Robot Fiction

Even as he trains to be a pilot for the Resisters, 12-year-old Ethan Blackwood is still reeling from the news that aliens called the Ch’zar have taken over the world and put all the adults under their mind control. Now the Ch’zar’s mechanical bug armies are growing. The Resisters need more pilots like Ethan, kids who aren’t afraid to think for themselves. Ethan knows just where the Ch’zar send troublemakers like him - to Sterling Reform School. Can Ethan find a way to break into Sterling and recruit new fighters before the enemy discovers the Resisters’ underground base?

Twelve-year-old Ethan Blackwood has always known exactly what he wants - to win the state soccer championship, get into the best high school, and become an astronaut. Then he meets Madison and Felix, who tell him something... insane. They claim that fifty years ago, aliens took over the Earth, and everyone past the age of puberty is under their mind control. Ethan doesn’t believe it. But then he sees for himself the aliens’ monster bug robots and the incredible way Madison and Felix have learned to fight them. So Ethan Blackwood has a choice....

Abbey Mei Otis's short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, and more. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the 12 stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

Las diferencias no nos hacen menos, sino únicos. Cuando Roz abre los ojos por primera vez, descubre que está sola en una isla remota y salvaje. No tiene idea de cómo llegó ahí o con qué propósito, pero sabe que necesita sobrevivir. Después de enfrentarse a una feroz tormenta y escapar del ataque de un oso, se da cuenta de que su única oportunidad para sobrevivir es adaptándose a sus alrededores y aprendiendo de los demás habitantes, aunque estos nos sean los más amigables.

Scranton, the strangest city on earth has an uneasy “live and let unlive” relationship with the supernatural. But when a vamp puts the bite on an unwilling victim, or some witch casts the wrong kind of spell, that’s when they call me. “My name’s Markowski, a Detective Sergeant on the Scranton PD’s Supernatural Crimes Investigation Unit. I carry a badge. Also, a crucifix, some wooden stakes, a big vial of holy water, and a 9mm Beretta loaded with silver bullets.”

Meet Matt Richter. Pi. Zombie. Another case proves dangerous for zombie PI Matt Richter, in the underworld realm of Nekropolis. From his arrival at Nekropolis, Matt has found himself embroiled in disputes with the city's vampire lords, shapeshifters, golems, and other monstrosities. Nothing has prepared him for the Dark War. Tim Waggoner is a novelist and college professor.

Who Collects the Collectors? Sam Thornton has had many run-ins with his celestial masters, but he’s always been sure of his own actions. However, when he’s tasked with dispatching the mythical Brethren – a group of former Collectors who have cast off their ties to Hell – is he still working on the side of right?

Ryan is lonely. He’s an only child and his dad is away serving in the military. He can’t have pets and all he wants is a dog. So he decides to make one. He loves computers and building things, but everyone thinks he’s just playing around, making a toy. He focuses on creating the best Kay-9 he can but can he prove that his robot dog isn’t just a toy?

Laugh as your favourite characters spit in the face of danger...then run for the hills. Admire the verbal jousting and witty wordplay...or is it the other way round? Gasp as kings and queens lose their heads. "Enjoy" the groanworthy puns and suffer the slings and arrows of poorly-trained archers.

Sam, a stranger to the world of the Fae, finds an unexpected offer from one of the Elemental Court’s most enigmatic Lords turns out to be far more than he bargained for. Meanwhile, Max, an Arbiter of the Split Worlds Treaty, is getting closer to uncovering who is behind the murder of the Bath Chapter. Can he stay true to his sworn duty without being destroyed by his own master, whose insanity threatens to unravel them all?

Shale is dying. A vast, chaotic, monster-bearing storm known only as the Roil is expanding, consuming the land. The last humans are fighting back with ever more bizarre new machines, but the Roil seems unstoppable. Whole cities have been consumed – where once there were twelve, now only four remain. It’s up to a decadent wastrel, a four thousand year-old man, and a young woman bent on revenge, to try to save their city – and the world.

Four years after the horrific events in Leadville, a young visitor from England, Victoria Dawes, sets into motion a series of events that will lead Cora and herself out into the New Mexico desert. They are in pursuit of Anaba, a Navajo witch bent on taking revenge for the atrocities committed against her people.

Rick Putnam is running for his life. A Vietnam veteran riding a motorcycle for a national news network, he's picked up something too hot to handle. So hot that a reporter and a camera crew has already been killed and a rogue CIA kill squad is on his tail. Stick with this charismatic character as he fights his way all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania in his battle for the truth.

Exiled from the court of Queen Elizabeth for accusing a powerful nobleman of treason, swordsman-turned-spy Mal Catlyn has been living in France with his young valet, Coby Hendricks, for the past year. But Mal harbours a darker secret: he and his twin brother share a soul that once belonged to a skrayling, one of the mystical creatures from the New World.

Meet Easie Damasco: thief, liar...and lately, reluctant hero. But whatever good intentions Damasco may have are about to be tested to their limits, as the most valuable - and dangerous - object in the land comes within his light-fingered grasp. Add in some suicidally stubborn giants, an old enemy with dreams of empire, and the deadliest killer in two kingdoms on his heels, and Easie’s chances of staying honest - or even just surviving - are getting slimmer by the hour.

It is the Black Dawn, a time of environmental apocalypse, the earth wracked and dying. It is the Bright Day, a time long generations hence, when a peace has descended across the world. In each era, a child shall be chosen. Their task is to find a dark messiah known only as the Crowman. But is he our savior - or the final incarnation of evil?

Meet Mookie Pearl. Criminal underworld? He runs in it. Supernatural underworld? He hunts in it. Nothing stops Mookie when he’s on the job. But when his daughter takes up arms and opposes him, something’s gotta give....

Meet Sam Thornton. He collects souls. Sam’s job is to collect the souls of the damned, and ensure they are dispatched to the appropriate destination. But when he’s sent to collect the soul of a young woman he believes to be innocent of the horrific crime that’s doomed her to Hell, he says something no Collector has ever said before... “No.”

Daniel Rhyse, nineteen, the youngest professor on campus, teaches ethics at the prestigious Cambridge Institute of Science, CIS (affectionately know as “Kiss”). But after he is ordered to give undeserved A's to the school's crack robotics team members, he realizes that he’s nothing more than a glorified rubber stamp. Rhyse has two choices: quit in protest, or accept being a doormat.

Having achived so much, Marius don Hellespont was finding life just a little boring. But now something, or maybe someone, has stopped the dead from, well, dying. So wouldn’t you know it, it’s up to Marius, incorrigible sidekick Gerd, and Gerd’s not-dead-enough Granny, to journey across the continent and put the marching dead back in the afterlife, where they belong.