Adventure Fantasy Fiction

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

At 30 years old, Phil is an unemployed gamer who struggles to make ends meet. His only source of income is freelance writing (when he feels inspired enough to add another article to his less-than-popular blog). His wife has just walked out on him, leaving him without money, purpose, or food in the fridge. On the day his wife dumps him, Phil receives a mysterious piece of wetware. A game interface seems to have been implanted in his brain, which allows him to see the world through the eyes of an RPG player. Now that Phil discovers his real-life stats, he can see they're below average.

The future is divided by Perimeters: high-security gated communities where life goes on as normal. If you're inside, you're lucky. If you're outside, life expectancy takes a nose dive. Riley is fortunate to have been born on the right side of the fence. But her life of privilege comes crashing down when someone breaks through and murders her sister. She forsakes her own safety to go in search of the killer. Luc decides to go with her; otherwise she'll be dead before she's past the security gate. But what awaits her outside is more unbelievable than she ever imagined.

Eco-terrorists unleash the worst attack the world has ever seen. Over 25,000 autonomous combat drones are released in Manhattan. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the entire island is evacuated and quarantined in just a few days' time. Ten years later, Manhattan is still empty of humans, with the exception of the salvage specialists of the most watched reality show in history: Zone War. Produced live and unedited, the show follows five teams of armored vehicle specialists who brave the active drones to recover lost riches and collect bounties on dead ones.

Ten years ago, the renegade demigod known as the Kinslayer returned. His armies of monsters issued from the pits of the earth, spearheaded by his brutal Yorughan soldiers. Thrones toppled and cities fell as he drove all before him. And then he died. A handful of lucky heroes and some traitors amongst his own, and the great Kinslayer was no more. Celestaine was one such hero and now she has tasked herself to correct the worst excesses of the Kinslayer and bring light back to her torn-up world. With two Yorughan companions she faces fanatics, war criminals, and the monsters and minions the Kinslayer left behind....

Lexi Jardine may be a thief, but she's not stupid. When a crooked fireshaper wants her to steal a ring from the boss of his order, she knows it's a one-way ticket to sleeping with the fishes. Her answer is to drop off the face of the earth. Safely hidden in a quiet seaside town, she just needs to keep her head down and pretend to be a regular human. Since her only magical ability is the power to control animals, that should be easy, right?

The City of Inventions, Pallass, is a fascinating place. Filled with all kinds of oddballs from the named-rank [Alchemist], Saliss of Lights, to Grimalkin the [Sinew Magus], a drunken Dwarven master [Blacksmith], to Chaldion, to... Wyverns? Erin Solstice is on a break from her inn. Not for long; she's returning with more Skills, but she has changed. She will return with her usual chaos and wonder, but always differently. Now, there are flames and... a garden?

He's big, burly, and way smarter than your average shapeshifting bear. He's also about to get trapped by his own game...Lou Crushek is a reasonable, mellow, easygoing kind of guy. But when someone starts killing the scumbags he works so hard to bust, that really gets under his fur. Especially when that someone is a curvy she-tiger with a skill set that's turning Crush's lone-bear world upside down - and bringing his passion out of hibernation.

Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin. The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household, biting her tongue and cleaning Malini’s chambers.

In this next adventure, Hoole reclaims the throne of his father and goes on to wage a war against the forces of chaos, greed, and oppression led by the powerful warlord-tyrants. Grank, the first collier, uses his skills with fire and metals to forge weapons for battle. With great trepidation, Hoole uses the power of the ember in the final, decisive battle and wins. At the dawn of a new era of peace, Hoole searches for the ideal place to establish not a kingdom but an order of free owls - and finds the Great Tree.

Raphael was born with the mark of the dragon. His foster father taught him a mysterious and ancient magic unlike anything seen since the last dragon left the world.

In the second installment of Dianne Duvall's Immortal Guardians series, when Marcus Grayden's grief over the loss of the woman he loved causes him to become reckless, he is assigned a new Second, who proves to be immensely distracting. Contains mature themes.

Stephen Crawford is trying to finish his PhD dissertation when he's transported to a magical land he's previously only experienced through gaming. With a strange new capability that causes him to capture (and remove from existence) places, things, and people, he's trying to make sense of his situation and make his way back to Earth.

Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross is renowned for his cutting-edge science fiction. This third entry in his “edgy … spoof of Cold War spy thrillers” ( Booklist) finds covert agent Bob Howard learning about a top-secret dossier that vanishes with his boss. Determined to discover the contents of this memorandum, Howard runs afoul of Russian spies, ancient demons, and apostles of a hideous cult planning to raise the Eater of Souls from the undead.

After the Renegade mission by the crew of the starship Flying Dutchman, the UN Expeditionary Force thought Earth was safe for hundreds of years, at least. After there was trouble on the home front and the president had to authorize a nuclear strike on an American city, UNEF decided they did need the Merry Band of Pirates again. So, the Flying Dutchman is sent out on a simple recon mission. But for the pirates, nothing is ever simple, and their mission will become Armageddon.

While the crew of the starship Flying Dutchman have been trying to assure that hostile aliens do not have access to Earth, the UN Expeditionary Force has been stranded on the planet they nicknamed "Paradise". The Flying Dutchman is headed back out on another mission, and the UN wants the ship to find out the status of the humans on Paradise. But Colonel Joe Bishop warns that they might not like what they find, and they can't do anything about it without endangering Earth.

United Nations Special Operations Command sent an elite expeditionary force of soldiers and pilots out on a simple recon mission, and somehow along the way they sparked an alien civil war. Now the not-at-all-merry band of pirates is in desperate trouble, again. Their stolen alien starship is falling apart, thousands of light years from home. The ancient alien AI they nicknamed Skippy is apparently dead, and even if they can by some miracle revive him, he might never be the same.

The world holds its breath as the colossal asteroid 2011 AG5 hurtles towards the Earth. As humanity is faced with extinction, archaeologist Sarah Morgan is in a race against time to uncover a secret that has been buried for millennia: that an advanced ancestor once populated the Earth. As Sarah travels across the continents in search of the truth, she discovers there are those that will kill to protect this most ancient of secrets....

Raised to cut throats, hunt Unseelie monsters, and ride dragons, Berserker-blooded Revna is the best of the best. But she has been assigned the impossible. Her king demands that she kill the ruthless Fae king. With no other options, Revna must glamour herself and hide among the Fae king’s bevy of potential mates. But all of her training will be useless if she can’t figure out how to feign love.

The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself. But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.