Fantasy Short Fiction

Ryan doesn’t remember much about his life before becoming a dungeon core. Only that he had a bit of a disagreement with the church—something to do with a beheading? Now reborn, Ryan begins to arm his darkness dungeon with devious traps, bestial zombies and ill-named skeletal creations, without doing anything too evil. Well, mostly. Some adventurers just deserve a stalactite to the head.

Mercy Thompson’s world just got a whole lot bigger... A collection of all-new and previously published short stories featuring Mercy Thompson, “one of the best heroines in the urban fantasy genre today” (Fiction Vixen Book Reviews), and the characters she calls friends...

Determined to reevaluate her life, Jude Murray flees America to take refuge in Faerie Hill Cottage, immersing herself in the study of Irish folklore and discovering hope for the future of the magical past. Finally back home in Ireland after years of traveling, Aidan Gallagher possesses an uncommon understanding of his country’s haunting myths.

Mia Devlin knows what it is like to love with your whole heart - and then watch your love walk away. Years ago, she and Sam Logan shared an incredible bond built on passion, legend, and fate. But then one day he fled Three Sisters Island, leaving her lost in memories of the magic they shared - and determined to live without love. But now Sam has returned....

With an introduction by J. J. Pierce, this volume features the 12 most important stories by Cordwainer Smith, a unique writer who has fused wonder and poetry into imaginative tales that transcend both science and fiction.

When a storm reveals a mysterious cave behind a waterfall, the young mystic’s apprentice and her wolf investigate. Inside, she discovers a secret place containing a pile of human bones and the young girl makes what could be a fatal mistake. In this Legends of the First Empire prequel, we witness the events that helped shape the woman who would one day become Suri the Mystic, the first Rhune Artist, and a hero to a generation

"In The Falling World", Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult. "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born.

Another rollicking short story from the Chronicles of St Mary’s author Jodi Taylor. Question: What sort of idiot installs his mistress in his wife’s house? Especially when that mistress is Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, queen of Egypt and the most notorious woman of her time? Answer: Julius Caesar - poised to become king of Rome. Or as good as.

Like a smaller and much scruffier Greta Garbo - finally - Markham speaks! It's Christmas and time for the first (and almost certainly last) St Mary's Annual Children's Christmas Party - attendance compulsory, by order of Dr Bairstow. Discovered practising his illegal reindeer dance and poo-dropping routine, our hero, along with fellow disaster magnets Peterson and Maxwell, is dispatched to Anglo-Saxon England to discover the truth about Alfred and the cakes.

There are still countless tales of the Scythedom to tell. Centuries passed between the Thunderhead cradling humanity and Scythe Goddard trying to turn it upside down. For years humans lived in a world without hunger, disease, or death with Scythes as the living instruments of population control. Neal Shusterman—along with collaborators David Yoon, Jarrod Shusterman, Sofía Lapuente, Michael H. Payne, Michelle Knowlden, and Joelle Shusterman—returns to the world throughout the timeline of the Arc of a Scythe series.

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

I was hanging out with some buddies, doing a little caving, when everything went south. When I woke up, I was in some kind of medieval dungeon. Totally naked and in the dark. Luckily, I had a neighbor in a cell near me. One with a decidedly sexy feminine voice. When she explained to me that she was due to be executed and I was in line to be brainwashed, there was only one thing to do. We had to escape.

The Bite of Winter: She is theirs to claim. They are hers to save. Zoey finds herself caught in Ian's and Connor's web of seduction. But as Christmas draws near and her grief deepens, happiness seems far out of reach. And Ian and Connor join forces to prove their love is sacred, special...and forever. His Little Vixen: Sadie Harris doesn't like immortals. After vampires leave her an orphan, she's raised by her grandmother at the edge of a werewolf pack's territory. As a fox shifter she knows the rules about werewolves.

Together for the first time, 14 action-packed tales of demons, monsters, vampires, and cosmic horrors too terrible to name - and the men and women who take them all down. Oh, and toss in an interdimensional insurance salesman for good measure.

The war is tearing our world apart. Instead of big armies with tanks in the field, the Vampire War is fought in the streets, neighbor against neighbor, family against family. Anyone can turn at any time. The blood hunger can suddenly appear in the middle of a kiss. The person who sleeps next to you every night could wake up in the dead of night... hungry. So hungry.

All the stories in this collection from Stephen King are related to the Vietnam War. King fans will recognize echoes of The Dark Tower series in the collection's first story, "Low Men in Yellow Coats." As the characters develop over the next four stories, King's version of the Vietnam War becomes one of his most frightening tales ever.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery will take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns - even if they're set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman's gotta eat.

Mika Tanner has loved Bailey Morrell, a beautiful Healer, since childhood. But his duty as a sentinel, a supernatural guardian of an ancient race, clashed with her rebellious spirit. Now a dangerous new anarchist group threatens life as they know it.

The Union army may be full of bastards, but there's only one who thinks he can save the day single-handed when the Gurkish come calling: the incomparable Colonel Sand dan Glokta. Curnden Craw and his dozen are out to recover a mysterious item from beyond the Crinna. Only one small problem: No one seems to know what the item is.

Word Puppets - the first comprehensive collection of Kowal's extraordinary fiction - includes her two Hugo-winning stories, a Hugo nominee, an original story set in the world of "The Lady Astronaut of Mars", and 14 other show-stopping tales.