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Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans--though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition." Now, eating human meat--"special meat"--is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he's given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he's aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost--and what might still be saved.

A man is hired to assist in the dangerous task of communicating with giant pelagic aliens, who can only be contacted by directly connecting with their nervous system from inside their bodies.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1978. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1979 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Eighth Annual Collection (1979), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections In Alien Flesh (1986) and The Best of Gregory Benford (2015).

Author of the Nebula Award winning Timescape, Benford's first collection of short stories demonstrates the extraordinary range of his imagination. The stories contained within are a perfect introduction to the work of one of our greatest SF novelists and thinkers.

Table of Contents:

• Blood on Glass - (1986) - poem
• In Alien Flesh - (1978) - novelette
• Time Shards - (1979) - shortstory
• Redeemer - (1979) - shortstory
• Snatching the Bot - (1977) - shortfiction
• Relativistic Effects - (1982) - novelette
• Nooncoming - (1978) - shortstory
• To the Storming Gulf - (1985) - novella
• White Creatures - (1975) - shortstory
• Me/Days - (1984) - shortstory
• Of Space/Time and the River - (1985) - novelette
• Exposures - (1981) - shortstory
• Time's Rub - (1984) - shortstory
• Doing Lennon - (1975) - shortstory
• Afterword (In Alien Flesh) - (1986) - essay

Consider the possibilities when the mind and body are things of the past.

These cutting-edge techno-tales by Poul Anderson, Greg Egan, Michael Swanwick, and other masters explore the infinite ways that new technology will free humankind from the boundaries of the flesh.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (2002) - essay by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Learning to Be Me - (1990) - shortstory by Greg Egan
• Pretty Boy Crossover - (1986) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• Ancient Engines - (1999) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Winemaster - (1999) - novelette by Robert Reed
• More Adventures on Other Planets - (2001) - novelette by Michael Cassutt
• Nevermore - (1997) - novelette by Ian R. MacLeod
• Approaching Perimelasma - (1998) - novelette by Geoffrey A. Landis
• The Gravity Mine - (2000) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
• Reef - (2000) - novelette by Paul J. McAuley

The language of the originators defines reality, every word warping the world to fit its meaning. Its study transforms the mind and body, and is closely guarded by stodgy, paranoid academics. These hidebound men don't trust many students with their secrets, especially not women, and more especially not "madwomen." Polymede and her lover Erishti believe they've made a discovery that could blow open the field's unexamined assumptions, and they're ready to face expulsion to make their mark. Of course, if they're wrong, the language will make its mark on them instead.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

A post-human civilization of synthetic beings, fixated on the concept of children, grapples with the meaning of life... after all life ceases to exist.

This story was originally published on Tor.com on 21 June 2023. Read it for free at Tor.com

Deidi is a reporter writing about a string of brutal murders--and dreaming about them before they happen. Camisa is a housewife living a waking nightmare--and having the same dreams as Deidi. But the connection between them is more than just coincidence. It is, in fact, pure evil....

Harry Hogge has an uncomplicated existence - until Emma Judd bursts into his life with her wild talk of voices plotting murder. Weird things are happening: a sinister club is meeting. And underground something monstrous is stirring from centuries of sleep with a hunger for human flesh.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Chinese Puzzle - (1953) - novelette
• 20 - Una - (1937) - novelette (variant of The Perfect Creature)
• 44 - The Wheel - (1952) - short story
• 51 - Jizzle - (1949) - short story
• 63 - Heaven Scent - (1954) - short story
• 73 - Compassion Circuit - (1954) - short story
• 84 - More Spinned Against... - (1953) - short story (variant of More Spinned Against)
• 95 - A Present from Brunswick - (1951) - short story
• 108 - Confidence Trick - (1953) - short story
• 125 - Opposite Number - (1954) - short story (variant of Opposite Numbers)
• 141 - Wild Flower - (1955) - short story

Following a failed alien invasion the world left is sparsely populated with psychologically scarred survivors, some of them technologically-enhanced women. Lo, leader of the small safe haven of Saugatuck, find their technological enhancements put to the test when a spaceship arrives bearing two men with both wonderful and terrifying news. Is this the beginning of a new era of reconstruction -- or the start of a new battle for survival? Not everyone in town wants to fight every comer. Not everyone in town shares Lo's mistrust of outsiders. This is the story not only of Lo's battle to protect the safe isolation of her unique community, but also of her struggle to come to terms with a constantly changing and uncertain world.

Markus Selvage has been bent by life, ground up and spit out again. In San Francisco's darkest sexual underground, he is a perpetual innocent, looking within bodies--his own and others'--for the lost secrets of satisfaction. But extreme body modification is only the beginning of where he will go before he's finished...

Something deadly has come to town-a slimy, slithering... thing like nothing anyone has seen before. With its dull eyes and its hideous mouth, it's always hunting for a new host to burrow into, and humans are the perfect prey. But the truly shocking part is not what it does to you when it invades your body-it's what it makes you do to others.

Out in a field, deep in the heart of Iowa hog-farming country, Terence Pearson beheads his own children, apparently without reason. But appearances are deceptive, and what the reader doesn't realise however, is that Terence is saving his children from a fate far worse: The Green Traveller, a strange mummer dressed in leaves, who with his companions, The Surgeon and The Witness, bring terror and pain to those who cross him. Terence knows his children are descendants of The Green Traveller, and he's returning for them--the consequences of which will be devastating...

What if when Columbus came to the New World he found, not Indians, but primitive apelike men who were soon dubbed "sims"?

These immediate ancestors of modern man were less effective hunters, allowing prehistoric creatures such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers to survive. Unable to learn human speech or conceptualize at a human level, sims could, however, be trained to do reliable work... as slaves.

Table of Contents:

• The Sorry Record - (1988) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Preface (A Different Flesh) - (1988)
• Vilest Beast - (1985)
• And so to Bed - (1986)
• Around the Salt Lick - (1986)
• The Iron Elephant - (1986)
• Though the Heavens Fall - (1986)
• Trapping Run - (1988)
• Freedom - (1988)

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction: Not Exactly By Accident - essay
• 9 - They Never Even See Me - (1970) - short story
• 21 - Hellter-Shelter! - (1986) - short story
• 35 - Time to Murder - (1966) - short story
• 49 - Public Places - (1988) - short story
• 65 - Stalemate - (1983) - short story
• 73 - Aspirations - (1985) - short story
• 89 - Uncoverup - (1985) - short story
• 95 - Happy Hour - (1987) - short story

It is the future, and while the world has changed, crime has not. A tangled web of lies and corruption surrounds the New Angeles headquarters of Jinteki, a massive mega-corporation that leads the industry in cloning technology. When corporate watchdog and media blogger Tallie Perrault stumbles upon evidence of a shocking coverup, she begins to unravel a conspiracy with world-changing implications. Now, Perrault must share her story with veteran NAPD detective and troubled psychic Caprice Nisei. But can these two women uncover the truth before it's too late?

There are reports of an uprising on the planet of Solo-Baston. Indigenous forces are rebelling against Imperial rule, led by the mysterious 'Dos Pares.' Amidst the conflict, the 31st Riverine Imperial Guard are dispatched to seek and retrieve a vital piece of weaponry, but find themseleves beset on all sides by hostile forces. And what they orginally thought wasd simple tribal warfare soon reveals a much more sinister activity.

Henry Zou's latest novel serves as a prequel to Emperor's Mercy and delivers non-stop action and mystery in the grim worls of Warhammer 40,000

Reeling from the devastation of Dust & Decay, Benny Imura and his friends plunge deep into the zombie-infested wastelands of the great Rot & Ruin. Benny, Nix, Lilah, and Chong journey through a fierce wilderness that was once America, searching for the jet they saw in the skies months ago. If that jet exists then humanity itself must have survived…somewhere. Finding it is their best hope for having a future and a life worth living.

But the Ruin is far more dangerous than any of them can imagine. Fierce animals hunt them. They come face to face with a death cult. And then there’s the zombies—swarms of them coming from the east, devouring everything in their paths. And these zoms are different. Faster, smarter, and infinitely more dangerous. Has the zombie plague mutated, or is there something far more sinister behind this new invasion of the living dead?

One thing Benny and his companions can’t afford to forget: In the great Rot & Ruin, everything wants to kill you.

The national bestselling Black Jewels trilogy established award-winning Anne Bishop as an author whose "sublime skill... blends the darkly macabre with spine-tingling emotional intensity, mesmerizing magic, lush sensuality, and exciting action."* Now the saga continues-with four all-new adventures of Jaenelle and her kindred.

Table of Contents:

• Weaver of Dreams - shortstory
• The Prince of Ebon Rih - novel
• Zuulaman - novelette
• Kaeleer's Heart - novel

They Rise...Out of the flooded streets of Houston, they emerge from plague-ridden waters. Dead. Rotting. Hungry. And as human survivors scramble to their rooftops for safety, the zombie hordes circle like sharks. The ultimate killing machines. They Feed...Houston is quarantined to halt the spread of the zombie plague. Anyone trying to escape is shot on sight - living and dead. Emergency Ops sergeant Eleanor Norton has her work cut out for her. Salvaging boats and gathering explosives, Eleanor and her team struggle to maintain order. But when civilization finally breaks down, the feeding frenzy begins. They Multiply...Biting, gnawing, feasting - but always craving more - the flesheaters increase their ranks every hour. With doomsday looming, Eleanor must focus on the people she loves - her husband and daughter - and a band of other survivors adrift in zombie-infested waters. If she can't bring them into the quarantine zone, they're all dead meat.

Double En, the most powerful corporation ever created, and its founders, Nakamura and Norton, are two of the most brilliant minds in history. But now they have launched a private war against each other and winner takes all. While Norton is hidden deep inside the heart of the Double En's mainframe, Nakamura is busy hiring the very best in computer warfare -- that's Iceberg Berg, master of security systems. No one can penetrate a barrier he has created, except for one woman, his ex-wife, Icebreaker Calley. No wall has ever been barred to her. Together again, they face the impossible task of separating Norton from his beloved matrix before the man becomes the computer and the computer becomes more powerful than anything humanity has ever seen.

Down by the river, the first to go missing were not much lamented. Disappearances of homeless men foraging through trash or nuisance skater kids who rolled their boards along the planked piers at night were not noteworthy enough to delay the city's development projects.

But deep beneath the riverbank, the evidence of a terrible crime has been covered up twice. When a TVA dam falters and the river swells, panic rises downtown. As the Tennessee creeps over its banks, it dredges up death from its own polluted bed. Twenty-nine victims of a long-ago slaughter walk when the water rises, patrolling the banks and dragging the living down to a muddy grave. No one remembers how they died and no one knows what they want.

Some secrets are never washed away. Instead they are patient, biding their time. They wait for the water to lift them so they can prowl for the justice that was denied them ninety years ago. But in ninety years a city's shape changes, and where justice can no longer be found, vengeance may have to suffice.

The city of Chattanooga is about to learn a terrible truth about the things a river can and cannot hide.... And reluctant medium Eden Moore may be the only one who can dissuade the twenty- nine bodies from adding hundreds of its citizens to their ghastly ranks.

Not Flesh Nor Feathers is a stand-alone sequel to Four and Twenty Blackbirds and Wings to the Kingdom.

Every year, thousands in the kingdom of Talin will flock to its capital twin cities, San-Er, where the palace hosts a set of games. For those confident enough in their ability to jump between bodies, competitors across San-Er fight to the death to win unimaginable riches.

Princess Calla Tuoleimi lurks in hiding. Five years ago, a massacre killed her parents and left the palace of Er empty... and she was the one who did it. Before King Kasa's forces in San can catch her, she plans to finish the job and bring down the monarchy. Her reclusive uncle always greets the victor of the games, so if she wins, she gets her opportunity at last to kill him.

Enter Anton Makusa, an exiled aristocrat. His childhood love has lain in a coma since they were both ousted from the palace, and he's deep in debt trying to keep her alive. Thankfully, he's one of the best jumpers in the kingdom, flitting from body to body at will. His last chance at saving her is entering the games and winning.

Calla finds both an unexpected alliance with Anton and help from King Kasa's adopted son, August, who wants to mend Talin's ills. But the three of them have very different goals, even as Calla and Anton's partnership spirals into something all-consuming. Before the games close, Calla must decide what she's playing for--her lover or her kingdom.

A mature alien woman judge sees an amphibious human woman, obviously a slave, displayed in a tank in front of a sex palace. And so an interstellar plot of murderous proportions involving many races and planets, galactic corporations, exploitive sex and horrible slavery is revealed.

An interstellar alien corporation run by aliens was thwarted in its plans to exploit genetically altered slaves. Now, in an attempt to keep it's case from ever coming to court, a judge is murdered on Khagodis--the planet where the amphibious human slaves were first bred--and the man who first broke the slave ring must find a way to bring these villains to justice.

How can you stop a conspiracy of telepaths? The alien Lyhhrt are powerful enough to read the human mind; if they find you know too much, they can erase your memory, or simply stop your heart. The normally peaceful Lyhhrt society has been splintered by technological change, the bitter legacy of their exploitation by the Zamos crime family. Now a few renegade Lyhhrt, driven mad by isolation from their group mind, seem to be planning terrible crimes--or are they again being used as deadly tools in someone else's scheme?

Space Commander Stagg explored the galaxies for 800 years. Upon his return, the hero Stagg is made the centerpiece of an incredible public ritual, one that will repeatedly take him to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of hell.

The 1968 Doubleday edition (as well as subsequent editions) is a revised and expanded version of the 1960 orginal.

With the ring of sorrows still missing, and the covenant between othernaturals and mortals broken, Chrysabelle and Malkolm's problems are just beginning. Chrysabelle still owes Malkolm for his help, but fulfilling that debt means returning to Corvinestri, the hidden vampire city neither of them is welcome in.

The discovery that Chrysabelle has a brother could mean reneging on her promise to Malkolm, something that might make him angry enough to loose the beast living inside him. And fulfilling her vow could prove devastating for Chrysabelle --- especially when you throw in power hungry witches, dead fringe vampires, and the Kubai Mata.

The Cirque de Charnu has come. They will clean out the demons and the suicides, and move on. As long as they stay within the rules, Jill Kismet can't deny them entry. But she can watch--and if they step out of line, she'll send them packing.When Cirque performers start dying grotesquely, Kismet has to find out why, or the fragile truce won't hold and her entire city will become a carnival of horror. She also has to play the resident hellbreed power against the Cirque to keep them in line, and find out why ordinary people are needing exorcisms. And then there's the murdered voodoo practitioners, and the zombies.An ancient vengeance is about to be enacted. The Cirque is about to explode. And Jill Kismet is about to find out some games are played for keeps...

The strange but beautiful purple blossoms now grew wild in his backyard. One day Brad Carter tripped and fell into an alternate world, a world peopled by these very flowers.

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".

Post-Rising Australia can be a dangerous place, especially if you're a member of the government-sponsored Australia Conservation Corps, a group of people dedicated to preserving their continent's natural wealth until a cure can be found. Between the zombie kangaroos at the fences and the zombie elephant seals turning the penguin rookery at Prince Phillip Island into a slaughterhouse, the work of an animal conservationist is truly never done -- and is often done at the end of a sniper rifle.

As Dr. Abbey knows, there are difficulties in running an underground virology lab in a post-Rising America.

And unwanted guests must be dealt with.

Collected here for the first time is every piece of short fiction from New York Times Bestseller Mira Grant's acclaimed Newsflesh series, with two new never-before-published novellas and all eight short works available for the first time in one volume.

We had cured cancer. We had beaten the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, a man-made virus taking over bodies and minds, filling them with one, unstoppable command... FEED.

Mira Grant creates a chilling portrait of an America paralyzed with fear. No one leaves their houses and entire swaths of the country have been abandoned. And only the brave, the determined, or the very stupid venture out into the wild...

Contents:

• Countdown
• Everglades
• San Diego 2014
• How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea
• The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell
• Please Do Not Taunt the Octopus
• All the Pretty Little Horses (Never Before Published)
• Coming to You Live (Never Before Published)

Hugo-nominated Novella

It was the summer of 2014, and the true horrors of the Rising were only just beginning to reveal themselves. Fans from all over the world gathered in San Diego, California for the annual comic book and media convention, planning to forget about the troubling rumors of new diseases and walking dead by immersing themselves in a familiar environment. Over the course of five grueling days and nights, it became clear that the news was very close to home... and that most of the people who picked up their badges would never make it out alive.

Outside the classroom walls the Rising was spreading, but inside was a carefully protected sanctuary against the growing threat.

Or so the teachers and students thought.

In 2014, two experimental viruses--a genetically engineered flu strain designed by Dr. Alexander Kellis, intended to act as a cure for the common cold, and a cancer-killing strain of Marburg, known as "Marburg Amberlee"--escaped the lab and combined to form a single airborne pathogen that swept around the world in a matter of days. It cured cancer. It stopped a thousand cold and flu viruses in their tracks.

It raised the dead.

Millions died in the chaos that followed. The summer of 2014 was dubbed "The Rising," and only the lessons learned from a thousand zombie movies allowed mankind to survive. Even then, the world was changed forever. The mainstream media fell, Internet news acquired an undeniable new legitimacy, and the CDC rose to a new level of power.

Set twenty years after the Rising, the Newsflesh trilogy follows a team of bloggers, led by Georgia and Shaun Mason, as they search for the brutal truths behind the infection. Danger, deceit, and betrayal lurk around every corner, as does the hardest question of them all:

When will you rise?

When Senator Peter Ryman of Wisconsin decides to take a team of bloggers along on his run for the White House, Georgia and Shaun Mason are quick to submit their application. They, along with their friend Georgette "Buffy" M. are selected, and view this as the chance to launch their careers to a whole new level... that is, if they can survive the campaign trail.”

Shaun Mason is a man without a mission. Not even running the news organization he built with his sister has the same urgency as it used to. Playing with dead things just doesn't seem as fun when you've lost as much as he has.

But when a CDC researcher fakes her own death and appears on his doorstep with a ravenous pack of zombies in tow, Shaun has a newfound interest in life. Because she brings news-he may have put down the monster who attacked them, but the conspiracy is far from dead.

Now, Shaun hits the road to find what truth can be found at the end of a shotgun.

Rise up while you can. - Georgia Mason

The year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising.

The year was 2039. The world didn't end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made.

Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there's one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it's this:

Things can always get worse.

BLACKOUT is the conclusion to the epic trilogy that began in the Hugo-nominated FEED and the sequel, DEADLINE.

FEEDBACK is a full-length Newsflesh novel which overlaps the events of the acclaimed and New York Times bestselling novel FEED. For the first time it reveals what happened from the perspective of reporters covering the Democrats' side of the story.

There are two sides to every story...

The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we unleashed something horrifying and unstoppable. The infection spread leaving those afflicted with a single uncontrollable impulse: FEED.

Now, twenty years after the Rising, a team of scrappy underdog reporters relentlessly pursue the truth while competing against the superstar Masons, surrounded by the infected, and facing more insidious forces working in the shadows.

These are the candid recollections of self-proclaimed Aberchef Orlando Crispe, whose overwhelming passion in life is for meat. In frank detail, he relates the progress of his love affair with beef, lamb, pork, chicken and, in the end, human flesh. He likens meat-eating to the act of physical love at its most intensely unifying. Crispe has even devised his own philosophy to explain it: 'Absorptionism'. Unfortunately the authorities in England and Italy do not share this elevated perspective and he is arrested for the murder of at least four people. The bulk of these confessions are written while Crispe languishes in Rome's Regina Coeli prison.

Recipes and other culinary secrets from Maestro Orlando Crispe's notorious 'Thursday Club', including the now justly famous Vitello Arrosto dallo Spirito del' Uomo Greco Antico and Roast Loin of Pork with Peach and Kumquat Stuffing, for which Maestro Crispe first used the thigh of Miss Lydia Malone. This cookbook, to quote its publisher, "takes cooking out of the kitchen and away from the tv screens, and puts it where it deserves to be, in the philosophy section alongside Plato and the other great masters of the human psyche." Recipes are accompanied by excerpts from Orlando Crispe's unpublished diaries and the book includes an application form for membership of the Thursday Club.
(author)

Orlando Crispe's Flesh-Eater's Cookbook takes cooking out of the kitchen and away from the tv screens, and puts it where it deserves to be: in the philosophy section alongside Plato and other great culinary masters.

Extreme cooking for cannibals which should appeal to meat eaters everywhere...
(publisher)

This is a cookbook for the millennium: an extravagant, shameless and highly entertaining work that will change the course of contemporary cuisine, it takes cooking out of the kitchen and away from the TV screens, and puts it where it deserves to be: in the philosophy section alongside Plato and other great culinary masters. The notorious Thursday Club reveals its culinary secrets as the reader is invited to take part in its annual banquet. The meal is lavish, its contents unique, the taste out of this world. It is not just a meal but a philosophical statement. It is not to be eaten, but absorbed into the body. Orlando Crispe demonstrates the power of food on human behavior and how it can incite both love and revulsion. And no detail of preparation is too insignificant or too outre to be revealed: Beef Stock au Orlando Crispe: Marinate the carcass of a cow in a hot-water bath for several hours with its chef, so that the juices of the one can mingle with that of the other.
(Amazon)

Reported sightings of a hellish hound and the discovery of newly dead desiccated corpses bring Sam and Dean Winchester to Brennan, Ohio. But when they catch the monster canine it turns out to be "Frankenmutt"; a reanimated patchwork of pieces from separate dogs.

Soon the brothers are on a trail that leads from mad scientists and biotechnology to a centuries-old alchemists, walking corpses, and an ancient and malevolent power.

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, December 1968. It can also be found in The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70) (1971) and edited by Isaac Asimov, More Stories From the Hugo Winners, Volume 2 (1973), also edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collections The Night Face and Other Stories (1978), Winners (1981), The Dark Between the Stars (1981), The Long Night (1983), Call Me Joe (2009) and Flandry's Legacy (2011).

In a land torn apart by civil war, pestilence, and shaky alliances, a man branded a traitor may be the world's only hope...

The rebellious son of a long line of pureblood cartographers and diviners, Valen has spent most of his life trying to escape what society — and his family — ordained for him. His own mother has predicted that he will meet his doom in water and blood and ice. And her divination seems fulfilled when a comrade abandons Valen in a rainy wilderness half-dead, addicted to an enchantment that converts pain to pleasure, and possessing only a stolen book of maps.

Offered sanctuary in a nearby monastery, Valen discovers that his book — rumored to lead men into the realm of angels — gains him entry into a world of secret societies, doomsayers, monks, princes, and madmen, all seeking to unlock the mystery of the coming dark age. Unfortunately, the key to Navronne's doom is buried in half-forgotten myth—and the secrets of his own past...

For centuries, the Others and humans have lived side by side in uneasy peace. But when humankind oversteps its bounds, the Others will have to decide how much humanity they're willing to tolerate--both within themselves and within their community...

Since the Others allied themselves with the cassandra sangue, the fragile yet powerful human blood prophets who were being exploited by their own kind, the delicate dynamic between humans and Others changed. Some, like Simon Wolfgard, wolf shifter and leader of the Lakeside Courtyard, and blood prophet Meg Corbyn, see the new, closer companionship as beneficial--both personally and practically.

But not everyone is convinced. A group of radical humans is seeking to usurp land through a series of violent attacks on the Others. What they don't realize is that there are older and more dangerous forces than shifters and vampires protecting the land that belongs to the Others--and those forces are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect what is theirs...

Table of Contents:

• No Different Flesh - (1965)
• Deluge - (1963)
• Angels Unawares - (1966)
• Troubling of the Water - (1966)
• Return - (1961)
• Shadow on the Moon - (1962)

Once, all power in the Vin Lands was held by the prince-mages, who alone could craft spellwines, and selfishly used them to increase their own wealth and influence. But their abuse of power caused a demigod to break the Vine, shattering the power of the mages. Now, fourteen centuries later, it is the humble Vinearts who hold the secret of crafting spells from wines, the source of magic, and they are prohibited from holding power.

But now rumors come of a new darkness rising in the vineyards. Strange, terrifying creatures, sudden plagues, and mysterious disappearances threaten the land. Only one Vineart senses the danger, and he has only one weapon to use against it: a young slave. His name is Jerzy, and his origins are unknown, even to him. Yet his uncanny sense of the Vinearts' craft offers a hint of greater magics within -- magics that his Master, the Vineart Malech, must cultivate and grow. But time is running out. If Malech cannot teach his new apprentice the secrets of the spellwines, and if Jerzy cannot master his own untapped powers, the Vin Lands shall surely be destroyed.

In Flesh and Fire, first in a spellbinding new trilogy, Laura Anne Gilman conjures a story as powerful as magic itself, as intoxicating as the finest of wines, and as timeless as the greatest legends ever told.

Code name SHADO. The most secret, sophisticated -- and important -- group on Earth. Only they know that mankind is under attack by a hostile intelligence from outer space.

A silent, invisible invasion by deadly aliens, bent on conquest and extermination. And SHADO's mission is to seek, find, and destroy the un-humans.

Why are the aliens kidnapping humans? SHADO has to know fast. They think they've scored when they capture an alien alive. But when he dies, the mission of the un-human invaders becomes horrifyingly clear...

Battlefield looter Angelika Fleischer joins forces with a group of Pilgrims headed for a remote monastery in the Blackfire Pass to visit Mother Elisabeth, the Priestess of Shallya, but the group is forced to confront a series of deadly goblin attacks and an unknown killer in their midst along the wa

Storm Constantine's first novel, expanded and re-edited from the original 1980s edition, with extra appendices and chapter heading illustrations. New edition 2007.

"Terror hung in the air like the foul-smelling smoke from a gutted house, where people have been burned alive inside. I could feel it. "Wraeththu. I shiver to say the word. Something has happened to them. Where did they come from? How did it happen? Why is it spreading like a plague? "I have seen. I have seen what they do. I have seen their faces. They always take their dead with them, always. There is a secret. Dont you understand? A secret. Wraeththu are not what they seem. They are more than they seem." Ground-breaking when they first appeared, the Wraeththu Chronicles chart the history of a new race of hermaphrodite beings who come to replace humanity on Earth.

Daring, erotic and magical, these editions include 'deleted scenes', which have now been restored and expanded. The book also includes new chapter heading illustrations by acclaimed fantasy artist, Ruby.