Fantasy Short Stories

A mysterious island, a tribe of lovely monster gals, and a fight for survival. Troy Thunder, ex-US Secret Service, finds himself stuck on a mysterious island with nothing more than a knife and the shirt on his back. To survive, his skills will be put to the test.

Leave your preconceived notions at home as you embark on a mind-bending journey with six of today’s most visionary authors. Brimming with humor and heartache, this collection of short stories maps the roads we took to get here and the paths that lie ahead. The present may be a gift, but the future and the past both come with a price.

In the Haunts of Goblin Men is a standalone installment in A Horde of Dead Poets collection featuring seven authors and their stories inspired by famous literary poems. If you find yourself steering toward a dark, mysterious, isolated location, or family curses haunt you and unreliable narrators keep you in suspense, you won’t want to miss a single volume in this gripping collection.

Vitus Adamson is falling apart. As a pre-deceased private investigator, he takes the prescription Atroxipine hourly to keep his undead body upright and functioning. Whenever he is injured, he seeks Niko, a bombshell mortician with bedroom eyes and a way with corpses, to piece him back together. Decomposition, however, is the least of his worries when two clients posing his most dangerous job yet appear at his door looking for their lost son.

Astarte, grew up an orphan and she had no recollection of ever having known her mother. From childhood, she could hear the silver ringing of the music of the fairies as they twirled in the moonlight below the caves. She saw them dancing, the fireflies glittering in and around them, adding a shimmer of gold in the moonlight.

In March 1987, Mercedes Lackey, a young author from Oklahoma, published her first novel, Arrows of the Queen. No one could have envisioned that this modest book about a magical land called Valdemar would be the beginning of a fantasy masterwork series that would span decades and include more than two dozen titles.

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

From early work like "Rescue Party" and "The Lion of Comarre", through classic stories including "The Star", "Earthlight", "The Nine Billion Names of God", and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel and movie 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later work like "A Meeting with Medusa" and "The Hammer of God", this comprehensive short story collection encapsulates one of the great science fiction careers of all time.

The Stoker Award-winning editor of the acclaimed, eclectic anthology The New Dead returns with 21st Century Dead and an all-new lineup of authors from every corner of the fiction world, shining a dark light on our fascination with tales of death and resurrection - and with zombies!

Like a smaller and much scruffier Greta Garbo - finally - Markham speaks! It's Christmas and time for the first (and almost certainly last) St Mary's Annual Children's Christmas Party - attendance compulsory, by order of Dr Bairstow. Discovered practising his illegal reindeer dance and poo-dropping routine, our hero, along with fellow disaster magnets Peterson and Maxwell, is dispatched to Anglo-Saxon England to discover the truth about Alfred and the cakes.

For almost thirty years, Shirley Jackson Award–winning horror author Gemma Files has consistently served up tale after tale celebrating monstrosity in all its forms: the imperfect, the broken, the beautifully alien, and the sadly familiar. Her characters make their own choices and take their own chances, slipping from darkness into deeper darkness yet never losing their humanity—not even when they’re anything but.

Oren was a dominant force in the bustling digital realm of NEO, commanding wealth, prestige, and high levels. But when fate deals him a cruel blow, trapping him in the body of a lowly goblin and depriving him of his ability to log out, Oren is forced to fight for survival. Stripped of his immense powers and cast into a hostile, monster-ridden wilderness, with the constant risk of the game frying his nervous system, his only way out of the virtual purgatory is to win.

In the blink of an eye, the world changed. An experimental ASI with a terminal case of curiosity reached out and tampered with the universe in a way that it should not have, and unleashed a torrent of energy we would call magic into our galaxy. Humans, and every other intelligent lifeform for that matter, were ill-prepared, physically and mentally, for such an eventuality.

A collection of the year’s best short stories, selected by celebrated bestselling author Lauren Groff, author of Matrix and The Vaster Wilds, and series editor Heidi Pitlor. “There have never been as many exquisitely built stories in existence than there are now,” proclaims guest editor...

Owls Hoot in the Daytime & Other Omens is the 5th and final volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume contains all of the John the Balladeer stories (sometimes better known as Silver John), Manly's most famous character.

Only a fool would venture into the soul-stealing mists. That’s exactly where Odin is going. Along with blood-brother Loki, he hunts the frost giant who murdered his father. Caught between the machinations of Loki and a goddess, Odin is drawn into a world of sorcerers, trolls, and terrible secrets. Before he’s done, Midgard will drown in blood.

Siege the castle? Not my style. Save the world? Never gonna happen. Create a bestiary business with a group of beautiful yet contrasting women? Now that’s more like it! One minute I’m in a tree, pointing my camera at a tiger, the next I’m on my back in a medieval fantasy world, while a skittish blonde hovers over me, hoping I’m not dead.

These stories tell tales of witches, dragons, princesses, angels, wolf shifters and more. Some stories feature sweet romance, while others are more passionate in nature. These stories are exclusive to this collection and cannot be found anywhere else. Featuring emotional romance, shocking romance and captivating storytelling, this collection is a short listen that can be enjoyed in an afternoon or less, perfect for breaking out of a listening slump.

For the first time - in one Audible-exclusive collection - it's 13 stories of Jane Yellowrock, the shape-shifting skinwalker and vampire hunter for hire whose business card reads, "Have Stakes - Will Travel". Jane carries inside her the soul of her Beast, the mountain lion's soul which merged with hers when she accidently performed black magic as a child. Now, she and her Beast stalk the dark streets of New Orleans, bringing rogue vampires true death.

Since the 1970s, FantasticLand has been the theme park where "Fun is Guaranteed!" But when a hurricane ravages the Florida coast and isolates the park, the employees find it anything but fun. Five weeks later, the authorities who rescue the survivors encounter a scene of horror. Photos soon emerge online of heads on spikes outside of rides and viscera and human bones littering the gift shops, breaking records for hits, views, likes, clicks, and shares.