Anthology Science

You define life or it defines you. In Shawn Speakman’s case, it was both. Lacking health insurance and diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011, Shawn quickly accrued a massive medical debt that he did not have the ability to pay. That’s when New York Times best-selling author Terry Brooks offered to donate a short story that Shawn could sell to help alleviate those bills—and suggested he ask the same of his other writer friends. Unfettered is the result: An anthology built in order to relieve that debt, featuring short stories by some of the best fantasy writers in the genre.

Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.

Taken from my old life with little memory of what brought me here, I wake up in a high tech capsule. A wrinkly old elf tells me that my soul is incomplete and has been fused with that of a Solar Dragon to give me a second chance at life. Where? When? An urban metropolis filled with fantasy races, erected atop the back of a giant asteroid. Meteoropolis. And millions of years in the future, to boot. But that's not all. I've got super powers, too. To add to the excitement, I end up hosted by an anxious unicorn elf named Pinky Peach who is basically a professional gamer girl.

“One of the greats….Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon.” – Stephen King From the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them. A bleak moon...

A father spends years chasing a mysterious funhouse where his son vanished. A man discovers the terrifying reality that humans are considered cattle for an ancient, malevolent race. A trip to the voting booth turns into a nightmarish responsibility when the outcome decides mankind’s apocalyptic fate. In an abandoned radio station, a couple fights for survival against sinister forces that can only be kept at bay by the power of rock-n-roll. A teen girl stumbles upon a supernatural convenience store that offers her a chance to alter her destiny.

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. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Arthur Cain was a hero to his city, the most accomplished and respected of the firefighters in his entire district. But when a call comes in from the so-called "Halfbreed Heights", the monsterfolk part of the city, Arthur's life gets flip-turned upside down. Though he saved the life of a matronly lamia that day, he was also partially crippled and forced into early retirement. Now unable to fit the image of her personal superman, Arthur's wife divorces him and leaves him to move into a cheaper home in the same monsterfolk slum that caused his current situation.

Surviving the first days of the apocalypse, William is a wreck and hiding in an attic. The daily acid storms, floating elementals, and bizarre mutated animals are the least of his problems. The reality-warping apocalypse has rules and a system much like those in video games. To survive, he must learn how the new uncooperative system works, choose a class without any real knowledge of what it does and create a place safe from the spawning horrors.

A group of mountain climbers, caught in the dark, fight to survive their descent; in the British countryside, hundreds of magpies ascend into the sky, higher and higher, until they seem to vanish into the heavens; a professor and his student track a zombie horde in order to research zombie behavior; an all-girl riding school has sinister secrets; a town rails in vain against a curse inflicted upon it by its founders; and much more.

Information is power, or at least it's the currency Dram deals in in Eternal Night. When the information broker is given a new puzzle relating to the latest upcoming game update, he goes all in. What Dram doesn't know is how far and to what extent the developers have seeded the game. Or what it'll cost him to learn the truth.

Between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities...there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars.... Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand...to tread the jeweled thrones of the earth under his sandalled feet.

A strange cry for help distracts Daniel from his boring study session. Curiosity gets the better of him and he is thrust through a portal where he emerges into a fantasy world of myth, magic, dragons and war. His arrival grants him a special opportunity. After stumbling upon a dying dragon, he discovers an egg that is about to hatch. Daniel knows a grand adventure awaits him and he seizes the moment to become a dragon rider.

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. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

The Sabbat War is a savage Imperial crusade, cutting a bloody, burning path across a vast swathe of the Imperium's lost territory. On the front line, the stalwart regiments of the Astra Militarum, including the valiant Tanith First-and-Only—better known as Gaunt’s Ghosts—confront the relentless menace of Chaos, the Archenemy of Mankind. There is, and ever will be, only war.

A collection of Smith's apace adventure stories featuring Captain Volmar, including the never before published novella, "Red World of Polaris."

It is a time of treachery, terrorism, and tyranny in the Star Kingdom. The king cannot be trusted, the galaxy is on the brink of war, and a notorious mercenary is destroying everything - and everyone - in his path on his quest for vengeance. The Star Kingdom is in dire need of heroes. What it gets is a band of misfits and underdogs:

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. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

Emma Chavet and her father are winemakers who stubbornly cling to the old ways. But when an unwelcome offer comes to buy their business, they must face the new realities of a Green society. This story was originally published in the Audie Award-winning METAtropolis: Cascadia.

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

Three short stories of the paranormal and the unknown, to delight, chill, and make you wonder. This book contains "The Hollowers", "The Other Side", and "The Night of the Fairies", published under single stories and now together.