Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Januari 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

From the publisher of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies comes a new tale of romance, heartbreak, and tentacled mayhem.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters expands the original text of the beloved Jane Austen novel with all-new scenes of giant lobsters, rampaging octopi, two-headed sea serpents, and other biological monstrosities. As our story opens, the Dashwood sisters are evicted from their childhood home and sent to live on a mysterious island full of savage creatures and dark secrets. While sensible Elinor falls in love with Edward Ferrars, her romantic sister Marianne is courted by both the handsome Willoughby and the hideous man-monster Colonel Brandon.

Can the Dashwood sisters triumph over meddlesome matriarchs and unscrupulous rogues to find true love? Or will they fall prey to the tentacles that are forever snapping at their heels?

This masterful portrait of Regency England blends Jane Austen's biting social commentary with ultraviolent depictions of sea monsters biting. It's survival of the fittest--and only the swiftest swimmers will find true love!

In this striking, bleak yet luminous debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud, winner of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award, uses the trappings of the Gothic and the uncanny to investigate a distinctly American landscape: the loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary life.

Ballingrud's stories are love stories. They're also monster stories. Sometimes the monsters collected here are vampires or werewolves. Sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, brothers, ex-wives--sometimes they wear the faces we see in our mirrors.

The people in these stories, ex-cons, single parents, unemployed laborers, kids seduced by extremism, are stranded by life, driven to desperate acts by love and a longing for connection.

Sometimes they're ruined; sometimes redeemed. They are always recognizably, wonderfully, terrifyingly human. Even at their most monstrous.

Table of Contents:

• You Go Where It Takes You - (2003)
• Wild Acre - (2012)
• S.S. - (2005)
• The Crevasse - (2009) - with Dale Bailey
• The Monsters of Heaven - (2007)
• Sunbleached - (2011)
• North American Lake Monsters - (2008)
• The Way Station - (2011)
• The Good Husband - (2013)

This story was originally published in the Ellen Datlow anthology Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural. It is also included in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection, edited by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant, Ellen Datlow (2008), The Mammoth Book of Angels and Demons (2013), edited by Paula Guran, and the collection North American Lake Monsters: Stories (2013).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Sixteen-year-old Koral and her older brother Emrik risk their lives each day to capture the monstrous maristags that live in the black seas around their island. They have to, or else their family will starve.

In an oceanic world swarming with vicious beasts, the Landers?the ruling elite, have indentured Koral's family to provide the maristags for the Glory Race, a deadly chariot tournament reserved for the upper class. The winning contender receives gold and glory. The others?if they're lucky?survive.

When the last maristag of the year escapes and Koral has no new maristag to sell, her family's financial situation takes a turn for the worse and they can't afford medicine for her chronically ill little sister. Koral's only choice is to do what no one in the world has ever dared: cheat her way into the Glory Race.

But every step of the way is unpredictable as Koral races against competitors?including her ex-boyfriend?who have trained for this their whole lives and who have no intention of letting a low-caste girl steal their glory. As a rebellion rises and rogues attack Koral to try and force her to drop out, she must choose?her life or her sister's?before the whole island burns.

A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes's new genre-bending novel of suspense.

Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?

If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe – and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.

Finalist for Hugo Award for Best Related Work

Anyone familiar with Liz Bourke's work knows she isn't shy about sharing her opinion. In columns and reviews for science fiction and fantasy website Tor.com and elsewhere, she's taken a critical eye to fantasy and SF, from books to movies, television to videogames, old to new. This volume presents a selection of the best of her articles. Bourke's subjects range from the nature of epic fantasy - is it a naturally conservative sort of literature? - to the effect of Mass Effect's decision to allow players to play as a female hero, and from discussions of little-known writers to some of the most popular works in the field. A provocative, immensely readable collection of essays about the science fiction and fantasy field, from the perspective of a feminist and a historian, Sleeping With Monsters is an entertaining addition to any reader's shelves.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword
• Introduction by Kate Elliott
• Part 1: Moving Forwards, Looking Back
  • Discussions of books by Susan R. Matthews, R.M. Meluch, Nicola Griffith, and Melissa Scott
• Part 2: Future Imperfect
  • Discussions of books by Elizabeth Bear, Aliette de Bodard, Jacqueline Koyanagi, Stephanie Saulter, Karen Lord, Lauren Beukes, Kameron Hurley, Jaine Fenn, Ann Leckie, Nnedi Okorafor, and Carolyn Ives Gilman
• Part 3: The Fantasy of Political Agency
  • Discussions of books by Stina Leicht, Molly Tanzer, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Seth Dickinson, P.C. Hodgell, Martha Wells, Kate Elliott, Violette Malan, Barbara Hambly, Kari Sperring, Sherwood Smith, Amanda Downum, Katherine Addison, Mary Gentle, Marie Brennan, Elizabeth Bear, and Beth Bernobich
• Part 4: And Yet - God Guide Them - Young
  • Discussions of books by Karen Healey, Amalie Howard, Michelle Sagara, Tamora Pierce, Gwenda Bond, Cassandra Rose Clarke, and Rae Carson
• Part 5: Playing Female - Or Not
  • Mass Effect, Tomb Raider, and Dishonored
• Part 6: In Which I Am Wrong on the Internet: Views and Shorter Pieces
  • Discussions of Canons, Queer Female Narratives, Older Women in SF, Fantasy Films, Endurance and Persuasion, Cop-out Arguments, Divine Possibilities, and the Clash of Expectations
• Afterword
• Works Cited

Prepare to meet the wicked progeny of the master of modern horror. In Lovecraft's Monsters, H. P. Lovecraft's most famous creations--Cthulhu, Shoggoths, Deep Ones, Elder Things, Yog-Sothoth, and more--appear in all their terrifying glory. Each story is a gripping new take on a classic Lovecraftian creature, and each is accompanied by a spectacular original illustration that captures the monsters' unique visage.

Contributors include such literary luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Karl Edward Wagner, Elizabeth Bear, and Nick Mamatas. The monsters are lovingly rendered in spectacular original art by World Fantasy Award–winning artist John Coulthart (The Steampunk Bible).

Legions of Lovecraft fans continue to visit his bizarre landscapes and encounter his unrelenting monsters. Now join them in their journey...if you dare.

Table of Contents:

• Only the End of the World Again by Neil Gaiman
• Bulldozer by Laird Barron
• Red Goat Black Goat by Nadia Bulkin
• The Same Deep Waters as You by Brian Hodge
• A Quarter to Three by Kim Newman
• The Dappled Thing by William Browning Spencer
• Inelastic Collisions by Elizabeth Bear
• Remnants by Fred Chappell
• Love is Forbidden, We Croak & Howl by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• The Sect of the Idiot by Thomas Ligotti
• Jar of Salts by Gemma Files
• Black is the Pit From Pole to Pole by Howard Waldrop and Steven Utley
• Waiting at the Crossroads Motel by Steve Rasnic Tem
• I've Come to Talk with you Again by Karl Edward Wagner
• The Bleeding Shadow by Joe R. Lansdale
• That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable by Nick Mamatas
• Haruspicy by Gemma Files
• Children of the Fang by John Langan

Featuring a mix of classic science fiction reprints and original stories all filled with: REALLY BIG MONSTERS!

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Size Matters: Introduction - essay by Hank Davis
• 9 - The Shining Ones - short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• 29 - All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past - short story by Howard Waldrop
• 41 - The Monster-God of Mamurth - short story by Edmond Hamilton
• 59 - Talent - short story by Robert Bloch
• 75 - The End of the Hunt - short story by David Drake
• 87 - Ooze - short story by Anthony M. Rud
• 113 - The Valley of the Worm - novelette by Robert E. Howard
• 137 - Whoever Fights Monsters - novelette by Wen Spencer
• 165 - Deviation from a Theme - short story by Steven Utley
• 175 - The Eggs from Lake Tanganyika - short story by Curt Siodmak
• 185 - The Dunwich Horror - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• 233 - From Out the Fire - short story by Sarah A. Hoyt
• 251 - Beauty and the Beast - short story by Henry Kuttner
• 271 - The Island of the Ud - novelette by William Hope Hodgson
• 297 - A Single Samurai - short story by Steve Diamond
• 311 - Planet of Dread - novelette by Murray Leinster
• 367 - An Epistle to the Thessalonians - short story by Philip Wylie
• 377 - The Monster of Lake LaMetrie - short story by Wardon Allan Curtis
• 395 - The Giant Cat of Sumatra - short story by Hank Davis
• 417 - Greenface - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• 451 - Tokyo Raider - novelette by Larry Correia

This novelette originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 19, November-December 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a "classically hypnotic horror story" (Time Out New York) about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.

Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine. Instead, Jack Peter begins to draw monsters, and when those monsters take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean. When she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, they fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy's only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the terrors that lurk in the outside world.

Keith Donohue's The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild.

Monsters are where you find them... unless they find you first: A young Abraham Van Helsing tracks the first vampires of his career while something far more horrible dwells much closer to home. A boxing manager seeks to discover what inhuman force could have killed his best prizefighter. A 19th century chemist investigates spiritualism, inventing a device whereby mediums speak with the dead. A werewolf awaiting a transfer of funds from home becomes embroiled in a bank robbery. A young boy discovers something unnatural living alongside him in a Chicago boarding house. A private investigator searching for a runaway wife tracks her to a town with a diabolical secret. Odysseus and his Greek soldiers climb out of the Trojan Horse... and into a nightmare.

These are just some of the Creatures and Curiosities lurking within this collection of fourteen dark, sinister, and comic stories by Stoker, Hugo, and Nebula award finalist Gregory Frost.

In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.

Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu's Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

Contents:

• 1 - Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867 - short story
• 15 - Liddy, First to Fly - short story
• 33 - Time Cubes - short story
• 45 - #Climbing Nation - short story
• 63 - Sandman - short story
• 83 - Twenty Hours - short story
• 99 - The Doll - short story
• 119 - In This Fantasy - short story
• 129 - Scissors - short story
• 141 - June Bugs - short story
• 183 - Bridezilla - novelette
• 197 - Do You Remember Candy - short story

Melissa Goodrich's debut short story collection, Daughters of Monsters, is a raw and magical book of spells, an honest yet harrowing look at the wonder and threat of the world. In these 17 short stories, a toxic cloud sweeps west to east across the country, devouring all in its path. Past versions of a man show up at the birthday party he's thrown himself. A lonely trucker delivers two-headed angels as part of a money-making scheme. And, in the title story, a daughter of monsters awaits her coming-of-age. The characters in this collection tempt disintegration as they attempt to become their fuller selves, staring hard into the treacherous fog in their ways.

Thirteen urban and paranormal tales of strong women, armed with weapons they are not afraid to use, as well as fists and feet of fury, who face monsters and bad guys-and are not above rescuing men in the process.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters) - essay by Kerrie Hughes
• 3 - The Drifter - short story by Jane Lindskold
• 36 - Our Lady of the Vampires - short story by Nancy Holder
• 56 - Best Friends - short story by Lilith Saintcrow
• 81 - Elizabeth and Anna's Big Adventure - short story by Jeanne C. Stein
• 92 - Lupercalia - short story by Anton Strout
• 114 - Murder, She Workshopped - short story by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• 138 - Heart of Ash - [Magic Ex Libris] - short story by Jim C. Hines
• 154 - Jiang Shi - short story by Elizabeth Vaughan
• 178 - No Matter Where You Go - [Victory Nelson, Investigator] - short story by Tanya Huff
• 206 - Signed in Blood - short story by Irene Radford
• 226 - Broch de Shlang - short story by Mickey Zucker Reichert
• 252 - The Wooly Mountains - short story by Alexander Potter
• 282 - Invasive Species - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• 300 - About the Authors (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters)
• 305 - About the Editors (A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters)

This short story originally appeared in Mothership Zeta, April 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton.

Read to the story for free at Mothership Zeta.

His father saw them--and built a shrine to them with The Wandering Dark, an immersive horror experience that the whole family operates.

His practical mother has caught glimpses of terrors but refuses to believe--too focused on keeping the family from falling apart.

And his eldest sister, the dramatic and vulnerable Sydney, won't admit to seeing anything but the beckoning glow of the spotlight... until it swallows her up.

Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in.

After waking up one too many times in a puddle of his own mess, Peter Laughlin, a thirty-five-year-old rock musician, has decided to kill himself. However, after catching an advertisement for rehabilitation in the back of a local newspaper, coupled with the fact that his one-night stand with old friend Bethany resulted in pregnancy, Peter decides to try and clean up his act. Again. Only this time, things will be different.

At Dawson Rehabilitation, things seem idealistic. Peter quickly befriends Henry Randolph, an alcoholic in his sixties, who, along with Donald Bove, Shelley Matthews, Jamie Peters and a mentally-defunct man named Walter Cartwright, make up the rest of the guests.

Something is wrong at Dawson Rehabilitation.

Peter and Henry don't trust the center's councilor, a man named Jerry Fisher. Jerry's hiding a secret. One ancient and terrible.

Tucked away in the Pennsylvania backwoods, in a remodeled farmhouse once owned by Dr. Harris Dawson himself, Peter finds himself in a fight for his life against Phobos, the great God of fear. To defeat him, Peter will have to set aside his doubts and answer the all important question: What do monsters fear?

The children of Mivtown have grown up hearing the legend of the monsters of the loch. But it's only a story - a warning to stay away from the water.

Then strange things start happening in the village. Effie's rabbit Buster escapes from a locked hutch, her mum disappears without trace and slugs start to infest her home.

Along with her best friend Finn, Effie begins to hunt for clues to solve the mysteries of Mivtown. Could this all be connected to the legend? Is it really just a story or is there something lurking in those deep, dark waters?

Some doctors are sicker than their patients. When a troubled psychiatrist loses funding to perform clinical trials on an experimental cure for schizophrenia, he begins testing it on his asylum's criminally insane, triggering a series of side effects that opens the mind of his hospital's most dangerous patient, setting his inner demons free.

Flame Tree Press is the new fiction imprint of Flame Tree Publishing. Launched in 2018 the list brings together brilliant new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices.

Lumsden Moss is an escaped thief and an unrepentant bibliophile with a long-suffering desire to foist some karmic retribution on those who have wronged him. But when the opportunity to steal a rare book from the man who sentenced him to prison puts him on the wrong side of the wrong people, Moss finds himself on the run. And it's not just the book he stole that these people want, it's also the secrets of a long-forgotten location on Nightjar Island, a place cursed and abandoned since the Purge.

When Moss falls in with Imogen, a nimble-fingered thief who has taken a traveling bookcase filled with many secrets, he starts to realize how much of his unsavory past is indelibly tied to a frightening witch-child and her nightmarish pet monster.

In a fantastic world, still recovering from a war where magic and technology were fused together, Moss and Imogen must decipher the mystery of their mutual pasts in order to illuminate the dark heart that still lurks on Nightjar Island.

Giant, technologically superior aliens have conquered Earth, but humankind survives - even flourishes in a way. Men and women live, like mice, in burrows in the massive walls of the huge homes of the aliens, and scurry about under their feet, stealing from them. A complex social and religious order has evolved, with women preserving knowledge and working as healers, and men serving as warriors and thieves. For the aliens, men and women are just a nuisance, nothing more than vermin. Which, ironically, may just be humankind's strength and point the way forward.

The Lansdale name is legendary in the horror field. Now acclaimed musician and actress Kasey Lansdale follows in her father's footsteps, making her editing debut with this anthology of monstrously innovative stories. The twelve creatures that stalk the pages of Impossible Monsters spring from the twisted imaginations of a dozen of today s most noted authors.

International superstar Neil Gaiman is a storyteller s storyteller, and with 'Click-Clack the Rattlebag' he weaves an atmospheric tale that ensures readers will never hear a simple bedtime story the same way again.

In 'The Glitter of the Crowns,' New York Times-bestselling author Charlaine Harris, the creator of the Sookie Stackhouse series, turns her attention from vampires to werewolves--but appearances may be deceiving where monsters are concerned.

Mystery legend Anne Perry offers 'Monster,' a story that takes the reader from an antiquarian bookstore in Cambridge to the blue seas of the Mediterranean and leaves the reader guessing until the very last page in true whodunit style.

And, of course, this anthology wouldn't be complete without a contribution from beloved, award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale, who offers the latest adventure of supernatural sleuth Dana Roberts in 'The Case of the Angry Traveler.'

Including stories by the likes of Al Sarrantonio and David J. Schow, among others, this collection of tales delivers on its promise. Because these monsters are never what the reader expects...

Table of Contents:

• Blue Amber - (2013) - shortfiction by David J. Schow
• Click-Clack the Rattlebag - (2012) - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
• Cavity Creeps - (2013) - shortfiction by Cody Goodfellow
• The Glitter of the Crowns - (2013) - shortfiction by Charlaine Harris
• Doll's Eyes - (2013) - shortfiction by Tim Bryant
• Bloaters - (2013) - shortfiction by Neal Barrett, Jr.
• Detritus - (2013) - shortfiction by Chet Williamson
• Monster - (2013) - shortfiction by Anne Perry
• Orange Lake - (2013) - shortfiction by Al Sarrantonio
• Nathan - (2013) - shortfiction by Selina Rosen
• Blood Moccasins - (2013) - shortfiction by Bradley Denton
• The Case of the Angry Traveler - (2013) - novella by Joe R. Lansdale

Kelly Link has lit up adult literary publishing and Viking is honored to publish her first YA story collection. Through the lens of Link's vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. From the multiple award-winning "The Faery Handbag," in which a teenager?s grandmother carries an entire village (or is it a man-eating dog?) in her handbag, to the near-future of "The Surfer," whose narrator (a soccer-playing skeptic) waits with a planeload of refugees for the aliens to arrive, Link's stories are funny and full of unexpected insights and skewed perspectives on the world. Her fans range from Michael Chabon to Peter Buck of R.E.M. to Holly Black of Spiderwick Chronicles fame. Now teens can have their world rocked, too!

Table of Contents:

• The Wrong Grave - (2007) - novelette
• The Wizards of Perfil - (2006) - novella
• Magic for Beginners - (2005) - novella
• The Faery Handbag - (2004) - novelette
• The Specialist's Hat - (1998) - short story
• Monster - (2005) - novelette
• The Surfer - (2008) - novella
• The Constable of Abal - (2007) - short story
• Pretty Monsters - novelette

Later editions also include

• The Cinderella Game - (2008) - short story

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Pretty Monsters (2008). It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonthan Strahan.

In her luminous, long-awaited debut collection, award-winning novelist Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations.

-- A woman introduces her new lover to her late brother.
-- A teenager is interviewed about her peer group's attitudes toward sex and baby boomers.
-- A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge.
-- Anthropologists visiting an isolated outpost mission are threatened by nomadic raiders.

McHugh's characters--her Alzheimers-afflicted parents or her smart and rebellious teenagers--are always recognizable: stubborn, human, and heartbreakingly real.

This new trade paperback edition has added material for book clubs and reading groups, including an interview with the author, book club questions and suggestions, and a reprint of Maureen's fabulous essay, "The Evil Stepmother."

Table of Contents:

• Ancestor Money
• In the Air
• The Cost to Be Wise
• The Lincoln Train
• Interview: On Any Given Day
• Oversite
• Wicked
• Laika Comes Back Safe
• Presence
• Eight-Legged Story
• The Beast
• Nekropolis
• Frankenstein's Daughter

A crucial, genre-bending tale about the life-saving power of friendship.

Solomon and Ash both experienced a traumatic event when they were twelve.

Ash lost all memory of that event when she fell from Solomon's treehouse. Since then, Solomon has retreated further and further into a world he seems to have created in his own mind. One that insulates him from reality, but crawls with foes and monsters... in both animal and human form.

As Solomon slips further into the place he calls Darkside, Ash realizes her only chance to free her best friend from his pain is to recall exactly what happened that day in his backyard and face the truth--together.

In these pages Bram Stoker Award-winner Lisa Morton reinvents the dark stars you grew up watching: Frankenstein, Dracula, Mr. Hyde, the Phantom, the Hunchback... all the silent ones and the first to find their voices are here, and they're even presented in roughly the order in which they first appeared on a silver screen.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Monsters of L.A.)
• Frankenstein
• Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
• The Phantom
• The Hunchback
• Dracula
• The Bride
• The Mummy
• The Invisible Woman
• The Mad Scientist
• The Werewolf
• The Haunted House
• Cat People
• The Creature
• The Alien
• Kaiju (Giant Monster)
• The Devil
• The Slasher
• The Killer Clown
• The Urban Legend
• The Zombie

A Martian recalls his career in Hollywood making sci-fi and horror B-movies.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #23 Spring 1988. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Famous Monsters (1995), Dead Travel Fast (2005) and Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories (2017).

World Fantasy Award winning short story. It originally appeared as a bonus chapbook with the limited edition of the collection Ana Kai Tangata: Tales of the Outer the Other the Damned and the Doomed (2014).

Have you ever wondered how much of ancient folklore is grounded in fact? Are ther really unicorns, elves, magic cities?

Here Abide Monsters is a fresh approach to myth. Most people have heard of the "Bermuda Triangle," but Andre Norton uses a similar situation to show the possiblity of a two-way door that opens both on this world and on another quite unlike our own. Nick Shaw and Linda Durant pass through the door into a world where their nightmares are real and deadly. They band together with an English group, some of who have been on the planet since before the turn of the century...

She's a fashion model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden freeway "accident" leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful center of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge that she exists. Enter Brandy Alexander, Queen Supreme, one operation away from becoming a real woman, who will teach her that reinventing yourself means erasing your past and making up something better. And that salvation hides in the last places you'll ever want to look.

In this hilarious and daringly unpredictable novel, the narrator must exact revenge upon Evie, her best friend and fellow model; kidnap Manus, her two-timing ex-boyfriend; and hit the road with Brandy in search of a brand-new past, present, and future. Changing names and stories in every city, they catapult toward a final confrontation with a rifle-toting Evie-by which time the narrator will have learned that loving and being loved are not mutually exclusive, and that nothing, on the surface, is ever quite what it seems.

The world and Mars are states of mind. Loosen up. Personal devolution isn't that bad, is it? The Martian Overmind will help you devolve, inverse ontogeny decapitulating phylogeny. We're all Phylum Monsters, after all. Don't fight it. Unwind. Loosen up. Relax.

"Never make a deal with shadows at night, especially ones that know your name."

Washington D. C., 1925: Clara Johnson can talk to spirits - a gift that saved her during her darkest moments, now a curse that's left her indebted to the cunning spirit world. So when a powerful spirit offers her an opportunity to gain her freedom, Clara seizes the chance, no questions asked. The task: steal a magical ring from the wealthiest woman in the District.

Clara can't pull off this daring heist alone. She'll need the help of an unlikely team, from a handsome jazz musician able to hypnotize with a melody to an aging actor who can change his face, to pull off the impossible. But as they race along DC's legendary Black Broadway, conflict in the spirit world begins to leak into the human one - an insidious mystery is unfolding, one that could cost Clara her life and change the fate of an entire city.

Sixteen-year-old Ariadne's whole life is curated and shared with the world. Her royal family's entertainment empire is beloved by the tabloids, all over social media, and the hottest thing on television. The biggest moneymaker? The Labyrinth Contest, a TV extravaganza in which Ariadne leads fourteen teens into a maze to kill a monster. To win means endless glory; to lose means death. In ten seasons, no one has ever won.

When the gorgeous, mysterious Theseus arrives at the competition and asks Ariadne to help him to victory, she doesn't expect to fall for him. He might be acting interested in her just to boost ratings. Their chemistry is undeniable, though, and she can help him survive. If he wins, the contest would end for good. But if she helps him, she doesn't just endanger her family's empire?the monster would have to die. And for Ariadne, his life might be the only one worth saving.

Ariadne's every move is watched by the public and predestined by the gods, so how can she find a way to forge her own destiny and save the people she loves?

Daisy sees dead people--something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she's completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother's secrets, nor what lurks within these walls...

A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at "Miracle Mansion" allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that's nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother's lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she'll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most--Daisy's or her own?

As Brittney investigates the mansion in the present, Daisy's story runs parallel in the past, both timelines propelling the girls to face the most dangerous monsters of all: those that hide in plain sight.

Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?' The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer. As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time.

In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Humankind makes monsters; but who really creates who? This is a book about reason, the imagination, and the creative act of reading and writing. Marcus Sedgwick's ghostly, menacing novel celebrates the legacy of Mary Shelley's literary debut in its bicentenary year.

Kajal knows she is not a good person. If she were, she wouldn't selfishly be risking her sister's soul in a dangerous bid to bring her back to life. She would let Lasya rest in peace - but Kajal cannot stand the horror of living without her.

As Kajal prepares for the resurrection, the worst happens: Her sister's soul warps into a bhuta - a murderous, wraith-like spirit - and Kajal gets sentenced to death for her sister's rampage. There seems little hope of escape until two strangers offer to free her. The catch: She must resurrect the kingdom's fallen crown prince to aid a growing rebellion against a tyrannical usurper. Desperate, Kajal rushes to complete her end of the deal... only to discover that the boy she's resurrected, Tav, is not the crown prince.

Now Kajal - prickly, proud, admirer of the scientific method - must team up with Tav - stubborn, reticent, and fonder of swords than of books - to find the real crown prince. With only a scalpel and her undead dog, Kutaa, at her side, Kajal must work fast before her mistake is exposed or Lasya's bhuta turns its murderous fury on the person truly responsible for her death: Kajal herself.

Philip Kenan does not appear to be the most reliable narrator. Obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, he keeps malign cosmic entities at bay by constantly revising his novel, The Despicable Quest. While Philip's preoccupied with the monsters lurking behind every cubicle at his dead-end job, his exasperated girlfriend flees — heading straight into the horror that lies at the heart of the corporate world.

William Browning Spencer's imaginative update on Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos offers a witty and wicked satire of office culture. This macabre masterpiece from one of America's foremost cult authors won the 1995 International Horror Critics Guild Award for Best Novel.

"If Woody Allen had ever written a Cthulhu Mythos novel, it might have come out like this." —The New York Review of Science Fiction

"An explosive story of menace, suspense, mystery, and love. Don't miss it." — Roger Zelazny

Author William Browning Spencer is "a brilliant writer of fantasy who's also a very considerable serious novelist." — Kirkus Reviews

Contents:

• 1 - Foreword (The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays) - essay by Christopher Tolkien
• 5 - Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics - (1937) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 49 - On Translating Beowulf - (1940) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 72 - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - (1953) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 109 - On Fairy-Stories - (1939) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 162 - English and Welsh - (1955) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 198 - A Secret Vice - (1931) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 224 - Valedictory Address - (1959) - essay by J. R. R. Tolkien

An alien invasion comes to one man's doorstep in the form of a story-creature, followed by death and rebirth in a transformed Earth.

This short story is included in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Shayol, #4 Winter 1980, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2014. It is included in the collections All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (1987) and Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (1991).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1987) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past - (1980) - short story
• Helpless, Helpless - (1984) - short story
• Fair Game - (1986) - novelette
• What Makes Heironymous Run? - (1985) - short story
• The Lions Are Asleep This Night - (1986) - novelette
• Flying Saucer Rock & Roll - (1985) - novelette
• He-We-Await - (1987) - novelette
• The Left-Handed Muse - (1987) - essay by Lewis Shiner

SECOND ENDING

A Complete Short Novel

Awakening from a deep sleep can be hell for anyone. Bur for a medical student who had been in suspended animation for more than two centuries, it was a particularly terrifying hell. For Ross suddenly was alive, aware and imprisoned five miles underground in a world he didn't know... and he was being prepared for a fate beyond his wildest dreams!

-- Plus --

COUNTER SECURITY

A locked-store thriller in which the only way to solve impossible crimes is with impossible solutions.

NUISANCE VALUE

A curious family affair where one man's obsession is another man's top secret.

DOGFIGHT

An inter-galactic war story in which man's worst enemies are the last to know the truth about their friends...

-- And lots more --

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction: Reality in Science Fiction - (1977) - essay
• 9 - Second Ending - (1962) - novel
• 118 - Counter Security - (1963) - novelette
• 143 - Dogfight - (1959) - novelette
• 171 - Nuisance Value - (1975) - short story
• 195 - In Loving Memory - (1956) - short story
• 209 - The Apprentice - (1960) - novelette
• 245 - Answer Came There None - (1974) - short story

In "All Kinds of Proof," a down-and-out drunk makes the unlikeliest of friends when he is hired to train a mail-carrying robot; in "Blood Memory," a mother confronts the dangerous reality that her daughter will never assimilate in this world after she was the first child born through a teleportation device; in "The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever," a physicist rushes home to be with his daughter after he hears reports of an atmospheric anomaly which he knows to be a sign of the end of the earth; in "Miss Gloria," a robot comes back to life in many different forms in a quest to save a young girl. Guardian Angels and Other Monsters displays the depth and breadth of Daniel H. Wilson's vision and examines how artificial intelligence both saves and destroys humanity.

All it's life, a small monster with emerald scales has been source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster's limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious artist and reforms into someone new - someone who can't be eaten.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

The Unteleported Man

Nobody would want to spend 18 years on a spaceship when you can make the journey via teleportation in an instant. In seconds, the Telpor effect could teleport you from an overcrowded Earth. 40 million emigrants had found it a solution to Earth's problems of pollution and overcrowding. But Rachmael ben Applebaum wasn't sure. Because there was a problem with the gateway to paradise. No one had ever returned.

The Mind Monsters

In that plantary games, was he pawn of prime-mover?

Welcoming Hiromi Goto to the Arsenal Pulp family is very exciting. It’s like having your long-lost cousin show up to your eighteenth birthday party and discovering you are exactly alike. And now, you get to show her off.

A lot can happen in a cousin or auntie’s life, and it might not be pretty. While some take their scrapes and call them unhealable wounds, these are not the ones Goto writes about. Goto describes the mothers, the grandfathers and the children that start out different, or end up strange but never gape at their otherness.

Goto’s characters are imbued with confidence and comforted by the magic of their alienness. Whether you believe that the hard things in life make you stronger, or people are just born that way, these Hopeful Monsters will impress you with their tenacity and their ability to bend Fate.

Table of Contents:

• The Green Millennium - (1953) - novel
• The Black Gondolier - (1964) - novelette
• Midnight in the Mirror World - (1964) - shortstory
• I'm Looking for Jeff - (1952) - shortfiction
• The Casket-Demon - (1963) - shortstory

As monster theory highlights, monsters are cultural symbols, guarding the borders that society creates to protect its values and norms. Adolescence is the time when one explores and aims at crossing borders to learn the rules of the culture that one will fit into as an adult. Exploring the roles of monsters in coming-of-age narratives and the need to confront and understand the monstrous, this work explores recent developments in the presentation of monsters–such as the vampire, the zombie, and the man-made monster–in maturation narratives, then moves on to discuss monsters inhabiting the psychic landscapes of child characters. Finally, it touches on monsters in science fiction, in which facing the monstrous is a variation of the New World narrative.

Discussions of novels by M. R. Carey, Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Sarah Maria Griffin, Seanan McGuire, Stephenie Meyer, Patrick Ness, and Jon Skovron are complemented by analysis of television series, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Westworld.

At age seventeen, Arun, the narrator of Of Love and Other Monsters, emerges from a fire, his memories and identity vanished with the flames. He finds a refuge and home with Janani and soon discovers his unique ability to sense and manipulate the minds of others around him. Intimately connected yet isolated by this insight, he inhabits a dangerous place outside conventional boundaries: man/woman, mind/body. When someone who shares his ability, Rahul Moghe, arrives on his doorstep, he senses a power beyond any he has known. Janani warns of the grave danger posed by Rahul and sends Arun on his journey, fleeing the one person who may have answers to the mystery of his past.

Of Love and Other Monsters was chosen for Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction for 2008. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 106, March 2019.

Table of Contents:

• Monsters in Orbit - novel
• The World Between - (1953) - novelette
• The Moon Moth - (1961) - novelette
• Brain of the Galaxy - (1951) - novelette (variant of The New Prime)
• The Devil on Salvation Bluff - (1955) - shortstory
• The Men Return - (1957) - shortstory

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Asimov's Choice: Black Holes & Bug-Eyed-Monsters) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe - [Eight Worlds] - (1977) - novelette by John Varley
• Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe - (1977) - interior artwork by Rick Sternbach
• Machismo on Byronia - [SF Puzzles] - (1977) - shortstory by Martin Gardner
• Low Grade Ore - (1977) - novelette by Kevin O'Donnell, Jr.
• Low Grade Ore - (1977) - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas
• Low Grade Ore [2] - (1977) - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas
• Low Grade Ore [3] - (1977) - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas
• Backspace - (1977) - shortstory by F. M. Busby
• Perchance to Dream - (1977) - shortstory by Sally A. Sellers
• On the Martian Problem - (1977) - shortstory by Randall Garrett
• On the Martian Problem - (1977) - interior artwork by Roy G. Krenkel
• On the Martian Problem [2] - (1977) - interior artwork by Roy G. Krenkel
• The Missing Item - [Black Widowers] - (1977) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov
• The Missing Item - (1977) - interior artwork by Donald R. Bensen [as by Don R. Bensen ]
• Home Team Advantage - (1977) - shortstory by Jack C. Haldeman, II
• Home Team Advantage - interior artwork by Rick Sternbach
• Air Raid - (1977) - shortstory by John Varley [as by Herb Boehm ]
• A Simple Outside Job - (1977) - shortstory by Robert Lee Hawkins
• Time and Hagakure - (1977) - shortstory by Steven Utley
• Time and Hagakure - (1977) - interior artwork by Freff
• Coming of Age in Henson's Tube - (1977) - shortstory by William John Watkins [as by William Jon Watkins ]
• To Sin Against Systems - (1977) - novelette by Garry R. Osgood
• To Sin Against Systems - (1977) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• To Sin Against Systems [2] - (1977) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• To Sin Against Systems [3] - (1977) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate

Darwen Arkwright's world is turned upside down when he is forced to move from a small English town to Atlanta in the United States of America. Feeling out of place and struggling to fit in at school, Darwen seeks solace in a mysterious shop full of mirrors. It's there that he discovers the ability to step through mirrors in to different worlds - worlds beyond his wildest imagination. Darwen befriends creatures including Moth, a tiny being with mechanical wings, but he soon learns that there is a terrible darkness threatening this new world... and only he can save it.

The problem with doors is that they open both ways. There are monsters inside, and some of them are trying to get out

Aden Onnery is the eldest son of a family of midwives who use their power to eradicate magic. As a boy, he was never meant to take on the Onnery mantle, but an accident of birth has left him marked and strange. His whole life he has believed that the Onnerys destroy the monsters that will bring the end of his people, until he is forced to enter into a bargain with a magical survivor.

In order to save his sister from the harsh law of the colonial powers, Aden chooses to enter the world outside his experience and go against everything he has been taught to believe. He must help save the very thing his family are meant to exterminate--a magical lineage in his people. In doing so, Aden will confront the truth that the monsters are his own family.

EMPTY MONSTERS weaves magic, family, and love into a bitter tonic about growing up and accepting that even the best intentions can exact a terrible price, and love is never simple.

Welcome my friends! Welcome...to "The Land"!

The battle of the dead was won, but at a great cost. Sion, leader of the Mist Village, was left with only pain and regret as Richter was claimed by the abyss.

What no one but the abandoned chaos seed knows is that he narrowly avoided the curse of the lich Singh, a curse that still hangs above his head. Now, surrounded by miles of darkness and tons of crushing rock, Richter has to find his way back into the light.

The only problem is that this monster of a man is being pursued by monsters, a demon, and his own foolish choices. Faced with all the dangers of the deep dark, what will Richter say when the buried horrors of The Land come a calling and asked if he's paid his dues?

Well he'll look right back, stare that horror in the eye, and say, "Yes sir, the check is in the mail!"

Welcome back my friends!

Welcome back... to The Land!

Three armies march on New Prentisstown, each one intent on destroying the others.

Todd and Viola are caught in the middle, with no chance of escape.

As the battles commence, how can they hope to stop the fighting? How can there be peace when they’re so hopelessly outnumbered? And if war makes monsters of men, what terrible choices await?

But then a third voice breaks into the battle, one bent on revenge…

The electrifying finale to the award-winning Chaos Walking trilogy. Publishing May 2010 in the UK, Ireland and Australia, and September 2010 in the United States and Canada.

In this thrilling conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, Karou is still not ready to forgive Akiva for killing the only family she's ever known.

When a brutal angel army trespasses into the human world, Karou and Akiva must ally their enemy armies against the threat--and against larger dangers that loom on the horizon. They begin to hope that it might forge a way forward for their people. And, perhaps, for themselves--maybe even toward love.

From the streets of Rome to the caves of the Kirin and beyond, humans, chimaera, and seraphim will fight, strive, love, and die in an epic theater that transcends good and evil, right and wrong, friend and enemy.

The breeding ground was a walled castle completely covered over with a huge electrified net. Inside were the scum of the earth, gathered from the prisons of the world, transformed into invincible giants. Now they were ready to ravage the world -- unless Doc Savage and his mighty crew could stop them.

Lester Dent authored this book under pseudonym Kenneth Robeson.

More information about The Monsters available at the Hidalgo Trading Company website.

The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Rose to a destination in deep space - Justicia, a prison camp stretched over seven planets, where Earth colonies deal with their criminals. While Rose finds herself locked up in a teenage borstal, the Doctor is trapped in a scientific labour camp. Each is determined to find the other, and soon both Rose and the Doctor are risking life and limb to escape in their distinctive styles. But their dangerous plans are complicated by some old enemies. Are these creatures fellow prisoners as they claim, or staging a takeover for their own sinister purposes?

"There are no vampires in Japan. That is the position of the Emperor. The Emperor is wrong..."

In 1899 Geneviève Dieudonné travels to Japan with a group of vampires exiled from Great Britain by Prince Dracula. They are allowed to settle in Yokai Town, the district of Tokyo set aside for Japan's own vampires, an altogether strange and less human breed than the nosferatu of Europe. Yet it is not the sanctuary they had hoped for, as a vicious murderer sets vampire against vampire, and Yokai Town is revealed to be more a prison than a refuge. Geneviève and her undead comrades will be forced to face new enemies and the horrors hidden within the Temple of One Thousand Monsters...

While seeking a cure for his malady of magicks, the suffering sorcerer Ebenezum and his hapless apprentice are rudely interrupted by militant monsters with a cause.

AN ADDICTIVE & DANGEROUSLY SPICY NEW ADULT RETELLING OF THE GREAT GATSBY WITH A VAMPIRIC TWIST...

Daisy is a recent college grad looking to get her feet back under her after a nasty breakup with her uber-controlling ex. When her cousin Nick convinces her to come to a lavish party being thrown by some mysterious new money showoff, she never expects to find the boy she loved and lost years ago...or to discover that Gatsby made his millions selling immortality to the highest bidder.

Daisy Finnegan is looking forward to the endless golden freedom of summer. No more college, no more pressure, no more worries. But when her cousin goes missing at an exclusive house party, Daisy is all too ready to confront the mysterious host... only to discover the wealthy recluse is Jay Gatsby, her childhood sweetheart--now sinfully hot and impossible to deny.

She could never resist him, and it isn't long before she's entangled in a web of wealth and lies and obsession, culminating in a shocking act of violence that shatters the summer haze and threatens to drown them all.

But it isn't until Gatsby is shot through the heart--and survives--that Daisy discovers the truth of how he clawed his way up in the world: by selling the secret of immortality to the highest bidder. Now with her friends' lives at stake, her own dizzying new powers still volatile, and an unimaginable threat closing in, Daisy will have to face an impossible choice: Side with the man who claimed her body and soul? Or with the monsters who would see him lost to her forever?

He's the most beautiful man I've ever seen... and the most dangerous. Eternally young and full of a brilliant passion that may ultimately be the end of me: my perfect Dorian Gray...

The painting that's kept Dorian Gray flawless for over a century is beginning to fall apart, rotted by his life of reckless decadence. Desperate, he seeks out the only person who might be able to save him: a talented young painter descended from Dorian's first love.

Baz may have the same magical gift as her ancestor, but she's vowed never to paint anyone's likeness again. Haunted by the memory of the terrible price her talent can exact, she swears she will not be swayed--not even by the seductive words dripping like venom from the lips of the most beautiful man she's ever met.

Yet as Dorian tries to persuade Baz by any means possible, they become aware of a darker, deadlier magic awakening around them. Dangerous forces, long dormant, have been stirred by Baz's presence... and are determined to have her no matter the cost. As tensions rise and desire flares ever-hotter, Baz and Dorian become trapped in a complex web of conflicting motives, messy emotions, and a growing, desperate passion that may well consume them both.

An addictive and truly original spicy New Adult retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray with a magical twist.

He was the other half of my soul--the mirror to my every dark desire. My destruction, my redemption, my salvation: my Heathcliff...

Cathy Earnshaw's got the devil inside her--or at least that's what the small, cultish community she's spent her whole life trapped inside would say. She can sense death coming, and every loss sends her spiraling into a violent, uncontrollable episode of grief, wailing like a banshee across the swampy forests of the Lowcountry. With a secret as dark as hers, there's no hope of relief, or escape, or finding someone with a chance of understanding.

Until she meets him.

Heathcliff's got his own trauma, and a secret just as dangerous as Cathy's. Stolen as a child, raised by necromancers, he's the most forbidden sin she could ever imagine... and the most desperately tempting. Violent in his passions, tender in his affection, he feels like the other half of her soul, but even as they claw desperately to be together, the world seems just as determined to keep them apart.

Because it turns out their little Southern community was built long ago on a graveyard of lies... and every cult needs its sacrificial lamb.

An addictive and truly original spicy New Adult retelling of Wuthering Heights with a magical twist.

There was a time I felt lost and alone... until I met them, and together our souls took flight: My gentle Raoul and our deadly Angel of Music...

Haunted by the violent death of her parents, Christine Daaé longs to find solace in music, but debilitating stage fright keeps her firmly in the shadows. All she can hope for is a few stolen moments singing to herself in the mournful silence of the backstage stairwell... until one night, the shadows sing back.

In exchange for complete devotion, her mysterious Phantom promises to teach her everything he knows--and with his praise boosting her confidence, Christine is finally able to take center stage... catching the eye of her sweet childhood friend turned something more, Raoul.

But her mysterious mentor is as obsessive as he is demanding, and he will not share Christine with anyone--not unless he can have them both in a bargain that is as dangerous as it is seductive. Light and shadows, gentleness and raging passion, the three of them should not fit so perfectly together. Yet as a supernatural force looms, ready to tear them apart forever, Christine must decide if love can truly exist in the space between beauty and madness... and whether she's finally ready to fully embrace the music of the night.

An addictive and truly original spicy New Adult retelling of The Phantom of the Opera with a magical twist.

Contents:

• vii - Introduction (The Battle of the Monsters and Other Stories) - (1976) - essay by David G. Hartwell and L. W. Currey
• 1 - The Secret of Apollonius Septrio - (1878) - novelette by Leonard Kip
• 69 - The Repairer of Reputations - [The King In Yellow] - (1895) - novelette by Robert W. Chambers
• 119 - The Monster-Maker - (1887) - shortstory by W. C. Morrow (variant of The Surgeon's Experiment)
• 153 - The Battle of the Monsters - (1899) - shortstory by Morgan Robertson
• 167 - A Thousand Deaths - (1889) - shortstory by Jack London
• 179 - The End of the World - (1903) - shortstory by Simon Newcomb
• 197 - The Battle for the Pacific: Sorakichi-Prometheus - (1976) - shortstory by Rowan Stevens
• 223 - Harry Borden's Naval Monster: A Ship of the Air - (1908) - shortstory by William J. Henderson

Tells the stories of mental parasites, extraterrestrial creatures, clones, monstrous aliens, invaders, and colonists.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction: Monsters - (1988) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• 12 - Passengers - (1968) - short story by Robert Silverberg
• 25 - The Botticelli Horror - (1960) - novelette by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.
• 64 - The Shapes - (1968) - novelette by J. H. Rosny aîné (trans. of Les Xipéhuz 1887)
• 88 - The Clone - (1959) - short story by Theodore L. Thomas
• 99 - The Men in the Walls - (1963) - novella by William Tenn
• 174 - The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth - (1965) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• 206 - Student Body - (1953) - novelette by F. L. Wallace [as by Floyd L. Wallace]
• 227 - Black Destroyer - [Space Beagle] - (1939) - novelette by A. E. van Vogt
• 258 - Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• 286 - Exploration Team - [Colonial Survey] - (1956) - novelette by Murray Leinster
• 332 - All the Way Back - (1952) - short story by Michael Shaara

Lee Striga is an actress, movie stuntwoman, and demon hunter. Fresh from filming Voodoo Wars in New Orleans, Lee returns to Los Angeles. Back at the Katz Family stunt ranch she finds animals of all kinds taking refuge on the grounds, and the supernatural creatures who populate Hollywood on edge to the point of violence. People are vanishing without a trace, and clues lead to a legendary mansion famous for its horrible deaths--the location for Lee's next film job.

A dark academia fantasy series about a teen who's willing to do anything to find her brother--even infiltrate a secret society full of monsters...

When August's brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks the stress of college got to him. But August knows her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing.

The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and protect their remaining family. And after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother might be in more danger than she could have imagined.

Unfortunately for her, the only person with a connection to the mysterious creature is the bookish Virgil Hawthorne... and he knows about them because he is one. If he doesn't find a partner to help control his true nature, he'll lose his humanity and become a mindless beast--exactly what the secret society he's grown up in would love to put down.

Virgil makes a proposition: August will join his society and partner with him, and in return, he'll help her find her brother. And so August is plunged into a deadly competition to win one of the few coveted candidate spots, all while trying to accept a frightening reality: that monsters are real, and she has to learn to master them if she's to have any hope of

Seventeen-year-old Clara is ready to fight back. Fight back against her abusive father, fight back against the only life she's ever known, and most of all, fight back against scrabs, the earth-dwelling monsters that are currently ravaging the world. So when an opportunity arises for Clara to join an international monster-fighting squad, she jumps at the chance.

When Clara starts training with her teammates, however, she realizes what fighting monsters really means: sore muscles, exhaustion, and worst of all, death. Scrabs are unpredictable, violent, and terrifying. But as Clara gains confidence in her battle skills, she starts to realize scrabs might not be the biggest evil. The true monsters are the ones you least expect.

When the world was crumbling, seventeen-year-old Clara fought back. She escaped her abusive home and joined Team Seven, a monster fighting squad of runaways and misfits formed to combat the scrabs terrorizing the planet. And after nearly dying in Paris, Clara and Team Seven discovered the sinister truth behind the scrab invasion. Scrabs aren't just mindless monsters set on destruction. They're being trained and weaponized by MDG, a private security firm hired by the government.

Now Clara and the rest of Team Seven have made it their mission to expose MDG. But no one said fighting for the truth would be easy. And as Clara and Team Seven find themselves at the center of a global conspiracy, they must face their biggest threat yet: their own demons.

There's no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from acclaimed author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains--and friends or enemies--with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books, This Savage Song is a must-have for fans of Holly Black, Maggie Stiefvater, and Laini Taylor.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city--a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent--but he's one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who's just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August's secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives. In This Savage Song, Victoria Schwab creates a gritty, seething metropolis, one worthy of being compared to Gotham and to the four versions of London in her critically acclaimed fantasy for adults, A Darker Shade of Magic. Her heroes will face monsters intent on destroying them from every side--including the monsters within.

Kate Harker is a girl who isn't afraid of the dark. She's a girl who hunts monsters. And she's good at it. August Flynn is a monster who can never be human. No matter how much he once yearned for it. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.

Nearly six months after Kate and August were first thrown together, the war between the monsters and the humans is a terrifying reality. In Verity, August has become the leader he never wished to be, and in Prosperity, Kate has become the ruthless hunter she knew she could be. When a new monster emerges from the shadows--one who feeds on chaos and brings out its victim's inner demons--it lures Kate home, where she finds more than she bargained for. She'll face a monster she thought she killed, a boy she thought she knew, and a demon all her own.

Glenn, a college sophomore, has a Sociology 102 paper that requires spending time with an unfamiliar a group or culture. Luckily, two hot girls from his class have the same idea: Attend the university's game club to get reaction material for their papers.

A creepy game moderator shows up, ready to start a game of Monsters, Maces and Magic. Glenn doesn't fret over the GM's disturbing vibe, figuring it'll lead to potential fodder for his paper.

Moments after rolling up his character and beginning the adventure, Glenn, his two classmates, and three other players are drawn into the game, literally. How and why they got trapped in the game, transformed into their RPG characters are important questions, sure. But simply surviving a world filled with horrific creatures, unknown magic, and perilous roads is first on the list.

Glenn, a college sophomore, hasn't gotten used to being a gnome healer, trapped in a world that functions under the rules of Monsters, Maces and Magic. Of course, acclimating isn't the plan. He, along with the other players drawn into the RPG world in the form of their characters, want to escape and return home.

Stephi, Kirby, Ron, Derek and Glenn survived their first adventure into the Dark Heart Swamp, and are approached to once again enter the dismal marshland. An elf maiden, daughter of a baronet, has been taken captive by a band of goblins, and gold is offered for her rescue.

Gold is needed, not only if the party hopes to escape the game world, but to live and survive its perils. Glenn and his party take the mission, even though they weren't the first choice. Beyond that, the foul swamp and its evil denizen may not be the greatest danger. A seer warns that their greatest threat lies in betrayal.

You can't hide in an RPG forever.

Eighteen years ago Tom, a barber college student, got trapped in the Monsters, Maces and Magic game world as Josiah the thief.The first two adventures saw all of Tom's party members, also trapped within the game world, perish within the fetid depths of the Dark Heart Swamp. His subsequent stint adventuring with NPCs proved short lived. He preferred survival. Over time, Tom became Josiah, adopting a life blending in with the game world's NPCs. He gave up advancing as a thief, trained as a lay healer, and works as a barber, cutting hair, pulling teeth, lancing boils and functioning as a low-level operative within the local thieves' guild. But life, even one lived as a faux NPC, can get interesting.

Such happens when a young half-goblin thief named Gurk shows up in Josiah's shop, looking for information. Little did the pair know that the unobtrusive barber shop would become a focal point in a brewing guild war.

Never deal with a leprechaun.

Finding a pot of unclaimed gold just doesn't come without a price in the Monsters, Maces and Magic RPG world. Stephi discovers this the hard way while tangling with a mean-spirited leprechaun.

With Stephi, now transmorphed into a fairy, the party must do the leprechaun's bidding. Otherwise, Stephi will remain a diminutive fairy with no hope of returning to her former elf self. But leprechauns aren't known for their straight dealing. Neither is Higslaff, a manipulative pawnshop owner who possesses what the leprechaun desires.

Glenn, Kirby, Stephi, Ron and Derek--RPG players trapped in the game world as their characters--set off on a mission to Riven Rock, a city rife with cruelty and corruption. There they must inflict retribution for an attack against the pawnshop owner. Danger and deceit threaten the party at every turn. Can they avoid getting caught up in the brewing war between rival thieves' guilds? Will they survive the journey, and the perils of Riven Rock? As low-rank characters, it'll take all the skill, cunning and luck the party can muster. And that might not be enough.

Higslaff the Pawnshop Owner needs a job done, but the Guild War has taken a toll. Those he'd normally call upon are engaged in some other vital assignment, or dead. He decides to hire Gurk, Jax, Marigold, Lysine and Kalgore instead. The adventuring party has proven themselves resourceful and effective on previous jobs, not only for himself, but for the local silversmith, and the Church of Apollo. This particular assignment shouldn't be a problem. What Higslaff doesn't know is that details of his job have been compromised. Agents of the Riven Rock Thieves' Guild are on the move, ready to wrest control of the enchanted item that could tip the balance in the Guild War.

Kirby is going on his first date, ever, but in the body of his RPG character, Gurk.

When vengeful danger rears its ugly head on the nighttime streets of Three Hills City, will the chivalry of a half-goblin thief suffice?

Minutes after being drawn into the Monsters, Maces and Magic world as their characters, the unsuspecting players fell under attack. Kim, having become the warrior monk Byeol, didn't survive, thanks to a rampaging ogre. But the party's quest to obtain a Revive the Dead Spell for Kim proved futile. Fortunately, rather than departing, her soul entered the party's vacant soul gem.

Such enchanted gems are rare and valuable. Somehow word of the party's treasure has reached Black Venom, leader of the local thieves' guild. He offers the party a deal they can't refuse: They get Byeol back, he gets their vacant soul gem.

If only it was that easy.

Nothing of consequence in the Monsters, Maces and Magic world is ever safe. Or easy.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Ultimate Frankenstein (1991), edited by Megan Miller, David Keller, Byron Preiss and John Betancourt. The story can also be found in the anthology Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993) and The Newford Stories (1999).

After a summer spent trying to prevent a catastrophic war among the Greek gods, Percy Jackson finds his seventh-grade school year unnervingly quiet. His biggest problem is dealing with his new friend, Tyson, a six-foot-three, mentally challenged homeless kid who follows Percy everywhere, making it hard for Percy to have any "normal" friends.

But things don't stay quiet for long. Percy soon discovers there is trouble at Camp Half-Blood: the magical borders which protect Half-Blood Hill have been poisoned by a mysterious enemy, and the only safe haven for demigods is on the verge of being overrun by mythological monsters. To save the camp, Percy needs the help of his best friend, Grover, who has been taken prisoner by the Cyclops Polyphemus on an island somewhere in the Sea of Monsters, the dangerous waters Greek heroes have sailed for millennia - only today, the Sea of Monsters goes by a new name... the Bermuda Triangle.

Now Percy and his friends - Grover, Annabeth, and Tyson - must retrieve the Golden Fleece from the Island of the Cyclopes by the end of the summer or Camp Half-Blood will be destroyed. But first, Percy will learn a stunning new secret about his family, one that makes him question whether being claimed as Poseidon's son is an honor or simply a cruel joke.

Evil always seeks a foothold. We must not give it one...

Lou has spent her whole life running. Now, after a crushing blow from Morgane, the time has come to go home--and claim what is rightfully hers.

But this is no longer the Lou her friends knew. No longer the Lou who captured a chasseur's heart. A darkness has settled over her, and this time it will take more than love to drive it out.

The girl, the monster, the prince, the queen.

They broke the world.

And some things can never be undone.

In Emily A. Duncan's Blessed Monsters, they must unite once more to fight the dark chaos they've unleashed - but is it already too late?

You are reading this because I am dead.

Something terrible happened at the Rewar Teng Institute of Experimental Methods. When the Tensorate's investigators arrived, they found a sea of blood and bones as far as the eye could see. One of the institute's experiments got loose, and its rage left no survivors. The investigators returned to the capital with few clues and two prisoners: the terrorist leader Sanao Akeha and a companion known only as Rider.

Investigator Chuwan faces a puzzle. What really happened at the institute? What drew the Machinists there? What are her superiors trying to cover up? And why does she feel as if her strange dreams are forcing her down a narrowing path she cannot escape?

Governor Saxa, of the great city of Carce, a fantasy analog of ancient Rome, is rusticating at his villa. When Saxa's son Varus accompanies Corylus on a visit to the household of his father, Crispus, a retired military commander, Saxa graciously joins the party with his young wife Hedia, daughter Alphena, and a large entourage of his servants, making it a major social triumph for Crispus. But on the way to the event, something goes amiss. Varus, who has been the conduit for supernatural visions before, experiences another: giant crystalline worms devouring the entire world.

Soon the major characters are each involved in supernatural events caused by a struggle between two powerful magicians, both mentored by the deceased poet and mage Vergil, one of whom wants to destroy the world and the other who wishes to stop him. But which is which? There is a complex web of human and supernatural deceit to be unraveled.

Monsters of the Earth, the new novel in David Drake's ongoing chronicles of Carce, The Books of the Elements, is a gripping and intricate work of fantasy.

One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.

As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend's trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.

At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark?

The world will soon find out.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by James H. Schmitz
• Lion Loose - (1961) - novella
• The Searcher - (1966) - novella
• The Winds of Time - (1962) - novelette
• The Pork Chop Tree - (1965) - shortstory
• Greenface - (1943) - novelette

Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Aurora Award-nominated Novella

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), editd by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection A Very British History (2013).

A stunning new work of historical fantasy, J. M. Miro's Ordinary Monsters introduces readers to the dark, labyrinthe world of The Talents

England, 1882. In Victorian London, two children with mysterious powers are hunted by a figure of darkness --a man made of smoke.

Sixteen-year-old Charlie Ovid, despite a lifetime of brutality, doesn't have a scar on him. His body heals itself, whether he wants it to or not. Marlowe, a foundling from a railway freight car, shines with a strange bluish light. He can melt or mend flesh. When two grizzled detectives are recruited to escort them north to safety, they are forced to confront the nature of difference, and belonging, and the shadowy edges of the monstrous.

What follows is a journey from the gaslit streets of London, to an eerie estate outside Edinburgh, where other children with gifts--the Talents--have been gathered. Here, the world of the dead and the world of the living threaten to collide. And as secrets within the Institute unfurl, Marlowe, Charlie and the rest of the Talents will discover the truth about their abilities, and the nature of the force that is stalking them: that the worst monsters sometimes come bearing the sweetest gifts.

With lush prose, mesmerizing world-building, and a gripping plot, Ordinary Monsters presents a catastophic vision of the Victorian world--and of the gifted, broken children who must save it.

Set in the same thrilling world as Genoveva Dimova's The Witch's Compendium of Monsters series, Ace Up Her Sleeve is a standalone, spoiler-free story featuring the fire witch Kosara, who must match wits with the Tsar of Monsters in a high-stakes card game that is equal parts magic, skill, and subterfuge...

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

As a witch in the walled city of Chernograd, Kosara has plenty of practice treating lycanthrope bites, bargaining with kikimoras, and slaying bloodsucking upirs. There's only one monster she can't defeat: her ex, the Zmey, known as the Tsar of Monsters. She's defied him one too many times and now he's hunting her. Betrayed by someone close to her, Kosara's only choice is to trade her shadow - the source of her powers - for a quick escape.

Unfortunately, Kosara soon develops the deadly sickness that plagues shadowless witches - and only reclaiming her magic can cure her. To find it, she's forced to team up with a suspiciously honorable detective. Even worse, all the clues point in a single direction: To get her shadow back, Kosara will have to face the Foul Days' biggest threats without it. And she's only got twelve days.

But in a city where everyone is out for themselves, who can Kosara trust to assist her in outwitting the biggest monster from her past?

With her magic reclaimed and her role in the community of Chernograd restored, Kosara's life should finally be back to normal - but, of course, things can't possibly be that simple.

She is now in possession of twelve witch's shadows. Holding them may grant her unprecedented power, but that doesn't mean they're always willing to do her bidding.

Across the wall in Belograd, Asen chases his only lead on the latest witch murder case. He follows the trail of smuggling kingpin Konstantin Karaivanov to an underground monster auction - which leads him right back to Chernograd.

There, sinister events follow one after another: snow falls in midsummer, a witch with two shadows is found dead, and monsters that should only appear during the Foul Days are sighted. The barrier between worlds thins... and Kosara is certain it's her fault - and her job to fix.

You are invited to a Warlock wedding...

B.Y.O.M. (Bring Your Own Monster).

The perennially popular Gallowglass family has three weddings to plan. But what Warlock wedding could be complete without an army of monsters threatening the planet?