Old Fantasy

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.

These five tales are absolutely perfect as bedtime stories. From an old but very kindhearted train to flying cows, from an elegant and very ambitious elephant to some surprising cauliflowers, these tales really have it all. Imaginative, amusing, charming, and fun. This five-tale collection is perfect for children of almost any age and not a few adults, too!

Since Grandpa died, Dally’s days are dull and restricted. She’s eleven and a half years old, and her exacting single mother is already preparing her to take over the family business. Starved for adventure and release, Dally rescues a mysterious envelope from her mother’s clutches, an envelope Grandpa had earmarked for her. The map she finds inside leads straight to an ancient vault, a library of secrets where each book is a portal to a precise moment in time. As Dally “checks out” adventure after adventure she begins to dive deep into her family’s hidden history.

Ra’al. Orr. Kriz. Three enormous beast of men who command a legion of Aurelians, the huge, marble-skinned aliens who exist to find their Fated Mate and tame her. They were built for war. Kings through conquest, they stamp down all resistance without mercy. They tell me they will build me a palace. It would only be a cage. But because I took up a rifle and defended the other servants when our planet was under attack, by the laws of their species, I am a free woman…

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.

TJ Young spent last summer fighting to unlock the secrets behind his sister's mysterious death but found himself battling the magic of the ancient Orishas instead. And some of the answers he sought came with a promise he may not be able to keep: to dismantle new human construction on the coastline of Lagos, Nigeria, by the start of spring. But how does a teenager do away with decades of infrastructure in only half a year? He’ll need to enlist the help of new allies, mortal and immortal alike.

Avalon James and Atticus Brightwell have a secret - one that they aren't allowed to discuss with anyone. This secret is shared between two best friends. When you and your best friend turn 10 years old, magical things are said to happen. You both will receive some kind of magical power. It can be a power you can call on time and time again. Or it can be a power that comes once when you need it most. It's your Infinity Year, and the possibilities are endless.

Imagine a school where you meet your own unicorn and have amazing adventures together! That's what happens for the girls at Unicorn Academy on beautiful Unicorn Island. Ariana loves her unicorn, Whisper, but hopes that their differences don't get in the way of their bond. When all the animals start to leave the Verdant Forest, Ariana and Whisper will need to gather all their courage and work together to help protect their friends and bring the animals home.

They called me an amplifier. And they had bred me, raised me, and trained me to be a killer with preternatural precision. I was capable of taking, holding, and transferring power that wasn’t my own with a simple touch. Skin-to-skin contact. Along with four others of my generation, I could infiltrate any magical organization, extracting whoever or whatever I’d been ordered to extricate. Then I could destroy all evidence of our passing presence. They had made me. They directed me. Controlled me. Then they tried to kill me.

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.

In Boulder, Allison "Lex" Luther barely gets her niece to safety. In Los Angeles, Scarlett Bernard is nearly shot in the back. It seems that a powerful enemy is unhappy with the Old World leaders' plans to form a government, and they've coordinated a strike against those rare individuals who can undo magic itself.

While Thierry is away, the Morrigan will play. Snatching the crown from her daughter-in-law's head wasn't the motherly thing to do, but Thierry doesn't mind trading the throne in Faerie for the ratty couch in her Texas apartment. The old crow is welcome to it. But ruling one world is not enough. The Morrigan wants an all-access pass to the mortal realm too.

When jackal shifter Quade Danas was banished from his pack for being gay, he spent years in the military escaping his father's prejudice before returning to civilian life as a bodyguard for Roman Howell, the teenage son of a very rich man. After Roman is in an accident that leaves him physically scarred and emotionally distant, Quade is the only one who can get through to him. As Roman becomes a man, he realizes what he wants - his bodyguard by his side and in his bed.

An apparent naval victory turns to chaos when the Adjudicators awaken an ancient star leviathan and send it against the allied fleet. Falling back to friendly territory ahead of this terrifying weapon, Jess Tolvern and the allied command muster the combined forces of the Alliance planets to finally defeat the Adjudicators and push across the inner frontier to reestablish contact with the remaining civilizations of Old Earth.

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.

Three stories of horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.

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?

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.

Harper Harlow-Monroe has everything she’s ever wanted. She has a husband she loves, a best friend who is only irritating 50 percent of the time, and a daughter who refuses to be “normal.” So, basically, she has it all.

I’d been compromised, then turned against those I loved. But no one controlled me. No one took anything I didn’t willingly offer. Not for long, anyway. If the elves wanted a war, I’d bring it. The instruments of assassination would come out to play. The dragon slayer would wreak bloody, sticky vengeance. And then I was getting freaking married—no elves invited. Even a baker of cupcakes and a maker of trinkets occasionally had to set aside the chocolate, the spice, and everything nice to save her friends. And her city.