Fantasy Short Fiction

You know about the invasion of Earth, and the Garde who will do anything to stop it. Yet there is still so much to learn. The stories in Zero Hour will help you get the answers you seek, but only the Garde and their allies can save our planet.

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.

The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come? Multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us another incredible volume in his much praised science-fiction anthology series.

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.

What does a fallen angel, a vampire, and a sexy bodyguard have in common? They’re the carriers of the seven deadly sins - and it’s my job to conquer them. I don’t take shit from anybody, and that’s what has gotten me through life so far. My mother’s dead. My brother struck a deal with the Incubus King that gets me in all sorts of trouble, and my dreams are plagued by a black fog of death that’s determined to hunt me down. Seems like destiny has finally caught up with me, and she’s a bitch.

E. E. Isherwood presents Books 1-3 of the Neighborhood Watch series.

"Children of the Bedtime Machine”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in the 2012 anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm. But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories. Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.

Seth Durant and his alpha brothers don’t have a lot of incentive to tell anyone they’re wolf shifters. As unregistered shifters living in secrecy, their very existence is technically illegal. Keeping that secret at all costs has been the number one rule the Durant brothers have lived by for nearly their entire lives.

From the author of science-fiction classics such as The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? comes a collection of 13 short stories of dystopic visions of technological terror, post-nuclear holocaust warfare, time travel, space travel, man vs. alien, man vs. machine, man becomes machine, man becomes plant, and other fantastic tales performed in a vividly dramatic narration by Andy Harrington.

The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.

The intrepid necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach—scourges of civilization, raisers of the dead, reapers of the souls of the living, devourers of hope, betrayers of faith, slayers of the innocent and modest personifications of evil—have a lot to answer for and answer they will, but first they must lie, murder and cheat their way through three more escapades in some of the harsher fringes, deprived wastelands and impoverished communities of the Malazan Empire. Much to the shame of their long-suffering general factotum, Emancipor Reese...

We have always fought. War is the furnace that forges new technologies and pushes humanity ever onward. We are the children of a battle that began with fists and sticks, and ended on the brink of atomic Armageddon. Beyond here lies another war, infinite in scope and scale. But who will fight the wars of tomorrow?

Ren has to be the grumpiest Voxeran in the universe. So why does his touch light me on fire? With the arrival of a ship from Vox, we’ll finally have a chance to escape Nuthora. Unfortunately, the blue-skinned alien rebel who comes to rescue us is the most frustrating man I’ve ever met. From our very first meeting when he pulls a knife on me, to the pointed barbs we trade back and forth, I think it’s safe to say we don’t like each other very much. But that doesn’t explain why he suddenly kisses me in the middle of an argument…or why I kiss him back.

A terrifying new collection of short stories from the master of zombie fiction, Max Brooks, best-selling author of World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide and Recorded Attacks.

Take your first steps into the adrenaline-fuelled fiction of the 41st millennium with a thrilling collection of tales, including an action-packed novella pitting noble Ultramarines against sinister necrons. Whether you're dipping a toe into the galaxy of Warhammer 40,000 or are a hardened veteran of the universe, this anthology is the perfect way to discover the many factions of the games in action-packed tales.

Leto II Atréides, l'Empereur-Dieu de Dune, est désormais un ver de sable à face humaine. À peu près invulnérable et immortel, il a entrevu dans l'avenir l'extinction de l'espèce humaine. Pour la conjurer, il fait respecter son ordre, le Sentier d'Or. L'empire a connu trente-cinq siècles de paix. La Guilde et le Bene Gesserit ont les mains liées : c'est Leto qui contrôle sur Dune les dernières réserves de l'indispensable épice. Les Ixiens lui envoient une femme parfaite, issue d'une éprouvette et chargée à son insu de le séduire et de le détruire.

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.

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.

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?