Fantasy World

Death walks beside me. Two weeks ago, I was hired by the Dragon Prince of Zaru to help his brother, the King, deal with their dead. Not that there is an abundance of corpses in their kingdom, but those who die aren't staying in their graves. As a necromancer, I'm one of the few people on Serai who can put the dead to rest and discover why they are rising. As a Raltven, I'm particularly good at it. Good enough that the King of Zaru sent his brother across the sea to find someone like me. At first sight, desire sparked between Prince Racmar and me. On the way to Zaru, our attraction for each ...

Lauren Russell often wondered why her father had been so adamant about teaching her skills that most other fathers wouldn't even consider teaching their daughters. Ever since she was little, she had been taught how to live and survive outdoors, and how to use firearms to protect herself and those around her. Some of the training had been a bit extreme. Or had it been? Many of her questions were answered the day the world as she knew it ended.

What family doesn't have their ups and downs? Mason and his wives have practically seen and experienced everything that the dystopian new world had to offer. Being forced from their home repeatedly, their bonds only grew stronger with each adversity they faced together. In time, their powers grew, too. In this final installment of the Dystopian Girls series, Mason must decide between his obligations to his family and the opportunity to save the world. Reunited with old friends and amassing an army of his own, he is eventually welcomed by the Children of the Phoenix. Each of Mason's favorite...

Today’s fans of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to hear about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today.

The Yaga siblings—Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist—have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet—only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet. Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty.

With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.

The Galactics arrived with their Battle Fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined a vast Empire that spanned the Milky Way. More than a century has passed since the glorious day of Earth’s annexation. Struggling to hold on to a handful of planets in the frontier provinces, humanity is at war with Rigel. After the destruction of both our fleet and theirs, a time of quiet rebuilding has begun.

After questing through the sidhe realms with her ex-hellhound lover, Nathan, Kai Tallman Michalski has finally returned home. But she knows Nathan will eventually be called back to serve his queen - and Kai will have to decide whether to enter her majesty’s service as well. Sure, the job comes with great bennies, but there’s one big downside: She would have to swear absolute fealty to the Queen of Winter.

The rollicking sequel to How to Train Your Dragon and How to Be a Pirate offers a fast-paced plot, slapstick humor, witty dialogue, to enhance an exciting tale featuring Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III.

Human laws do not apply in the territory controlled by the Others - vampires, shape-shifters, and paranormal beings even more deadly. And this is a fact that humans should never, ever forget.... After her divorce, Vicki DeVine took over a rustic resort near Lake Silence - in a human town that is not human controlled. Towns like Vicki's have no distance from the Others, the dominant predators that rule most of the land and all of the water throughout the world. And when a place has no boundaries, you never really know what's out there watching you.

Strega Nona, the local witch, is very popular in her small Italian town. Her potions are old fashioned, but reliable. Strega Amelia, who lives on the other side of the mountain, is a modern witch. She uses the latest scientific equipment in her cures. What will happen when she moves to Strega Nona’s town? Tomie dePaola delights fans of all ages with his timeless stories of Strega Nona and her colorful friends.

It was a hard-learned lesson but Jim Powell finally understood that isolating his group of friends and family was no longer the best idea. It was a strategy that had once kept them safe, but lately seemed to be doing exactly the opposite. Staying out of town and away from people had led to them missing critical intelligence—that there were people in their community actively plotting against Jim.

The epic journey continues with perilous landscapes, newfound magic, and terrifying creatures for fantasy readers ages 13 to 100+. A storm gathers to the west as the enemy grows stronger. The orphan Chip and his companions flee eastward on the One Road. On their journey, the wizard Xander senses strange activity in Cave Mountain, the Unnamed One’s ancestral lair. The small party decides to brave Fang Forest to seek out the cause, but in so doing, they come face to face with an evil more profound than anyone could imagine. The mission turns to one of escape as they become hunted by a ...

On a dark night along a lonely stretch of coast a small ship sends two people ashore. Their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. If they succeed, the consequences will affect the destinies of empires, and lives both great and small.

Broken...Sold...Enslaved... Alistar trained from birth to fight for humanity, only to receive a unique class that's locked upon entering the dungeon. He has five years of fighting ahead of him with no way to level up and gain new skills. But when humanity falls, he quickly learns to only trust his familiar, Kale. The one perk of his class that he can use is rapid healing. Turns out, that's a curse in disguise when he's sold to the arena to fight to the death. Locked away...broken...defeated. His only dream is to see the sun again, but to do that, he must kill all those in his way and break ...

Adelaide - heiress to the wealthiest man in the Ceithren Empire - has felt a void since her sister's death. Just as she's resigned herself to the empty life her father chose for her, a relic from a world that shouldn't exist plunges her into chaos. Clark - son of the greatest terrorist the empire has ever known - is still reeling from his father's death. Since then, his life has boiled down to two things: his brothers and his next mission. When his mission to bring back a mystical artifact goes awry, he's forced to choose between getting the job done and saving the life of a socialite.

Londons fall and kingdoms rise while darkness sweeps the Maresh Empire, and the fraught balance of magic blossoms into dangerous territory while heroes struggle. The direct sequel to A Gathering of Shadows and the final book in the Shades of Magic epic fantasy series, A Conjuring of Light sees the newly minted New York Times best-selling author V. E. Schwab reach a thrilling conclusion concerning the fate of beloved protagonists - and old foes.

There have been 19 years of blood. The ruthless Grand Duke Orso is locked in a vicious struggle with the squabbling League of Eight, and between them they have bled the land white. While armies march, heads roll and cities burn, and behind the scenes bankers, priests, and older, darker powers play a deadly game to choose who will be king.

When murder and sabotage imperil the time-sensitive and top-secret mission of a team of civilian scientists, Starfleet deploys Captain Christopher Pike and the Enterprise crew to Kathara Station, a classified research facility located above the accretion disk of a black hole. Lieutenant Commander Una Chin-Riley soon discovers the station’s director, Valkeya, is hiding secrets—but so is Captain Pike, who many years earlier visited this same black hole on a mission that went tragically wrong, and whose consequences have haunted him ever since.