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A Natural History of Transition is a collection of short stories that disrupts the notion that trans people can only have one transformation. Like the landscape studied over eons, change does not have an expiration date for these trans characters, who grow as tall as buildings, turn into mountains, unravel hometown mysteries, and give birth to cocoons. Portland-based author Callum Angus infuses his work with a mix of alternative history, horror, and a reality heavily dosed with magic.

American owner of a failing gallery, Toni, is unexpectedly called to England when she inherits a manor house in Hertfordshire from a mysterious lost relative.

What she really needs is something valuable to sell, so she can save her business. But, leaving the New Mexico desert behind, all she finds is a crumbling building, overgrown gardens, and a wealth of historical paperwork that needs cataloguing.

Soon she is immersed in the history of the house, and all the people who tended the gardens over the centuries: the gardens that seem to change in the twilight; the ghost of a fighter plane from World War Two; the figures she sees in the corner of her eye.

A beautiful testament to the power of memory and space, Threading the Labyrinth tells the stories of those who loved this garden across the centuries, and how those lives still touch us today.

A collection of nineteen dark, wildly imaginative short stories from the author of the award-winning TikTok sensation Tender Is the Flesh.

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica's vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways--often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In "Roberto," a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman's neighbor jumps to his death in "A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound," and in "Candy Pink," a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica's signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.

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 stunningly original work of speculative fiction, The Fungus Garden follows the plight of a man who becomes transformed into a termite. Impeccably researched, this story brings the reader effortlessly into a fascinating world of conflict and desire, ultimately becoming an investigation into what it means to be human.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1981. The story can also be found in the anthologies Dragons of Darkness (1981), edited by Orson Scott Card, amd The Best Science Fiction of the Year #11 (1982), edited by Terry Carr. It is included in the collection Particle Theory (1981).

Two wandering adventurers and unlikely soulmates are variously plying their trades as swords for hire, horse thieves and con artists - until fortune entangles them in the myriad schemes and battles that follow a bloody coup in the medieval Jewish empire of the Khazars.

A series of essays and reviews on and of genre fiction by Michael Chabon.

Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, has joined forces with the editors of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern to create a collection of action-packed short stories by some of today's most talented names in literature. Elmore Leonard's telling of life for a fifteen-year-old boy and his dad in 1920's Oklahoma in "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman" shifts easily to the happenings of an adolescent's unexpected run-in with the future in Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium." In these and other stories, including Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick," Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn't Come Out," "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" by Dave Eggers, Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That" (read by Harlan Ellison, himself), Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes," and "The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance" by Michael Chabon, the authors return to the traditions of pulp fiction, spinning adventurous, suspense-ridden tales destined to keep their audience on the edges of their seats.

Table of Contents:

• The Editor's Notebook - (2003) - essay by Michael Chabon
• Tedford and the Megalodon - (2003) - shortstory by Jim Shepard
• The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter - (2003) - shortstory by Glen David Gold
• The Bees - shortstory by Dan Chaon
• Catskin - (2003) - shortstory by Kelly Link
• How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman - (2003) - shortstory by Elmore Leonard
• The General - (2003) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Closing Time - (2003) - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
• Otherwise Pandemonium - (2003) - shortstory by Nick Hornby
• The Tale of Gray Dick - (2003) - shortstory by Stephen King
• Blood Doesn't Come Out - (2003) - shortstory by Michael Crichton
• Weaving the Dark - (2003) - shortstory by Laurie R. King
• Chuck's Bucket - (2003) - shortstory by Chris Offutt
• Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly - (2003) - shortstory by Dave Eggers
• The Case of the Nazi Canary - (2003) - shortstory by Michael Moorcock
• The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers - (2003) - shortstory by Aimee Bender
• Ghost Dance - (2003) - shortstory by Sherman Alexie
• Goodbye to All That - (2003) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Private Grave 9 - (2003) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Albertine Notes - (2003) - novella by Rick Moody
• The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance - (2003) - novelette by Michael Chabon
• About the Contributors - (2003) - essay by Michael Chabon
• This Book Benefits 826 Valencia - (2003) - essay by Dave Eggers and Michael Chabon

Ethan Feld is bad at baseball. Hopeless, even. But when his father mysteriously disappears, Ethan is recruited to save him and the world by traveling the baseball-obsessed Summerlands to stop Coyote, the trickster, from unmaking existence. With help from a ragtag group of friends he meets along the way, Ethan must not only find his father and stop Coyote, but also master his position on the field. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon has created a distinctly American fantasy experience with baseball at its heart.

With this brilliant novel, the bestselling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys gives us an exhilarating triumph of language and invention, a stunning novel in which the tragicomic adventures of a couple of boy geniuses reveal much about what happened to America in the middle of the twentieth century. Like Phillip Roth's American Pastoral or Don DeLillo's Underworld, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a superb novel with epic sweep, spanning continents and eras, a masterwork by one of America's finest writers.

It is New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat to date: smuggling himself out of Nazi-occupied Prague. He is looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a collaborator to create the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Out of their fantasies, fears, and dreams, Joe and Sammy weave the legend of that unforgettable champion the Escapist. And inspired by the beautiful and elusive Rosa Saks, a woman who will be linked to both men by powerful ties of desire, love, and shame, they create the otherworldly mistress of the night, Luna Moth. As the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe and the world, the Golden Age of comic books has begun.

The brilliant writing that has led critics to compare Michael Chabon to John Cheever and Vladimir Nabokov is everywhere apparent in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon writes "like a magical spider, effortlessly spinning out elaborate webs of words that ensnare the reader," wrote Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times about Wonder Boys, and here he has created, in Joe Kavalier, a hero for the century.

For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their descendants have prospered in the Federal District of Sitka, a "temporary" safe haven created in the wake of revelations of the Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of the fledgling state of Israel. Proud, grateful, and longing to be American, the Jews of the Sitka District have created their own little world in the Alaskan panhandle, a vibrant, gritty, soulful, and complex frontier city that moves to the music of Yiddish. For sixty years they have been left alone, neglected and half-forgotten in a backwater of history. Now the District is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their dream is coming to an end: once again the tides of history threaten to sweep them up and carry them off into the unknown.

But homicide detective Meyer Landsman of the District Police has enough problems without worrying about the upcoming Reversion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a wreck, his career a disaster. He and his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Shemets, can't catch a break in any of their outstanding cases. Landsman's new supervisor is the love of his lifeand also his worst nightmare. And in the cheap hotel where he has washed up, someone has just committed a murderright under Landsman's nose. Out of habit, obligation, and a mysterious sense that it somehow offers him a shot at redeeming himself, Landsman begins to investigate the killing of his neighbor, a former chess prodigy. But when word comes down from on high that the case is to be dropped immediately, Landsman soon finds himself contending with all the powerful forces of faith, obsession, hopefulness, evil, and salvation that are his heritageand with the unfinished business of his marriage to Bina Gelbfish, the one person who understands his darkest fears.

At once a gripping whodunit, a love story, an homage to 1940s noir, and an exploration of the mysteries of exile and redemption, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a novel only Michael Chabon could have written.

America is on the brink of a revolution, one both technological and political. The science fiction of AI and robotics has finally come true, but millions are angry and fearful that the future has left them behind.

After narrowly stopping a bombing at Washington's Union Station, FBI Special Agent Lara Keegan receives a new assignment: to field-test an advanced police robot. As a series of shocking catastrophes unfolds, the two find themselves investigating a conspiracy whose mastermind is using cutting-edge tech to rip the nation apart. To stop this new breed of terrorist, their only hope is to forge a new type of partnership.

The United States, China, and Russia eye each other across a twenty-first century version of the Cold War, which suddenly heats up at sea, on land, in the air, in outer space, and in cyberspace. The fighting involves everything from stealthy robotic-drone strikes to old warships from the navy's "ghost fleet." Fighter pilots unleash a Pearl Harbor-style attack; American veterans become low-tech insurgents; teenage hackers battle in digital playgrounds; Silicon Valley billionaires mobilize for cyber-war; and a serial killer carries out her own vendetta. Ultimately, victory will depend on blending the lessons of the past with the weapons of the future.

A canonical, riveting work from the patron saint of Cuban science fiction that is reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey and now available to an English readership for the first time.

A morally profound chamber piece, Agustín de Rojas' A Legend of the Future takes place inside a damaged spaceship following the failure of a mission to Titan, one of Saturn's moons. The journey back to Earth forces the crew members to face their innermost fears. This mesmerizing novel is a science fiction roman à clef about the intense pressures--economic, ideological, psychological--inside Communist Cuba.

The cult classic from the godfather of Cuban science fiction, Agustín de Rojas's The Year 200 is both a visionary sci-fi masterwork and a bold political parable about the perils of state power.

Centuries have passed since the Communist Federation defeated the capitalist Empire, but humanity is still divided. A vast artificial-intelligence network, a psychiatric bureaucracy, and a tiny egalitarian council oversee civil affairs and quash "abnormal" attitudes such as romantic love. Disillusioned civilians renounce the new society and either forego technology to live as "primitives" or enhance their brains with cybernetic implants to become "cybos." When the Empire returns and takes over the minds of unsuspecting citizens in a scenario that terrifyingly recalls Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the world's fate falls into the hands of two brave women.

Drawing as much from the realms of the adventure novel, spy thriller, and political satire as from hard science fiction, horror, and fantasy, The Year 200 has been proven prophetic in its consideration of cryogenic freezing, artificial intelligence, and state surveillance, while its advanced weapons and robot assassins exist in an all-too-imaginable future. Originally published in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the onset of Cuba's devastating Special Period, Agustín de Rojas's magnum opus brings contemporary trajectories to their logical extremes and boldly asks, "What does 'the greatest good for the greatest number' really mean?"

Contents:

• vii - The Cthulhu Mythos - essay by August Derleth
• 3 - The Call of Cthulhu - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• 31 - The Return of the Sorcerer - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1931) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• 45 - Ubbo-Sathla - [Hyperborea] - (1933) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• 53 - The Black Stone - [Cthulhu Mythos Tales] - (1931) - shortstory by Robert E. Howard
• 69 - The Hounds of Tindalos - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1929) - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
• 83 - The Space-Eaters - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1928) - novelette by Frank Belknap Long
• 111 - The Dweller in Darkness - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1944) - novelette by August Derleth
• 146 - Beyond the Threshold - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1941) - novelette by August Derleth
• 170 - The Shambler from the Stars - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1935) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• 179 - The Haunter of the Dark - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1936) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• 201 - The Shadow from the Steeple - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1950) - novelette by Robert Bloch
• 222 - Notebook Found in a Deserted House - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1951) - novelette by Robert Bloch
• 242 - The Salem Horror - [Michael Leigh] - (1937) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• 259 - The Haunter of the Graveyard - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by J. Vernon Shea
• 272 - Cold Print - [Cthulhu Mythos] - shortstory by Ramsey Campbell [as by J. Ramsey Campbell ]
• 286 - The Sister City - [Cthulhu Mythos] - shortstory by Brian Lumley
• 300 - Cement Surroundings - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by Brian Lumley
• 321 - The Deep Ones - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novelette by James Wade
• 351 - The Return of the Lloigor - [Cthulhu Mythos] - novella by Colin Wilson
• 402 - Biographical (Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos) - shortfiction by uncredited

Here is a collection of the most famous stories of this unparalleled writer: The Rats in the Walls, PIckman's Model, The Colour out of Space, The Call of Cthulhu and The Haunter of the Dark, plus other tales you would be advised to read late at night if you hope for untroubled sleep....

Contains:

• The Colour out of Space
• The Music of Eric Zann
• The Outsider
• The Rats in the Walls
• The Call of Clthulhu
• Pickman's Model
• The Dunwich Horror
• The Whisperer in Darkness
• The Thing on the Doorstep
• The Haunter of the Dark

He is not to open the door which leads to the strange time and place, nor to invite Him Who lurks at the threshold..." went the warning in the old family manuscript that Ambrose Dewart discovered when he returned to his ancestral home in the deep woods of rural Massachusetts. Dewart's investigations into his family's sinister past eventually lead to the unspeakable revelations of The Great Old Ones who wait on the boundaries of space and time for someone to summon them to earth.

Acclaimed cult horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's notes and outlines for this tale of uncanny terror were completed by August Derleth, his friend and future publisher. Of the many Lovecraft-Derleth "posthumous collaborations," The Lurker at the Threshold remains the most popular, having sold 50,000 copies in its previous edition alone.

Note: According to S. T. Joshi, of the novel's 50,000 words, only 1,200 were written by Lovecraft.

Cross frontiers of fear into chill realms of terror

Strange and terrible experiences await you in this book. A mis-spawned, murderous abomination lurking in its shuttered prison, waiting for its chance to escape... a man's mind wrenched through aeons of time and imprisoned in an alien body... a "window" that looks out across the dimensions onto scenes of grotesque monstrosities about to break through into our world...an occult experimenter trying to acheove reptilian longevity - and horribly succeeding: these and more stories from th eouter limits of horror are here. Each one will transport you into icy territories of unimaginable fear...

H. P. LOVECRAFT
the century's greatest master of supernatural terror, left several stories unfinished at his untimely death. August Derleth, his friend and fellow writer, skillfully completed them. The stories in this volume are the result of this unique collaberation.

Contains:

• The Survivor
• Wentworth's Day
• The Peabody Heritage
• The Gable Window
• The Ancestor
• The Shadow Out of Space
• The Lamp of Alhazred
• The Fisherman of Falcon Point
• The Dark Brotherhood
• The Shuttered Room

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by August Derleth
• A View from a Hill - (1925) - shortstory by M. R. James
• Glory Hand - (1937) - shortstory by August Derleth
• The Lady's Maid's Bell - (1902) - novelette by Edith Wharton
• The Shadows - (1927) - novelette by Henry S. Whitehead
• Out of the Eons - (1935) - novelette by Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Jar - (1944) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• The Bully of Chapelizod - shortstory by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• Over the River - (1941) - shortstory by P. Schuyler Miller
• Carnaby's Fish - (1945) - shortstory by Carl Jacobi
• The Painted Mirror - (1937) - shortstory by Donald Wandrei
• The Double Shadow - (1933) - shortstory by Clark Ashton Smith
• The Ocean Leech - (1925) - shortstory by Frank Belknap Long
• Amina - (1907) - shortstory by Edward Lucas White
• Farewell Performance - (1940) - shortstory by H. Russell Wakefield
• One Way to Mars - (1945) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• Out of the Picture - (1936) - novelette by Arthur Machen
• The Canal - (1927) - shortstory by Everil Worrell
• The Postman of Otford - (1917) - shortstory by Lord Dunsany
• Deaf, Dumb and Blind - (1925) - shortstory by C. M. Eddy, Jr. and H. P. Lovecraft
• Spider-Bite - (1926) - novelette by Robert S. Carr
• Brenner's Boy - (1932) - shortstory by John Metcalfe
• Mr. Lupescu - (1945) - shortstory by Anthony Boucher
• Masquerade - (1942) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• Seventh Sister - (1943) - shortstory by Mary Elizabeth Counselman
• In Amundsen's Tent - (1928) - novelette by John Martin Leahy
• Man in a Hurry - (1944) - shortstory by Alan Nelson
• The Last Pin - (1940) - shortstory by Howard Wandrei
• The Doll - (1946) - novelette by Algernon Blackwood
• The Tool - (1928) - shortstory by William Fryer Harvey
• The Dreams in the Witch-House - (1933) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• Bibliography - essay by uncredited

Contents

• The Shadows on the Wall (1903) - short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• Old Martin (1925) - short story by A. E. Coppard
• The Lake (1944) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster (1928) - short story by H. Russell Wakefield
• It (1940) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Phantom Farmhouse (1923) - novelette by Seabury Quinn
• Squire Toby's Will (1868) - novelette by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• Negotium Perambulans (1922) - short story by E. F. Benson
• The Intercessor (1911) - novelette by May Sinclair
• The House of the Nightmare (1906) - short story by Edward Lucas White
• The Follower (1935) - short story by Cynthia Asquith
• The Ravel Pavane [Gerald Canevin] (1946) - short story by Henry S. Whitehead

A STARTLINGLY ORIGINAL, GENRE-BENDING LITERARY DEBUT IN WHICH A LOVESICK COLLEGE STUDENT IS ABDUCTED BY HIS FUTURE SELVES.

After Henry's girlfriend Val leaves him and transfers to another school, his grief begins to manifest itself in bizarre and horrifying ways. Cause and effect, once so reliable, no longer appear to be related in any recognizable manner. Either he's hallucinating, or the strength of his heartbreak over Val has unhinged reality itself.

After weeks of sleepless nights and sick delusions, Henry decides to run away. If he can only find Val, he thinks, everything will make sense again. So he leaves his mother's home in the suburbs and marches toward the city and the woman who he thinks will save him. Once on the George Washington Bridge, however, a powerful hallucination knocks him out cold. When he awakens, he finds himself kidnapped by two strangers--one old, one middle-aged--who claim to be future versions of Henry himself. Val is the love of your life, they tell him. We've lost her, but you don't have to.

In the meantime, Henry's best friend Gabe is on the verge of breakdown of his own. Convinced he is somehow to blame for Henry's deterioration and eventual disappearance, Gabe is consumed by a potent mix of guilt and sadness. When he is approached by an enigmatic stranger who bears a striking resemblance to his lost friend, Gabe begins to fear for his own sanity. With nowhere else to turn, he reaches out to the only person who can possibly help him make sense of it all: Val.

The Lost Boys Symphony is a beautiful reminder of what it's like to be young, lost, and in and out of love for the very first time. By turns heartfelt and heartbreaking, Ferguson's debut novel boldly announces the arrival of a spellbinding new talent on the literary stage, in a master feat of empathy and multilayered storytelling that takes adventurous literary fiction to dizzying new heights.

From the moment William Mertoun arrives to catalogue the library at Colonel Barr's old mansion on the desolate Northumbrian moors, he senses something is terribly wrong. Barr's brother Ian has just died, mysteriously and violently, and the Colonel himself is hidden away in a locked room, to which his sinister nurse denies all access. As strange and supernatural events begin to unfold, Mertoun learns the local legend of a ghostly Roman centurion, slain on the site sixteen centuries earlier, who is said to haunt the estate. Mertoun is sceptical at first, but after another murder, a harrowing seance, and an actual sighting of the spirit one lonely night on the moor, he realizes that he and everyone at Barr's mansion are in mortal danger. What does the ghost want, and can it be stopped?

Brody Quail is a man without dreams... but he's beginning to live a nightmare. He exists in four different lives, in four simultaneous identities: happy young boy, lovelorn teenager, damaged young man, and a pitiable middle-aged loner. He lives blissfully unaware of his divided nature until a series of increasingly surreal experiences shakes this already fragile equilibrium. Time begins to stop and start for him alone. Intimations of a recurring event haunt his thoughts, and a silent, shadowy presence watches and stalks him. As the barriers between his realities begin to flicker and blur, Brody's confusion and fear find sympathetic understanding in Constance Drake, whose own sense of reality seems to be fraying into terrifying incoherence. Threatened by madness and oblivion, Brody and Constance embark on a desperate search for answers. The truth may set them free--or utterly destroy them.

In the year 2060, the next plague has arrived. MaGo bots, the nanotechnology used for everything from fighting the common cold to radical life extension, have begun to malfunction, latching onto the brain's acetylcholine receptors to cause a permanent state of delirium.

The Birthday Problem follows four Seattle survivors: Chaaya Gopal Lee, great-granddaughter of the MaGo programmer, whom the pandemic turns into a killer; 40-something ex-rock star and pharmacy technician Greystone Toussaint, the "King of Seattle"; Alastair Gomez-Larsen, forced to become a blood-smuggler to treat his father's liver disease; and Didi VanNess, a lovesick former-WNBA center and CNA, who tries to win back her wife's heart against a backdrop of madness, death and 30 cats, all named Ira.

In a world rocked by revolt, your worst enemy can become your greatest hope

Fourteen-year-old Tommy Shore lives a life of privilege: he has the finest clothing, food, and education available and servants to take care of his every whim. He is the son of the chief administrator of Aeren-the most important man on the islands. Fifteen-year-old Tamsin Henry has grown up knowing only poverty, but she is the daughter of a revolutionary who longs to give her and their people more.
Ordinarily, Tommy and Tamsin would never cross paths, but on the day of a violent and deadly revolt, chance brings them together. Now the world waits to hear the fate of the August 5, five men led by, and including, Tamsin's father and captured during the uprising. As tensions between the government and the rebels escalate, Tommy uncovers a brutal truth about his father. How will he ever get Tamsin to trust that he wants to help her cause, when she believes he stands for everything she's fighting against?

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Trampoline (2003), edited by Kelly Link. The story is included in the collection Pictures from an Expedition (2006).

Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? is included in the book Stopping for a Spell.

How do you get rid of a guest who picks you up by the hair, won't let you play the piano, watch television or shut the window?

Candida and her family try everything - they poison his stew and litter the house with roller-skates in the hope that he will fall over them - but nothing works! Surely they can't be stuck with him for ever?

When a brilliant scientist seeking to solve the problem of world hunger tries to create giant mushrooms through genetic manipulation, what could possibly go wrong?

The mutated spores escape the lab and spread across all of England. Toadstools grow to twenty feet tall, and a case of athlete's foot can mean a grisly and horrible death.

But those who die quickly are the lucky ones. Those who survive infection by the fungus will be transformed into something unthinkably monstrous ...

After the Russians and Chinese conquer America, a savage dictatorship is imposed. The hero becomes involved in a resistance plot to launch a satellite armed with nuclear weapons, hoping to threaten the enemy into surrendering.

Asimov's Readers Award Finalist Novella

In a future United States, automation technology provided by alien visitors has made large numbers of people unemployed, scraping for survival outside of wealthy enclaves where the rich live in luxury and plenty. A gifted young woman who has grown up poor is given the chance to join the wealthy people, but after a while her enjoyment of her new situation sours, and, realizing that she really wants to change things for the poor, she joins an underground rebellion.

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2020. Read it for free at the publisher's website.

Angus McIntyre makes his debut with The Warrior Within, a mind-bending science fiction adventure about a man with many people living in his head

Karsman has a dozen different people living in his head, each the master of a different set of skills and hoping to gain mastery of Karsman's body. He survives on a backwater planet dominated by the Muljaddy, a mostly ambivalent religious autocracy, where devotion and prayer can be traded in for subsistence wages and enough food to survive. Surrounded by artifacts of a long dead civilization, the population survives off its salvage, with Karsman eking out an uneventful life as the unofficial mayor of his small town.

But that life is soon interrupted, when a group of commandos arrive, coming from the wastelands as only off-worlders could. They've come to kill a woman, or so they say. At first the commandos merely threaten as they search. Unable to find what they're looking for, they begin to ratchet up their measures, separating the men from the women, instigating violent encounters, and eventually staging a coup against the Muljaddy and his Temple.

Faced with the task of protecting his quiet town and a woman he might love from the commandos who could want to kill her, Karsman must balance between maintaining his personality and harnessing the personas whose skills he desperately needs.

First published in serial form as Der Golem in the periodical Die weissen Blätter in 1913-14, The Golem is a haunting Gothic tale of stolen identity and persecution, set in a strange underworld peopled by fantastical characters. The red-headed prostitute Rosina; the junk-dealer Aaron Wassertrum; puppeteers; street musicians; and a deaf-mute silhouette artist.

Lurking in its inhabitants' subconscious is the Golem, a creature of rabbinical myth. Supposedly a manifestation of all the suffering of the ghetto, it comes to life every 33 years in a room without a door. When the jeweller Athanasius Pernath, suffering from broken dreams and amnesia, sees the Golem, he realises to his terror that the ghostly man of clay shares his own face....

The Golem, though rarely seen, is central to the novel as a representative of the ghetto's own spirit and consciousness, brought to life by the suffering and misery that its inhabitants have endured over the centuries. Perhaps the most memorable figure in the story is the city of Prague itself, recognisable through its landmarks such as the Street of the Alchemists and the Castle.

Note: this novel has been translated into English several times. Older editions may be abriged.

It was Vera's idea to buy the Itza. The "world's most advanced smart speaker!" didn't interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house--who ordered industrial lye? Then there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.

It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed, and Thiago's world became unbearable. Pundits and politicians all looking to turn his wife's death into a symbol for their own agendas. A barrage of texts from her well-meaning friends about letting go and moving on. Waking to the sound of Itza talking softly to someone in the living room...

The only thing left to do was get far away from Chicago. Away from everything and everyone. A secluded cabin in Colorado seemed like the perfect place to hole up with his crushing grief. But soon Thiago realizes there is no escape--not from his guilt, not from his simmering rage, and not from the evil hunting him, feeding on his grief, determined to make its way into this world.

A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness and the oppressive intimacy of technology, This Thing Between Us marks the arrival of a spectacular new talent.

The extraordinary journey of one unforgettable character - a story of friendship and betrayal, loyalty and redemption, love and loneliness and the inevitable march of time

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.

No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes.

Until now.

As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. 'I nearly missed you, Doctor August,' she says. 'I need to send a message.'

This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

'Tell me strange things' the dandified clergyman and vampirologist Montague Summers was wont to say. With this volume, Summers' enthusiastic contribution to the tradition of ghostly and gothic fiction, readers can at last encounter a full-fledged collection of his own strange tales. Unpublished during his lifetime, despite its exquisite quality, which was attested to by the author and medievalist M. R. James, Six Ghost Stories displays a range from the gruesome to the grotesquely comic, presenting posthumous vendettas, a bibliophile who unwittingly seeks domestic help from an unusual location, a toy theatre that affords its new owner a glimpse into the bloodiest tragedy of the Victorian stage, and other spectral intrusions. These pieces showcase Summers' love of scandal, diablerie and the theatre, as well as offering a fascinating glimpse into the creative process of one of the most colourful men of Edwardian letters.

The Swedish original of this short story appeared in Mitrania #3, 2009. It was published in English in Weird Tales, Spring 2011 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2013. The story can also be found in the anthology The Time Traveler's Almanac (2014), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Jagannath: Stories (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Ahn, age-old enemy of the Dhar, have mastered a powerful new battle sorcery and are massing for an attack on Dharbek's shores. It will be the last and greatest battle, a merciless conquest of the lands they once owned and the total destruction of the hated Dhar.

But Daviot, a Dhar storyteller and memory of his people, has an impossible dream--to bring peace to the two warring races. His only allies are a beautiful blind mage; an Ahn warrior who has forgotten his history and heritage; and a beast-man, a hybrid creation of cynical magic, rebelling against a lifetime of persecution and servitude. Together they journey to the lost lands of the north to search for the one weapon that will ensure that the Dhar and the Ahn listen to this small band of dreamers. But they may find that a weapon of peace can wreak far greater destruction than generations of war.

Twelve stories by the modern master of science fiction represent the evolution of his writing over a period of thirty-three years.

Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (The Best of Isaac Asimov) - (1973) - essay
• 15 - Marooned Off Vesta - [Brandon, Shea & Moore - 1] - (1939) - short story
• 32 - Nightfall - (1941) - novelette
• 68 - C-Chute - (1951) - novelette (variant of The C-Chute)
• 105 - The Martian Way - (1952) - novelette
• 152 - The Deep - (1952) - novelette
• 174 - The Fun They Had - juvenile - (1951) - short story
• 178 - The Last Question - [Multivac] - (1956) - short story
• 191 - The Dead Past - (1956) - novelette
• 239 - The Dying Night - [Wendell Urth] - (1956) - novelette
• 266 - Anniversary - [Brandon, Shea & Moore - 2] - (1959) - short story
• 283 - The Billiard Ball - (1967) - novelette
• 303 - Mirror Image - [Elijah Baley / R. Daneel Olivaw] - (1972) - short story

Aided by the dark magic of an evil sorcerer, a merciless army seeks to conquer the peaceful province of Chaldor. After Chaldor's king meets his death in battle, his queen urges the region's fiercest warrior, Gailard the Highlander, to carry out one final mission. She asks - and Gailard consents - to protect the royal daughter, Princess Ellyn, until she is old enough to gain her hereditary powers and win back her father's kingdom. But Gailard knows the enemy is closing in. In desperation, he turns to Shara, an enigmatic sorceress--and the only one with the power to help the pair survive. Shara vows to lead Gailard and Ellyn to their destiny. But will it be one of triumph...or destruction?

Long ago the Kandarians seized the border forests, driving the native Durrym into a land of powerful magic that protects the Durrym from further invasion. But Kandarian priests have now mastered their own form of magic--a magic that can overcome the Durrym's protective spells and open their land to conquest. For Cullyn, a young and innocent Kandarian woodsman, it means the end to a life of idyllic solitude, as Kandarian troops, Durrym spies, a noble lady, and a cruel priest all force him to choose sides in the impending conflagration. Cullyn soon comes to realize that through fate's design, he alone can stop the war. But it will mean betraying his own people, earning the trust of his Durrym enemies, and winning the heart of the woman he loves--before the coming clash of magic and mayhem destroys them all.

On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of human complexities. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, "The Magus" is a feast for the mind and the senses.

Three Songs for Roxy tells three inter-related tales: of Kizzy, a foundling raised by a Romany Gypsy family in present-day Seattle, as she is about to be claimed by the aliens who left her to be raised as human; of Scott Lynn Miller, an unstable survivor of Katrina and security guard who is deeply affected by what he witnesses when the aliens contact Kizzy; and of "Natalie," an alien assigned to retrieve Kizzy-- who is befriended by the current champion of the "Night of a Thousand Stevies" and falls in love with Kizzy's adopted sister Roxy.

Three Songs for Roxy explores issues of identity, gender, sexuality, and what it means to be an outsider.

Set in a near future (the novel was first published in 1961 and is set in the period 1970-73), this is Angus Wilson's most allegorical novel, about a doomed attempt to set up a reserve for wild animals. Simon Carter, secretary of the London Zoo, has accepted responsibility and power to the prejudice of his gifts as a naturalist. But power is more than just the complicated game played by the old men at the zoo in the satirical first half of this novel: it lies very near to violence, and in the second half real life inexorably turns to fantasy - the fantasy of war. This tense and at times brutal story offers the healing relationship between man and the natural world as a solution for the power dilemma.

LEGENDS AREN'T BORN. THEY'RE FORGED.

Dug Sealskinner is a down-on-his-luck mercenary travelling south to join up with King Zadar's army. But he keeps rescuing the wrong people.

First, Spring, a child he finds scavenging on the battlefield, and then Lowa, one of Zadar's most fearsome warriors, who's vowed revenge on the king for her sister's execution.

Now Dug's on the wrong side of that thousands-strong army he hoped to join - and worse, Zadar has bloodthirsty druid magic on his side. All Dug has is his war hammer, one rescued child and one unpredictable, highly-trained warrior with a lust for revenge that's going to get them all killed...

It's a glorious day to die.

LEADERS ARE FORGED IN THE FIRES OF WAR

Iron Age warriors Dug and Lowa captured Maidun castle and freed its slaves. But now they have conquered it, they must defend it.

A Roman invasion is coming from Gaul, but rather than uniting to protect their home, the British tribes battle each other - and see Maidun as an easy target.

Meanwhile, Lowa's spies infiltrate Gaul, discovering the Romans have recruited bloodthirsty British druids, and Maidunite Ragnall finds his loyalties torn when he meets Rome's charismatic general, Julius Caesar.

War is coming. Who will pay its price?

WARRIOR QUEENS AND ROMAN INVADERS DO BATTLE IN THE FINAL VOLUME OF THIS THRILLING EPIC FANTASY TRILOGY.

Caesar's soldiers have murdered, massacred and pillaged their way through Gaul and loom on the far side of the sea, ready to descend upon Britain - with them are an unstoppable legion of men twisted by dark magic. Somehow Queen Lowa must repel the invasion, although her best general is dead and her young druid powerless. She faces impossible odds, but when the alternative is death or slavery, a warrior queen will do whatever it takes to save her people.

EVERY EMPIRE HAS ITS DOWNFALL.

Toby Greene has been reassigned.

The Department: Section 37 Station Office, Wood Green.

The Boss: August Shining, an ex-Cambridge, Cold War-era spy.

The Mission: Charged with protecting Great Britain and its interests from paranormal terrorism.

The Threat: An old enemy has returned, and with him Operation Black Earth, a Soviet plan to create the ultimate insurgents by re-animating the dead.

A number of influential South Korean nationals are committing suicide on UK soil. In all cases they seem to simply drop whatever they're doing and swiftly -- almost vacantly -- end their own lives. An electronics importer falls from the top floor of his high-rise office, the ambassador to the UK shoots his chauffeur and drives his own car off London Bridge, an actor sets fire to himself during a movie premiere...

August and Toby investigate and slowly uncover the ancient force of the Rain-Soaked Bride, a ghostly spirit of vengeance that drags her enemies to their deaths.

Once summoned the spirit cannot be dismissed until it takes the life it is charged with, it will be unstoppable in its pursuit of the mortal it has in its sights. Unfortunately, after getting too close to the source of the spirit, that mortal is now Toby Greene.

Toby Greene, a Clown Service agent, is running for his life. Pursued around the globe by the relentless Rain-Soaked Bride, to stop is to die. But section Chief August Shining has problems of his own. Under investigation by MI6 and at the mercy of a mysterious entity, he's on his own.

In the north, a fire rages through the world-spanning forest of Beltrevan. Out of the flames is born a terrifying being with monstrous powers--Taws, Messenger of the fire-god Ashar. The ancient prophecies say he will raise a great Horde from the warlike tribes of the north to bring destruction to the peaceful Kingdoms of Tamur, Ust alich, and Kesh.

In the south, a young prophetess of the order of the Lady forsakes her vows of celibacy to bear a child, for the Book of Kyrie says that a champion will arise from Tamur to meet the challenge of the Usurper. The boy is named Kedryn. And as he nears manhood it seems that he may indeed be the child of prophecy, for he wields powers that none outside the Sisterhood have ever claimed. He may be the last, desperate hope for the survival of the Kingdoms, but the Usurper has learned of Kedryn as well, and his armies are on the march

Kedryn, the young prince prophesied the sacred Book of Kyrie, has led the Three Kingdoms to victory over the barbaric northern Hordes commanded by the demonic Taws, the fire-born Messenger of the war-god Ashar.

But victory had a terrible price. Kedryn was blinded by an ensorcelled sword in his hour of triumph. Now he must journey into the abode of the dead, accompanied by his beloved Wynett, on a perilous quest to confront the shade of the warrior who wielded the blade. In Kedryn's absence, Taws the Messenger rises again, using his terrible magics to foment bloodshed and rebellion among the Kingdoms.

Years ago, the sacred Book of Kyrie prophesied that a champion would lead the Three Kingdoms in battle against the demonic sorcerer Taws and his barbarian Horde, sent by the wrathful war-god Ashar to tear the kingdoms apart.

When the young prince Kedryn Caitin defeated Taws and his forces, the Three Kingdoms joined in proclaiming him and his wise and beautiful bride, Wynett, heirs to the throne. Now comes the challenge of ruling nations--and Kedryn feels inadequate to the task.

As the Three Kingdoms forge a new leadership and Kedryn and Wynett begin their life together, all are certain that the battle is over at last. But concealed by darkness, Ashar's anger simmers and he waits. His minion may have failed. But his diabolical cause is not forgotten.

Brandyjack is a bawdy, boisterous traveling man whose hard drinking and ready fists regularly land him in trouble. Thoruso is a man of vision who has unlocked the hidden knowledge of the ancients and has planned to escape the struggle of Earth life. He will need Brandyjack's protection to realize his ambition.

Brandyjack grows restless living in a settlement with Lotus. He decides to return to the city to find his old friends and new adventures and becomes involved in a battle against an oppressive government.

The latest addition to the Myths series from Canongate, now available in paperback, is a beguiling tale from the beloved author of the best-selling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Angus is one of the earliest Celtic deities and one of the most cherished to this day. Like an even more handsome combination of Apollo and Eros, he is the god of love, youth, and beauty. Just the sight of him has made people fall in love, and he has the power to reveal a person's true love in a dream, if asked politely.

Alexander McCall Smith has turned his renowned storytelling talents to crafting irresistible stories from this ancient myth. Five exquisite contemporary fables of love lost and found unfold alongside Angus's search for the beautiful Caer, the swan maiden he met in his dreams. McCall Smith unites reality and dreams, today and the ancient past, mesmerizingly, leaving the reader to wonder: what is life but the pursuit of dreams?

A miraculous machine... and a nightmare!

Innova, a young gnomish recluse finds himself in a terrible situation. Tried in a gnomish court for an unfortunate accident and sentenced to spend months at the bottom of Mt. Nevermind tuning gnomeflingers, young Innova makes an incredible discovery. The whole gnomish society is changed by one machine that, unlike any other gnomish invention, makes the entire mountain run like clockwork.

In the face of this, Commander Halion Khargos of the Knights of Tahkisis must fulfill his Vision, sent to him by the Dark Queen Tahkisis. He must take Mt. Nevermind.

Fergus Ryan tells the amazing story of the gnomes of Mt. Nevermind during the upheval of the Chaos War. And because they're gnomes, their adventures are punctuated with two or three explosions.

Robert Darvel, a young and penniless French engineer at the turn of the twentieth century, is an amateur astronomer obsessed with the planet Mars. Transported by a combination of science and psychic powers to Mars, Robert must navigate the dangers of the Red Planet while trying to return to his fiancée on earth. Through his travels, we discover that Mars can not only support life but is also home to three different types of vampires. This riveting combination of science fiction and the adventure story provides a vivid depiction of an imagined Mars and its strange, unearthly creatures that might be closer to earthly humans than we would care to believe.

Originally published in French as two separate volumes, translated as The Prisoner of the Planet Mars (1908) and The War of the Vampires (1909), this vintage work is available to English-language audiences unabridged for the first time and masterfully translated by David Beus and Brian Evenson.

In the time of the beginning, when the First Gods created all things, they brought forth two children, Tharn and Balatur, lesser gods, to walk upon the new world. But Balatur was arrogant, Tharn was consumed with madness, and the First Gods were forced to condemn them both to an eternal, deathlike sleep, lest they destroy creation.

Now a mysterious wizard seeks to awaken the mad Tharn and unleash his terrifying power into the world. If he succeeds, the god's insane fury could rip apart the fabric of existence and give the diabolical magician what he seeks most of all: the scepter of domination over the forces of chaos.

Only the young scholar Calandryll has the knowledge and skill to stop the evil wizard's plan. Accompanied by a cynical mercenary, protected by an enigmatic magic, he must journey across a war-torn countryside, facing terror and treachery both real and magical, to find the ancient book whose incantations can bring the evil god back to life and destroy it forever.

Ages ago, when the First Gods ruled heaven and earth, they created two lesser deities to reign along with them. But these gods, Tharn and Balatur, were flawed. Their madness threatened creation itself--and thus they were condemned to an eternal sleep. Only an ancient book of spells holds the key to their release.

Now an evil necromancer has obtained the book and hastens to Tharn's hidden resting place with a plan as deadly as the god himself. Ancient prophecy points to the exiled prince Calandryll as the only one who can defeat the wizard--aided by a beautiful warrior woman, a hard-bitten mercenary, and Calandryll's own uncertain powers.

But first Calandryll and his companions must travel a kingdom racked by civil war, cross the rolling prairie of the fierce horse clans, and finally venture into the forbidden wastes and uncharted territories beyond. Enemies and foul treachery await, while the mighty Tharn, as if somehow aware of his imminent release, begins to stir...begins to dream...and all creation begins to quake.

When the First Gods created all things, they brought forth two lesser gods, Tharn and Balatur, to walk upon the new world. But greed and power twisted their minds and turned their ambition into madness. And so the First Gods condemned them to eternal sleep in order to preserve creation.

Now, the exiled prince Calandryll, the mercenary Bracht, and the warrior woman Katya pursue Rhythamun, a powerful wizard who would wake one of the mad gods and provoke apocalypse. He carries with him the Arcanum, an ancient book of power that--simply by virtue of having been discovered--already stirs the god from his slumber.

But Calandryll and his companions are chased by another vengeful mage, whose dark magics have created Cennaire, an undead murderess, to thwart their efforts. And as they face the perils of civil war, magical assaults, and the ever-present threat of Cennaire's treachery to reach Rhythamun before he wakes the god, they live with the knowledge that the fate of the world rests solely in their hands.

This short story originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, November 1955. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• S-F: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy (1956), edited by Judith Merril
• SF: The Best of the Best (1967), edited by Judith Merril
• One Hundred Years of Science Fiction (1968), edited by Damon Knight
• Arena: Sports SF (1976), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg
• Science Fiction of the Fifties (1979), edited by Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph Olander
• The Road to Science Fiction 4: From Here to Forever (1982), edited by James Gunn
• The Great SF Stories 17 (1955) (1988), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Isaac Asimov
• The Science Fiction Century (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell

When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world - for there is magic in Marianne's blood, and magic in her soul. And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore is the first volume of Sheri S. Tepper's acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

Venture at your own risk into a realm where the sun sinks into oblivion -- and all that is unholy, unearthly, and unspeakable rises. These rare, hard-to-find collaborations of cosmic terror are back in print, including:

• Wentworth's Day - A fellow figures his debt to a dead man is null and void, until he discovers just how terrifying interest rates can be.
• The Shuttered Room - A sophisticated gentleman must settle his grandfather's estate, only to find that the house shelters dark secrets.
• The Dark Brotherhood - A beautiful woman and her companion meet the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, in a tale as terrifying as anything Poe himself ever created.
• Innsmouth Clay - A sculptor returns from Paris to create a statue not entirely of this world -- and not at all under his control.
• Witches' Hollow - A new schoolteacher puts his soul in peril while trying to save one of his students from a ravenous creature.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by April Derleth
• The Lurker at the Threshold - [Cthulhu Mythos] - (1945) - novel by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Survivor - (1954) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• Wentworth's Day - (1957) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Peabody Heritage - (1957) - novelette by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Gable Window - (1957) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Ancestor - (1957) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Shadow Out of Space - (1957) - novelette by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Lamp of Alhazred - (1957) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Shuttered Room - (1959) - novelette by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Fisherman of Falcon Point - (1959) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• Witches' Hollow - (1962) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Shadow in the Attic - (1964) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Dark Brotherhood - (1966) - novelette by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Horror from the Middle Span - (1967) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• Innsmouth Clay - (1971) - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft
• The Watchers Out of Time - short story by August Derleth and H. P. Lovecraft

Meet Stan Markowski of the Scranton PD's Occult Crimes Unit

Like the rest of America, Scranton's got an uneasy 'live and let unlive' relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that's when they call me.

My name's Markowski. I carry a badge.

Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

My name's Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

A series of seemingly motiveless murders of supernatural creatures points to a vigilante targeting the supe community. Markowski wouldn't normally have much of a problem with that, but his daughter may be next on the killer's list...

Meet Stan Markowski or the Scranton PD's Occult Crimes Unit.

"My name's Markowski. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.

"A new supernatural gang is intent on invading Scranton and it looks like I'm going to have to work with the current mob to prevent a demonic gang war.

"If there's one thing I hate more than living with supernatural scumbags, it's working with them! But you know that they say, better the devil you know…"

The aliens had arrived with gifts, warnings, and an offer we couldn't refuse...

Our choice was simple: we could be cannon fodder, or we could be...fodder. We could send our forces to fight and die (as only humans can) against a ravening horde that was literally feeding on its interstellar conquests -- or remain as we were -- virtually weaponless and third in line for brunch.

We chose to fight.

Thanks to alien technology and sheer guts, the Terrans on two worlds fought the Posleen to a standstill. Thank God there was a moment to catch our breath, a moment, however brief, of peace --

Now, for the survivors of the Barwhon and Diess Expeditionary Forces, it was a chance to get some distance from the blood and misery of battle against the Posleen centaurs. A blessed chance to forget the screams of the dying in purple swamps and massacres under searing alien suns.

For earth it was an opportunity to flesh out their force of raw recruits with combat-seasoned veterans. Political, military and scientific blundering had left the Terran forces in shambles -- and with the Posleen invasion only months away, these shell-shocked survivors might be the only people capable of saving the Earth from devastation.

If the veterans had time to lick their wounds.

Because the Posleen don't read schedules.

Two thrilling new occult investigations, featuring the urban fantasy sleuths Quincy Morris, great-grandson of Dracula's killer, and the white witch Libby Chastain.

PLAY WITH FIRE
Houses of worship - churches, synagogues and mosques alike - are burning across the U.S., usually while still full of people. The fires are initially dismissed as random acts of violence, until Morris and Chastain uncover the deadly meaning behind the destruction, and the terrifying cause the arsonists seek to serve.

MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS
Seeking revenge for the U.S.'s actions in the Middle East, a terrorist cell has conjured an afreet, a deadly djinn that will strike at the very heart of America - unless Morris and Chastain can stop it first.

Occult investigator Quincey Morris and his "consultant", white witch Libby Chastain, are hired to free a family from a deadly curse that appears to date back to the Salem witch trials. Fraught with danger, the trail finds them stalking the mysterious occult underworlds of Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans and New York, searching out the root of the curse. After surviving a series of terrifying attempts on their lives, the two find themselves drawn inexorably towards Salem itself - and the very heart of darkness. Black Magic Woman marks the start of an electrifying news series of supernatural thrillers following the exploits of occult investigators Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain, as they search out evil in the darkest corners of America.

"Justin is a first class writer; he's smart and he's fun, he moves quickly and he takes corners at speed. Every time you think you know where he's going, he makes a point of going somewhere else. His characters are sharp and vivid, his dialogue crackles with wit and tension, and when it comes to the scarier corners of the magical underworld, he knows his stuff." - Simon R. Green, New York Times best-selling author of the Nightside series

Jim Butcher, author of the "Dresden Files" novels "'Black Magic Woman' is the best manuscript I've ever been asked to read. Keep your eye on Justin Gustainis."

A MORRIS AND CHASTAIN INVESTIGATION

Supernatural investigator Quincey Morris and his partner, "white witch" Libby Chastain, are each in pursuit of a vicious killer. One is murdering small children for their bodily organs; the other is hunting down white witches - and Libby may be next. Along a trail that leads from Iraq to Turkey, to the US, all clues point to crazed billionaire Walter Grobius, a man obsessed with harnessing the ultimate evil. Morris and Chastain, teamed with the deadly Hannah Widmark, must fight desperately to stop a midnight rendezvous between forces so powerful that the fate of the world may be at stake. And the clock is ticking... Evil Ways continues the electrifying new series of supernatural thrillers following the exploits of investigators Quincey Morris and Libby Chastain.

A MORRIS AND CHASTAIN INVESTIGATION

Senator Howard Stark wants to be President of the United States. So does the demon inside him. With the competing candidates dropping out due to scandal, blackmail, and 'accidental' death, Stark looks like a good bet to go all the way to the White House. And if he gets there, Hell on Earth will follow. Occult investigator Quincey Morris and white witch Libby Chastain are determined to stop this evil conspiracy. But between them and Stark stand the dedicated agents of the US Secret Service - as well as the very forces of Hell itself. Quincey and Libby will risk everything to exorcise the demon possessing Stark. If they fail, 'Hail to the Chief' will become a funeral march - for all of us.

A thrilling new occult investigation from Justin Gustainis, creator of the urban fantasy sleuths Quincy Morris, great-grandson of Dracula's killer, and his partner, white witch Libby Chastain.

Houses of worship are burning all across the U.S., churches, synagogues and mosques alike. Usually while the places are full of people. The fires are initially dismissed as unconnected, random acts of violence, until Morris - freshly released from jail after their last case - and Chastain track down the terrible meaning behind the destruction, and the dark cause the arsonists seek to serve. A race against time ensues, to stop a ritual that will cause the deaths of hundreds... and bring about the end of the world.

A thrilling new occult investigation from Justin Gustainis, creator of the urban fantasy sleuths Quincy Morris, great-grandson of Dracula's killer, and his partner, white witch Libby Chastain.

Seeking revenge for the U.S.'s actions in the Middle East, a terrorist cell has conjured an afreet, a deadly djinn that will strike at the very heart of America - unless Morris and Chastain can stop it first.

She escaped the slavepens of Lyland--a beautiful girl with hair the color of summer sun, eyes as blue as the heavens, and a body that invited love.

Rescued by sorcerer priests, she was schooled in every art of weaponry and combat. Her sword stained by the blood of legions, no man could defeat her.

With her mysterious companion-mentor Spellbinder, and a great black bird to watch over them, Raven journeyed forth to her destiny--and the happy day of slaughtering Karl ir Donwayne, the cruel master who had tortured her mercilessly as a slave...

Journey to Mars: The Wonderful World; its Beauty and Splendor; its Mighty Races and Kingdoms; its Final Doom (1894)

Pope's novel is the story of a Lt. Frederick Hamilton, USN. On a voyage to Antarctica, his ship is wrecked; he and a Maori sailor are cast onto a barren island. Though near the end of his endurance, Hamilton rescues a strange-looking man before he loses consciousness. He awakens three weeks later, aboard a spaceship traveling to Mars.

On Pope's Mars there are three human-like races: red, yellow, and blue Martians. They have attained a sophisticated technology while preserving a feudal society (which allows for duels and swordplay). The Martians travel in "ethervolt cars" and anti-gravity aircraft; they enjoy communications devices that are equivalent to television and video telephone. Pope also provides a Martian magician who is telepathic, invokes spirits, and reads the hero's future.

Hamilton has various adventures, including a romance with the yellow-complexioned Princess Suhlamia. The Martians need to relocate from their world because of impending planetary catastrophe: meteors bombard the planet (the so-called Martian canals are actually linear cities, which makes them thinner targets), and the moons Phobos and Deimos threaten to crash to the surface. Hamilton returns to Earth to try to find space for them. A Martian revolution disrupts his plans, however; he writes no account of his adventures prior to an attempt to return to the red planet.

Journey to Venus, the Primeval World; Its Wonderful Creations and Gigantic Monsters.

The book was a sequel to Pope's novel of the previous year, Journey to Mars. The Venus volume features the same hero and heroine, Lt. Frederick Hamilton, USN, and his love interest the Martian princess Suhlamia. They travel to Venus on a Martian "ethervolt" spacecraft.

The publisher promoted the book as "full of exciting adventures, hairbreadth escapes, and perilous vicissitudes, among primeval monsters and semi-human creatures, the episodes following each other in such breathless succession that the interest of the reader never flags."

The Jarada are a mysterious race of insectoid being with an extreme devotion to protocol. When this usually reclusive race offer to open diplomatic relations with the Federation, Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise are quickly ordered to Jarada to negotiate the exchange of Ambassadors.

When the ship arrives, the Jarada seem uncharacteristically friendly. They invite Picard to send down members of his crew and negotiations proceed both quickly and smoothly. Suddenly, however, the Jarada change. They cut off Commander Riker and his away team from the U.S.S. Enterprise and initiate an unprovoked attack on the ship, Now Picard must unravel the aliens' mystery before it's too late for the away team -- and the U.S.S. Enterprise.

In the middle of a routine mapping mission, Captain Picard and the crew of the "U.S.S. Enterprise" encounter a culture just on the edge of developing warp drive technology. When they survey the planet, they are startled by the sudden approach of thousands of spacecraft from an aggressive alien race bent on destroying this emerging culture. Picard has only days to resolve a conflict that has been going on for millennia. If he fails, billions will die, yet if he succeeds, he will unleash a powerful new threat to the Federation.

Geordi LaForge and his fellow cadets are headed to Atlantis Station, the underwater research base located near a volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. Up until now Geordi has spent most of his life in space with his Starfleet officer parents and he is more than ready to explore this strange, new world deep underwater.

The first stop for the cadets is the above-ground complex on Isla del Fuego, where the students barely escape a small volcanic eruption. They finally arrive at the underwater station shaken and fighting among themselves, but determined to carry out their assignments.

Then suddenly an earthquake rocks the station and the cadets are trapped in their lab with tempers running high. Now, as debris blocks their path back to the aquashuttle, Geordi and the others, together, must race against time and the dangers of the freezing seawater to escape the station before it disappears into an underwater abyss.

Geordi LaForge has been given the chance of his lifetime! He's been chosen to join the training vessel Benjamin Franklin as assistant engineer, an opportunity rarely given to plebes. Geordi is determined to live up to Commander Sanchez's expectations. Their mission is to chart a neglected sector of the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter.

That night, Sanchez calls up s history of the old starship and Ben's first commander, the heroic Ike Ikushima, who died saving his crew from disaster. The next night Geordi sees Ikushima's ghost, arm raised, pointing directly at him! When he tells Sanchez, everyone begins to doubt Geordi's reliability... until the ghost reappears, pointing a warning finger at them all! What does it mean? Is the ship haunted? Is it an alien invasion? The cadets are about to make history themselves-- if they escape with their lives!

Massive computer malfunctions are plaguing the Enterprise when Kirk suddenly receives a shocking message from Star Fleet Command: Centaurus has been bombed and annihilated; thousands are dead. Give whatever help you can. Centaurus is a beautiful, peaceful planet, home to many humans -- including McCoy's daughter Joanna.

The crew risks beaming down to investigate. But Kirk is thrown into a deadly struggle between violent enemy terrorists and vengeful Centaurians. Now Lt. Uhura, left alone in command, must jeopardize the cripple Enterprise to save Centaurus, Kirk -- and Joanna McCoy!

Transporting a diplomatic party is nothing new for Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise -- but this particular mission promises trouble from the start.

For one thing, the wife of the Federation ambassador on this trip is an old flame of Kirk's -- she's determined to see that they resume their romance where they left off. Of course, when another ambassador presents Kirk with three of his wives, finding time for the first romance, let alone any of his other duties, is going to prove nearly impossible.

When a diplomatic attache is murdered, and the prime suspect is one of his crewmembers, Kirk begins to wish that Starfleet Command would consider using some other Starship to ferry diplomatic personnel....

Windows On A Lost World

While Captain Kirk and a landing party from the Starship Enterprise explore the ruins of an ancient civilization on the uninhabited planet Careta IV, they discover strange devices that appear to be windows.But the mysterious windows prove to be more than they seem when Kirk, Chekov, and two security guards enter them and disappear.

Suddenly, Kirk and his team find themselves find themselves trapped in a strange alien enviorment and must fight with all their strength to survive and keep their sanity. Now Spock must locate his missing comrades and solve the window's ancient mysteries before his captain and crewmates are lost forever....

It has been eighteen months since the Starship Enterprise completed her historic five-year mission and her legendary crew has seperated, taking new assignments that span the galaxy.

On Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk has married and started a new life as the Chief of Starfleet operations where he is overseeing the refit of his beloved ship, now commanded by a new Captain -- Willard Decker. Kirk's only tie to his former crewmates is his Chief of Staff, a young Lieutenant Commander named Kevin Riley.

But Kirk's new, quiet life changes when he meets a scientist named G'dath who is on the brink of perhaps the greatest scientific discovery in a century. G'dath's invention could mean tremendous strides in Federation technology, or -- in the wrong hands -- the subjugation of countless worlds.

When Klingon agents capture this new technology, Admiral Kirk and Lt. Commander Riley are all that stands between peace and devastation for the entire Federation.

The world of The Ancient Magus' Bride is bigger than Elias and Chise, and many are the folk and spirits who cross their lives' path. Their tales twist together in a tapestry, words like golden yarn, a weaving of memories and secrets. Contained within these pages are new stories of Kore Yamazaki's fantastic Britain, penned by the author herself and a star-studded lineup of Japanese authors. From a Celtic vampire in love with a human, to a gemstone knight, and even a glimpse into what Silky does in her spare time, let this enchanted collection take you to the hidden corners of a beloved fantasy world.

The world of The Ancient Magus' Bride is bigger than Elias and Chise, and many are the folk and spirits who cross their lives' path. Their tales are woven into a tapestry, words like silver yarn, twining together emotions and warmth. Held within these pages are new stories of Kore Yamazaki's fantastic Britain, penned by the author herself and a star-studded lineup of Japanese authors. From the story of a very strange brownie to gangsters and dragon eggs, and a mage who finds a clutch of magical silkworms, let this spell-binding collection return you to the hidden corners of a beloved fantasy world.

Sevenna City simmers with tension between the ruling elite known as the Zunft and the working-class cottagers. Hoping to regain control, the Zunft cracks down on the cottagers, but their brutality just fuels the flames of rebellion. A cottager boy tries to navigate the dangerous currents of the city but finds himself on a collision course with both the Zunft and the people who want to bring them down.

"The Freedom of Navid Leahy" is set in the world of Jenna Helland's debut novel, The August 5.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Expendables had struck it lucky at last. After grappling with the revolting Death Worms of Kratos, the deadly Rings of Tantalus and the weirdly anachronistic military society of Zelos, their fourth mission looked an easy one. Argus was an earth-type planet with one major continent, comfortably covered with vegetation. But that was before The Expendables encountered the deadly harpoon tree, or the low-lying plant which grasped greedily at anyone who dared to set foot on it, or the hornets that paralyzed their victims - so as to enjoy their food in peace. Worst of all the lurking horrors of Argus was the deadly hallucinogenic pollen which turned quiet Santa Maria crew members into vicious maniacs

In The Shadow of His Wings, a miner's son, Lukan Barra, joins forces with the beautiful and unpredictable Rui Ravenstone, his brother's former lover, in an attempt to be the first to reach the lair of the Erseiyr, the god and monster whose great wings shadow the future of the land, and whose fate becomes linked with Lukan's in a strange and wonderful bonding.

The first book in the Six Kingdoms series, The Shadow of His Wings is set at the end of the first millennium in Myrcia. The novel opens with the estrangement of Lukan from his criminal brother, Vearus, who returns from exile with the secret of healing and transformation of the flesh that gains him power second only to Myrcia's despotic ruler, the Sanctor Grouin.

An invading army from Skarria is threatening the capitol city of Castlecliff and Lukan is press-ganged into military service, barely surviving the battle of Dawn Horse Hill which only temporarily halts the Skarrian onslaught.

Grouin declares the throne open to anyone who can secure the intervention of the fabled Erseiyr--the immortal winged creature worshipped and feared by Myrcians--who lives in a mountaintop cavern filled with tribute of ages past. Lukan, thrown unjustly into prison after the battle and then mysteriously released, resolves to claim the prize of the throne.

Wealthy, high-born Amala Damarr was supposed to be the means for Falca Breks--a roughneck, thief, and extortionist--to fulfill his long-held dream of escaping the decaying port city of his birth. And so she proved to be, but not in the way he planned on--because leaving the dismal, dangerous streets and alleys of Draica included a price he never thought existed: two souls worth saving... and Falca Breks was about to discover that one of them was his own.

Against the backdrop of a hauntingly familiar yet alien otherworld, Avram Davidson casts the adventures of the sorcerer known as Vergil Magus. Vergil was to construct a virgin speculum, a mirror of magical properties.

From Publishers Weekly: Inspired by medieval legends about the poet Vergil, who was revered not only as the author of the Aeneid but also as a powerful necromancer, Davidson embarked on his Vergil Magus series in the '60s with the intriguing novel The Phoenix and the Mirror. In this sequel, Vergil answers a magical summons from Averno, both the wealthiest and the filthiest of cities. The magnates there are worried about the waning and shifting of the natural fires that have fueled their industries and fouled their air. The bare skeleton of plot is fleshed out with an eccentric, wide-ranging series of digressions, reminiscences, dreams and cabalistic glosses, all in a rich, baroque, rhetorical style. Between that form and the subject matter (counterfeiters and alchemists, rituals of superstition and sorcery, mystic visions and magic lantern shows), the novel is less akin to fantasy than to the fiction of Laurence Sterne or William Gaddis. An acquired taste, the work is by turns witty and obscure, frustrating and fascinating.

YOU DIE WHEN YOU DIE...

You can't change your fate - so throw yourself into battle, because you'll either win or wake up drinking mead in the halls of your ancestors. That's what Finn's people believe.

But Finn wants to live. When his settlement is massacred by a hostile nation, Finn plus several friends and rivals must make their escape across a brutal, unfamiliar landscape, and to survive, Finn will fight harder than he's ever fought before.

The David Gemmell Award-nominated author of Age of Iron returns with You Die When You Die - an epic fantasy adventure in which a mismatched group of refugees battle animals and monsters, determined assassins, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfil a prophecy.

The David Gemmell Award-shortlisted author of Age of Iron returns with the second book in his epic West of West trilogy, in which a mismatched group of refugees must battle animals and monsters, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfill a prophecy.

Welcome to the Badlands...

Newly and uneasily allied, two tribes from different worlds set off across the Ocean of Grass. Their mission is to fulfill a prophecy and take Ottar the Moaner west of west, to save mankind.

In their way are the denizens of the Badlands, the most terrifying and powerful collection of murderers and monsters the world has ever seen.

The outrageously thrilling West of West trilogy comes to an action-packed close in Where Gods Fear to Go -- a gritty epic fantasy journey in which a mismatched group of refugees battle animals and monsters, an unforgiving land and each other as they cross a continent to fulfill a prophecy.

Battling across the Shining Mountains, the questers discover a land more terrifying than they ever could've imagined--and they've fought thunder lizards.

All the while fighting and falling in love, the tentatively allied Wootah and Calnians must survive monster attacks, flash floods, and tornados to uncover the secret of The Meadows. And then comes the hard part.

To save themselves and everybody else, they will travel west of west, deeper into danger... and attempt to take on a goddess who has already killed all the gods.