Short Game

Short stories about dystopian worlds created by people longing for immortality and power. Once attained—what's next for humanity?

It's Christmas at Camelot and that can only mean one thing...an eerie adventure is about to begin! Grab a cup of mead, sit back and enjoy this famous Christmas short story told like never before.

From the slightly fantastical to the utterly real, light, and sweet romance to tales tinged with horror and thrills, Game On is an anthology that spans genre and style. But beneath each story is a loving ode to competition and games perfect for anyone who has ever played a sport or a board game, picked up a video game controller, or rolled a twenty-sided die.

The themes that thread through these nine accomplished stories are drawn from the great tradition of the twentieth-century weird tale, and they are suffused with a distinctly cosmopolitan European feel. Mark Samuels writes about the fundamental fears of modern life, especially the effects of isolation and the dislocation that city dwellers can experience in their inhospitable man-made environment. The Grandmaster's Final Game: The Church of St Ignatius of Loyola appeared to be empty but the Reverend Mooney, S.J., still sat waiting in the confessional, squinting at his watch in the shadows.

Giselle ventured into the kinky game with an open mind, expecting the party game to be lighthearted, fun, and filled with flirting and innuendos. The last thing she thought she would be doing would be submitting her untouched back-door cherry. And in a pair of handcuffs and blindfolded no less....

Busty, young Jennifer is the perfect girlfriend to a budding writer. The young waitress helps her aspiring boyfriend enacting intimate scenes to reveal the true pleasure and emotions of the characters. And so when Ellis struggles with a face-sitting scene, his enthusiastic girlfriend is all too eager to help. It’s not long before Ellis is strapped down, eagerly waiting to be smothered...experiencing the sensation of face-sitting first-hand at the hands of his girlfriend who slowly is beginning to develop dominant tendencies.

In this book, you will get a glimpse at Wall Street Bets, the subreddit that costs two of the largest hedge funds hundreds of millions of dollars. This will show you a David and Goliath story about a short squeezed that took the GameStop stock to the moon and made traditional Wall Street look and think about the little guys before thinking about squeezing a company backed by real-life trolls.

From tales of chilling horror, to heart-stopping stories of suspense, Warped is best-selling author Jeff Menapace's ultimate collection of short fiction. Warped contains currently published tales of the macabre like "Princess" and "The Straw Man and a Murder", the currently out of print and award-winning "Sugar Daddy" and its sequel, "Sugar Daddy 2", and the author's preferred version of his controversial "Torment".

Rob goes to Smith Investigations to gather her things and resign, but Smith's complaints about his team falling apart get her suspicious. He says that with her leaving and Robert MIA on some video game tournament, Smith has had trouble dealing with the recent wave of new cases.

When a prominent chemist disappears for more than a few days, the family hires Smith Investigations to find her. It is Rob's first official case. The members of the investigation team thinks the chemist may be dead, but Rob thinks otherwise. In the midst of this investigation, Rob has to deal with issues of her team. Is the chemist dead for sure?

It’s one single steamy July day at the West 4th Street Court in New York City, otherwise known as the Cage. Hotshot baller ESPN is wooing the scouts, Boo is struggling to guard the weird new guy named Waco, a Spike Lee wannabe has video rolling, and virgin Irene is sizing up six-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch-tall Chester. Nine of young-adult literature’s top writers reveal how it all goes down in this searing novel in short stories that each ingeniously pick up where the last one ends.

When a group of men crash on the surface of an alien planet, they are hemmed in on every side by a deadly, impenetrable bog and attacked by an unknown, unseen enemy.

Less than a minute remains in the game; their offense presses - the ball bears down; you're the last defender. What will you do?

Why do you suppose some combat veterans give up the sport of hunting? Is it because they gain empathy with the hunted, or hunting a prey less cunning than they has lost its allure. Richard Connell, in this short story “The Most Dangerous Game” takes us where the hunter becomes the hunted. This hunter is not being hunted by a beast less cunning or calculating than he is, like a lion or a tiger. No, this hunter is a master at his craft, crueler and only slightly better armed than he is.

They had a plan, but they never thought the plan would be reality. Friendship as a whole is strong, but during an apocalypse it is a different story.

Ex-soldier Lenora is determined to escape an alien slave colony no matter what the cost. Her disobedience angers her male alien overseers, who are trying to breed humans so they can intermarry with them. Lenora, and willful women like her, are sent to the Bride Games. If they win they will be granted their freedom. If they lose they must accept marriage to an alien nobleman.

When the late-night delivery order came into Frank's Pizza, Alicia knew she'd be the one stuck with having to deliver it. She just never thought it might be her last night alive. Drugged and abducted, Alicia awakens to find herself tied to a wooden chair in a basement, surrounded by corpses, and is suddenly forced into a high-stakes poker game. One where losing comes with the heaviest of penalties.

War is a serious business - or is it? Christopher Anvil turns his sardonic sense of humor loose on the subject. Hard-SF legend and Analog regular Christopher Anvil brings together mind-bending ideas and grim-but-true black humor in the face of war's utter destruction in this mega-compilation.

And through the sleepiness, Inka sensed a man in her presence. He was standing there but she couldn’t see him. He was hunting for her, but he couldn’t see her either. Inka Keto - Sexy, curvy and full of vigor, she's a bear shifter from a very close family of shifters. As open, kind, and as whimsical as she is, she's also tight like a steel trap. Her family has been trying to save shifter slaves from the powerful, yet evil regime, on Herta for some time.

Enjoy eight short stories with a travel theme - a perfect companion for the train, the plane, or on a road trip. Road Games happen on the road, in the air, the open sea, and in the uncharted territory where the twilight meets the horizon.