Science Fiction Monsters

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Devil's Desk 3 and experience the apocalyptic world of monsters.

War makes for strange alliances - and so it is for the free city of the Colonnade, which must turn to the Mother of Nightmares and her dynasty of monsters to defend themselves against the hordes of Chaos. The Colonnade, a free city, is the jewel of Ghur, obsessed with purity in a realm of bestial savagery. But now, it faces annihilation at the hands of an unstoppable beastherd. In a desperate gamble, Councillor Atella Reigehren requests the aid of a being anathema to the Colonnade. She seeks Lauka Vai, the Mother of Nightmares, and her dynasty of monsters, the Avengorii.

They say fire rained from the sky for seven days signaling the arrival of the monsters. They say humanity fought hard to beat them. They say the celestials saved us. They say a lot of things. Me? I deal in the present. In scouting for useful things and keeping my team alive outside the protective walls of our base. I might not have a fancy monster-killing blade like the Sweepers do, but I've avoided getting my face eaten off so far, so I call that a win. But when my base is taken by monsters, my scout skills are the only thing standing between imminent demise and survival.

A virus tears across the globe, transforming its victims in nightmarish ways. As the world collapses, dark forces pull a small group of women together. Erin, once quiet and closeted, acquires an appetite for a woman and her brain. Why does forbidden fruit taste so good? Savannah, a professional BDSM switch, discovers a new turn-on: committing brutal murders for her eldritch masters. Mareva, plagued with chronic tumors, is too horrified to acknowledge her divine role in the coming apocalypse, and as her growths multiply, so too does her desperation.

Pawning my grandma's bracelet was supposed to be temporary—not contractually bind me to a breathtaking naga. Now I'm working off my debt at Sundar’s pawn shop, trying not to stare at his powerful tail, or imagine all the wicked ways he could pin me down with it... But Sundar isn’t just hard to resist—he’s impossible to read. One moment he’s cold-blooded and controlled. The next, his possessive instincts are wrapping tighter than his coiled tail. I know better than to fall for my boss. But the more time I spend under his golden gaze, the more I wonder...

Washington D. C., 1925. Clara Johnson talks to spirits, a gift that saved her during her darkest moments in a Washington D. C. jail. Now a curse that’s left her indebted to the cunning spirit world. So, when the Empress, the powerful spirit who holds her debt, offers her an opportunity to gain her freedom, a desperate Clara seizes the chance. The task: steal a magical ring from the wealthiest woman in the District.

Using forbidden Marrangha magic and the three stolen vapours, the evil sorcerer Zharradan Marr has created a creature....but for what purpose?

Alchemist Zoe Faust is no stranger to magical mayhem, but when her boyfriend's new tea shop is vandalized and his special tea blends stolen, she plunges into a baffling mystery to save him. The clues lead Zoe and her gargoyle sidekick Dorian to an eerie mansion high in the Portland hills, filled with creeping carnivorous plants and enigmatic topiary monsters. When they stumble across a corpse in the conservatory that appears to have been killed by sinister shrubbery, an estranged member of the family is implicated in the murder.

Steve is back and ready for more adventures! But this time the excitement lands closer to home. While walking home from the village, Steve is surprised to hear a loud BOOM! When he returns home, he finds his wheat farm destroyed and a huge crater where the wheat once grew. And his diamond sword is missing! Steve believes it's the act of a griefer with a lot of TNT. Devastated, Steve wants to rebuild and find his sword, but with his wheat destroyed, he must call on old friends to help him.

In this striking and bleak, yet luminous debut collection, Nathan Ballingrud, winner of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award, uses the trappings of the Gothic and the uncanny to investigate a distinctly American landscape: The loneliest and darkest corners of contemporary life. Ballingrud’s stories are love stories. They’re also monster stories. Sometimes the monsters collected here are vampires or werewolves.

Jack Miller has spent his entire nine years in the same house on the same street in the same town with the same best friend. One day, while delivering papers on his same ordinary paper route, Jack finds himself amidst a very unordinary world. A world where strange and silly monsters become his friends. In this story, Jack and Annabelle meet Orville, who will stop at nothing to keep the humans from returning to Monster World.

A man becomes targeted by witches after he inherits some very special real estate.

Victor Wolfe has roamed his country for twelve years now. Ever since leaving his tiny village to escape to a life that felt worthwhile, he has been traveling the lands, fighting battles, plundering old tombs, and bedding fierce adventuresses. It's been quite the life. But that all changes when he has an intimate encounter with a monster girl, a dryad who opens his eyes to the possibilities of pleasure that only monster girls can provide. Now he is headed north, towards the famed Hinterlands.

"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.

Steve and his friends are back at the wheat farm, trying to find a way to secure their crops from hostile mobs, when their old friend, Georgia, comes to them for help. Georgia's village is in the middle of a serious skeleton attack. The skeletons appear at dawn, and nobody can go to bed without risking death. Steve and the gang agree to help, but the journey to Georgia's village isn't easy, especially with a new batch of rainbow griefers on their trail.

She's a bunny. She's a girl. And she's going to evolve. Elise was always made fun of for her big ears and buck teeth. She tried her best to overcome the mockery, only to work herself to death and wake up as... a big-eared, buck-toothed rabbit. Now, with nothing but an almost worthless System Assistant to help her, she needs to survive in a world full of magic and monsters. On top of all that, for some reason she's been given the ominous skill. She has no idea what it does, but things keep happening to her, most of them unpleasant.

Dollitrice Grandmeir never thought her village would turn into a dungeon or that she’d battle a Kaiju overlord with the help of her giant tortoise. Now she’s got an all-new weirdness on her radar. The Twelve Days of Crisismas are coming, and without a special brew of eggnog, Taffy and the Ex-Mas Posse will transform into horrific Grumpus monsters, annihilating Dolli’s dungeon from the inside out.

With her crooked spine and reckless heart, Princess Meera always knew she wasn't meant to become queen of Ezo. But when her sister, the rightful heir, is cursed on the eve of her coronation, Meera must defend her kingdom from ruthless invaders by taking the throne.

Syl, an archmage who tirelessly fought the monsters spilling from the magical Gates and Towers, yearns for a life free from the chaos of battle. When he is assigned to an Aurian magic academy to guard an undercover princess, he is happy to be no more than an unremarkable class three student with dismal practical scores. Right up until people start trying to kill them both.

This third edition to the Prince Roger Series takes the Bronze Barbarians across the Eastern Ocean of Marduk, facing giant sea monsters, pirates, and the barbarian nations that dwell on the other side. Their destination is a spaceport held by humans of questionable loyalties. As Roger comes nearer to making his way home, he learns that his attempted assassination was part of a larger plot. Not all is as it seems on Earth or on Marduk.