Old Fantasy

Three days. That was all the reprieve we got before one of the five showed up, injured and on the run. The snowstorm that had encased the property, as well as stifled the town, hadn’t even melted away. That wounded prey led our newest adversary directly to me. To Christopher. Inconvenient timing, but not unexpected. It was the betrayal forcing me to stay my hand against that adversary that shocked me. Betrayal from the least likely of sources. Or so I would have thought.

We had chosen our place, etching our lives into a new land. Then, we had defended that land when called upon to do so. And we’d won. We’d maintained our freedom. But magic attracts magic. As they say. So, when the sorcerers showed up, holding my recent past hostage - along with a future I had dreamed I might build - it was just as expected. In fact, I might have been getting just a little bored playing at being Emma Johnson.

Three months ago, I nearly lost my best friend while retrieving the first instrument of assassination. I also inadvertently released a rival who was definitely unhinged, way more powerful than me, and obsessed with harnessing the deadly power of the artifacts I’d been tasked by the guardian dragons to collect. Add a sexy sentinel and a nearly immortal vampire to the mix, and what could possibly go wrong?

I’d led a deadly squad of genetically enhanced, uber-powerful magic wielders through life-threatening missions multiple times in the first 21 years of my life. When marked for death, I’d led the escape from those who’d bred us, controlled us. Utterly annihilating the Collective’s compound, and destroying everything that had gone into creating us—the Five. I found Christopher and Paisley a home, a safe haven.

I wasn’t even remotely interested in collecting the third instrument of assassination. It was far better for everyone involved—and for Warner, specifically—if I just let it be. And since I was the only one who could retrieve the artifacts, I figured it was my call to make.

We had run. We had adapted. And when our magic came back, we changed course again. Hiding instead of running, knowing that we needed to remain hidden from the Collective. Knowing that our lives, our freedom, depended on it. Then the sorcerer showed up, drained and disoriented. And when my past came quickly following him, I had to make another choice. Fight or flight. Continue to deny the power that resided in my blood, in my DNA. Remain perpetually caught between being Amp5 and Emma Johnson. Or face my demons.

Scholastic's best-selling Old Lady returns in this adventure series with a nonfiction twist that will make you laugh and learn! In this spin-off, the Old Lady turns into an Old Astronaut who travels through space, swallowing a moon...along with a star, a planet, a comet, a meteor, a rocket, and a satellite.... Why? Well, it went down just right, that bright satellite!

Written by multiple Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee Jay Lake, "A Very Old Man with No Wings at All" was first published in the August 2007 issue of Aeon. Over his long career, Jay Lake has published 10 novels and more than 300 stories. He was honored with the 2004 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings.

The Southerland family left the old world to start anew in America, but little did they know that a blood-feud, older than history itself, would follow them through the generations to come. Kate Southerland, the first born of the latest generation of Southerlands, has been murdered, but she is not dead. Her little brother, Johnny, has also vanished, a severed, bloody finger the only clue. But the Southerlands have no clue what they've fallen into....

Marcus Bola and his friends barely made it through their last self-imposed mission. He found and rescued his estranged son from the clutches of a Seelie drug cartel bent on taking over Columbus, but success means that they’ve proven their ability to get the job done. Now tasked with retrieving the Huntsman's Mantle in hopes of giving the Wild Hunt new life, Marcus and his friends leave the High Table for Grestal, the birth place of nightmares.

A young school teacher learns about strange lights in a foreboding marsh; a nurse in a remote outport visits the baby she delivered weeks before to find a devastating change; a woman meets a mysterious funeral procession late one evening; a musician falls thrall to a group of strange little people and can’t stop playing. The stories in Spirited Away are populated by the fairy-led, by changelings, by people who stray onto fairy turf and experience unnerving events.

In the 23rd century, fossil fuels are almost exhausted, and Earth depends on energy from a swarm of solar-powered satellites. Conditions are harsh in the space stations that serve this network, and some of the crews rebel. They move away from Earth's orbit and build their own colonies, the "Seven Dwarfs", meant for life, not labor. The real beginning of the Space Age has come at last.

Psychic Nora Ashcroft can't tell the future, but she's starting to look forward to it. And with the support of Donovan and the rest of the town, she's ready to leave the past behind. Too bad the same can't be said for Eastwind's most newly departed. After a body is discovered in the street, everyone has a theory about what might've happened...including the deceased himself. Though he swears he was ready for death and has no unfinished business keeping him around, Nora knows something must be tethering him to this plane.

Tales of Old Japan (1871) is an anthology of classic tales compiled by Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, Lord Redesdale. The narratives - adapted from Japanese sources - covers various aspects of Japanese life before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Engaging with an arresting range of subjects such as Buddhist sermons, knightly exploits, ghost stories, fairy tales, folklore, terrifying vampires, noble samurai, and the plots of four Noh plays, the collection also serves as a treasure trove of information on the customs, characters, and places of the time.

When a deadly fly flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are 18-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico's father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives life after life in an attempt to put the world back together. As swarms of infected flies roam the Earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and love in a world gone dark.

Sanderson’s army is still running rampant south of the new community in northern Alabama. Chaos, hunger and gangs still plague the country. The group grows in numbers and skills when Jeff discovers two compatible groups nearby. His small town is growing and this violates his belief that survival depends on keeping a low profile, but life is comfy and going well.

Having fled the defeat at the Green Gulch, Darius and Jerico, believing themselves the last two paladins of their kind, must separate once more in order to survive. While Jerico rushes to the aid of Lord Arthur and the siege at his Castle of Caves, Darius travels east, determined to remove the bounty on his head. But on his way, he encounters a young priest following an older way of faith, whose desire for their return will risk destruction upon all the North. Sacrifice must be made in blood.

Farley is an old prepper who is stuck in the city when a solar storm sets off an electromagnetic pulse event, taking the grid down worldwide.... Our hero stays in the city, facing societal breakdown, for 10 weeks - until it is evident he must escape and bug out somewhere. The problem is he has a only half tank of gas and no means to get any more. His destination requires more fuel than that, and he finds himself stuck on the side of a dirt road heading toward a lake cabin he once stayed in.

Shane Daniels and Romany Zetz have been drawn into a war that is not their own. Lives will be destroyed, families will be torn apart. Trust will be broken. When the war is over, some will return to a changed world. Will they discover that glory is a lie? Claire G. Coleman's new novel takes us to a familiar world to again ask us what we have learned from the past. The Old Lie might not be quite what you expect.