Short Stories Science

In ancient Egypt, Atticus agrees to raid a secret chamber underneath the library of Alexandria, dodging deadly traps, only to learn that on-site security includes two members of the Egyptian pantheon.

Lucy inherits an Oxford knitting shop...and so much more. Like the vampires who live downstairs and pop up to the shop when they run out of wool, or for their late-night knitting club. They've even offered to help Lucy learn how to knit. She discovers she's a witch and has some quirky relatives she never knew about. Her grandmother's supposed to be dead, but keeps showing up. It's enough to send Lucy screaming back to Boston, except there's a mystery to solve and Oxford and her new vampire friends are kind of growing on her....

Ren has to be the grumpiest Voxeran in the universe. So why does his touch light me on fire? With the arrival of a ship from Vox, we’ll finally have a chance to escape Nuthora. Unfortunately, the blue-skinned alien rebel who comes to rescue us is the most frustrating man I’ve ever met. From our very first meeting when he pulls a knife on me, to the pointed barbs we trade back and forth, I think it’s safe to say we don’t like each other very much. But that doesn’t explain why he suddenly kisses me in the middle of an argument…or why I kiss him back.

You define life or it defines you. In Shawn Speakman’s case, it was both. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, Shawn quickly accrued a massive medical debt that he did not have the ability to pay. That’s when New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills—and suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends. Unfettered is the result: An anthology built in order to relieve that debt, featuring short stories by some of the best fantasy writers in the genre.

Long before movies like Minority Report and The Matrix, the world's writers have been recording the future as it might exist - and as it turns out, they were right. This bizarre anthology collects the most stunning predictions and imagined inventions here for the first time. Visions of Tomorrow includes "The Land Iron Clads" by H. G. Wells, who described a military tank in 1903 - long before it was ever a possibility; "The Yesterday House" by Fritz Leiber, who wrote about cloned humans; and more.

With more than 10 stories from exciting new voices and a few veterans of the universe, the second anthology highlights the lives and struggles of humanity's best and worst years after system advent.

One protector. Five kings. And one destiny none of them could get away from. This collection contains all three books in the Full-Blood series: Protector, Saviour, and Queen. If you like magic, witches, and a badass woman who doesn't stop to save those she loves, then this is the series you want to pick up!

It is a time of treachery, terrorism, and tyranny in the Star Kingdom. The king cannot be trusted, the galaxy is on the brink of war, and a notorious mercenary is destroying everything - and everyone - in his path on his quest for vengeance. The Star Kingdom is in dire need of heroes. What it gets is a band of misfits and underdogs:

Inside the Dragon's Tower, the fate of the world hangs in the balance. To win, climbers from all corners must brave the harrowing floors one by one. Each floor is tougher and the higher the floor, the less success there is. After a hundred floors filled with unique challenges, a prize awaits—a dragon's egg. To Tem, the Dragon's Tower seems simple from his distant farmland on the frontier. The harsh truth of the situation involves politics, personal sacrifices, and unfathomable struggles to keep advancing.

Sviska is a man of the shadows, an assassin without any one place to call his own. But in the Far North, he discovers a secret. Magic, long thought lost to the world, is alive. The genocide to destroy every elf, wizard, and sacred being of old is not yet complete. Sviska's masters work the strings of the world and he has been sent for a task he does not even fully understand yet. When at last he feels he has what he has always wanted, darkness falls upon the world.

A game of tag turns monstrous one night in the forested village of Pine Bluff, where kids who are "it" for too long transform into something terrifying. When little Mateo goes missing after being "it," the kids begin to worry who the next victim will be—only to discover that the truth may be scarier than they thought! Follow along with Mateo and others in this collection of scary stories.

The Shadow Market is a meeting point for faeries, werewolves, warlocks, and vampires. There, the Downworlders buy and sell magical objects, make dark bargains, and whisper secrets they do not want the Nephilim to know. As a Silent Brother, Brother Zachariah is a sworn keeper of the laws and lore of the Nephilim. But once he was a Shadowhunter called Jem Carstairs, and his love, then and always, is the warlock Tessa Gray. And Jem is searching through the Shadow Markets, in many different cities over long years, for a relic from his past.

What William Gibson did for science fiction, China Miéville has done for fantasy, shattering old paradigms with fiercely imaginative works of startling, often shocking, intensity. Now from this brilliant writer comes a groundbreaking collection of stories, many of them previously unavailable in the United States, and including four never-before-published tales - one set in Miéville’s signature fantasy world of New Crobuzon.

When the end of the world arrived, it came not with a bang, as most expected, but with more of a "pfft" instead. Humanity has been torn asunder and brought to the edge of total annihilation in less than an hour. For those who died, it was a quick death, so fast that their brains didn't have time to process the pain signals from their nerves. For those who survived, the true horror is about to begin as they struggle to not only stay alive, but come to grips with the shocking realization about what - and who - was responsible.

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.

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.

Gotrek Gurnisson was the greatest monster slayer of the age, who met his doom at the End Times. The heroic duardin stepped forth into the Realm of Chaos to fight the daemons gnawing at the world's ending and satisfy his death oath, leaving behind his companion Felix Jaeger. Now Gotrek has returned, having outlived the old gods and the Old World. Spat from the ruinous depths with his redemption unfulfilled, he emerges into the Mortal Realms, a strange new world where gods walk the earth and dark forces are ascendant. Nothing is as he remembers.

Welcome back to Beechwood Harbor, the small town where witches, vampires, shifters, and werewolves all work, play—and mostly—get along! This boxed set includes Books 10–12 in the Beechwood Harbor Magic Mysteries by Danielle Garrett.

A bounty hunting survivor. A Galactic dark elf. A woman who has given up her humanity to become something more. These stories and more are available in the first short story anthology for the System Apocalypse, covering year one on Earth. When the world ends, humanity steps up, finding new ways to survive in a world with classes, magic, and monsters. The anthology features exciting, new stories by five new writers and a new, never publicly released short story by Tao Wong.

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm. But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild. THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH will tell their stories. Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. THE END IS NIGH focuses on life before the apocalypse. THE END IS NOW turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And THE END HAS COME focuses on life after the apocalypse.