Fantasy Short Fiction

From sorcerous bridges that link worlds to the simple traditions of country folk; from the mysterious natures of twins to the dangerous powers of obligation and contract. Laden with perils for both the adventurous and the unsuspecting, magic is ultimately a contradiction: endlessly powerful but never without consequence, and rigidly defined by rules of its own making. Award-winning Jonathan Strahan brings together some of the most exciting and popular writers working in fantasy today to dig into that contradiction.

More than a hundred years into the future, as the US approaches its 400th anniversary, Tomas, a young graduate student, searches for the real identity of one of the cyborgs that maintained American homes. He has been haunted for years by an audio clip of a cyborg named Felipe and is intent on writing Felipe’s biography. In the clip, Felipe can only recite that he was made in America, but Tomas must find out: Where was the Self-made Man really from?

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.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and—with a perspective created but not limited by humans—what it should do.

Bradbury's imaginative field is boundless. In this audiobook, his stories carry us from the cozy familiarity of the small-town America we lived in in Dandelion Wine to the frozen desert and double moon that have been parts of our interior landscape since The Martian Chronicles.

Pass through fairy tales into the magic of invisible worlds in these opulent stories by a beloved fantasy icon and author of the classic Riddlemaster trilogy.

Before Miss Peregrine gave them a home, the story of peculiars was written in the Tales. Wealthy cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars. A fork-tongued princess. These are but a few of the truly brilliant stories in Tales of the Peculiar - the collection of fairy tales known to hide information about the peculiar world, including clues to the locations of time loops - first introduced by Ransom Riggs in his number-one best-selling Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series.

Humans have always been fascinated by darkness. Especially the darkness of a city at night, when the black sky is made ever more inky by the pools of illumination dropped under streetlights. Whether the mean streets be in an alternate past charmed with dark magic or the dirty alleyways of futuristic crowded space stations, the city—and its darkened streets—will always fascinate us. Here then, an anthology of all new stories of science fiction and fantasy with a hardboiled noir twist that acknowledge that the city is a living, breathing entity...and it isn’t always on our side.

A mind-blind scholar outwits the mages who disdain him. A gold mage must secure a bank vault from a monster capable of obliterating entire cities. An aging basketweaver wakes up one morning to find a brand new river in front of her house. A palace-sized octopus seeks to defend his city from a living fortress of bone—if he can get his arms to cooperate. In these twenty-four short stories set in the world of Mage Errant, John Bierce explores the murky depths of history, forgotten corners of Ithos and beyond, and the strangest reaches of magic itself.

Following the enormous success of 2004 bestseller and critics' favorite Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke delivers a delicious collection of ten stories set in the same fairy-crossed world of 19th-century England. With Clarke's characteristic historical detail and diction, these dark, enchanting tales unfold in a slightly distorted version of our own world, where people are bedeviled by mischievous interventions from the fairies.

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 universe of the Lunar Chronicles holds stories - and secrets - that are wondrous, vicious, and romantic. How did Cinder first arrive in New Beijing? How did the brooding soldier Wolf transform from young man to killer? When did Princess Winter and the palace guard Jacin realize their destinies?

Sviska is a man of the shadows, an assassin without any one place to call his own. But in the Far North, he discovers a secret. Magic, long thought lost to the world, is alive. The genocide to destroy every elf, wizard, and sacred being of old is not yet complete. Sviska's masters work the strings of the world and he has been sent for a task he does not even fully understand yet. When at last he feels he has what he has always wanted, darkness falls upon the world.

In Matheson's vampire classic I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world and transformed the unfortunate survivors into bloodthirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth. Every other man, woman, and child has become a vampire hungry for Neville's blood. By day he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn. How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

This exciting new anthology has over a dozen original tales starring the vicious foes of Marvel's superheroes: Greg Cox's chronicle of the Super-Skrull's conflict with the Avengers, Michael Jan Friendman's story of evil Loki's latest attempt to snare his stepbrother Thor, Adam-Troy Castro's tale of a mutant who brings Magneto and X-Men's Professor X together in a unique manner, Glenn Greenberg's pairing of Venom and the Absorbing Man in an unlikely jailbreak.

The Sabbat War is a savage Imperial crusade, cutting a bloody, burning path across a vast swathe of the Imperium's lost territory. On the front line, the stalwart regiments of the Astra Militarum, including the valiant Tanith First-and-Only—better known as Gaunt’s Ghosts—confront the relentless menace of Chaos, the Archenemy of Mankind. There is, and ever will be, only war.

This collection features Howard at his finest and Conan at his most savage. Truly heroic fantasy at its best, this volume contains "The Servants of Bit-Yakin", "Beyond the Black River", "The Black Stranger", "The Man-Eaters of Zamboula", and "Red Nails", which is perhaps Conan's most famous adventure.

This collection features 10 original stories, and three of the best narrators around: Steve Lee, Rodney Tompkins, and Dan Levy. You’ll get a sweet and sexy first-time story and a story about rediscovering sex after a bad breakup. You’ll meet a young man obsessed with the MILF he met at the store and a young woman and her smoking hot sugar daddy. My writers do not hold back!

New York Times best seller, master-class alternate historian, and creator of the Ring of Fire saga Eric Flint delivers an explosion of tales filled with well-turned action, wit, and wonder.

Roshad is a sorcerer and street thief in the great caravan city of Ular Kel. Bors is a nomadic warrior and heir to the Horse Throne. As a pair, the two are members of the mysterious Iridian Fold, an organization in which lovers seek to perfectly blend their consciousness to become an elite combat unit. But when Bors’ father forbids their union, are Bors and Roshad willing to start a war to defend their love?