Fantasy Short Stories

Return to the zombie apocalypse wasteland that is the Rot & Ruin in this short story collection from Jonathan Maberry. Benny Imura's zombie-infested adventures are well-chronicled in the gripping novels Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, Flesh & Bone, and Fire & Ash. But what else was happening while he was on his quest? Who were the others navigating the ravaged landscape full of zombies? Bits & Pieces fills in the gaps about what we know about First Night, surviving the plague, and traveling the land of Rot & Ruin.

Desert Storm. A mysterious figure half-seen in the heat rising from the hot sands of Kuwait. A series of supernatural events that leave the crewmen of an American IFV wondering if there is more to the legend of the djinn than they knew.

Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled fans with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

Julian never thought that graduating from the Ironfist Academy would be the easy part. He returns to his ancestral manor and is greeted by crumbling walls, growing debts, and a father who’s conveniently disappeared. To top it all off, someone is intent on making his new role as lord of the estate as difficult as possible. Armed with magic and a purpose, Julian must juggle the ancient art of estate management. Luckily, he's not alone.

Dive into a world of forbidden desire with BDSM Short Stories: Please Daddy, I’m a Good Girl, a scorching collection of five electrifying tales crafted to ignite your deepest fantasies and keep your vibrator humming night after night. Penned by the sultry maestro Celeste Moreau, this anthology is a siren’s call to women craving intense, consensual BDSM that pushes boundaries and delivers explosive pleasure. Each story—The Velvet Cage, The Midnight Masquerade, The Crimson Altar, The Penthouse Pact, and The Garden of Surrender—pulses with raw, filthy passion, designed to make you wet,...

Kitty Norville is everybody's favorite werewolf DJ and out-of-the-closet supernatural creature. Over the course of eight books, she's fought evil vampires, were-creatures, and some serious black magic. She's done it all with a sharp wit and the help of a memorable cast of werewolf hunters, psychics, and if-not-good-then-neutral vampires by her side. Kitty's Greatest Hits not only gives listeners some of Kitty's further adventures, it offers longtime fans a window into the origins of some of their favorite characters.

Best-selling author Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) is one of the most lyrical writers gracing the fantasy genre. With the debut of her newest work, Dreams of Distant Shores is a true ode to her many talents. Within these chapters you will find a youthful artist possessed by both his painting and his muse and seductive travelers from the sea enrapturing distant lovers. The statue of a mermaid comes suddenly to life, and two friends are transfixed by a haunted estate.

Long lost to the public in out-of-print pulp magazines, dusty Victorian anthologies, and the pages of now defunct newspapers, these vintage vampire stories have truly proved immortal. Resurrected now for the year 2011, this is a stunning collection of nineteenth-century vampire stories by heavyweights such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Bram Stoker. These rare stories are arranged in chronological order from 1846 to 1913 and are compiled by two of the world's leading vampire anthologists and experts.

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. This third volume of the series brings together 21 of his fantasy stories.

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.

Acclaimed best-selling author Peter F. Hamilton has taken the science fiction world by storm with his stunning, grand-scale epic: The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God. Now, with this collection of six stories and a short novel, Hamilton spans more than five centuries in the future history of bitek, affinity genes, Edenists, Adamists, xenocs, the Saldanas, and the starship Lady Macbeth.

"Perfect deadpan marks the opening of Ali Simpson’s The Monster'" writes Susan Merrell of The Southampton Review in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading.

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.

Freeing Londyn: Londyn has been in and out of foster homes since she was 3. A few weeks after her 18th birthday she is taken prisoner to become a breeder for a power-hungry alpha of the Phoenix pack, Damien. After 2 years of enduring unimaginable abuse, Londyn, with the help of Damien's daughter, Aria, escape to another pack. At Hidden Park, she quickly makes a home, under the watchful eye of the Alpha Tristan, whom she can't seem to get out of her thoughts. Tristan is a strong alpha of the Hidden Park Pack, his twin brothers, and his baby sister is all that is left of his family. He ...

📖✨ Fairy tales were never meant to be safe… ✨📖 Step into the shadows of Grimm & Twisted, where the classic fairy tales you thought you knew unravel into chilling, dark, and unexpected new versions. This collection takes beloved folklore and injects it with mystery, horror, and surreal twists—where Cinderella’s slipper leads her to a curse, the Big Bad Wolf is the least of Red Riding Hood’s problems, and a sleeping beauty might never wake up... or maybe she never really slept at all. With 25 original, nightmarish retellings, this book is perfect for lovers of dark fantasy, ...

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".

🌲💖 Love is wild… literally! Bigfoot in Love is a whimsical, mysterious, and heartwarming collection of short stories where romance meets the unknown! From gentle Sasquatches watching from the shadows to unexpected forest encounters, these tales will make you laugh, swoon, and maybe even believe in love beyond the ordinary! 🌿 Inside, you'll find: 🦶 A lonely cryptid finding his perfect match 🌕 A woman drawn to the deep woods… and something watching her 💌 Secret letters exchanged between a human and a hidden admirer 🔥 A hunter who becomes the hunted… by love! ✨ ...

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.

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.