Old Fantasy

Ancient rivals, worst of friends, best of enemies: dragonlord Janx and master vampire Eliseo Daisani are the threads upon which a tapestry of lives and loves are woven across the centuries. From the coldest Russian nights to the heat of Chicago's greatest fire, nothing brings the immortal adversaries together - or tears them apart - like a woman. And there is always a woman....

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.

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.

Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction's top talents, collected by best-selling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois.

I’d given myself and Sisu 12 days to get settled into our new life before tackling my first official day as the head archivist of the magical archives at the National Museum of Ireland. Our new kitchen was under construction, with the electrical and plumbing upgrades in the main rooms of the estate well on the way. I knew how and where to buy groceries, and had arranged a tutor for Sisu. Totally under control.

Sarah Lester's mother is missing, and the Indian uprising holds her father captive. The police want to question her, and even the church is demanding its pound of flesh. Her return to The Old Curiosity Shop raises more questions than answers. Waiting in the shadows is a vengeful Richard Grey. After discovering Sarah’s ability to travel through time, nothing will stop him from restoring his name to its former glory. Not even time. Can Sarah reunite her scattered family before Grey closes the doorway to the past?

It's Angel's birthday and she can't wait to celebrate with her purrmaid and mermicorn best friends! But the girls don't seem very excited to celebrate with her. They keep sneaking off to be alone. Angry and hurt, Angel swims out in the ocean by herself and finds Minnie—a manatee who needs help! Can the girls all work together to save Minnie? Or are Angel's friends too busy with their secret plans?

Five years after Sofia Lyon disappeared, her remains are found stuffed into the hollow of a tree bursting through the floorboards of an abandoned house in the woods. The women who loved her flock home to the North Carolina hills to face their grief.

It’s been eight weeks since Pairing Day when the Mythics—Kit, Marina, Hailey, Ember, and Pippa—learned that they are the only ones who can save Terrafamiliar. With Golden Jumpsuit tracking their every move, the Mythics are on edge, and now it’s Kit’s turn to find her Mythie. Kit has a hard time relying on others and she always expects the worst to happen. She’s also never had a team like the Mythics to help her.

Sam hates his office job, but at least every night he can delve into Alterwhere and forget about stupid teamwork for a while. The world’s hottest new cerebral reality game is a fully immersive mash-up of the retro fantasy RPGs he used to play on his dad’s steam account back in the early 2030s—the kind where you can eat a bowl of stew in the middle of a battle, fire crossbows underwater, and steal all the plates from an NPC’s kitchen as long as they’re looking away at the time.

Kotumikud are mysterious creatures who visit children in the spring, summer, and autumn when the elves are resting. They help toddlers with their everyday problems, boosting their confidence and encouraging them to follow their dreams. Kotumikud is an amazing book full of adventures, heart-warming life lessons, and fun characters. The story is simple and easy to listen to.

When all new threats are dealt with, old enemies emerge from the shadows. Dean Parker has brought his wife home, and he’s looking forward to relaxing and having a future with his family on New Spero. The Iskios vortex is gone, vanquished by the Hero of Earth, but unforeseen enemies linger in the universe. The Bhlat send a warning to the humans, one that suggests the Kraski may not all be dead. All signs point to Lom of Pleva, a wealthy and very dangerous enemy to have.

Two more elves were at large in Vancouver, but thankfully they’d been keeping a low profile while I faced the most daunting task of my twenty-seven years — planning and executing my wedding. I was dealing with a disgruntled grandmother with an extensive guest wish list of the magically inclined, all of whom didn’t particularly like each other. Plus a fiance whose concept of time was altered whenever he stepped into a dimensional pocket, and a best friend who’d spent months planning what was certain to be an insane bachelorette party.

In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth: Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn all the young people from their village to America. When one of those young emigrants goes missing, Uriel and Little Ash set off to find her.

I had everything I’d ever wanted — a successful business with a second bakery in the works, a sexy fiance who I adored, and good friends who loved to laugh almost as much as I did. So of course it couldn’t possibly last. Unfortunately, this time the trouble was homegrown in Vancouver, threatening my own backyard and those who were under my protection — whether they wanted to be or not. I was, after all, the wielder of the instruments of assassination. Apparently, cutesy cupcakes and being nice only stretched so far.

Three months ago, I lost my foster sister, Sienna, to the darkness. As in blood magic, chaos and, general mayhem. No one saw it until it was too late, but I should have. Now, I have a wounded heart and soul that I can’t even reveal to anyone around me, because I’m supposed to hate Sienna with the fiery passion of the justified.

If you’d asked me a week ago, I would have told you that the best cupcakes were dark chocolate with chocolate cream cheese icing, that dancing in a crowd of magic wielders—the Adept—was better than sex, and that my life was peaceful and uneventful. Just the way I liked it. That’s what 23 years in the magical backwater of Vancouver will get you—a completely skewed sense of reality. Because when the dead werewolves started showing up, it all unraveled—except for the cupcake part. That’s a universal truth.

At 58 years old, Jeff Mann had read dozens of those apocalyptic sci-fi novels, and all were wrong. The cause was the incompetence of the world's governments and the failure of the many financial Ponzi schemes. First, the riots and looting came, and then starvation and depravity followed. The billionaires built safe compounds while everyone else died off or fought to survive the holocaust at the end of the modern world. Jeff begins a crusade against human trafficking after saving two women from slavers. Can one man and two women make a difference in a world gone mad?

Earth belongs to mankind once again. But not everyone has the same vision for the planet. Dean visits Earth, touring the colonies, and quickly learns that not all remaining humans are pleased with the new changes to their planet. The Restorers are determined to build a pre-Industrial Revolution state, claiming technology will only destroy them again. Dean must infiltrate the group and learn their master plan before they go too far.

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.