linked by walkway bridges, symbolizing the bridging of differences and a closer link between the divided citizenry. But when a professor hints there may be a dangerous flaw in the blueprints, he quickly winds up dead. What is Sir George's real agenda, and how is it connected to the centuries-old legend of the Skulda?

John Blackburn (1923-1993) was regarded as one of the great British mystery and thriller writers of his time. This first-ever reprint of Blow the House Down (1970), one of his scarcest books, includes a new introduction by Adrian Schober.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Old Venus (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF 2015 (2016), edited by David Afsharirad. The story is included in the collection Insistence of Vision (2016).

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, August 3, 1981. There are no other known publications available at this time.

IN A VESSEL THAT SAILS ON A TIMELESS SEA, A GOD SINGS OF HUMAN MORTALITY...

Hear then of a time when the Lochlannach first came a viking into Eire, of a time when the gentle Christos was new-come to the land and an elder magic flickered still--and once in a great while, under just the right conditions and with a very special curse, might flare up into full life again.

Enslaved by fairies in sixth-century Ireland, Tadh MacNiall and his wife, Maire, are returned to the land of mortals in the twentieth century when the fairy empire disintegrates.

There was a cure for depression and unemployment.

There was a cure for war, madness and national hatreds.

There was a cure for prejudice, crime and mass hysteria.

But there were those who wanted the cure suppressed until the world collapsed!

A novel of the fever-pitched fight against the end of the world, reminiscent of 1984 or A Clockwork Orange - but with an amazing difference.

Once upon a time there were four brothers who ruled the land of Fenario--along with a goddess, a wizard, an enigmatic talking stallion, and a very hungry dragon--and lived in a crumbling, Brokedown Palace on the banks of the River of Faerie. Beneath the palace the foundations trembled, for something was rotten in Fenario.

When former Air Force officer and NSA agent Ron Moosic is assigned for special duty in charge of security for a nuclear power plant, he has no idea that the plant is only a cover for a top-secret project involving time travel.

The government has discovered a way to travel back in time and is sending secret observers to different periods. But there are serious limitations with the time travelling process. All travelers are automatically "re-born" into someone who is actually alive during the historical period, and staying in the past for too long causes memory loss and the risk of losing their own selves.

Suddenly Moosic is himself forced to travel back in time as terrorists infiltrate the facility. But little does he know that both he and the terrorists are just pawns in a much wider game played by future beings... a game that may result in the destruction of Earth itself.

Once there was a Hero who confronted the dreaded Daggertooth and slew it. Unfortunately he was also slain by it - but the legend persisted. If it could be done once, then another Hero could be raised to do it again. Because the Daggertooth was dangerous to hibernating humanity. All people - all that anyone knew of - lived far underground in tunnels built for safety and hibernation. The Daggertooth was a mass killer - more so even than the hideous Oddlies, the outcasts of the darker tunnels.

So this is the story of John-A, the "vatkid" who was trained to be a second Hero. And the story of "trukid" Shirl who taught John-A what to do. And Threesum, the Oddlies' leader, who scoffed at heroes. And the Elders who frowned at all the risky goings-on. This is the story of a mighty strange world and a mighty strange future...

THE MOST DESOLATE PLACE ON EARTH

Chile's Rapa Nui, Easter Island -- home of the enigmatic stone faces, and site of the forced landing of the crippled NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis. For pilot Frank King, diplomat Juyce Fisher, and island governor, Ernesto Obregon, the crisis of the orbiter's near crash-landing was ony the beginning.

Beneath the unseeing eyes of the ancient gods, NASA's best minds had to build an emergency spaceport on a stone-age deset owned by a hostile nation -- before the shuttle's lethal rocket fuel could endanger the whole island... before local terrorists could take the rescue mission hostage... and before a web of internation tension and human passion could explode in violent confrontation on the island at the center of the world.

Jules is a young man barely a century old. He's lived long enough to see the cure for death and the end of scarcity, to learn ten languages and compose three symphonies - and to realize his boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World.

Disney World! The greatest artistic achievement of the long-ago twentieth century. Now in the care of a network of volunteer "ad-hocs" who keep the classic attractions running as they always have, enhanced with only the smallest high-tech touches.

Now, though, it seems the "ad hocs" are under attack. A new group has taken over the Hall of the Presidents and is replacing its venerable audioanimatronics with new, immersive direct-to-brain interfaces that give guests the illusion of being Washington, Lincoln, and all the others. For Jules, this is an attack on the artistic purity of Disney World itself.

Worse: it appears this new group has had Jules killed. This upsets him. (It's only his fourth death and revival, after all.) Now it's war: war for the soul of the Magic Kingdom, a war of ever-shifting reputations, technical wizardry, and entirely unpredictable outcomes.

Bursting with cutting-edge speculation and human insight, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom reads like Neal Stephenson meets Nick Hornby: a coming-of-age romantic comedy and a kick-butt cybernetic tour de force.

Download this book for free from the author's website.

In a future society where various alien races mix with humans, twelve-year-old Nuri performs crimes for Vadith until the day she is called away from her home in the slums by an irresistible song only she can hear. Nuri ends up in a secret training facility with the cream of Terra's youth, who are all competing for the ultimate prize. This magnificent Sci-Fi story masterfully creates a whole futuristic universe while maintaining focus on Nuri's rich inner world.

When Liz Drake's best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover's life - in her dreams he drowns.

Blake's new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can't fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands.

Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.

In "Death by Dahlia," number-one New York Times best-selling author Charlaine Harris takes vampire Dahlia Lynley-Chivers to a lavish party that turns deadly. And with so many different creatures of the night in attendance, Dahlia will have a hard time identifying the most likely suspect.

Number-one New York Times best-selling author Patricia Briggs thrills in "In Red, with Pearls," as a werewolf P.I. races to crack a case involving zombies, witches, and the most horrifying creatures of them all: lawyers.

In "Lord John and the Plague of Zombies", New York Times best-selling author Diana Gabaldon follows Lord John as he journeys to the beautiful but faintly sinister island paradise of Jamaica, where he's soon investigating a mystery with no shortage of spiders, snakes, revolutionaries, and, of course, zombies.

With these and 13 more original tales, Down These Strange Streets takes you to the cities where fantasy and mystery collide and where private eyes who have seen it all find something lurking that is stranger still.

Table of Contents

• The Bastard Stepchild - (2011) - essay by George R. R. Martin
• Death by Dahlia - (2011) - novelette by Charlaine Harris
• The Bleeding Shadow - (2011) - novelette by Joe R. Lansdale
• Hungry Heart - [Nightside] - (2011) - shortstory by Simon R. Green
• Styx and Stones - (2011) - novelette by Steven Saylor
• Pain and Suffering - (2011) - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• It's Still the Same Old Story - (2011) - novelette by Carrie Vaughn
• The Lady Is a Screamer - (2011) - shortstory by Conn Iggulden
• Hellbender - (2011) - novelette by Laurie R. King
• Shadow Thieves - (2011) - novelette by Glen Cook
• No Mystery, No Miracle - (2011) - novelette by Melinda M. Snodgrass
• The Difference Between a Puzzle and a Mystery - (2011) - novelette by M. L. N. Hanover
• The Curious Affair of the Deodand - (2011) - novelette by Lisa Tuttle
• Lord John and the Plague of Zombies - (2011) - novella by Diana Gabaldon
• Beware the Snake - (2011) - shortstory by John Maddox Roberts
• In Red, with Pearls - (2011) - novelette by Patricia Briggs
• The Adakian Eagle - (2011) - novella by Bradley Denton

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Universe 2 (1972), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Award Stories Eight (1973), edited by Isaac Asimov, Unicorns! (1982), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, and the collections Deathbird Stories: A Pantheon of Modern Gods (1975) and Troublemakers (2001).

Contents:

• Down in the Black Gang (1969)
• The Shadow of Space (1967)
• A Bowl Bigger Than Earth (1967)
• Riverworld (1966)
• A Few Miles (1960)
• Prometheus (1961)
• The Blasphemers (1964)
• How Deep the Grooves (1963)

In this science fiction adventure, lovers Calla and Jason are forced apart by the obligations of duty when Calla stands alone against a power-hungry tyrant who would destroy the universe in order to rule it.

In the woods outside Overdeere, Ontario, there are trees that speak, a village that doesn't appear on any map and a hill that opens wide, entrapping unwary travellers. Music drifts up from deep underground, while dreams—and nightmares—take on solid shape, flitting through the darkness. It's a place most people usually know better than to go, at least locally—until tonight, at least, when five bloodlines mired in ancient strife will finally converge once more.

Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke—these are the clans who make up the notorious Five-Family Coven. Four hundred years ago, this alliance of witches, changelings, and sorcerers sought to ruin and recreate the Earth in their own image, thwarted at the last only by treachery that sent half of them to be burned alive. Driven apart by rage and hatred, their descendants have continued to feud, intermarry, and breed with each other throughout the centuries, their mutual dislike becoming ever more destructively intimate.

But now, from downtown Toronto to the wilds beyond, where reality's walls grow thin, dark forces are drawing the Coven's last heirs to a final confrontation. Psychics, ex-possessees, defrocked changeling priests, shamans for hire, body-stealing witches, and monster-slaying nuns—the bastard children of a thousand evil angels—all are haunted by a ghost beyond any one person's power to exorcize unless they agree to stand together once more, at least long enough to wreak vengeance upon themselves.

Broke Down Engine: Thirteen wry and terrifying tales of homo mechanicus (what we are becoming) versus the machines we have created. In a technocracy gone mad, in a universe populated by note-passing refrigerators, killer stoves, houses that cuckold their owners, medical androids, and a host of other malfunctioning mechanisms -- the moment of truth is the moment of breakdown.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: The Way Things Don't Work - essay
• The Trouble with Machines - (1968) - shortstory
• Broke Down Engine - (1969) - shortstory
• Lofthouse - (1969) - shortstory
• Calling Dr. Clockwork - (1965) - shortstory
• Princess #22 - (1962) - shortstory
• All for Love - (1965) - shortstory
• The Katy Dialogues - (1958) - shortstory
• Nobody Starves - (1964) - shortstory
• Muscadine - (1968) - shortstory
• Disposal - (1970) - shortstory
• To the Rescue - (1966) - shortstory
• Joker for Hire - (1963) - shortstory
• Terminal - (1965) - shortstory

In this futuristic mystery, our hero, FPA Agent Zack Tourney - along with a number of prominent figures - discovers that he has been infected with a deadly, time-released virus. In order to save himself, and those infected, he must track down the parties responsible - before the virus becomes fatal.

The eerie tale of a mischievous brother and sister who pretend their grandmother's Vermont inn is haunted and awaken the real spirits who inhabit the place...

Travis and his sister, Corey, can't resist a good trick. When they learn that their grandmother's quiet Vermont inn, where they're spending the summer, has a history of ghost sightings, they decide to do a little "haunting" of their own. Before long, their supernatural pranks have tourists flocking to the inn, and business booms.

But Travis and Corey soon find out that they aren't the only ghosts at Fox Hill Inn. Their thoughtless games have awakened something dangerous, something that should have stayed asleep. Can these siblings lay to rest the ghosts they've stirred?

In this supernatural tale, where the long-buried secret of a young girl's death in a canoe accident relentlessly makes its way to the surface of an idyllic vacation...

A family secret is at the root of Mary Downing Hahn's story of supernatural events in Maine. Thirteen-year-old Ali is eager to spend her vacation with Aunt Dulcie, helping to care for her little niece, Emma, in the lake house where Dulcie and Claire, Ali's mother, spent summers. Claire, who is phobic about water, is dead set against her going but is forced to agree. The vacation by the lake turns unpleasant when Ali and Emma meet a mean, spiteful kid named Sissy. Emma idolizes and imitates Sissy, becoming bratty and hostile and accepting Sissy's dangerous dares. Sissy keeps talking about Teresa, a girl who drowned under mysterious circumstances when Claire and Dulcie were kids. At first Ali thinks Sissy is just trying to scare her with a ghost story, but soon she discovers the real reason why Sissy is so angry: she is the ghost of Teresa and blames Claire and Dulcie for her death.

The haunting tale of a mysterious doll discovered in a young girl's garden, and its owner, a girl from seventy years in the past, who wants it back...

A suspenseful story of unexpected connections between present and past. Ashley and her mother need their new apartment to work out, but everything Ashley does seems to upset the irritable and unforgiving landlady. When Ashley makes friends with the girl next door, Kristi, they uncover a wooden box containing a well-loved turn-of-the-century doll. Ashley wants to keep the doll for herself, but Kristi has other ideas. So does the doll's original owner, a girl who died decades ago, but whom Ashley meets when she follows a mysterious white cat through a hedge. Can Ashley bring peace to the girl and resolve her own present-day challenges?

In this chilling Gothic tale, an orphan girl sent to live in Crutchfield Hall finds the place haunted by the ghost of her cousin Sophia, who is bent on revenge...

Twelve-year-old Florence looks forward to a new life with her great uncle and aunt at Crutchfield Hall, certain it's bound to be better than the grim orphanage she has lived in since her parents' death. But Florence doesn't expect the ghost of her cousin Sophia, who haunts the cavernous rooms and dimly lit hallways of Crutchfield and concocts a plan to use Florence to help her achieve her murderous goals. Will Florence be able to convince the others in the household of the imminent danger and stop Sophia before it's too late?

A suspenseful, spine-chilling yarn of a girl imprisoned for more than a century, the terrifying events that put her there, and a friendship that crosses the boundary between past and present...

A family moves into an old, abandoned house. Jules's parents love the house, but Jules is frightened and feels a sense of foreboding. When she sees a pale face in an upstairs window, though, she can't stop wondering about the eerie presence on the top floor--in a room with a locked door. Could it be someone who lived in the house a century earlier?

Her fear replaced by fascination, Jules is determined to make contact with the mysterious figure and help unlock the door. Past and present intersect as she and her ghostly friend discover--and change--the fate of the family who lived in the house all those many years ago.

Daniel doesn't believe the woods behind his new home are haunted by an evil witch and her terrifying beast. But then his little sister disappears, and it's up to him to find her...

They say that a ghost witch lives in the woods, up on the hill. They say her companion has a pig skull for a face and stands taller than a man, his skeleton gleaming in the moonlight. They say that the witch takes young girls, and no one ever sees them again.

Daniel doesn't believe the stories. He figures the kids on the bus are just trying to scare him since he's new. Still, he wishes his family had never moved here--their house is a wreck, Mom and Dad keep fighting, and his little sister, Erica, spends most of her time talking to her creepy doll.

But when Erica disappears into the woods one day, Daniel knows something is terribly wrong. Has she been "took"?

A suspenseful yarn about two children who dislike their malicious younger stepsister, Heather--and tensions that escalate when Heather starts talking to a ghost named Helen...

In a chilling ghost story that is also an insightful family drama, Molly, 12, and her brother Michael, 10, are wary of their sneaky seven-year-old stepsister, Heather. Ever since they became a blended family, Heather has lied, tattled, and created tension between their parents.

Worst of all, Heather claims she has been talking to a ghost named Helen, and she warns Molly and Michael that Helen is coming for them. Molly feels certain Heather is getting herself into some kind of danger, but every time she tries to help, Heather maneuvers to get her into trouble. The whole family is at odds. It seems as if things can't get any worse. But they do--when Helen comes.

This novelette originally appeared in Omni, March 1979. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9 (1980), edited by Terry Carr, Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Ninth Annual Collection (1980), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1982), edited by Jerry Pournelle and John F. Carr, and The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collection High Tension (1982).

Casper, Johnny, and Gwinny are sure they'll never be happy again when their mother marries Jack, who is as mean as an ogre. To make matters worse, two obnoxious stepbrothers, Malcolm and Douglas, move in as well. No one -- except the parents -- seems happy. But when Jack gives a chemistry set to each group of kids, bigger problems take over. These are, it turns out, not your average chemicals. In one hilarious experiment after another, the kids discover they can fly, switch bodies with one another, and even disappear. If only they could figure out how to undo all of this! Are one combustible stepfamily and two explosive chemistry sets a formula for disaster?

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1996 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell, Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science (2000), edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, and Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories (1997).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Aurealis, Ditmar and WFA winning, and Stoker, Hugo, Nebula and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the collection Black Juice (2004). It can also be found in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2005), edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant and The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2012), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer.

Malzberg's fifth collection of short fiction. Many of these stories originally appeared in the various original anthologies of the '70s, where his uncompromising approach to SF was welcomed.

Contents:

• Introduction: A Short One for the Boys in the Back Room
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975)
• Thirty-Seven Northwest - (1976)
• Sedan Deville - (1974)
• State of the Art - (1974)
• Isaiah - (1973)
• On the Campaign Trail - (1975)
• Report to Headquarters - (1975)
• Streaking - (1975)
• Making It to Gaxton Falls on the Red Planet in the Year of Our Lord - (1974)
• After the Great Space War - (1974)
• Trashing - (1973)
• Vox Populi - (1973)
• Fireday: Firenight - (1974)
• Making the Connections - (1975)
• January 1975 - (1975)
• The Destruction and Exculpation of Earth - (1973)
• Transfer - (1975)
• The Ballad of Slick Sid - (1972)
• Notes Leading Down to the Events at Bedlam - (1975)
• Seeking Assistance - (1976)
• Redundancy - (1976)
• Leviticus: In the Ark - (1975)
• Rage, Pain, Alienation and Other Aspects of the Writing of Science Fiction - (essay)
• Down Here in the Dream Quarter - (essay)

KALUIKI... an island-name destined to become a household word, along with the names of eight courageous people--Farrant, Strang, Hoevler, Earl, MacClennon, Youd and the two women, Kay Kinley and Hilde Bartok--if "the project" could be brought off successfully. It took three days to warm the reactor up to the critical point of Zero Hour. Meanwhile, some strange insanity had been let loose on the security-bound island. How long would it take to kill eight people? How long before some of them panicked or shut themselves uselessly in the safety of a locked room?

Farrant was a good man--maybe too good, with his easygoing humor and wry acknowledgment that he was something of a dunderhead among a flock of super-experts. Yet Farrant committed at least one particularly bloody killing--and then couldn't remember that his victim was dead. How many others had he killed? What was the secret locked in his mind--the secret that affected the lives of everybody on the island, and which would eventually uncover the secret of AGNES itself?

The tension grew unbearable as the inexorable hours ticked by and the small force of scientists was reduced one by one, until the final explosion revealed an answer not even the scientists had thought of--an answer written in time, and speed, and blood.

JEFF MCQUEEN THOUGHT HE WAS CRACKING UP...

He believed the strange laughter and the children's voices in his rented mansion were created by his own tormented brain -- and his guilt over the accident that had killed his son.

Then he saw the strange footprints in the garden...

Then "they" came to steal his daughter.

Now Jeff McQueen knows he is sane. The unspeakable terror is real. He alone can save his daughter's life, her immortal soul... and his own.

Shakedown Cruise was first published in the Anthology Riding the Red Horse.

That day, the world turned upside down. We didn't know why it happened. Some of us wondered whether it was our fault. Whether we had been praying to the wrong gods, or whether we had said the wrong things. But it wasn't like that--the world simply turned upside down.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

Sturgeon Award-nominated Novelette

This story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2014. It was podcast by StarShipSofa, No 346, July 16, 2014, and reprinted in Forever Magazine, Issue 32, September 2017.

Listen to this story for free at StarShipSofa.

If you visit the Temple and ask nicely for forgiveness, you might get it – assuming you aren't Lord Archias and you haven't killed the Goddess's favorite musician, Lysippus. But even goddesses are expected to follow certain rules, and as much as she wants to punish Lord Archias it seems her troublesome, all-powerful father forbids it. So the Goddess will just have to get around that by forgiving Lord Archias if he can manage some simple – or, rather, seemingly impossible – tasks. A Goddess has to do what a goddess has to do.

And in World Fantasy Award winner K.J. Parker's sharply inventive new novella Downfall of the Gods that means everything from soothing supernatural egos to accompanying the argumentative Lord Archias on an epic quest to save his soul... and get her own way. As the Goddess and her mortal charge make their way across the world to the Land of the Dead, a host of divine surprises await them. Could what they find at the end be the downfall of the gods themselves? Only time will tell. This is a story Parker fans won't want to miss.

This novella was originally published as a chapbook. It was collected in The Father of Lies (2018).

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Three, March-April 2015.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

What do you do if the man you've vowed to kill dies before you can kill him?

In college, Tom Holbrook worshipped Shasta DiMaio from afar, but she married the arrogant John Atwater -- and Atwater eventually murdered her.

All that's left for Tom is revenge. He has devoted the rest of his life to finding Atwater and killing him -- but when he finally finds him, Atwater is in a bag in the Los Angeles County morgue.

How do you kill a man who has already died?

Twenty tales of science fiction and fantasy from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides.

Twenty pulse-pounding, mind-bending tales of science fiction, twisted metaphysics, and supernatural wonder from the two-time World Fantasy and Philip K. Dick Award winning author of The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides.

A complete palette of story-telling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale "The Bible Repairman," where a psychic handyman who supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients finds the remains of his own broken soul on the line when tasked with rescuing the kidnapped ghost of a rich man's daughter. Time travel takes a savage twist in "Salvage and Demolition," where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco where he must prevent an ancient Sumeric inscription from dooming millions in the future. Humor and horror mix in "Sufficient unto the Day," when a raucous Thanksgiving feast takes a dark turn as the invited ghosts of relatives past accidentally draw soul-stealing demons into the family television set. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in "Down and Out in Purgatory," where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life. Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending--these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy.

Table of Contents:

• Foreward: Paths Through Dark Woods - essay by David Drake
• Introduction: The Powers Effect - essay by Tony Daniel
• Salvage and Demolition - (2013) - novella
• The Bible Repairman - (2006) - short story
• Appointment at Sunset - (2014) - novelette
• The Better Boy - (1991) - novelette, with James P. Blaylock
• Pat Moore - (2004) - novelette
• The Way Down the Hill - (1982) - novelette
• Itinerary - (1999) - short story
• A Journey of Only Two Paces - (2011) - short story
• The Hour of Babel - (2008) - short story
• Where They Are Hid - (1995) - novella
• We Traverse Afar - (1993) - short story, with James P. Blaylock
• Through and Through - (2003) - novelette
• Night Moves - (1986) - novelette
• A Soul in a Bottle - (2006) - novelette
• Parallel Lines - (2010) - short story
• Fifty Cents - (2003) - novelette, with James P. Blaylock
• Nobody's Home: An Anubis Gates Story - (2014) - novella
• A Time to Cast Away Stones - (2009) - novella
• Down and Out in Purgatory - (2016) - novella
• Sufficient Unto the Day - (2017) - short fiction

In the deepness of space there are millions of worlds like our own - and each with its own humanity. They are linked by the Bright, an ancient pathway between the stars created by an ancient, godlike race known only as the Makers. Now humanity travels the Bright, uniting its worlds to a common desiny. But the Bright can also be travelled by those bent on destruction - those who have chosen a different path, whose sole purpose is conquest.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2005. The story is included in the collections New Dreams for Old (2006) and Win Some, Lose Some: The Hugo Award Winning (and Nominated) Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Mike Resnick (2012).

They used to say that no one could blend mystery and science fiction, but that theory was dashed decades ago with the publication of Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Since then, the two fields have crossbred, producing sf mysteries in every style, from locked-room to noir. We at the SFBC especially love the Chandler-esque tales, whose hard-bitten sleuths stalk crime down the dark alleys of space. So we jumped at Mike Resnick's suggestion that we do a book called Down these Dark Spaceways, featuring six original novellas exclusive to the Club. These stories have never been published anywhere else, and each one is written by a top-notch writer who shares our passion for a good sf mystery.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Mike Resnick
• Guardian Angel - novella by Mike Resnick
• In the Quake Zone - novella by David Gerrold
• The City of Cries - novella by Catherine Asaro
• Camouflage - novella by Robert Reed
• The Big Downtown - novella by Jack McDevitt
• Identity Theft - novella by Robert J. Sawyer

UTOPIA WAS NO FUN

They had a Guaranteed Annual Income and an automated world where no one had to work - but there was nothing to do!

When Morris and his friends ran out of beer, there was only one alternative - they decided to overthrow the government!

Table of Contents:

• A Short, Sharp Shock - (1990) - novella
• The Blind Geometer - (1986) - novella
• The Lunatics - (1988) - novelette
• A Transect - (1986) - shortstory
• Down and Out in the Year 2000 - (1986) - shortstory
• Our Town - (1986) - shortstory
• The Return from Rainbow Bridge - (1987) - novelette
• The Translator - (1990) - novelette
• Glacier - (1988) - novelette
• Before I Wake - (1989) - shortstory
• Zürich - (1990) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1986. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Future on Fire (1991), edited by Orson Scott Card. The story is included in the collections Remaking History (1991), Down and Out in the Year 2000 (1992) and Remaking History and Other Stories (1994).

In 2059, two vastly different groups of people undergo cryonic suspension. While their bodies are frozen, their minds, still active and awake, are uploaded into a massive quantum computer.

The first group are all astronauts, about to leave Earth on a one-way interstellar colonization mission. The second group consists of convicted murderers and volunteers who elect to serve their sentences in a virtual-reality prison.

But while both groups are suspended, a global cataclysm devastates most of the Earth, and their cryosleep is extended by more than 500 years.

Welcome to Grail, Louisiana -- next to nothing and just beyond reality -- where hoodoo meets Jesus, and townsfolk pray to both. This dark fantasy delves into the psychological and motivational depths of Grail and its residents. Miss Sedele mixes up green cocktails called 'cryptoverdes' at Le Bon Chance. Vida Dumars, owner of the Moonlight Diner, peers into the deepest realms of her customers' hearts as though they were picture windows. Town spirit Good Gray Man has promised good fortune to the town as long as it hangs onto tradition. A quirky, fantastical town's heart and soul are slowly, often painfully revealed in this dark and captivating novella.

Gundersen returned to Holman's World seeking atonement for his harsh years as colonial governer. But now this lush, exotic planet of mystery was called by its ancient name of Belzagor, and it belonged once again to its native alien races, the nildoror and the sulidoror. Drawn by its spell, Gundersen began a harrowing pilgrimage to its mist-shrouded north, to witness a strange ritual rebirth that would alter him forever.

Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from mythology as a wild beast, now considered extinct. Mikael takes the troll, whom he has named Pessi, back to his apartment. But Mikael does not discover that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultra-hip Stalker jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the art director of the advertising agency, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden feelings.

This novelette originally appeared in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, December 1995. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell. The story is included in the collection The Ocean and All Its Devices (2006).

Something hasn't been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.

Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isn't right at the motel, something haunting and scary.

Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.

Kit Gordy sees Blackwood Hall towering over black iron gates, and she can't help thinking, This place is evil. The imposing mansion sends a shiver of fear through her. But Kit settles into a routine, trying to ignore the rumors that the highly exclusive boarding school is haunted.

Then her classmates begin to show extraordinary and unknown talents. The strange dreams, the voices, the lost letters to family and friends, all become overshadowed by the magic around them.

When Kit and her friends realize that Blackwood isn't what it claims to be, it might be too late.

Now, in this startling new anthology, S. M. Stirling invites the most fertile minds in science fiction to join him in expanding his rich Emberverse canvas. Here are inventive new perspectives on the cultures, the survivors, and the battles arising across the years and across the globe following the Change.

In his all-new story "Hot Night at the Hopping Toad," Stirling returns to his own continuing saga of the High Kingdom of Montival. In the accompanying stories are fortune seekers, voyagers, and dangers--from the ruins of Sydney to the Republic of Fargo and Northern Alberta to Venetian and Greek galleys clashing in the Mediterranean.

These new adventures revisit beloved people and places from Stirling's fantastic universe, introduce us to new ones, and deliver endlessly fascinating challenges to conquer, all while unfolding in a "postapocalyptic landscape that illuminates both the best and the worst of which our species is capable," "a world you can see, feel, and touch."

Table of Contents:

• "Hot Night at the Hopping Toad" by S. M. Stirling
• "Rate of Exchange" by A. M. Dellamonica
• "Tight Spot" by Kier Salmon
• "Against the Wind" by Lauren C. Teffeau
• "The Demons of Witmer Hall" by M. T. Reiten
• "Bernie, Lord of the Apes" by John Jos. Miller
• "The Seeker: A Poison in the Blood" by Victor Milán
• "Grandpa's Gift" by Terry D. England
• "Fortune and Glory" by John Birmingham
• "The Venetian Dialectic" by Walter Jon Williams
• "The Soul Remembers Uncouth Noises" by John Barnes
• "Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers" by Harry Turtledove
• "The Hermit and the Jackalopes" by Jane Lindskold
• "The New Normal" by Jody Lynn Nye
• "A Missed Connection" by Emily Mah Tippetts
• "Deor" by Diana Paxson

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 2011 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, January 2018. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David Hartwell, and Stars: Original Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian (2013), edited by Janis Ian and Mike Resnick. The story is included in the collection Not So Much Said the Cat (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Horror Garage, #1 2000, and was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine, January 2016. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Read the full story for free at Nightmare Magazine.

1945: Russian troops have entered Berlin, and are engaged in a violent orgy of robbery, rape, and revenge...

Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel, a career soldier on the losing end of the greatest war in history, flees from a sniper's bullet, finding himself hurled into a mysterious, fantastic world of wizards, dragons, and unicorns. There he allies himself with the blond-haired, blue-eyed Lenelli, and Velona, their goddess in human form, offering them his knowledge of warfare and weaponry in their genocidal struggle against a race of diminutive, swarthy barbarians known as Grenye.

But soon, the savagery of the Lenelli begins to eat at Hasso Pemsel's soul, causing him to question everything he has long believed about race and Reich, right and wrong, Übermenschen and Untermenschen. Hasso Pemsel will learn the difference between following orders... and following his conscience.

From Harry Turtledove, bestselling author and critically acclaimed master of the short story, comes a classic collection of science fiction tales and what-if scenarios. In narratives ranging from fantastic to oddly familiar to eerily prescient, this compelling volume illustrates Turtledove's literary skill and unbridled imagination.

FORTY, COUNTING DOWN: With the help of his time-travel software, computer genius Justin Kloster returns to the past to stop himself from making a terrible mistake - but all actions have their consequences.

THE MALTESE ELEPHANT: A legendary detective finds himself in grave danger when a noir masterpiece takes a stunning new twist.

GODDESS FOR A DAY: Taking a page from history, a young girl dares to challenge the gods - and is richly rewarded for her efforts.

DECONSTRUCTION GANG: Mired in unemployment and despair, an academic finds happiness and intellectual fulfillment in a most unexpected place.

TWENTY-ONE, COUNTING UP: Justin Kloster's college life and romantic dreams are rudely interrupted - and irreversibly disrupted - when forty-year-old Justin arrives from the future to save himself from himself.

Plus twelve more thrilling, unforgettable tales of wonder!

Table of Contents:

• Forty, Counting Down - (1999)
• Must and Shall - (1995)
• Ready for the Fatherland - (1991)
• The Phantom Tolbukhin - (1998)
• Deconstruction Gang - (1992)
• The Green Buffalo - (1991)
• The Maltese Elephant - (1995)
• Vermin - (1993)
• Ils ne passeront pas - (1998)
• In This Season - (1992)
• Honeymouth - (1990)
• Myth Manners' Guide to Greek Missology #1: Andromeda and Perseus - (1999)
• Goddess for a Day - (1995)
• After the Last Elf is Dead - (1988)
• The Decoy Duck - (1992)
• The Seventh Chapter - (1997)
• Twenty-One, Counting Up - (1999)

Hugo Award winning novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January 1993. The story can also be found in the anthology The New Hugo Winners, Volume IV: (1992-94) (1997), edited by Gregory Benford. It is included in the collection We Install and Other Stories (2015).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

It's 1974, and Jerry Stieglitz is a grad student in marine biology at UCLA with a side gig selling short stories to science fiction magazines, just weeks away from marrying his longtime fiancée. Then his life is upended by grim-faced men from three-letter agencies who want him to join a top-secret "Project Azorian" in the middle of the north Pacific Ocean--and they really don't take "no" for an answer. Further, they're offering enough money to solve all of his immediate problems.

Joining up and swearing to secrecy, what he first learns is that Project Azorian is secretly trying to raise a sunken Russian submarine, while pretending to be harvesting undersea manganese nodules. But the dead Russian sub, while real, turns out to be a cover story as well. What's down on the ocean floor next to it is the thing that killed the sub: an alien spacecraft.

Jerry's a scientist, a longhair, a storyteller, a dreamer. He stands out like a sore thumb on the Glomar Explorer, a ship full of CIA operatives, RAND Corporation eggheads, and roustabout divers. But it turns out that he's the one person in the North Pacific who's truly thought out all the ways that human-alien first contact might go.

And meanwhile, it's still 1974 back on the mainland. Richard Nixon is drinking heavily and talking to the paintings on the White House walls. The USA is changing fast--and who knows what will happen when this story gets out?

This novelette originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 18, September-October 2017. It is incuded in the collection The Future Is Blue (2018).

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1999. The story is included in the collection Heart of Whitenesse (2005) and Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction, 1980 - 2005 (2007).

What happens when...
...An all-powerful killing machine is equipped with a human brain on the brink of madness?
...A group of apes are injected with human intelligence and build their own strange empire?
...A child with an other-worldly intellect is locked in mortal combat with his own down-to-earth father?
...A hand-picked space team convenes at a countdown that can mean the start of a new era - or the end of mankind?

You'll find out when you enter - THE DOWNSTAIRS ROOM.

Table of Contents:

• Unbirthday Party - (1968)
• Baby, You Were Great - (1967)
• When the Moon Was Red - (1960)
• Sirloin and White Wine - (1968)
• Perchance to Dream - (1968)
• How Many Miles to Babylon? - (1968)
• The Downstairs Room - (1968)
• Countdown - (1968)
• The Plausible Improbable - (1968)
• The Feel of Desperation - (1964)
• A Time to Keep - (1962)
• The Most Beautiful Woman in the World - (1968)
• The Planners - (1968)
• Windsong - (1968)

Bow Down to Nul

When Earthman Gary Towler is off work, he is a pariah. For his task as chief interpreter for the corrupt and tyrannical nuls makes other humans avoid him as a traitor.

Nor is he trusted by the three-armed mammoth rulers themselves, especially when they learned than an envoy was on the way from their distant planetary headquarters to investigate charges of corruption on Earth. For the leaders realized that Gary knew too much.

When the humans leading the underground rebellion demanded Gary's aid or his life, he was caught between two untrustful forces. And his only way out was to make himself into a one-man third force against two worlds' plotters.

The Dark Destroyers

They brought a new ice age.

Barnes's engaging debut is one of the first novels in the new Isaac Asimov Presents series published by Congdon & Weed with the cooperation of Davis Publications. The Orbital Republics may be the dominant power in the solar system but political and social forces are moving them toward a war on the Breakaway Confederation of moons and asteroids that barely maintains its independence. The Confederation sees its one slim chance against the OR's overwhelming military might in a diversionary tactic. It therefore sends several agents, including political historian Saul Pareto, down to the backwater colony that Earth has become. Among the harassed farmers of New York's Finger Lakes, Saul quickly foments a revolt but finds himself getting more involved with the people and their cause than he had anticipated. Patterned on the American Revolution complete with Swamp Fox tactics this is a clever novel of ideas in action and their dire consequences.

Alexander the Great ruled the greatest Empire of the ancient world, but he was ruled by his mother, called Olympias. There are as many legends about this powerful Queen as there are of her famous son, and the stories began long before she even met Philip of Macedon. Priestess of the Great Goddess, daughter of ruling house of Epiros, witch, and familiar of Serpents...she was a figure of mystery, fascination, and fear even during her own lifetime. Author Judith Tarr weaves the legends into an intensely romantic fantasy novel set in ancient Greece and Macedon.

The Beyond started with the Stations orbiting the stars nearest Earth. The Great Circle the interstellar freighters traveled was long, but not unmanageable, and the early Stations were emotionally and politically dependent on Mother Earth. The Earth Company which ran this immense operation reaped incalculable profits and influenced the affairs of nations.

Then came Pell, the first station centered around a newly discovered living planet. The discovery of Pell's World forever altered the power balance of the Beyond. Earth was no longer the anchor which kept this vast empire from coming adrift, the one living mote in a sterile universe.

But Pell was just the first living planet. Then came Cyteen, and later others, and a new and frighteningly different society grew in the farther reaches of space. The importance of Earth faded and the Company reaped ever smaller profits as the economic focus of space turned outward. But the powerful Earth Fleet was sitll a presence in the Beyond, and Pell Station was to become the last stronghold in a titanic struggle between the vast, dynamic forces of the rebel Union and those who defended Earth's last, desperate grasp for the stars.

There's one truth on Australia.

You fight or you die.

Usually both.

Imagine a nightmare from which there is no escape.

Seventeen-year-old Chan's ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. They never found one.

This is a hell where no one can hide.

The only life that Chan's ever known is one of violence, of fighting. Of trying to survive.

This is a ship of death, of murderers and cults and gangs.

But there might be a way to escape. In order to find it, Chan must head way down into the darkness - a place of buried secrets, long-forgotten lies, and the abandoned bodies of the dead.

This is Australia.

Seventeen-year-old Chan, fiercely independent and self-sufficient, keeps her head down and lives quietly, careful not to draw attention to herself amidst the violence and disorder. Until the day she makes an extraordinary discovery - a way to return the Australia to Earth. But doing so would bring her to the attention of the fanatics and the murderers who control life aboard the ship, putting her and everyone she loves in terrible danger.

And a safe return to Earth is by no means certain.

It was the kind of story that barely made the news in London.

When 91 year-old Alice Hoffman dies of neglect in her top floor flat on a busy London road, the story is upheld as an example of what has gone wrong with modern society; she slipped through the cracks in a failing system.

But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their doubts. Mrs Hoffman was once a government security expert, even though no-one can quite remember her. When a link emerges between the old lady and a diplomat trying to flee the country, it seems that an impossible murder has been committed.

Mrs Hoffman wasn't alone. Bryant is convinced that other forgotten women with hidden talents are also in danger. And they all own models of London Bridge...

With the help of some of their more certifiable informants, the detectives follow the strangest of clues in an investigation that will lead them through forgotten alleyways to the city's oldest bridge in search of a desperate killer.

Just when the case appears to be solved and exasperated unit chief Raymond Land can retire and rest easy, the detectives discover that Mrs Hoffman was smarter than anyone imagined. There's a bigger game afoot that has more terrible consequences...

It's time to celebrate Bryant and May's twentieth anniversary as their most lunatic case brings death and rebirth to London's most peculiar crimes unit.

I let it go--all of it. Everything I'd been saving up all my life, building and growing inside me, too much to hold in one half-human body. It pushed and fought to be free with a force that turned me into a bomb with a timer vibrating on zero. I was free.

But so was everything I'd fought so hard not to be....

Brothers Cal and Niko Leandros know trouble when they see it--and then proceed to wipe the floor with it. But now it seems their whole world is falling to pieces. Cal's nightmarish monster side is growing ever stronger, changing Cal physically as well as mentally. Which is exactly what Grimm--Cal's savage doppelgänger--wants. And when a covert supernatural organization decides that it's time to put Cal down before he threatens pretty much everything else in existence, the brothers find themselves in a fight they actually might lose. But the dark temptations Cal has denied all his life may prove to be exactly what can save them.

Even if he must fall forever...

In 1942 Hitler led the world's most savage military machine. Stalin ruled Russia while America was just beginning to show its strength in World War II. Then, in Harry Turtledove's brilliantly imagined Worldwar saga, an alien assault changed everything. Nuclear destruction engulfed major cities, and the invaders claimed half the planet before an uneasy peace could be achieved.

A spectacular tale of tyranny and freedom, destruction and hope, Colonization takes us into the tumultuous 1960s, as the reptilian Race ponders its uneasy future. But now a new, even deadlier war threatens. Though the clamoring tribes of Earth play dangerous games of diplomacy, the ultimate power broker will be the Race itself. For the colonists have one option no human can ignore. With a vast, ancient empire already in place, the Race has the power to annihilate every living being on planet Earth...

Awakened from a centuries-long spell of sleep, a warrior woman finds she is now a healer with powerful earth-magic. But the land is now haunted by an evil force which has the strength to alter the very laws of life and death.

Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients' problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control.

Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his own former employer, a racket boss who isn't entirely human. Then there's Caitlin: brilliant, beautiful, and the lethal right hand of a demon prince.

A man named Faust should know what happens when you rub shoulders with demons. Still Daniel can't resist being drawn to Caitlin's flame as they race to unlock the secret of the Etruscan Box, a relic that people all over town are dying -- and killing -- to get their hands on. As the bodies drop and the double-crosses pile up, Daniel will need every shred of his wits, courage and sheer ruthlessness just to survive.

Daniel Faust knew he was standing with one foot over the brink of hell. He's about to find out just how far he can fall.

Daniel Faust's last heist ended with a betrayal, a bullet in his heart, and a plunge from a lonely back-country bridge. Now he's on life support, and the occult relic keeping him tethered to this world is counting down the last seconds to midnight.

That's the good news. The bad news is, he just woke up in hell.

Marooned, lost, and hunted in an endless city of the damned, Daniel is racing against time. If he can't make it back to his body before the clock runs out, he'll be trapped in the netherworld forever. A host of enemies stand in his way. Some are desperate to silence him. Others, ghosts etched in blood and gun-smoke, are hungry for payback. Hell is the one place where you can never outrun your past.

And in the land of the living, Daniel's family and crew gather to mount a desperate defense around his hospital bed as assassins close in from all sides. Survival will take a miracle, but this magician might have one last trick up his sleeve.

Lois Lane has settled in to her new school. She has friends, for maybe the first time in her life. She has a job that challenges her. And her friendship is growing with SmallvilleGuy, her online maybe-more-than-a-friend. But when her friend Maddy's twin collapses in a part of town she never should've been in, Lois finds herself embroiled in a dangerous mystery that brings her closer to the dirty underbelly of Metropolis.

The nuclear cataclysm that maimed America altered the rules of existence. The new reality guarantees a grim battle for survival, but the higher human instinct to exist in peace and good will lives on. Legends endure and Ryan Cawdor is a warrior of his time. When the good fight needs to be won, Ryan and his band take a stand.

In the nuke-altered region of the Great Lakes, Ryan and his group face the spectrum--from the idyllic to the horrific--of a world reborn. Close to enclaves of peace and sanctuary, Deathlands' most distorted spawn of humanity, cannibals, spread terror. Against the battered shoreline of Lake Michigan, an encounter with an old friend leads to a battle to save Milwaukee from a force of deadly mutant interlopers--and to liberate one of their own.

Jolon Gallamor was being hunted by the same inter-galactic hunters who had slain his father. Behind him lay certain death. Ahead of him lay a universe teeming with pirates, slavers, tyrants & warriors, where all law & order had broken down, & survival was only for the fittest. Jolon Gallamor had a mother wit & an acting skill that let him play a different role on every planet. He had a strange store of knowledge from the nearly forgotten past that he used to his bizarre advantage. And he had an implacable enemy coming closer & closer as Jolon moved ever outward in space toward the point of no return.

AKA: Stardrift

Across the room, in a high-backed leather chair, Victoria saw the old man from the reading room. His face was curiously young for someone so long dead.

In 1966, the Doctor defeated the Great Intelligence, but he knew it wasn't a final victory. And his companion Victoria, whose mind had once hosted the evil entity, might still fall prey to its power.

Now it seems that his fears are justified. In a Tibetan monastery, the monks display unearthly powers -- UNIT are investigating. A new university has opened in London with a secret agenda that may threaten the whole country. Victoria, abandoned in an age very different from her own, and haunted by visions of a father she refuses to believe is dead, is slipping into despair and madness. But are the visions which plague her really hallucinations? Or has the Great Intelligence once again made Earth its target for invasion?

Award-winning author Simon Morden joins Gollancz with a stunning SF quest across a vast world that mirrors every London ever built.

Instead of fire, there was water.

A wave slapped through the open doorway, and a gust of wind blew into the smoke-filled corridor, dragging a spiral of soot outwards and away.

MARY. One slip away from prison, fighting to build herself a future from nothing.

DALIP. The gentle son of a warrior tradition. A young man who must fight for independence from his family.

STANISLAV. A fierce and capable man carrying the wounds of a brutal war.

They left London in flames for a place where everything was different. A place that can uncover your secrets.

A place haunted by a man called Crows...

Let's face it, none of us deserve to be saved. None of us are wiser, smarter, stronger or prettier than all those we watch die. Whatever criteria Down uses, how worthy we are doesn't come into it.

Since escaping London's inferno, Mary and Dalip have fought monsters and won - though in the magical world of Down, the most frightening monsters come from within. Now they hold the greatest of treasures: maps that reveal the way to the White City, where they can find the answers they're looking for and learn the secrets of Down. But to get there they must rely on Crows, who has already betrayed them at every turn.

As they battle their way towards the one place in all of Down without magic, they must ask themselves how far they will go to find their way home. After all, if there's one thing the White City offers those brave enough to enter, it's more than they bargained for.

Simon Morden's Down Station was an extraordinary quest for meaning and identity. Now he's leading us to the kind of truths that leave us changed.

On The Path Toward Greatness, Every Hero Makes a Choice

Legends sing of Sir Gawain, one of the most respected warriors of King Arthur's reign and one of the greatest champions of all time. But this is not that story. This is the story of Gwalchmai, middle son of the beautiful, infinitely evil sorceress Morgawse, and gifted student of her dark magical arts. A story of an uncertain man, doubting his ability to follow his elder brother's warrior prowess and seeking to find his own identity by bonding with his frightening and powerful mother. Disappointed in himself and despised by his father, Gwalchmai sets out on a journey that will lead him to the brink of darkness...

A tale of loss, redemption, and adventure, Hawk of May brings new depth and understanding to Sir Gawain, the legend of King Arthur, and the impact of choices made-and the consequences that follow.

On the path toward greatness, even a hero makes mistakes.

Armed with his magical sword and otherworldly horse, Gwalchmai proves himself the most feared and faithful warrior of Arthur's noble followers. But while defending the kingdom, he commits a grave offense against the woman he loves, leading her to disappear from his life and haunt his memories.

With his trusted servant, Rhys, a commonsense peasant, Gwalchmai tries to find her in the Kingdom of Summer, where Arthur has sent him. But an unexpected and most malevolent force of evil and darkness is loose-that of his mother, the witch-queen Morgawse-and Gwalchmai finds that the secrets of his past may deny him peace...

In the second book of Gillian Bradshaw's critically acclaimed trilogy, Sir Gawain comes to life as Gwalchmai, startlingly human yet fantastically heroic.

Vows broken... Friendships betrayed... The fate of heroes finally revealed...

As powerful enemies attack the throne from inside the kingdom, Arthur, his queen, and his greatest warrior Gwalchmai will be put to the ultimate test. Never faltering in her loyalty to the king, Gwynhwyfar has stood at Arthur's side through rebellion and war. But one desperate decision could cost her all they've built. With the kingdom crumbling around them, following the Queen's heart could be the greatest threat of all...

A deliciously terrifying mash-up of horror, fantasy, thriller and satire: Saw crossed with Fight Club, with an extra shot of adrenaline!

Dan is an angsty emo-kid who works in a deadly dull shopping mall. He hates his job.

Rhoda is a junkie whose babysitting charge ran off while she was scoring cocaine. She hates her life. Rhoda bullies Dan into helping her search, but as they explore the neon-lit corridors behind the mall, disturbing text messages lure them into the bowels of the building, where old mannequins are stored in grave-like piles and raw sewage drips off the ceiling. The only escape is down.

Plummeting into the earth in a disused service lift playing head-splitting Musak, Dan and Rhoda enter a sinister underworld that mirrors their worst fears. They finally escape, but something feels different. Why are the shoppers all pumped full of silicone? Why are the shop assistants chained to their counters? And why is a café called McColon's selling lumps of bleeding meat?

Just when they think they've made it back to the mall, they realize the nightmare has only just begun...

Lisa is a plastic surgery addict with severe self-esteem issues. The only hospital that will let her go under the knife is New Hope: a grimy, grey-walled facility dubbed 'No Hope' by its patients.

Farrell is a celebrity photographer. His last memory is a fight with his fashion-model girlfriend and now he's woken up in No Hope, alone. Needle marks criss-cross his arms. A sinister nurse keeps tampering with his drip. And he's woken up blind...

Panicked and disorientated, Farrell persuades Lisa to help him escape, but the hospital's dimly lit corridors only take them deeper underground - into a twisted mirror world staffed by dead-eyed nurses and doped-up orderlies. Down here, in the Modification Ward, Lisa can finally have the face she wants... but at a price that will haunt them both forever.

Don't mess with the creepy new girl

Ryan Devlin, a predator with a past, has been forced to take a job as a handyman at an exclusive private school, Crossley College. He's losing his battle to suppress his growing fascination with a new girl who seems to have a strange effect on the children around her.

Tara Marais fills her empty days by volunteering at Crossley's library. Tara is desperate, but unable, to have a baby of her own, so she makes Reborns--eerily lifelike newborn dolls. She's delighted when she receives a commission from the mysterious "Vader Batiss," but horrified when she sees the photograph of the baby she's been asked to create. Still, she agrees to Batiss's strange contract, unaware of the consequences if she fails to deliver the doll on time.

Both Tara and Ryan are being drawn into a terrifying scheme, one that will have an impact on every pupil at Crossley College.

THE DEPARTED HAVE ARRIVED.

The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen, and the living are under attack. The powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. Enter Chess Putnam, a fully tattooed witch and freewheeling ghost hunter. She's got a real talent for banishing the wicked dead. But Chess is keeping a dark secret: She owes a lot of money to a murderous drug lord named Bump, who wants immediate payback in the form of a dangerous job that involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in lust for a rival gang leader and a dangerous attraction to Bump's ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.

ENEMIES DON'T NEED TO BE ALIVE TO BE DEADLY.

For Chess Putnam, finding herself near-fatally poisoned by a con psychic and then stopping a murderous ghost is just another day on the job. As an agent of the Church of Real Truth, Chess must expose those looking to profit from the world's unpleasant little poltergeist problem--humans filing false claims of hauntings--all while staving off any undead who really are looking for a kill. But Chess has been extra busy these days, coping with a new "celebrity" assignment while trying on her own time to help some desperate prostitutes.

IT'S A THIN LINE BETWEEN ALIVE AND UNDEAD.

Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess's bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.

Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city's most notorious crime boss--and Chess's drug dealer--gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn't bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he's not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity.

Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths, First Elders, and a lot of seriously nasty magic--all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man Chess can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.

READING, WRITING, AND RAISING THE DEAD

When Chess Putnam is ordered by an infamous crime boss--who also happens to be her drug dealer--to use her powers as a witch to solve a grisly murder involving dark magic, she knows she must rise to the challenge. Adding to the intensity: Chess's boyfriend, Terrible, doesn't trust her, and Lex, the son of a rival crime lord, is trying to reignite the sparks between him and Chess.

Plus there's the little matter of Chess's real job as a ghost hunter for the Church of Real Truth, investigating reports of a haunting at a school in the heart of Downside. Someone seems to be taking a crash course in summoning the dead--and if Chess doesn't watch her back, she may soon be joining their ranks.

As Chess is drawn into a shadowy world of twisted secrets and dark violence, it soon becomes clear that she's not going to emerge from its depths without making the ultimate sacrifice.

A DEADLY HIGH

Magic-wielding Churchwitch and secret addict Chess Putnam knows better than anyone just how high a price people are willing to pay for a chemical rush. But when someone with money to burn and a penchant for black magic starts tampering with Downside's drug supply, Chess realizes that the unlucky customers are paying with their souls--and taking the innocent with them, as the magic-infused speed compels them to kill in the most gruesome ways possible.

As if the streets weren't scary enough, the looming war between the two men in her life explodes, taking even more casualties and putting Chess squarely in the middle. Downside could become a literal ghost town if Chess doesn't find a way to stop both the war and the dark wave of death-magic, and the only way to do that is to use both her addiction and her power to enter the spell and chase the magic all the way back to its malevolent source. Too bad that doing so will probably kill Chess--if the war doesn't first destroy the man who's become her reason for living.

How far can a hero fall? Far enough to lose his soul?

Dhamon Grimwulf, once a Hero of the Heart, has sunk into a bitter life of crime and squalor. Now, as the great dragon overlords of the Fifth Age coldly plot to strengthen their rule and to destroy their enemies, he must somehow find the will to redeem himself. But perhaps it is too late.

Downfall marks the return of Dhamon and other characters from author Jean Rabe's bestselling Dragons of a New Age trilogy.

Despite not having been published outside of Australia, Dreaming Down-Under won the 1999 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, and stories from its pages have appeared in many Year's Best anthologies. Now we in this hemisphere can enjoy this excellent anthology without a round-the-globe trip.

Internationally acclaimed author Harlan Ellison recently declared that this is the Golden Age of Australian Science Fiction. Dreaming Down-Under showcases this Golden Age with thirty-one exciting original stories by both acknowledged masters and hot new writers from--where else?--Down-Under.

Table of Contents:

• What Stands for a Preface - essay by Harlan Ellison
• Introduction - essay by Jack Dann and Janeen Webb
• Entre les Beaux Morts en Vie (Among the Beautiful Living Dead) - novelette by Sean Williams
• The Dancing Floor - novelette by Cherry Wilder
• Descent - short story by Cecily Scutt
• The Soldier in the Machine - novelette by Russell Blackford
• Matilda Told Such Dreadful Lies - short story by Lucy Sussex
• The Womb - novelette by Damien Broderick
• A Walk-On Part in the War - short story by Stephen Dedman
• Wired Dreaming - short story by Paul Collins
• The Body Politic - short story by Tess Williams
• The Truth About Weena - novelette by David J. Lake
• The Marsh Runners - short story by Paul Brandon
• Prelude to a Nocturne - novelette by Rowena Cory Lindquist
• Real Men - short story by Rosaleen Love
• The Latest Dream I Ever Dreamed - short story by Norman Talbot
• Ma Rung - short story by Steven Paulsen
• Dream, Until God Burns - short story by Andrew Enstice
• Night of the Wandjina - short story by Wynne Whiteford
• To Avalon - short story by Jane Routley
• He Tried to Catch the Light - novelette by Terry Dowling
• The Third Rail - short story by Aaron Sterns
• Jetsam - short story by Kerry Greenwood
• And Now Doth Time Waste Me - novella by George Turner
• Afterword (to "And Now Doth Time Waste Me" in Dreaming Down-Under) - essay by Judith Raphael Buckrich
• Afterword (to "And Now Doth Time Waste Me" in Dreaming Down-Under) - essay by Bruce Gillespie
• The Man Who Lost His Shadow - short story by Isobelle Carmody
• Unborn Again - short story by Chris Lawson
• The Evil Within - novelette by Sara Douglass
• Two Recipes for Magic Beans - short story by Rosaleen Love
• The Doppelgänger Effect - short story by Dirk Strasser
• Tamed - short story by Robert Hood
• Queen of Soulmates - novelette by Sean McMullen
• The Last Dance - short story by Ian Nichols
• With Clouds at Our Feet - short story by Simon Brown

Following the World Fantasy Award-winning Dreaming Down-Under, acclaimed editor Jack Dann gathers thirty-five of the best and brightest in a golden age of Australian fiction to pen fantastic new tales to shock, astound, and delight. The outstanding bestselling authors include Garth Nix, Terry Dowling, Sean McMullen, Kim Wilkins, Sara Douglass, A. Bertram Chandler, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Stephen Dedman, Trudi Canavan, John Birmingham, Margo Lanagan, Janeen Webb, Isobelle Carmody, and many others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2008) - essay by Jack Dann
• Old Friends - (2008) - short story by Garth Nix
• A Guided Tour in the Kingdom of the Dead - (2008) - short story by Richard Harland
• This Is My Blood - (2008) - novelette by Chris Lynch and Ben Francisco
• Nightship - (2008) - short story by Kim Westwood
• The Fooly - (2008) - short story by Terry Dowling
• Neverland Blues - (2008) - short story by Adam Browne
• The Jacaranda Wife - (2008) - short story by Angela Slatter
• The Constant Past - (2008) - short story by Sean McMullen
• The Forest - (2008) - short story by Kim Wilkins
• Robots & Zombies, Inc. - (2008) - short story by Lucy Sussex
• This Way to the Exit - (2008) - novelette by Sara Douglass
• Grimes and the Gaijin Daimyo - (2008) - short story by A. Bertram Chandler
• Afterword (Grimes and the Gaijin Daimyo) - (2008) - essay by Paul Collins
• Lure - (2008) - short story by Paul Collins
• Empire - (2008) - novelette by Simon Brown
• Lakeside - (2008) - short story by Christopher Green
• Trolls' Night Out - (2008) - short story by Jenny Blackford
• The Rest Is Silence - (2008) - short story by Aaron Sterns
• Smoking, Waiting for the Dawn - (2008) - short story by Jason Nahrung
• The Lanes of Camberwell - (2008) - novelette by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
• Lost Arts - (2008) - novelette by Stephen Dedman
• Undead Camels Ate Their Flesh - (2008) - short story by Jason Fischer
• Europa - (2008) - short story by Cecily Scutt
• Riding on the Q-Ball - (2008) - short story by Rosaleen Love
• In from the Snow - (2008) - short story by Lee Battersby
• The Lost Property Room - (2008) - short story by Trudi Canavan
• Heere Be Monsters - (2008) - novelette by John Birmingham
• Purgatory - (2008) - short story by Rowena Cory Daniells
• Manannan's Children - (2008) - novelette by Russell Blackford
• The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross - (2008) - short story by Margo Lanagan
• Twilight in Caeli-Amur - (2008) - short story by Rjurik Davidson
• Paradise Design'd - (2008) - short story by Janeen Webb
• The New Deal - (2008) - short story by Trent Jamieson
• Conquist - (2008) - short story by Dirk Strasser
• The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga - (2008) - short story by Peter M. Ball
• Perchance to Dream - (2008) - novelette by Isobelle Carmody
• About the Editor - (2008) - essay by uncredited

World Fantasy Award-winning anthology

A celebration of Australia's current Golden Age of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magical realism. Jack Dann the multi-award-winning author and co-editor of the classic Dreaming Down-Under, the anthology that has been credited with putting Australian writing on the international map and the first Australian book to win a World Fantasy Award, has collected a wonderfully eclectic range of short fiction that showcases what our best fantasists are doing right now at this genre-bending moment in time.

Table of Contents:

• Welcome to the Golden Age: An Introduction of Sorts - (2016) - essay by Jack Dann
• Sing, My Murdered Darlings - (2016) - short story by Sean Williams
• Falling Angel - (2016) - short story by Paul Brandon
• Martian Triptych - (2016) - short story by James Bradley
• Northerner's Farewell - (2016) - short story by Rjurik Davidson
• Midnight in the Graffiti Tunnel - (2016) - short story by Terry Dowling
• A Right Pretty Mate - (2016) - short story by Lisa L. Hannett
• Eromon No More - (2016) - short story by Jason Nahrung
• Luv Story - (2016) - short story by Kim Westwood
• The Luminarium Tower - (2016) - short story by Sean McMullen
• Neither Time nor Tears - (2016) - short story by Angela Slatter
• His Shining Day - (2016) - short story by Richard Harland
• The Liquid Palace - (2016) - short story by Adam Browne
• Heat Treatment - (2016) - short story by Venero Armanno
• Snowflakes All the Way Down - (2016) - short story by Rosaleen Love
• Served Cold - (2016) - novelette by Alan Baxter
• The Dog Who'd Been Dead - (2016) - short story by Anna Tambour
• Fade to Grey - (2016) - short story by Janeen Webb
• All Those Superpowers and What Are They Good For? - (2016) - short story by Garth Nix
• Burnt Sugar - (2016) - novelette by Kirstyn McDermott
• In Hornhead Wood - (2016) - short story by Kim Wilkins
• Moonshine - (2016) - novelette by Simon Brown

Furnace Penitentiary: The world's most secure prison for young offenders, buried a mile beneath the earth's surface. Convicted of a murder he didn't commit, sentenced to life without parole, "new fish" Alex Sawyer knows he has two choices: find a way out, or resign himself to a death behind bars, in the darkness at the bottom of the world. Except in Furnace, death is the least of his worries. Soon Alex discovers that the prision is a place of pure evil, where inhuman creatures in gas masks stalk the corridors at night, where giants in black suits drag screaming inmates into the shadows, where deformed beasts can be heard howling from the blood-drenched tunnels below. And behind everything is the mysterious, all powerful warden, a man as cruel and dangerous as the devil himself, whose unthinkable acts have consequences that stretch far beyond the walls of the prison.

Together with a bunch of inmates - some innocent kids who have been framed. Others cold-blooded killers - Alex plans an escape. But as he starts to uncover the truth about Furnace's deeper, darker purpose, Alex's actions grow ever more dangerous, and he must risk everything to expose this nightmare that's hidden from the eyes of the world.

In a fort on the edge of civilization, an ancient evil has awoken

Ten years after the Demon War, the wounds of the Forest Kingdom are finally beginning to heal. Deep in the Darkwood, on the border between two long-feuding territories, a fort has been erected to keep the peace. But a month ago, the soldiers inside stopped speaking to the outside world. Have they come under attack, or is something more sinister at work?

Led by the adventure-hungry warrior Duncan MacNeil, a party of Rangers is sent to investigate. With a witch, a swordsman, and a powerful eight-fingered woman at his side, MacNeil steps into the deserted fort—and discovers a massacre. The gory scene suggests that the soldiers turned on one other, but the witch has an alternate theory. Beneath this newly built fort, she senses an ancient evil, a power older than the Kingdom itself, about to trap them in the dark.

The Dark Knight Must Choose: Justice or Vengeance

Watchman by day, vigilante by night, Shadowbane's world is turned upside down when he runs across a powerful wizard--in the form of a confused, hunted girl who finds herself at the heart of a fell plot. When his friends start dying and the girl is kidnapped, Shadowbane must choose between the darkness and the light in his heart: to avenge the deaths of his friends, or to let the villain live to face--and possibly escape--justice.

Downshadow is thrilling tale of vigilante justice set in the classic City of Splendors and presented by Forgotten Realms campaign setting creator and celebrated author Ed Greenwood. You don't want to miss out on this exciting glimpse into what the latest edition of the Realms has to offer.

Crown princess. Clever spy. Powerful mind magier. Gemma Ripley of Andvari is all those things--and determined to stop an enemy from using magical tearstone weapons to conquer her kingdom.

Gemma's quest for answers leads her to a trade Summit between the various kingdoms. Among the other royals in attendance is Queen Maeven Morricone of Morta and her son, Prince Leonidas--Gemma's charming and dangerous nemesis.

Gemma knows that Maeven always has a long game in motion, and sure enough, the cunning queen invokes an arcane tradition that threatens the fragile truce between Andvari and the other kingdoms. Despite her best intentions, Gemma once again finds herself thrown together with Leo and battling her growing feelings for the enemy prince.

When a series of deadly attacks shatters the Summit's peaceful negotiations, Gemma realizes that someone wants to tear the royals down from their thrones--and that this enemy just might succeed.

After being shot in the back and dying - again - Harper's recovery has been hard. She's lost many of the powers she'd acquired since first becoming a Greywalker, and knows that if she dies one more time, she won't be coming back. Her only respite from the chaos is her work... until she sees a ghostly car accident for which there are no records. Worse still, the victim of the fatal wreck insists he was murdered, and that the nearby community of Sunset Lakes - called 'Blood Lake' by locals - is to blame.

The picturesque area is an unlikely a haven for conspiracy but Harper soon learns that the icy waters of the lake hide a terrible power and a host of hellish beings. And both are held under the thrall of a sinister cabal that will use the darkest of arts to achieve their fiendish ends...

In a surprise attack that killed many of her dearest subjects, Hail Bristol, empress of Indrana, has been captured by the Shen -- the most ruthless and fearsome aliens humanity has ever encountered. As she plots her escape, the centuries-long war between her captors and the Farians, their mortal enemies and Indrana's oldest allies, finally comes to a head.

When her captors reveal a shocking vision of the future, Hail must make the unexpectedly difficult decision she's been avoiding: whether to back the Shen or the Farians.

Staying neutral is no longer an option. Will Hail fight? Or will she fall?

The Last Policeman received the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original--along with plenty of glowing reviews.

Now Detective Hank Palace returns in Countdown City, the second volume of the Last Policeman trilogy. There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over... until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.

Brett Cavatone disappeared without a trace—an easy feat in a world with no phones, no cars, and no way to tell whether someone’s gone "bucket list" or just gone. With society falling to shambles, Hank pieces together what few clues he can, on a search that leads him from a college-campus-turned-anarchist-encampment to a crumbling coastal landscape where anti-immigrant militia fend off "impact zone" refugees.

Countdown City presents another fascinating mystery set on brink of an apocalypse--and once again, Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond "whodunit." What do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing all around you?

THE SAFETY OF INTECH'S RESIDENTS IS PARAMOUNT.
INSURRECTION WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

Tanta and Cole may have stopped the mass murder of InTech's residents, but the cost was severe. Despite their efforts, Harlow 2.0 - the update to InTech's mind-based operating system - fed out. Now its citizens are compliant zombies, and Tanta and her crew are trapped underground.

All except for Fliss, who has no system to update. She alone can go outside, and it's Fliss the crew are relying on to help get them out.

For only then can they dismantle the damage Harlow 2.0 has done. If Tanta, Cole and InTech's residents are to truly be free, it needs to be destroyed. But Tanta knows that task will put her on a collision course with the corporation that raised her, her oldest friends, and the woman who was once her soulmate.

And this last mission might ask more of her than she's able to give.

The fate of the wild fairies that inhabit the modern world lies in the hands of a young Toronto fiddler named Johnny Faw and a handful of human and not-so-human companions in the newest contemporary fantasty by the author of Moonheart. This sequel to Jack the Giant-Killer amply displays de Lint's innate charm and compelling storytelling.

The year is 2062, and after years on the run, Jenny Casey is back in the Canadian armed forces. Those who were once her enemies are now her allies, and at fifty, she's been handpicked for the most important mission of her life-a mission for which her artificially reconstructed body is perfectly suited. With the earth capable of sustaining life for just another century, Jenny-as pilot of the starship Montreal-must discover brave new worlds. And with time running out, she must succeed where others have failed.

Now Jenny is caught in a desperate battle where old resentments become bitter betrayals and justice takes the cruelest forms of vengeance. With the help of a brilliant AI, an ex—crime lord, and the man she loves, Jenny may just get her chance to save the world. If it doesn't come to an end first…

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 1999. The story can also be found in the anthology The Time Traveler's Almanac (2014), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Counting Up, Counting Down (2002).

This new anthology contains 20 original horror stories, 16 of which have been commissioned from some of the top names in the genre, and 4 of which have been selected from the 100s of stories sent to Flame Tree during a 2-week open submissions window. It is the first of what will hopefully become an annual, non-themed horror anthology of entirely original stories, showcasing the very best short fiction that the genre has to offer.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (After Sundown) - essay by Mark Morris
• 3 - Butterfly Island - short story by C. J. Tudor
• 20 - Research - short story by Tim Lebbon
• 34 - Swanskin - short story by Alison Littlewood
• 46 - That's the Spirit - short story by Sarah Lotz
• 61 - Gave - short story by Michael Bailey
• 76 - Wherever You Look - short story by Ramsey Campbell
• 88 - Same Time Next Year - short story by Angela Slatter
• 94 - Mine Seven - short story by Elana Gomel
• 108 - It Doesn't Feel Right - short story by Michael Marshall Smith
• 123 - Creeping Ivy - short story by Laura Purcell
• 134 - Last Rites for the Fourth World - short story by Rick Cross
• 148 - We All Come Home - short story by Simon Bestwick
• 161 - The Importance of Oral Hygiene - short story by Robert Shearman
• 177 - Bokeh - short story by Thana Niveau
• 189 - Murder Board - short story by Grady Hendrix
• 209 - Alice's Rebellion - short story by John Langan
• 218 - The Mirror House - short story by Jonathan Robbins Leon
• 233 - The Naughty Step - short story by Stephen Volk
• 249 - A Hotel in Germany - short story by Catriona Ward
• 266 - Branch Line - novelette by Peter Finch

Hugo-nominated Novella

"Countdown" is the first novella set in the world of Feed, and tracks the early days of the Rising, from well-meaning medical research to the dead beginning to walk. Meet the accidental creators of the zombie apocalypse, and ask yourself for the first time: When will you Rise?

The year is 2014, the year everything changed. We cured cancer. We cured the common cold. We died.

This is the story of how we rose.

Republished in 2012 by Subterranean Press as When Will You Rise? Stories to End the World, including the unrelated Mira Grant short story, "Apocalypse Scenario #683: The Box".

Tired of life on the ground, Lieutenant Nicole Shea is delighted when she is asked to join the crew of the Starswift, the controversial first joint human-alien mission into space.

Best-selling author Neal Asher was far from idle during the isolation of lockdown; he kept himself occupied in the best way possible: he wrote. And his imagination was clearly in overdrive. Five brand new novellas and novelettes and one novella reworked and expanded from a story first published in 2019. Together, they form Lockdown Tales, exploring the latter days of the Polity universe and beyond. What lies in wait for humanity after the Polity has gone?

Six stories, 150,000 words of fiction that crackle with energy, invention and excitement. Within their pages you will encounter prador, hoopers, sassy A.I.s, resurrected Golem, a mutated giant whelk that can ravage an island, hooders, megalomaniacs, war drones, Penny Royal, an intriguing sfnal take on High Planes Drifter and another with echoes of Robinson Crusoe... In fact, everything you might expect from concentrated Neal Asher and more.

Table of Contents:

• An Introduction (Lockdown Tales) - essay
• The Relict - [Polity Universe] - short fiction
• Monitor Logan - [Polity Universe] - novella
• Bad Boy - [Polity Universe] - short fiction
• Plenty - [Polity Universe] - short fiction
• Dr. Whip - [Polity Universe] - short fiction
• Raising Moloch - [Polity Universe] - short fiction

Lila Black faces her greatest challenge yet as she takes herself, her dead lover, and the AI in her head into death’s realm...

Lila Black is now a shape-shifting machine plugged into the Signal—the total dataset of all events in the known universe and all potential events; Zal, the elf rock star with a demon soul, is now a shadow form animated and given material actualization by firelight; Teazle the demon has taken up the swords of Death and is on the way to becoming an angel. To say this puts some pressure on their three-way marriage is an understatement.

Meanwhile the human world is seeing an inexplicable influx of the returning dead, and they’re not the only ones. Many old evils are returning to haunt the living following three harbingers of destruction created in the ancient past.

What seems epic is revealed as personal to all concerned as events unfold and that which cannot be escaped must be faced. Heroic destinies unravel as greater powers reveal themselves the true masters of the game.

At long last, an extraterrestrial civilization reached out and made the First Contact. However, no one on Earth took their communique for the genuine article. In a similar vein, very few people appreciated just how little time our new suzerains had promised to keep our planet safe. Regardless, the end of their message showed humankind how to access a mysterious game.

The objective of this game is unclear. No one can say where its servers are located, and its inner workings are beyond comprehension. But the game slowly gained momentum, pulling in more and more players. Soon enough, it became impossible to ignore the fact that things that happened in the game had a direct impact on our reality. And not only ours... But as people figure out this mysterious game, the countdown timer ticks away. And no one can say exactly what will happen when Earth's safety is no longer guaranteed.

The surviving crew of the USS Da Vinci must try to recover from their devastating mission to Galan VI. Corsi returns home to try to mend a long-standing rift with her father; while Abramowitz becomes embroiled in a complex problem on a mysterious alien world. But Commander Gomez faces the most difficult test of all: how can she deal with her grief at the death of Lieutenant Commander Duffy?

Contents:

• 1 - Home Fires - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 25] - novella by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore
• 87 - Age of Unreason - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 26] - novella by Scott Ciencin
• 141 - Balance of Nature - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 27] - novella by Heather Jarman
• 245 - Breakdowns - [Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers - 28] - novella by Keith R. A. DeCandido
• 305 - About the Authors (Breakdowns) - essay by uncredited

When renegade Federation starships begin wreaking destruction across the Alpha Quadrant, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise are shocked to discover that the mastermind behind this sudden threat is none other than Picard's protégé and friend: Admiral William T. Riker. The newly minted admiral is on board the U.S.S. Aventine as part of a special assignment, even as the mystery deepens behind his involvement in the growing crisis. But the Aventine is helmed by Captain Ezri Dax--someone who is no stranger to breaking Starfleet regulations--and her starship is by far the faster vessel... and Riker cannot yield even to his former mentor. It's a battle of tactical geniuses and a race against time as Picard struggles to find answers before the quadrant's great powers violently retaliate against the Federation...

Set before the events of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, this new novel is a thrilling follow-up to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis.

It's kill or be killed in the space penitentiary that houses the galaxy's worst criminals, where convicts face off in gladiatorial combat while an underworld gambling empire reaps the profits of the illicit blood sport. But the newest contender in this savage arena, as demonic to behold as he is deadly to challenge, is fighting for more than just survival. His do-or-die mission, for the dark masters he serves, is to capture the ultimate weapon: an object that will enable the Sith to conquer the galaxy.

Sith lords Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious are determined to possess the prize. And one of the power-hungry duo has his own treacherous plans for it. But first, their fearsome apprentice must take on a bloodthirsty prison warden, a cannibal gang, cutthroat crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and an unspeakable alien horror. No one else could brave such a gauntlet of death and live. But no one else is the dreaded dark-side disciple known as Darth Maul.

In this third and final volume of the Corellian trilogy, Han and Luke lead the Alliance in a mad scramble against the Selonian rebels for control of the planetary technology.

When a loyalist ship approaching Selonia is blasted out of space, Han Solo quickly realizes that rebel forces are turning planetary repulsors into weapons of immense destruction. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker and Lando Calrissian manage to discover the terrifying secret of Centerpoint Station. It is the infamous Starbuster itself, and its next programmed nova, hard-wired in, is set to annihilate a chosen star, its inhabited worlds, and millions of innocent lives. There's only one way to stop it: blow up the station. But as a massive rebel fleet closes in on Centerpoint, Han, Luke, and their friends will discover time is running out.

Then the true leaders of the rebellion reveal their identities and issue their final ultimatum: The New Republic must withdraw all claim to power over the entire Corellian sector. With the future of Corellian freedom at stake, Han and those loyal to the Republic must somehow resist. But how can they possibly stop the deadliest weapon the galaxy has ever known?

Starstream!

A great interstellar migration has begun, down the grand, ethereal highway known as the starstream--from the remnant of the Betelgeuse supernova to the center of the Milky Way. Who could have predicted the wonders of the starstream, or the perils it would unleash--including the Throgs, shadowy beings of n-space that seem to understand only death and destruction? But life goes on, dangers or no, and colonists pour down the starstream seeking new worlds. Aboard starship Charity are many such colonists, including one Claudi Melnik, a child of uncommon talents--and an AI named Jeaves, with purposes of his own. When the unthinkable occurs, Claudi must face alone the challenge of the Throgs. And no one, not even Jeaves, could have predicted the final confrontation--or imagined where unexpected allies would be found.

In the aftermath of the supervolcano's eruption in Yellowstone Park, North America is covered in ash. Farmlands cannot produce food. Machinery has been rendered useless. Cities are no longer habitable. And the climate across the globe grows colder every day.

Former police officer Colin Ferguson's family is spread across the United States, separated by the catastrophe and struggling to survive as the nation attempts to recover and reestablish some measure of civilization....

Now that she's solved her sister's murder, Hallie Michaels has left the army and isn't sure what to do next. Her relationship with deputy Boyd Davies is tentative, there's still distance between her and her father, and she needs a job. The good news is, she hasn't seen a ghost in weeks.

All that changes when she gets a call asking her to help an elderly neighbor who is being stalked by black dogs, creatures from the underworld that are harbingers of death. When a black dog appears, Hallie learns, a reaper is sure to follow. And if the dark visions she's suddenly receiving are any indication, it looks like the reaper is now following her.

Meanwhile, strange events herald the arrival of ghosts from Boyd's past, ghosts the young deputy isn't ready to face. Refusing Hallie's help, Boyd takes off to deal with the problem on his own, only to find that he's facing something much larger and more frightening than he'd imagined.

Stalked by a reaper and plagued by dark visions, Hallie finds she must face her fears and travel into Death's own realm to save those she most loves.

War machines and AI gods run amok...

WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT

WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND

WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK

When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to life: its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he's seen. He's run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines.

The Archive Undying, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies.

Come get in the robot.

The dreamers walk among us... and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming - they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives - they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.
And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer... and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed....

In Charles Stross's novel The Atrocity Archive and its sequels, the "Laundry" is a secret British agency responsible for keeping dark interdimensional entitities from destroying the cosmos and, not incidentally, the human race. The battles with creatures from beyond time are dangerous; however, it's the subsequent bureaucratic paperwork that actually breaks men's souls. Now, in "Down on the Farm," Laundry veteran Bob Howard must investigate strange doings at another obscure, moth-eaten government agency--evidently a rest home for Laundry agents whose minds have snapped...

Charles Stross is the Hugo-winning author of some of the most acclaimed novels and stories of the last ten years, including Singularity Sky, Accelerando, Halting State, the "Merchant Princes" series beginning with The Family Trade, and the story collections Toast and Wireless. In 2010, his Laundry story "Overtime," published on Tor, is a finalist for science fiction's Hugo Award.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In the aftermath of Gettysburg, the 35th Regiment of the Union Army were pulled through a time warp, leaving them stranded in a strange alien world. Now it's time for exploration - and to discover a way to survive.

Fleeing from justice across the ancient dust-oceans of Mars, Brant had no way of knowing that he was running toward the most fantastic adventure any man had ever lived!

Symir -- the Drowning City. home to exiles and expatriates, pirates and smugglers. And violent revolutionaries who will stop at nothing to overthrow the corrupt Imperial government.

For Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and spy, the brewing revolution is a chance to prove herself to her crown. All she has to do is find and finance the revolutionaries, and help topple the palaces of Symir. But she is torn between her new friends and her duties, and the longer she stays in this monsoon-drenched city, the more intrigue she uncovers -- even the dead are plotting.

As the waters rise and the dams crack, Isyllt must choose between her mission and the city she came to save.

Death is no stranger in the city of Erisín-- but some deaths attract more attention than others.

When a prostitute dies carrying a royal signet, Isyllt Iskaldur, necromancer and agent of the Crown, is called to investigate. Her search leads to desecrated tombs below the palace, and the lightless vaults of the vampiric vrykoloi deep beneath the city. But worse things than vampires are plotting in Erisín...

As a sorcerous plague sweeps the city and demons stalk the streets, Isyllt must decide who she's prepared to betray, before the city built on bones falls into blood and fire.

With her master dead and her oaths foresworn, necromancer and spy Isyllt Iskaldur finds herself in exile. Hounded by assassins, she seeks asylum in Assar, the empire she so recently worked to undermine.

Warlords threaten the empire's fragile peace, and the empress is beset by enemies within the court. Even worse, darkness stirs in the deep desert. Ancient spirits long held captive are waking - spirits that can destroy Assar faster than any army.

Accompanied by an outcast jinn, Isyllt must travel into the heart of the desert to lay the darkness there to rest once more. But her sympathies are torn between the captive spirits and the order of mages sworn to bind them. And whichever choice she makes could raze the empire to dust.

For thousands of years the Sontarans and the Rutans have fought a brutal war across the galaxy. Now the Sontarans have a secret plan to destroy the Rutan race - a secret plan the Doctor is racing against time to uncover. Only one Rutan spy knows the Sontarans' plan. As he is chased through the galaxy in a desperate bid for his life, he reaches the planet Sentarion - where Professor Bernice Summerfield's research into the history of the Sontaran-Rutan war is turning into an explosive reality. It is an adventure featuring the Seventh Doctor, as played by Sylvester McCoy.

Chief Terry Myell and Lieutenant Commander Jodenny Scott are in that most precarious of military situations, a mixed marriage. Enlisted and officer. It's unnatural.

Terry and Jodenny have been assigned to duty on the planet Fortune, away from the huge ships that carry colonists from the wreckage of polluted Earth to clean new worlds across the galaxy.

But there's another way besides spaceships to travel from world to world. A group within Team Space is exploring the Wondjina Spheres, a set of ancient alien artifacts that link places and times. Now those spheres have shut down and Team Space thinks that Terry and Jodenny are part of the key to make them work again --no matter how the two of them feel about it. They can volunteer, or be "volunteered."

What the researchers can't anticipate is that the status quo, in which Team Space holds the monopoly on travel between worlds, is about to change. And as a result, Terry and Jodenny will be tested to their limits and beyond....

Dusty Carrick lived in the small town of Skene Falls, Oregon, her entire life. And, like many of the local children, she played with "imaginary" Pixie friends in Ten Acre Woods.

But the Pixies are not imaginary at all, and Ten Acre Woods is their home. Now, the woods are in danger, and if it falls, the Pixies too will die. Only Thistle Down, exiled from her tribe and trapped inside a mortal woman's body, can save her people-as long as she can convince Dusty Carrick to help her before it's too late.

A CITY DIVIDED - For centuries The City of Cries - one of the most desired locales in the Skolian Imperialate - has existed by the thinnest of threads. On the dying world of Raylicon, the "haves" live in great luxury in Cries while the "have-nots" scrape by, eking out a marginal existence in the notorious Undercity beneath the desert. Major Bhaajan, formerly of the Pharaoh's Army, knows both worlds. Born into the Undercity, she nevertheless has made a name for herself in the Imperialate. And now, she has the chance to help her people.

HOPE FOR RECONCILIATION - For the first time, a member of the Royal class wants to extend an olive branch to the Undercity. Hoping to build bridges, Colonel Lavinda Majda recruits Bhaaj and her Dust Knights to act as guides and bodyguards on a mission of goodwill to those who live below the surface of their parched world.

THE DOWN DEEP - But the problems of the Undercity run deeper than anyone knows. To help find peace, the Dust Knights must reach the most hidden rungs in that mysterious underground world, a place known only as the Down Deep, where the scars from centuries of distrust are greatest. There they will face an unseen enemy that may destroy the lives of everyone they know--and threaten interstellar civilization.

The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover - a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty - and discover how truth can survive becoming history.

A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over thirty years, Richard Adams's Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

Watership Down was one of this century's best-loved works of imaginative literature. Now Richard Adams returns, to tell us what happened to the rabbits after their defeat of General Woundwort.

Tales From Watership Down begins with some of the great folk stories well known to all rabbits. Then we listen in as Dandelion, the rabbits' master storyteller, relates the thrilling adventures experienced by El-ahrairah, the mythical rabbit hero, and his stalwart, Rabscuttle, during the long journey home after their terrible encounter with the Black Rabbit of Inlé (as narrated in Watership Down). Finally, in the principal part of the book, we are told eight enchanting stories about the rabbits of the Down - Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and their companions - including the impact on the warren of the obsessive doe Flyairth, and the appointment of Hyzenthlay as a female Chief Rabbit and partner to Hazel.

All listeners - the millions who remember Watership Down with the deepest affection, and also those for whom this volume will be their first encounter with the rabbits - will find these nineteen tales utterly compelling, the fruit of Richard Adams spellbinding narrative power and ability to conjure up a world that is at the same time both real and unreal.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first...

Jacqueline was her mother's perfect daughter -- polite and quiet, always dressed as a princess. If her mother was sometimes a little strict, it's because crafting the perfect daughter takes discipline.

Jillian was her father's perfect daughter -- adventurous, thrill-seeking, and a bit of a tom-boy. He really would have preferred a son, but you work with what you've got.

They were five when they learned that grown-ups can't be trusted.

They were twelve when they walked down the impossible staircase and discovered that the pretense of love can never be enough to prepare you a life filled with magic in a land filled with mad scientists and death and choices.

When Jack left Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children she was carrying the body of her deliciously deranged sister -- whom she had recently murdered in a fit of righteous justice -- back to their home on the Moors. But death in their adopted world isn't always as permanent as it is here, and when Jack is herself carried back into the school, it becomes clear that something has happened to her. Something terrible. Something of which only the maddest of scientists could conceive. Something only her friends are equipped to help her overcome.

Eleanor West's "No Quests" rule is about to be broken.

Again.

The fifth volume in the Wild Cards alternate universe saga is set in the New York City of 1986. The simmering streets of Jokertown have erupted, as gang war breaks out between ruthless rivals: the Shadow Fists and the Mafia. As the violence rages out of control, even the metahuman Aces and Jokers alike are forced to go underground and wage their own war against the powers of the netherworld!

On September 15, 1946, a biological weapon created by an alien race was accidentally detonated above the streets of New York City, killing countless numbers of men, women, and children. But those who survived the initial explosion soon began to wish they had died also, once they discovered they had been forever mutated by the virus unleashed in the blast. . . .

When the first volume in the Wild Cards series made its debut in 1986, it caused a sensation in the science fiction and fantasy communities. Here were stories of superpowered beings in a real world setting, detailing the lives of "Aces," those given superhuman powers by the "Wild Cards" virus, and "Jokers"?those whom the virus transformed into freaks and monsters. Over the course of fifteen volumes, the world created by editor George R.R. Martin and some of SF's most talented writers was explored through the eyes of both Aces and Jokers across the globe.

In this all-new collection of Wild Cards stories, the spotlight is on the most unusual Wild Cards of them all?the Deuces. As you'll discover in this thrilling collection, their role in the Wild Cards Universe is just as important as that of the Aces and the Jokers. In fact, their actions have affected the course of Wild Cards history.

Set in an alternate, shared-world universe, Deuces Down is the one place you'll find such never-before-told tales as John J. Miller's exciting 1969 World Series between the Baltimore Orioles and the Brooklyn Dodgers; Michael Cassutt's first moon landing, when the whole world wasn't watching; Walton Simons' Great New York City Blackout of 1977; Melinda M. Snodgrass's account of Grace Kelly's mysterious disappearance during the filming of The French Lieutenant's Woman. It's a strange and terrifying world, where anything can happen. A world of Wild Cards.

The Battle Continues

Questioning the origins of his ancestors, the estranged vampire called beckett has come to Chicago, arriving in the middle of a now full-blown war. Unknowlingly, Beckett helps Khalid al-Rashid, a powerful Nosferatu, piece together the ancient history of the mummies - a history hidden for centuries. Now the Kindred not only face the threat of Thea Ghandour and her fellow hunters, but now must also struggle against other immortals.

An Unknown History

The Temple of Akhenaton has been destroyed, and Maxwell Carpenter reveals his true motive for uncovering the source of the mummies' power: revenge. Powered by his hatred, Carpenter will stop at nothing until he has killed the last member of the Sforza family, the mummy, Nicholas Sforza-Ankhotep. The mummies must protect the heart of their power or they and their future will cease to exist.