Fantasy Short Fiction

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award - winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy. An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: A graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Among the greats of 20th-century horror and fantasy, few names stand above Richard Matheson. Though known by many for novels like I Am Legend and his 16 Twilight Zone episodes, Matheson truly shines in his chilling, masterful short stories. Since his first story appeared in 1950, virtually every major writer of science fiction and fantasy has fallen under his influence, including Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Joe Hill, as well as filmmakers like Stephen Spielberg and J. J. Abrams.

Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.

Avram Davidson was one of the great original American writers of this century. He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. Now, his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

Everyone deserves to get away for a bit. Even the miscreants at St Mary's. Astonishingly, Dr. Bairstow has declared a holiday. Even more astonishingly - he's paying for it. Needless to say, there are strings attached. They have to record the 1601 performance of Hamlet, with Shakespeare himself in the role of the Ghost. It doesn't go well, of course.

Available only on audio, this exciting collection features original stories by Adam-Troy Castro, some never before published. The stories collected here include "The Assassin's Secret"; "Narrow Escape of Zipper-Girl"; "A Place Without Portals"; "The Hour in Between; "Greetings, Humanity! Welcome to Your Choice of Species"; "The Refrigerator in the Girlfriend"; "My Wife Hates Time Travel"; and many others.

With accomplished precision and gentle eloquence, Jhumpa Lahiri traces the crosscurrents set in motion when immigrants, expatriates, and their children arrive, quite literally, at a cultural divide. The nine stories in this stunning debut collection unerringly chart the emotional journeys of characters seeking love beyond the barriers of nations and generations.

The Horus Heresy is an epic conflict spanning hundreds of worlds and thousands of battles, laced with countless tales of heroism and valour, betrayal and villainy. This anthology collects some of the most memorable, featuring every one of the Loyalist and Traitor Legions. Whether you're a veteran Legionary or exploring the grim setting of the Horus Heresy for the first time, this handpicked collection of 21 existing short stories features gripping tales for each of the Loyalist and Traitor Legions that waged wars of betrayal and destruction on an immeasurable scale.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

The ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan gets more than greasy corn dogs and flat soda when he visits a carnival in Kansas to which his apprentice, Granuaile, drags him. He runs across a barker with a strange power over the crowd: attractive women leave their men and disappear into an unmarked tent, never to be seen again, and the men wander away, forgetting that they ever had girlfriends or wives. When Granuaile falls under the barker’s influence and enters the tent, Atticus isn’t about to forget it and move on.

An unplanned murder during a bank robbery has another sheriff on the trail of those on the lam.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Niblock House is a rising executive at General Technics, one of a few all-powerful corporations. His work is leading General Technics to the forefront of global domination, both in the marketplace and politically - it's about to take over a country in Africa. Donald Hogan is his roommate, a seemingly sheepish bookworm. But Hogan is a spy, and he's about to discover a breakthrough in genetic engineering that will change the world...and kill him. Society is squeezed into hive-living madness by god-like mega computers and mass-marketed psychedelic drugs.

Major Sharpe finds himself a fugitive, hunted by enemy and ally alike. Major Richard Sharpe awaits the opening shots of the army's campaign with grim expectancy. For victory depends on the increasingly fragile alliance between Britain and Spain - an alliance that must be maintained at any cost. Pierre Ducos, the wily French intelligence officer, sees a chance both to destroy the alliance and to achieve a personal revenge on Richard Sharpe.

Lucy inherits an Oxford knitting shop...and so much more. Like the vampires who live downstairs and pop up to the shop when they run out of wool, or for their late-night knitting club. They've even offered to help Lucy learn how to knit. She discovers she's a witch and has some quirky relatives she never knew about. Her grandmother's supposed to be dead, but keeps showing up. It's enough to send Lucy screaming back to Boston, except there's a mystery to solve and Oxford and her new vampire friends are kind of growing on her....

When the elite fighter pilots of the Phantine XX arrive on the beleaguered world of Enothis, they know it is a desperate hour. The forces of Chaos are closing in, and their final push could well wipe out all human life on the planet. Thousands of refugees flee the dark armies, and the infamous Chaos fighter pilot Khrel Kas Obarkon is always hunting the skies for more prey....

For ten millennia, the Black Templars have continued the Great Crusade, remaining true to the Emperor's dream of a galaxy free of the alien, the traitor, and the mutant. One of the few Chapters to venerate the Emperor as a god, they strive always to follow His example and secure His Imperium for all mankind. This anthology brings together seven tales of the sons of Sigismund, including an exploration of High Marshal Helbrecht's first crusade and three stories from the Third War for Armageddon.

The Sheep Dragon is a collection of 14 short stories set before, during, and after the first four parts of The Unconventional Heroes series. Each story addresses questions of world-shaking importance like: Is it possible for a young dragon to watch over a flock of sheep without those sheep ending up in his stomach? What do necromancers actually do at necromancer conventions? And what is the best way to deal with a surprise demonic invasion?

Ein is on a mission from God...the God of Death. Time is up for the emperor of Ten Kings, and it falls to Ein, an eight-year-old boy, to render the judgement of the reaper. He can't do it alone, but luckily the world is full of travelling heroes. There's only one catch; in order to serve him, they must first die.