Fantasy Adaptation

Join Rapunzel, Ariel, and Tiana for the fourth edition of this top-selling storybook collection, featuring 14 completely updated stories.

Detan Honding, a wanted conman of noble birth and ignoble tongue, has found himself in the oasis city of Aransa. He and his trusted companion Tibs may have pulled off one too many cons against the city’s elite and need to make a quick escape. They set their sights on their biggest heist yet - the gorgeous airship of the exiled commodore Thratia. But in the middle of his scheme, a face changer known as a doppel starts murdering key members of Aransa’s government.

Ryan Cawdor is gunned down and left for dead by the new Provisional US Army, commanded by a brilliant general with a propensity for casual mass murder and a vision to rebuild America. Waging war from his pre-Dark, fusion-powered armored locomotive, he's poised to unlock the secrets of the Gateways — as the rest of Ryan's group stand powerless. All except one. Hope may be lost for Krysty Wroth. But revenge is enough.

Deathlands is a living hell, but there is someplace worse: a parallel Earth where the atomic mega-cull never happened. Now this Otherworld Earth is in its final death throes. Yet for an elite few, the reality portal offers a new frontier of raw energy, expendable slaves — a bastion of power for Dredda Otis Trask. Her invasion force of genetically engineered warrior women has turned the ruins of Salt Lake City into the deadly mining grounds of a grotesque new order — one that lies in wait for Ryan and his companions.

Archaeologist and explorer Annja Creed's fascination with the myths and mysteries of the past leads her to a crypt in the caves of France, where the terrifying legend of the Beast of Gevaudan hints at the unimaginable. What she discovers is shattering: an artifact that will seal her destiny; a brotherhood of monks willing to murder to protect their secret; and a powerful black-market occultist desperate to put his own claim to centuries-old blood money.

Survival is an endless battle in the dark age of post-holocaust America, but even amid the ashes of the past, new pockets of civilization emerge, fledgeling communities bound by savage rules. Ryan Cawdor and his band of warrior-survivalists are transported from one Valley of the Shadow of Death to another, shaken by the mind-bending effects of the mat-trans, emerging at last into a promised land whose inhabitants are healthy and young.

Lady Cecelia is to mysteries what a pack of foxhounds is to a fox...and her interference brings her to disaster. But Captain Serrano isn't about to let her employer - and now her friend - be destroyed. With the help of Lady Cecelia's nephew and his friends, including Lord Thornbuckle's adventurous daughter, Heris plots a rescue, while trying to re-balance her own life and recover relationships with some of her former crew. In the process, she and Lady Cecelia bring down a government.

Esmay Suiza wasn't a member of a great Navy family like the Serranos. She'd had to make her way on grit alone, which meant it wasn't likely she'd ever make admiral and "hoist her own flag." Well, that was fine with her: all Esmay wanted was a secure berth where she could be part of something greater than herself, and otherwise just live her life in peace.

She calls herself Calexa Rose Dunhill - names taken from the grim surroundings where she awoke, bruised and bloody, with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who left her for dead. She has made the cemetery her home, living in a crypt and avoiding human contact. But Calexa can’t hide from the dead - and because she can see spirits, they can’t hide from her. Then one night, Calexa spies a group of teenagers vandalizing a grave - and watches in horror as they commit murder.

In the year 2057, the last freelance private investigator, partnered with an experimental AI named Harv, solves cases involving androids, future tech wizards, and all sorts of mayhem.... When Ona Thompson, a genetically altered superwoman, media darling, and one of the indestructible Thompson Quads, discovers her sister's murdered body, a freelance private investigator who is wired to an experimental AI named HARV comes to the rescue.

World War III is now a bloody page in American history. With nuclear holocaust killing more than a quarter-billion people worldwide and the United States just a memory, John Thomas Rourke, ex-CIA Covert Operations Officer, weapons expert and survival authority is enduring the ultimate test. Soviet Occupation Forces have landed and must begin the "pacification" of America. They will start by liquidating any prominent Americans who could become a rallying point for armed resistance.

Esmay Suiza wasn't a member of a great Navy family like the Serranos. She'd had to make her way on grit alone, which meant it wasn't likely she'd ever make admiral and "hoist her own flag." Well, that was fine with her: All Esmay wanted was a secure berth where she could be part of something greater than herself, and otherwise just live her life in peace. But what we want or think we want from life and what we get are seldom the same — and one day Esmay found herself in the middle of a space battle, and the senior surviving officer in a mutiny against a traitorous captain.

With danger dodging his heels at every turn, Private Investigator Zachary Nixon Johnson, while protecting Sexy Sprockets, a talentless redheaded teen media superstar, from terrorists, finds himself at the mercy of three psionic, superhuman dominatrices bent on world domination.

Although the exciting military career she hoped for never got off the ground, Ky Vatta ended up seeing plenty of combat when she took the helm of one of the commercial transport vessels in her family's fleet...and steered it into a full-blown war. Now the lessons she learned in that trial by fire are about to pay off - because this time, the war has come to her. Someone has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire.

Young ex-slave Gideon Bardsley is a brilliant inventor, but the job is less glamorous than one might think, especially since the assassination attempts started. Worse yet, they're trying to destroy his greatest achievement: a calculating engine called Fiddlehead, which provides undeniable proof of something awful enough to destroy the world. Both man and machine are at risk from forces conspiring to keep the Civil War going and the money flowing. Bardsley has no choice but to ask his patron, former president Abraham Lincoln, for help.

The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Then he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it.... If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River.... If only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.

A roundear there shall surely be born to a strong, raised to be free fighting dragons in his youth leading armies, nothing loth ridding his country of a sore joining two, then united four until from seven there be one only the will his task be done....

King Malcom of the kingdom of Redhart is dead. The kingdom has been overrun by the forces of the Unreal. Statues live, corpses walk and nothing is as it seems. One of Malcom's three sons may assume the throne, but two will have to die. Jordan, the great actor, is hired to impersonate Prince Viktor, who is ill, but can't be seen in public as weak. Jordan's skills are great, but there is much he doesn't know about the prince and his ignorance could kill him if he doesn't acquire allies and learn the truth about life at Castle Midnight.

Restored to her former state of health (and determination) Lady Cecelia goes in search of fresh bloodstock - she's had enough of politics. But once again she manages to put herself - and Heris Serrano - at the point where lightning will strike. This time it's invasion from the neighboring empire: The Benignity of the Compassionate Hand. Heris is only a civilian now, with a space yacht - what can she do in the face of a full-scale fleet of warships? But she is also a Serrano - born to lead.

Mercy is smart enough to realize that when it comes to the magical Fae, the less you know, the better. But you can't always get what you want. When she attempts to return a powerful Fae book she'd previously borrowed in an act of desperation, she finds the bookstore locked up and closed down. It seems the book contains secret knowledge—and the Fae will do just about anything to keep it out of the wrong hands. And if that doesn't take enough of Mercy's attention, her friend Samuel is struggling with his wolf side—leaving Mercy to cover for him, lest his own father declare Sam's life forfeit.