Short Science Fiction Fantasy Stories

From best-selling authors Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn, Allyson James, and Jeanne C. Stein comes an anthology of four all-new novellas featuring powerful women who know how to handle a hex or two. In "Double Hexed" from Allyson James, a novella of the Stormwalker series, Janet and her friends find themselves locked in her hotel, victims of a hex cast by a very powerful sorcerer.

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: Acaelus Thorne, Yric the Black, Hrothan Steelbender, Tal Drakkan, Rebus Nimble.

At turns nonchalantly hip and charmingly deranged, Suzuki's singular slant on speculative fiction would be echoed in countless later works, from Margaret Atwood and Harumi Murakami, to Black Mirror and Ex Machina. In these darkly playful and punky stories, the fantastical elements are always earthed by the universal pettiness of strife between the sexes, and the gritty reality of life on the lower rungs, whatever planet that ladder might be on.

The Drexian warriors are big, and gorgeous, and tasked with keeping Earth safe from violent invaders. In exchange, Earth has agreed to send a select number of women to their holographic space station, to be the warriors’ mates. Too bad, the women don’t know anything about it. Not until they’ve been abducted, at least. As hot as the Drexian warriors are, not all the abducted women want to take an alien mate. But these warriors aren’t used to being disobeyed. And they aren’t used to feisty human women. Sparks will fly.

Grey dedicated his life to working as a bounty hunter for BeneCorp, seeking out those with special powers who could be a danger to everyone if they are not controlled. But when Grey watches the corporation execute his brother Ashe for betrayal, Grey begins to question everything he thought he knew.

I thought the last thing I would have expected while working at the mall during the holiday season was to meet a real elf woman. Then the blue-skinned ogre tore through the mall. The elf and I made a quick escape and ended up in a strange fantasy world. Now, I’m finding out that the elves have been in decline for centuries and are being hunted to extinction for their magical abilities. They need someone to help them. Someone to protect them. Someone with magical powers that could make elves strong like they used to be.

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.

Join James, our intrepid adventurer, streamer, and bug hunter, as he jumps headfirst into the first true immersion VRMMORPG game and explores the digital reality that the dev's have kept under lock and key. No previews? No class or race info before launch? What could possibly go wrong? Especially starting in the empire inspired by ancient Egypt. Rolling a character reminiscent of an old-school D&D cleric, James takes on the world of Sosaku Online with spear, shield, and holy fire.

The second novel of the Codex of Souls furthers explores the strange occult world first introduced in Lightbreaker. Mark Teppo’s vision of a magical underworld is a non-stop adventure that continues to bring new light to the occult origins of our history. Markham returns to Paris where he lost his love, and nearly his life. The ancient order of manipulative magicians that once cast him out is now in turmoil...a turmoil made all the greater by the swaths of destruction that Markham tried to avert.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the British Empire, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story. This collection includes "The Man Who Would Be King", "The Mark of the Beast", "Rikki Tikki Tavi", and "Just So Stories".

Why is it that I’m a boyfriend-less, job-less, chunky loser? I returned home from my failed life in a heaping pile of misery. I’m lucky I have friends who built me up, dusted me off, and shoved a dating app in my face. I expected nothing to become of it, until I got a hit. He’s the hot new guy in town, and heavens help me, I accept his date request.

Award-winning, best-selling author Neil Gaiman demonstrates why he’s one of the hottest stars in literature today with “The Thing About Cassandra,” a subtle but chilling story of a man who meets an old girlfriend he had never expected to see .International blockbuster bestselling author Diana Gabaldon sends a World War II RAF pilot through a stone circle to the time of her Outlander series in “A Leaf on the Winds of All Hallows.”

Kurt Vonnegut made his mark as one of America’s most influential writers with novels such as Slaughterhouse Five, named one of the 100 best English-language novels by Time. Published posthumously, While Mortals Sleep is a collection of 16 short stories, written early in Vonnegut’s career, that further cements his status as an American literary icon.

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 new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre's most popular and critically-acclaimed authors. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

New York Times best-selling author Nalini Singh delivers a smoldering story with Secrets at Midnight, as the scent of Bastien Smith's elusive lover ignites a possessiveness in him that's as feral as it is ecstatic. And now that he's found his mate, he'll do anything to keep her.

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.

A young woman is driven to madness by the recurring appearance of a hospital gown that first traumatized her as a child. By the author of the bestselling gothic novel The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, “The Gown” is a chilling example of how a seemingly innocuous event can tragically erode the psyche of a sensitive child. This disturbing short story follows a nameless girl as she attempts to make a normal life for herself while struggling to escape the debilitating fear that preys upon her in her most vulnerable moments.

The story of rookie pilot Lt. Halley's first drop ship command. (A short story in the Terms of Enlistment universe.)

After the alien virus struck humanity in the wake of World War II, a handful of the survivors found they possessed superhuman powers. The Wild Cards shared-world volumes tell their story. Here in book two, we trace these heroes and villains through the tumultuous 1980s, in stories from SF and fantasy giants such as George R. R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, Pat Cadigan, Lewis Shiner, Walter Jon Williams, and others.