Fantasy Short Stories

This sequel to the Hugo and Audie Award nominated METAtropolis features interconnected stories by today’s top writers of speculative fiction – performed by a galaxy of Star Trek stars. As the mid-20th century approaches, the Pacific Northwest has been transformed - politically, economically, and ecologically - into the new reality of Cascadia. Conspiracies and secrets threaten the tenuous threads of society. And the End of Days seems nearer than ever.

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. "Ill Met in Lankhmar" was honored with both the 1971 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella.

After a century of imprisonment, demons have broken free of the wardstones surrounding the Worldwound. As fiends flood south into civilized lands, Count Varian Jeggare and his hellspawn bodyguard, Radovan, must search through the ruins of a fallen nation for the blasphemous text that opened the gate to the Abyss in the first place - and that might hold the key to closing it.

Over 30,000 words of passion in this BAD BOY BIKER BUNDLE COLLECTION This is a 3 book Step sibling Romance collection that contains an explosion of HOT and INCREDIBLY SEXY stories sure make you sweat and get your heart pumping!! This collection includes: 1. Forbidden Love 2. Playing Games 3. Ride of Her Life Add this sizzling collection to your Kindle library today!

From the author of Aevalorn Tales comes a dark fantasy story about binding promises. Enter the world of Godwick Emberfoot, a Halfling Warlock enslaved to the Archfae Aurusel the Gardner, sent to wrest a treasure from a dragon’s hoard. But, in the dark, nothing is what it seems, and the dragon isn't willing to just hand it over. Trapped in the dragon’s lair, Godwick finds himself in a high-stakes game of wit and will against a dragon whose motives are as enigmatic as his methods, and there’s an old score to settle with the Archfae. Godwick must bargain for the treasure and his life and...

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 ...

Here are delightful upendings of genre clichés and heartfelt revitalizations of classic tropes. Here is social commentary with teeth, and here are scenes of pants-wettingly funny comedy. Here are characters and situations that by their very outrageousness achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. And here is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer “this generation’s Le Guin”.

In a post-apocalyptic America, Jamie Teague helps a group of travelers make their way past the murderous Bushwhackers. Jamie comes to find that the strangers are Mormons headed for Utah to avoid being massacred. Knowing that they will die without his help, he agrees to take them as far as his cabin.

This story is included in Orson Scott Card's collection The Folk of the Fringe.

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.

"Children of the Bedtime Machine”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in the 2012 anthology Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury.

Elyana is an elven adventurer devoted to helping innocents escape the madness of revolutionary Galt. Together with her band of bold human companions, she is a powerful force for freedom, and one that many Galtan leaders would happily see tied up at the bottom of a guillotine. When one of their allies is gravely injured, it's up to Elyana and the wizard Arcil to buy time by leading the enemy on a wild chase into the dark depths of the Verduran Forest.

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.

First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality.

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 ...

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again”. A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people.

Mikey hopes he won't find his alpha for a long, long time. The young jaguar omega is too busy finishing his screenplay to settle down - even if his need for a mate becomes unbearable every time he goes into heat. When Mikey returns to his small hometown, the last thing he expects is to find that fated connection. But when a chance encounter with the devastatingly handsome tiger alpha makes him go into heat, he knows Lukas is his mate. Will Mikey's independence come between him and his mate? Or is he ready to get pregnant for the alpha? (Pregnant for the Alpha is an M/M paranormal romance ...

S.F. Namora is a literary periodical magazine focusing on genre-based short science fiction stories. Our aim is to satisfy your daily need of science fiction. Short stories are the perfect medium for science fiction. There's something about short-form sci-fi that has the potential to be especially mind-blowing. In just a few pages, the author must set up an entire new world (or a world that is just ever so slightly different than our own), and then deftly twist this new world into some kind of satisfying (or devastating) conclusion. It's no mean feat. Lucky for us, though, some of the ...

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.

When police officer Rick LaFLeur is infected with the taint of black were-leopard, he goes to Jane Yellowrock for help. But her idea of "help" is not quite what he was expecting: she knocks him out and he wakes up in a cage.

In Virginia DeMarce's witty and touching "Pastor Kastenmayer's Revenge", a Lutheran pastor gets even with the American who eloped with his daughter by scheming to gain new adherents through eight separate arranged marriages between Lutheran down-timers and American up-timers. Also included: Gorg Huff's "Other People's Money", plus much more.