Science Fiction Anthology Short Stories

You were on your way home when you died. It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me. And that’s when you met me." A short story about the universe.

People work; folk play. That is how it has been in this country for as long as Sam can remember. He is happy, and he understands that this is the way it should be. People are bigger than folk. They are stronger. They do not need food or water. They do not need the warmth of a fire. All they need are jobs to do and a blacksmith to fix them when they break. The people work so the folk can drink their moonshine, fish a little, and throw horseshoes. But once Sam starts to wonder why the world is like this, his life will never be the same.

Billy the Barbarian is an Isekai adventure story about a normal man from our Earth whose destiny changes when he gets snatched up by the gods of a magical world. He then wakes up to find himself in a strange, cruel land known as Thune to the locals. It turns out the gods of Thune have pretty big plans for Billy, and before he knows it he's swept up into an adventure the likes of which you've never seen before.

Time Travel Tales & Other Short Stories contains a dozen tales dealing with time travel, suspense, mystery, and a hit man named Tanner.

The vast comet should have destroyed us... When it slowed, then landed, everything we thought we knew about the universe changed. And for Mark, things just got far stranger, and much more dangerous. They came from another dimension, condemning our selfish, greedy ways, but sensing in us a potential to change. So when they chose Mark as a volunteer in their deadly trials to save the human race, how could he say no? Join him on his quest for loot, levels, and powerful abilities.

This book won a World Fantasy Award. It's remarkable: The stories are rich, fascinating stuff - creepy and unsettling and phantasmic. Imagine what Tolkien's Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had tried to tell that story sympathetically from the point of view of the human denizens of Mordor and you'll have the slightest sense of what you're about to wade into... but only just a sense.

This expansive collection contains 27 stories and novellas written between 1963 and 1981, years in which Dick produced some of his most mature work, including such novels as Ubik, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, and A Scanner Darkly. Among the many pleasures included here are the classic title story (filmed twice as Total Recall), in which an ordinary clerk, awash in resurrected memories, discovers the truth about his past and about the astonishing role he has played in human history.

A collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was first published in 1979 and awarded the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. This Audible exclusive adaptation is narrated by legendary actors, Richard Armitage and Emilia Fox, who take on different chapters of the audiobook. Among these are 'The Bloody Chamber', 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon', 'The Tiger's Bride', 'Puss in Boots', 'The Erl-King', 'The Snow Child', 'The Lady of the House of Love', 'The Werewolf' and 'Wolf-Alice'.

For the first time as an Orbit special edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend.

The beachside town of Oyster Cove had everything a man could want—endless white sand beaches, plentiful summer activities, and of course, more beautiful women than you could shake a tail at. I came to Oyster Cove to enjoy a leisurely summer of surf and sun, but I find out pretty quickly that there’s more to this town than meets the eye. My next door neighbor has eyes that are very similar to a cat’s, and I could have sworn the gorgeous waitress at my favorite food spot has scales on her legs.

The urge to explore and discover is a natural and universal one, and the edge of the unknown is expanded with each passing year as scientific advancements inch us closer and closer to the outer reaches of our solar system and the galaxies beyond them. Generations of writers have explored these new frontiers and the endless possibilities they present in great detail. The Final Frontier delivers stories from across this literary spectrum, a reminder that the universe is far large and brimming with possibilities than we could ever imagine, as hard as we may try.

Fall under the intoxicating spell of their hex appeal…In the magical world that lies hidden beneath our own, witches and conjurers play deadly games. They know just the right spell to kill a man with one kiss—or raise him back again. And they’re not afraid to exact sweet revenge on those who dare to cross them. But what if you’re the unlucky soul who falls victim to a conjurer’s curse? And if you had the power to cast a magic spell of your own, would you use it?

Summoners are born, not made. For Bran of Ealdor, this is the one thing stopping him from becoming a member of the legendary warriors known as summoners. They are gods among men who can call monsters into battle to fight alongside them. Mages, Rangers, Beastmasters, Protectors, Hunters, and Lancers. These are the six classes of summoners. None of which Bran can become.

The Barsoom Collection: Books 1-6 is the collection of the first six novels in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series, read by esteemed narrator Christopher Ragland.

William and his friends have battled scores of the diseased and left communities behind them on their journey to find what lies south of the wall bisecting the country. They’ve lost loved ones and overcame many challenges, but they’ve never faced an obstacle as great as the one before them: the wall, steel, sheer, and 200 feet tall—an insurmountable barrier designed to separate the north and south. Their dream should stop here, but the group has a plan to get to the other side, and it might just work.

Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America and winner of countless awards—including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker—Harlan Ellison proved once more that he was both unpredictable and irrepressible in this second collection of innovative science fiction. Again, Dangerous Visions—the middle installment in a planned three anthology series—includes award-winning stories from incomparable writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Kurt Vonnegut, Piers Anthony, Dean Koontz, and James Tiptree, among many others.

Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, nastiest, ugliest people in the world. They hate everything - except playing mean jokes on each other, catching innocent birds to put in their Bird Pies, and making their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, stand on their heads all day. But the Muggle-Wumps have had enough. They don't just want out, they want revenge.

When an EMP catastrophe shuts down power worldwide, Melanie Pearson must embark on a grueling trek to reunite with her family. But before she can cross the savage wastelands, she’ll need to help her boss find his own son first. And Melanie quickly realizes she may have made a deal with the devil himself….

An arsonist's twisted handiwork claims hundreds of lives in the roughest neighborhood in New York - Daredevil's turf. Daredevil digs up the root of the problem and comes up with a ruthless crime boss bent on brutally wrestling control of New York's underworld from the corrupt clutches of the Kingpin of Crime. The new crime boss' enforcer? The bloodthirsty Bullseye, master assassin with a pathological enmity for Daredevil. Bullseye takes to his work with deadly efficiency, killing his way toward the Man Without Fear.

Clementine has been taken by a creature of darkness. Dorin is a fiend in love who must find Clementine before losing her forever. While on his desperate search, Dorin pens eight dark and romantic monstrous tales, written only for Clementine.