Fantasy Short Stories

Within this audiobook, you'll find myriad approaches to Alice, from horror to historical, taking us from the nightmarish reaches of the imagination to tales that will shock, surprise, and tug on the heart-strings. So, it's time now to go down the rabbit hole, or through the looking-glass or...but no, wait. By picking up this audiobook and starting to listen to it, you're already there, can't you see?

The Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy may have concluded, but we haven't heard the last of our favorite peeps from the Nine Worlds. Join Hearthstone, Blitzen, Samirah, Alex, Jack, T.J., Mallory, Halfborn, and more on a hilarious and unforgettable journey through Rick Riordan's unique take on Norse mythology. While Magnus is off visiting his cousin, Annabeth, his friends find themselves in some sticky, hairy, and smelly situations as they try to outwit moronic giants, murderous creatures, and meddlesome gods. Can they stave off Ragnarok at least until Magnus gets back?

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.

The new United States in central Germany launches a one-plane Doolittle Raid on Paris, France. The target: their arch enemy, Cardinal Richelieu. Meanwhile, an ambassador from the Mughal Empire of northern India is being held captive in Austria by the Habsburg dynasty. Mike Stearns decides to send a mercenary company to rescue him, led by two 17th century mercenary officers: an Englishman and a Irishman, who seem to spend as much time fighting each other as they do the enemy.

The very first Spellmonger anthology! Includes two audio exclusive stories, Stonesinger and The Ugliest Maid in Castal.

For the better part of five decades, Jerry Pournelle's name has been synonymous with hard-hitting science fiction. For the first time, all of Pournelle's best short work has been collected in a single volume. Herein you will find over a dozen short stories, each with a new introduction by editor and longtime Pournelle assistant John F. Carr, as well as essays and remembrances by Pournelle collaborators and admirers.

Before Area X, there was Ambergris. Jeff VanderMeer conceived what would become his first cult classic series of speculative works: the Ambergris trilogy. Now, for the first time ever, the story of the sprawling metropolis of Ambergris is collected into a single volume, including City of Saints and Madmen, Shriek: An Afterword, and Finch.

The When Swords Fall Silent anthology showcases the imaginations and talents of more than a dozen of the best modern science-fiction and fantasy authors, with each tale centered around one or more characters burdened with a bloody task they will see to completion no matter the cost. Every story takes you for a vicious ride through a world of shadow and death, each as unique in perspective and execution as the contracts carried out within.

Stephen Leeds is perfectly sane. It's his hallucinations who are mad. A genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people - Stephen calls them aspects - to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems...for a price. Then a company hires him to recover stolen property - a camera that can allegedly take pictures of the past....

The incomparable Ray Bradbury is in the driver's seat, off on 21 unforgettable excursions through fantasy, time, and memory, and there are surprises waiting around every curve and behind each mile marker. The journey promises to be a memorable one.

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.

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

It started as a simple heist. It went to hell from there. On a space station orbiting a pale blue sun, a package changes hands. Data too sensitive to transmit will be exposed for one brief moment. The client is paying a crazy sum - if the job is clean. That’s not going to happen. Instead, the galaxy’s unluckiest crew of outlaws will have to put all their resources into salvaging what they can from the job. Even if it’s only avoiding blame for the fallout.

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.

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.

For decades, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after 35 annual collections comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies. In The Very Best of the Best, legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the finest short stories for this landmark collection, including short fiction from authors such as Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, and any many more.

Launch once more into galaxy-spanning conflict and legendary heroism, shards of an ever-expanding journey where human and alien alike find their finest hours in facing their greatest challenges. These scattered stories span untold millennia, from the age of the ancient custodial race known as the Forerunners to the aftermath of the Covenant's bloody war against humanity and even the shocking events surrounding the resurrection of the mysterious Guardians.

After his son gives him a pair of "X-ray" glasses as a gift, Martin Blackstone tries them on just for the hell of it - and all they do is give him a headache...until he sees things he can’t possibly be seeing. Glimpses of things on the other side of a wall or beneath someone’s clothing. He wants to believe it’s just his overactive imagination, but the “X-ray” specs actually work.

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?

Jane Sagan: Soldier. Killer. Lover. Dreamer. In John Scalzi's best-selling Old Man's War series of science-fiction novels, we see this warrior woman as the other characters see her - silent and strong, from the outside. But now The Sagan Diary shows us Sagan from another point of view: her own, as she prepares to leave military life and join her new husband and adopted daughter on a colony world.