Fantasy Short Fiction

This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Octavia E. Butler. A Necessary Being precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In Childfinder, a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.

After the loss of her mother, a woman returns to the San Fernando Valley only to uncover a haunting secret about her childhood friend. A visiting professor at a charming but strange California liberal arts college must face her past in order to protect her son. A sister, lost in the woods, confronts the dangerous truth about her brother, her stepmother, and herself. Rose's dog Wolfie has died, and three seductive women offer to help return him to her. But only if she will pay the price.

Mika Tanner has loved Bailey Morrell, a beautiful Healer, since childhood. But his duty as a sentinel, a supernatural guardian of an ancient race, clashed with her rebellious spirit. Now a dangerous new anarchist group threatens life as they know it.

Wellman’s work will be remembered, and should be preserved because it combines the dark gothic tradition of the American pulps with a detailed snapshot of regional history and culture. This mixture is shown through the lens of the American modernist tradition, revealing something that is larger than the sum of its parts.

For the first time - in one Audible-exclusive collection - it's 13 stories of Jane Yellowrock, the shape-shifting skinwalker and vampire hunter for hire whose business card reads, "Have Stakes - Will Travel". Jane carries inside her the soul of her Beast, the mountain lion's soul which merged with hers when she accidently performed black magic as a child. Now, she and her Beast stalk the dark streets of New Orleans, bringing rogue vampires true death.

Seabury Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales' original publication run. His most famous character, the supernatural French detective Dr. Jules de Grandin, investigated cases involving monsters, devil worshippers, serial killers, and spirits from beyond the grave, often set in the small town of Harrisonville, New Jersey. Collected for the first time, The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, edited by George Vanderburgh, presents all 93 published works featuring the supernatural detective.

The new United States in central Germany launches a one-plane Doolittle Raid on Paris, France. The target: their arch-enemy, Cardinal Richelieu. Meanwhile, an ambassador from the Mughal Empire of northern India is being held captive in Austria by the Habsburg dynasty. Mike Stearns decides to send a mercenary company to rescue him, led by two 17th-century mercenary officers: an Englishman and a Irishman, who seem to spend as much time fighting each other as they do the enemy.

Together for the first time, 14 action-packed tales of demons, monsters, vampires, and cosmic horrors too terrible to name - and the men and women who take them all down. Oh, and toss in an interdimensional insurance salesman for good measure.

Hunting vampires is her legacy. Detective Rainey Astor walks a dangerous line between the human and supernatural worlds. As a vampire hunter, she's a formidable opponent, having killed hundreds of their kind. Yet, when her latest foray into the supernatural world goes terribly wrong, she finds herself rescued by the very creature she's vowed to kill.

Published in chronological order, with extensive story and bibliographic notes, this series not only provides access to stories that have been out of print for years, but gives them a historical and social context. Series editors Scott Conners and Ronald S. Hilger excavated the still-existing manuscripts, letters and various published versions of the stories, creating a definitive "preferred text" for Smith's entire body of work.

Gathering four stories from four best-selling author friends, Invitation is the first collection in the ongoing Harbingers series. In "The Call" by Bill Myers, four strangers are drawn together to help a student at the mysterious Institute for Advanced Psychic Studies. His gifts are supposedly being honed to assist world leaders...but there are some very disturbing strings attached.

"Shadow of the Moon" by Sherrilyn Kenyon: Angelia has fought her entire life to make herself strong. Now, with her patria under fire, she has to protect her people from Fury and his werewolf clan. Vowing to bring him to justice, Angelia sets out alone...until the hunter becomes the hunted, and the only way for her to survive is to trust the very wolf she's sworn to kill.

Aspen is a Norm. A non-magic. A human. And in this supernatural city, that's a quick way to wind up dead. Or worse. She didn't plan on becoming an apprentice to Lucien Dunadine, one of the strongest members on the Council of Mages. She really didn't plan on taking part in a deadly competition against Isak Uchida, her handsome, aggravating, deadly opponent. But with something sinister going down in the magic boroughs, they'll all have to work together if they want to uncover the source of an ancient evil threatening their home.

The second set of interconnected stand-alone fairy tale retellings from the Four Kingdoms series includes The Princess Pact: A Twist on Rumpelstiltskin, A Midwinter's Wedding: A Retelling of The Frog Prince, and The Princess Game: A Reimagining of Sleeping Beauty....

For the better part of five decades, Jerry Pournelle's name has been synonymous with hard-hitting science fiction. For the first time, all of Pournelle's best short work has been collected in a single volume. Herein you will find over a dozen short stories, each with a new introduction by editor and longtime Pournelle assistant John F. Carr, as well as essays and remembrances by Pournelle collaborators and admirers.

With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 33 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2020.

"Red Wine and Blood": The Blood Wars raged for centuries across Boston. Witness a brief glimpse into the brutal history of the Wars with Ignacio Salvatore and the vampire he loves, Ashwin Metcalfe, in 1897. "A History of Trouble": Angel was joking when he asked O'Malley if someone resurrected a mammoth. Little did he know that was exactly what someone did. "A Dragon in the City": What happens when Eroch goes adventuring in Beacon Hill without Angel? Chaos, pure chaos. "Fae's Gold": Daniel is helping the newly-resurrected fae, Ruairi Brennan, become accustomed to modern-day living.

"In The Falling World", Jade, sister queen of the Indigo Cloud Court, has traveled with Chime and Balm to another Raksuran court. When she fails to return, her consort, Moon, along with Stone and a party of warriors and hunters, must track them down. Finding them turns out to be the easy part; freeing them from an ancient trap hidden in the depths of the Reaches is much more difficult. "The Tale of Indigo and Cloud" explores the history of the Indigo Cloud Court, long before Moon was born.

The Shifters of Oak Mountain have a secret ... And it is hot-as-sin... Get your fill of Bear shifter goodness, with an exclusive series epilogue included, as they seek to claim the curvy woman they so desire. You'll meet Blaine and Estelle who have to endure the tension of an employee boss relationship...where they are oh so close...but cannot touch...even as his Bear rages to claim her...and that's before the Dragons start messing with his business... Then there's the tale of Kent and Adrian...he is assigned to protect her...but she can't know...and worse she is her own worst enemy as ...

Glowing with narrator Virginia Leishman’s finely tuned phrasing, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye is the perfect introduction to A.S. Byatt, an author who continues to receive international awards and acclaim. Her wondrous fairy tales are iridescent stories full of spells, marvelous creatures, and beautiful princesses.