Fantasy Short Stories

Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are back in a chilling collection of all-new tales of dark secrets, alien agendas, terrifying monsters, and murderous madmen. Edited by New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Maberry, The Truth Is out There features original stories by best-selling authors Rachel Caine, David Wolverton, Hank Philippi Ryan, Kelley Armstrong, Kami Garcia, Greg Cox, and many others.

New research has uncovered deeply buried military secrets—both the Allied and Axis special operations during WWII included monsters. Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk? Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the US drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju? This collection takes real events from World War II and injects them with fantastical creatures that mirror the “unreality” of war itself. Each story—and two poems—feature mythical, mystical, and otherwise unexplainable beings that change the course of history.

Society runs smoothly because a secret team adjusts it, stepping in occasionally to bring about changes by adjusting people and their attitudes unbeknownst to them. As you can imagine timing is of the utmost importance, because if one individual is not adjusted, that sets the whole thing out of balance.

Eve moved to Texas to get away from a family tragedy and found herself in her own when the only job she could find was at a local bar. Her family was gone and she was left to figure it all out on little wages and rowdy patrons. That is, until she met Gwen. Gwen brought her into her world and before she knew it, she was a member of a new family. It was an all-women motorcycle gang that made its living racing. Since Eve had grown up fixing and riding bikes, it was the perfect place for her and she was quickly climbing the ranks as an illegal street racer. Everything changes though when she is...

Weeds by Stephen King: When a meteorite lands on his property, Jordy Verrill envisions an easy payday. Unfortunately for Jordy, this is no ordinary rock - and the uncompromising force inside has found its first target.

It takes some gumption to claim to be the best tea shop in the city of Kansar, where five ancient roads meet and everyone is selling something. But Yala’s shop has been in her family for three generations and is famed for its brews among warriors and wizards alike. When the Imperial Spell Company claims a monopoly on all magic in Kansar, Yala tries to convince a company henchman that her teas are nothing but ordinary leaves and water.

From the author of Aevalorn Tales comes a story about freedom and autonomy. Godwick Emberfoot, a Halfling Warlock enslaved to an Archfae, takes the king’s cousin hostage to learn the whereabouts of the last Gifting Tree—a tree whose fruit grants infinite, perfect knowledge—in the mortal realm. Upon finding the tree, Godwick’s pseudodragon familiar, Greymalken, urges Godwick to destroy it, but instead, Godwick eats the fruit from the tree, risking everything by asking a single gnawing question. And when the universe answers, Godwick's consciousness is pulled into the Faewild, where ...

A colony survives among the icy rings of a planet, hiding from alien robots determined to destroy them … at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers, and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment … a man who can’t feel pain has been bioengineered to be a killing machine, but he refuses to give in to his fate … a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction.

This audiobook collects Wellman’s John Thunstone and Lee Corbet stories, written between 1943 and 1979. These stories combine the mystical and horrific with traditional Southern folk tales and legends. These stories also reveal a post-World War II modernism that make them much more then pulp romanticism. The paranoia and cynicism of modern weird icons, such as The X-files, may well have had their genesis in the pulp musings of Manly Wade Wellman.

: Patricia DeLaney runs an uber successful catering business and bakery. She also hosts weekly book club meetings in her home. Her favorite topic? Mysteries. She adores a good mystery so when her husband Art, short for Arthur, comes home with a juicy story, Patricia is all too willing to sink her teeth into it. Art DeLaney is a retired police detective who runs a small private investigation business. With his contacts at the police department, he gets all the best tips and can easily sit around and shoot the bull with his old colleagues. Feeding Patricia’s need for information isn’t his...

In a dystopian future, a high-tech city named after the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir was supposed to be a utopia where society and technology flourished outside of government control. Step into the neon streets of Noir City, a realm reminiscent of Cyberpunk 2077, West World, and Sin City, where shadows conceal secrets and technology holds sway over every aspect of life. As an enigmatic signal looms ominously, threatening to disrupt the delicate balance, the lives of its inhabitants become entwined in a web of mystery. Initially appearing disparate, each story holds a sinister ...

Previously published in the collection Hungry Tales, "Calling Death" is a nonviolent zombie story set in Appalachia. With humor and rich storytelling, Jonathan Maberry brings you zombies as you've never seen them before.

More than a hundred years into the future, as the US approaches its 400th anniversary, Tomas, a young graduate student, searches for the real identity of one of the cyborgs that maintained American homes. He has been haunted for years by an audio clip of a cyborg named Felipe and is intent on writing Felipe’s biography. In the clip, Felipe can only recite that he was made in America, but Tomas must find out: Where was the Self-made Man really from?

During a time of political and social unrest in Egypt, a god-like force, Nyarlathotep, emerges. He travels the land dazzling people with electricity and psychology. While witnesses of this god-like creature encourage others to see him, afterwards, people seem terrified. As the narrator recounts his experiences, he becomes disoriented. By the end of the story, the narrator and the other viewers of Nyarlathotep begin to lose touch with reality.

"Yellowjacket Summer”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in The Twilight Zone magazine, October 1986.

Seabury Quinn's 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. The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, presents all 93 published works featuring the supernatural detective. Presented in chronological order over five volumes, this is the definitive collection of an iconic pulp hero. The third volume, The Dark Angel, includes all Jules de Grandin stories from "The Lost Lady" to "The Hand of Glory", as well as The Devil's Bride.

Kenzie had made some bad choices in her youth that landed her in an all-girls boarding school. She hated the two years she spent there and looked forward to the time when she would be able to go back home to Chicago. Life had other plans though. Her mother had married while she was away and Kenzie was coming back to a whole new family that was so much different than her, as well as traveling to the other side of the country. The biggest challenge came when she met her new stepbrothers, Nate and Shane. Their good looks and charming ways had Kenzie thinking of them in more than a family way. ...

From best-selling authors Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James, and Jeanne C. Stein comes an anthology of four all-new novellas featuring powerful women who know how to handle a hex or two. In "Double Hexed" from Allyson James, a novella of the Stormwalker series, Janet and her friends find themselves locked in her hotel, victims of a hex cast by a very powerful sorcerer.

Best-selling writer Orson Scott Card founded the online magazine Intergalactic Medicine Show in 2006. It has been a big success, drawing submissions from well-known science fiction and fantasy writers, as well as fostering some amazing new talents. This collection contains some of the best of those stories.

The Last Hieroglyph is the fifth of the five-volume Collected Fantasies series. Editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger have compared original manuscripts, various typescripts, published editions, and Smith's notes and letters, in order to prepare a definitive set of texts. The Last Hieroglyph includes, in chronological order, all of Clark Ashton Smith's stories from "The Dark Age" to "The Dart of Rasasfa".