Fantasy Short Stories

How do you systematically destroy a child with love? It's not something that any parent aspires to do, yet a surprising number come perilously close to achieving it.

Thirty-three shorter tales of the Liaden Universe® brought together for the first time in two mega-volumes. Seventeen tales to start with in Volume One! The nationally bestselling Liaden Universe® novels are treasured by space opera aficionados for their wit, world-building, strong characterizations, tender romance, and edge-of-the-chair action.

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.

Father John has lived his whole life without knowing a woman’s touch. Hard at first, his self-denial grew easier over time, as he learned to master his urges with a regimen of prayer, cold showers, and jigsaw puzzles. That changes the day that Debra Rocks enters his confessional. A rough-talking adult film actress, she has come to ask him to pray for a murdered costar. Her cinnamon perfume infects Father John, and after she departs he becomes obsessed.

(Rated "G" for General Audience) ... Can love be found in the strangest places? Follow the paths of the heart and the stars and find out. Cathy & the Dolphin Reporter Mark asked, "The others who were on the boat with you, did you see what happened to them?"....."They died," replied the girl. "He tried to save them, but they grew frightened and swam away from him."....."By 'he,' do you mean the dolphin?" Mark inquired, puzzled....."He is a prince," the girl said....."A prince?" Mark questioned, mouth quirking in surprise....."Yes, a prince," she repeated, chin raised..... Stardust He caught ...

The war continues…Two days after the events of Extinction Aftermath, European Unified Command calls on Team Ghost for a top secret mission. The residents of a small Inuit fishing village in Greenland have gone missing and reports of Variants unaffected by Kryptonite have surfaced. Fatigued, injured, and unaware of the events back in the United States, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick leads Team Ghost into the remote and alien winter landscape to determine the fate of the missing villagers.

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 (black) magical season is here - and whether it's a solstice seance gone demonically wrong with the incomparable Kim Harrison, a grossly misshapen Christmas with the remarkable Lynsay Sands, a blood-chilling-and-spilling New Year's with the wonderful Marjorie M. Liu, or a super-powered Thanksgiving with the phenomenal Vicki Pettersson, one thing is for certain: in the able hands of these exceptional dark side explorers, the holidays are going to be deliciously hellish!

"Having the Barbarian's Baby": Megan's ready to give birth, but she's not ready to let her mate leave her side. When Cashol must go hunting to feed the tribe, they're separated for the first time since resonance. Not a problem, except the baby's ready to be born and there's a storm brewing...

From master anthologist Ellen Datlow comes an all-original of weird tales inspired by the strangeness of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Between the hallucinogenic, weird, imaginative wordplay and the brilliant mathematical puzzles and social satire, Alice has been enjoyed and savored by every generation since its publication. Datlow asked 18 of the most brilliant and acclaimed writers working today to dream up stories inspired by all the strange events and surreal characters found in Wonderland.

In Paula Goodlett and Gorg Huff's "Poor Little Rich Girls," we follow the continuing adventures of the teenage tycoons begun by Huff in "The Sewing Circle" (Gazette #1) and "Other People's Money" (Gazette #3). The focus in this story, however, is on the younger siblings - the so-called Barbie Consortium - and their down-timer associates and enemies.

Pass through fairy tales into the magic of invisible worlds in these opulent stories by a beloved fantasy icon and author of the classic Riddlemaster trilogy.

After his son gives him a pair of "X-ray" glasses as a gift, Martin Blackstone tries them on just for the hell of it - and all they do is give him a headache...until he sees things he can’t possibly be seeing. Glimpses of things on the other side of a wall or beneath someone’s clothing. He wants to believe it’s just his overactive imagination, but the “X-ray” specs actually work.

With this, his bestselling and most critically acclaimed collection ever, Ellison celebrates four decades of brilliant, outrageous writing. The award-winning novella Mefisto in Onyx is the centerpiece of an irreverent and wildly imaginative book that the San Diego Union-Tribune called "electrifying … Ellison is back, as unsettling as ever."

Years after a war that destroyed America, Sam Monson, the governor of the state of Deseret, negotiates a peace treaty with a woman out of his past - on behalf of the son he left behind.

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

"Time's Arrow" was first published in the summer 1950 issue of Science-Fantasy. Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) is regarded as one of the most-influential science fiction writers of all time. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Hell hath no Fury like a Dark Goddess Life is good for Gathelaus, he won back his crown, his kingdom and his woman - too bad the dark goddess Boha-Annu hasn't forgotten and is plotting her revenge. She knows his weakness, his temptations and his obligations, she will use all of his strengths against him. Nobody holds a grudge like a spurned Goddess... There will be a Fire in the Bones!

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 ...

In a career spanning more than 50 years, Harlan Ellison has written or edited 75 books; more than 1700 stories, essays, articles and newspaper columns; two dozen teleplays; and a dozen movies. Now, for the first time anywhere, Troublemakers presents a collection of Ellison's classic stories—chosen by the author—that will introduce new listeners to a writer described by the New York Times as having "the spellbinding quality of a great nonstop talker, with a cultural warehouse for a mind."

Only an act of pure love can shatter Shida the Silent's celestial bonds. Forged by divine hands to serve the whims of a powerful sultan, Shida the Silent, the enchanting genie, was endowed with unparalleled beauty and beguiling charm. Bestowed with the ability to satisfy every sexual desire of humans, Shida's only purpose is to infiltrate the ranks of the sultan's political adversaries, weaving her magical influence to sway their allegiances. Her mesmerizing presence becomes a formidable tool in the sultan's intricate game of diplomacy. However, amidst the intrigues of the court, Shida ...