Contemporary Science Fiction

Josie Barton is a lean, mean, faerie-fighting machine. After her victory against the infamous lord, Fir Darrig, the young sorceress has taken up the family tradition of bringing the words offenders of the faerie world to justice. Partnered with her changeling boyfriend, Zeph Clemmont, and back by the Faerie King, Eldrick Dorchaidhe, Josie feels confident she has nothing more to fear.

Michael finds himself in the realm of the Forever Kingdom, with no memory of how he got there and who he is. Even so, he must participate in the Grand Game and forge a new destiny for himself. Dropped into a dungeon of monsters and strange magics, would you survive in a game where to lose means death? Alone, and with little more than his wits to aid him, Michael must advance as a player, slay his foes, and gain experience. All while navigating the intrigues around him and discovering his purpose.

Half-angel Trinity and her bonded gargoyle protector, Zayne, have been working with demons to stop the apocalypse while avoiding falling in love. The Harbinger is coming…but who or what is it? All of humankind may fall if Trinity and Zayne can’t win the race against time as sinister forces gather. As tensions rise, they must stay close together and patrol the DC streets at night, seeking signs of the Harbinger, an entity that is killing Wardens and demons with no seeming rhyme or reason.

Dorina Basarab is a dhampir - the feared and hated cross between a vampire and a human - or so she has always believed. She spent most of her life on the fringes of her two worlds, yearning to belong to one or the other, but despised and distrusted by both. Recently, a war in the supernatural community allowed her to get a foothold into her vampire father's world, one of danger, intrigue, glitz, and glamour, where she found not only a home, but a lover, too. For the first time in centuries, life seemed to be going her way.

In The Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and best-selling author Gardner Dozois presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters - many of them set in their authors' best-loved worlds. Join today's finest tellers of fantastic tales, including George R. R. Martin, K. J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Scott Lynch, Ken Liu, C. J. Cherryh, Daniel Abraham, Lavie Tidhar, Ellen Kushner, and more on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do.

The first in a new YA fantasy trilogy combines urban fantasy with magical realism mythology, featuring ancient animal totems - American Gods meets Princess Mononoke. Roan Harken considers herself a typical high school student - dead parents, an infected eyeball, and living in the house of her estranged, currently comatose grandmother (well, maybe not so typical) - but she's uncovering the depth of the secrets her family left behind. Saved from the grasp of Death itself by a powerful fox spirit named Sil, Roan must harness mysterious ancient power.

American expat Joan Howe has a to-do list she loathes: find a new job, buy milk, ask her neurologist friend, Lisa, to cure her migraines. So when Lisa enrolls her in an experimental drug trial, Joan is elated. That is, until she takes the medication and wakes up at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. That's right, Joan wakes up smack-dab in the middle of the court of Henry VIII.

From best-selling author Anne Rice, writing as A.N. Roquleaure, in the traditional folktale of "Sleeping Beauty", the spell cast upon the lovely young princess and everyone in her castle can only be broken by the kiss of a prince. It is an ancient story, one that originally emerged from and still deeply disturbs the mind's unconscious. Now Anne Rice's retelling of the Beauty story probes the unspoken implications of this lush, suggestive tale by exploring its undeniable connection to sexual desire. Here the prince reawakens Beauty, not with a kiss, but with sexual initiation.

Tristran Thorn has lost his heart to the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester. One crisp October night, as they watch, a star falls from the sky, and Victoria promises to marry Tristran if he'll retrieve the star and bring it back for her. It is this promise that sends Tristran on the most unforgettable adventure of his life.

Seventeen-year-old Evie Dasher knows firsthand the devastating consequences of humanity's war with the aliens. When she's caught up in a raid at a notorious club known as one of the few places where humans and the surviving Luxen can mingle freely, she meets Luc, an unnaturally beautiful guy she initially assumes is a Luxen...but is in fact something much more powerful. Her growing attraction for Luc will lead her deeper and deeper into a world she'd only heard about, a world where everything she thought she knew will be turned on its head....

Leah Nazir is an Insighter. Reincarnation is her business. But while her clients' pasts are a mess, Leah's is nothing short of tragedy. She's been murdered. A lot. If left to that bitch destiny, it'll happen again. Leah wants to know who's been following her through time - and who's been stalking her in the present.

Cherished by a Father, coveted by a king, loved by an almost-priest; tormented by demons, tortured by a madman, hunted by a cult, hounded by her father. Mouse has survived it all. Despite Mouse's power, her father always wanted a son - and now, at long last, he has him. And Mouse has a brother, someone else in the world just like her. Hiding among a tribe of the Martu in the isolation of the Australian outback near the edges of Lake Disappointment, Mouse and Angelo have seemingly evaded at least one of the predators hunting them.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

The Gale family can change the world with the charms they cast, which has caused some supernaturally complicated family shenanigans in the past. So when NASA and Doomsday Dan confirm Auntie Catherine’s dire prediction, Charlotte “Charlie” Gale turns to the family for help. But Allie is unavailable because the universe seems determined to have her produce the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale.

Reyna Carpenter was promised paradise. She was delivered into hell. Giving up her body for money was supposed to be the hardest part of becoming a blood escort. She never expected to lose her heart to her dark, enigmatic boss, Beckham Anderson. After being taken by a depraved captor who plans to rule the world, Reyna will do anything to return to Beckham. She just has to find the will to survive this game.

Living in a peaceful, prosperous African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family, a boy who is surrounded by boisterous characters and yet deeply alone.

He’s killed three men in the few days she’s known him. Yes, it was self-defense, but when he tried to kill her, it wasn’t. Her peaceful mountain refuge has been invaded, her inexplicable nausea linked to his physical presence. She’s captive in his house for her “protection,” with a churning stomach, his bad attitude, and no safe way home. All that changed the night the stars aligned. Now he’s talking about ancient bloodlines and celestial alignments…and other things she only believes because of what she’s seen him do.

Eighteen-year-old Natalie Colter is sure that the rumors about her great-great-grandmother's cult of wronged women are just gossip, but that doesn't stop the true-crime writers and dark tourism bloggers from capitalizing on the town's reputation. It's an urban legend that's hard to ignore, and it gets harder when Nat learns that the sisterhood is real. And magical. And they want her to join.

Lorsqu'une simple partie de foot se change en bataille contre un gang de cannibales géants, Percy le demi-dieu a un terrible pressentiment. Comme le lui annonçaient ses étranges cauchemars, les frontières magiques qui protègent la Colonie des Sang-Mêlés sont empoisonnées. L'arbre de Thalia se meurt et sans lui, les pensionnaires ne sont plus en sécurité ! Pour le soigner et rétablir la barrière magique, une seule solution : partir en quête de la Toison d'or, en parcourant la Mer des Monstres.

Something weird is happening to the Los Angeles freeways - phantom cars, lanes from nowhere, and sometimes unmarked off-ramps that give glimpses of a desolate desert highway - and Sebastian Vickery, disgraced ex-Secret Service agent, is a driver for a covert supernatural-evasion car service. But another government agency is using and perhaps causing the freeway anomalies, and their chief is determined to have Vickery killed because of something he learned years ago at a halted Presidential motorcade. Reluctantly aided by Ingrid Castine, a member of that agency, and a homeless Mexican boy....