Urban City

Inspired by the Nipsey Hussle mixtape, Mailbox Money, this collection of twelve interconnected short stories explores what it means to chase more than money; to chase a name, a future, a reason to keep running. Each story draws from a track off the mixtape, pulling its emotion and message into the lives of characters hustling on the corners of New York streets, plotting their next move, or standing under stage lights they once only dreamed of.

For 1600 years, Nick Medea has guarded the gate between our world and Feirie, preventing the Wyld - the darkest Feirie of all - from coming into Chicago to find human prey. But since he defeated Oberon, more and more Wyld have been slipping through. Nick and his Feirie companion, the shapeshifter, Fetch, have been busy hunting them down. Nick keeps coming across the Dacian Draco, the sign of his ancient enemy Galerius, including a tattoo worn by a human thug. Unfortunately, every trail ends as if years old.

Since he became the guardian of the Gate between our world and Feirie 1600 years ago, Nick Medea, once Saint George, has battled to keep the darkest Feirie - the Wyld - from invading the mortal plane. With the dragon an unwilling part of him, Nick maintains balance between realms, often at great cost to him and those nearest to him. Nick and his ragtag confederates - including the shape-shifter Fetch and Nick's reincarnated love, Claryce - have battled the Wyld, but mortals as sinister as the darkest Feirie.

For more than 1600 years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over. Yet in the 50 years since the night the dragon breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk.

Italy is for lovers - unless those lovers are on opposite sides of a 900-year-old family feud. Mastering the intricacies of winemaking isn't the only challenge Amber is facing on her and Irix's trip to Northern Italy. Two prominent families with secrets of their own are on the edge of war, and a young romance might be the spark that ignites their hostilities into flame.

M is a magician of modest wit, dim ability, and few scruples, who would prefer to spend his easy immortality drinking artisanal beer and making eyes at smiling women. Alas, in the infinite nexus of the universe that is New York City, equilibrium is no easy thing to maintain. Canal pirates, drug-induced divinities, pocket steam-punk universes, hipster zombies, ex-girlfriends, and the devil are all taken in easy stride.

City of Hope, City of Rage gives a fascinating account of three turbulent and transformative decades in the history of Miami. Marked by mass immigration, racially motivated uprisings, economic inequity, rising crime, and social change, Miami's history from 1968 to 1994 saw the city evolve rapidly from a predominantly white city and vacation spot into a global, Hispanic-majority metropolis with an international tourist base. And yet Miami remains highly segregated today.

Adam Smith has a tent, blankets, a water bottle, friends, and a school voucher. What more could he need? He’s doing great overall, but winter is coming fast, the gangs know his face, and he is failing cooking class! Choices have to be made. Stay and fight, or run? But if he stays, how will he survive? And if he runs, will she come with him?

Nya Yorke isn't strong enough to take them down alone, but she can't let the men who raided her nightclub away with murder. It turns out that the man who rescues her from the same fate is capable of committing horrors, and Nya recognizes that he is the key to completing a mission of her own. Archer wants Tag, her oldest friend, and if she can broker a deal to get him what he wants then she might be able to punish the men who attacked her colleague. Nya needs an ally, but quickly learns that wearing Archer's mark means more than deferring to him, it could change the course of her life.

When biologist Hanna Bjørgaas spots a fairy cup lichen in Antarctica, she is surprised to recognize it from her own backyard in Oslo. When she returns home, she embarks on a journey into urban nature, visiting city parks, cemeteries, and concrete rooftops to investigate the species that live in urban spaces. Along the way, she meets corvids, songbirds, ants, pigeons, bats, sparrows, fungi, and linden trees—and the experts who study their surprising abilities to survive, and thrive, in the city.

Just before my wedding on the planet called Kifirin, I decided I wasn't going to marry someone I'd never met. Kordevik Weth was a stranger to me, and I wasn't willing to accept him. That's why I asked Aunt Bree for help. She had one condition: I had to live on Earth and take a job with Rome Enterprises in San Francisco.

When New York City unveils a program to roast supernaturals, I wonder if I should be sweating. The bloodthirsty Arnaud thinks so, and he's insisting that our survival depends on a wizard-vampire alliance. Never mind his history of wanting me dead. Or undead. Meanwhile, the mayor wants me on his team - an offer that's only slightly less unnerving given our recent clash. So who's really behind the purge? City Hall? The werewolves? Or is it the brainchild of the fae, whose newest advisor to the mayor slipped from my bed and life four months ago?

Kal Hakala is the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation’s best agent, but even he needs a break after his last case, which brought him a hair’s breadth from death and killed the fiancée of his best friend, a Mescalero Apache agent named Canton Asate. Kal’s temporary desk-job is nothing less than leadership of the entire BSI. Now it is on his head to assemble teams of agents to fight the latest Supernatural incursions and man up if they fail.

In Draining New Orleans, renowned geographer Richard Campanella recounts the epic challenges and ingenious efforts to dewater the Crescent City. With forays into geography, public health, engineering, architecture, politics, sociology, race relations, and disaster response, he chronicles the herculean attempts to "reclaim" the city's swamps and marshes and install subsurface drainage for massive urban expansion.

White Americans have long been comfortable in the assumption that they are the cultural norm. Now that notion is being challenged, as white people wrestle with what it means to be part of a fast-changing, truly multicultural nation. Facing chronic economic insecurity, a popular culture that reflects the nation’s diverse cultural reality, a future in which they will no longer constitute the majority of the population, and with a Black president in the White House, whites are growing anxious.

"Warum hast du mich hergeholt?" "Weil wir einen Helden brauchen, der uns rettet. Weil ich einen Helden brauche..." Ich bin Andrew. Mitte zwanzig, Computernerd und mit meiner Nickelbrille und dem hageren Body bestimmt kein Supermodel. Auch kein Superheld, aber für diesen Zweck habe ich ja meine virtuellen Spiel-Charaktere. Mein Leben war ein ruhiger, gemütlicher Trott – bis zu dem Tag, als ich in ein verrücktes Paralleluniversum geriet. Ich rate euch eins: Lauft nie einem weißen Hasen hinterher.

San Francisco’s reputation for accommodating progressive and unconventional identities can find its roots in the waves of transients and migrants that flocked to San Francisco between the gold rush and World War I. In the era of yellow journalism, San Francisco’s popular presses broadcast shocking stories about the waterfront, Chinatown, Barbary Coast, hobo Main Stem, Uptown Tenderloin, and Outside Lands. The women and men who lived in these districts did not passively internalize the shaming of their bodies or neighborhoods.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Samantha Bonti knew the writer's life she was meant to live waited across the bridge in Manhattan. Summoning the courage to break free from an abusive mobster boyfriend, Sam finally leaves Bensonhurst and begins her new life, working as a temp in a Wall Street brokerage firm. Quickly, she's swept off her feet by Wall Street player Alec DeMarco, a man of boundless energy, appetites, desires, and the wealth to indulge it all.

Fortunetellers. Demotivational speakers. Disillusioned shapeshifters. You never know quite who—or what—you'll run into in Psychic City, but that's what makes life interesting for a PsyOps agent.

Brink City. It’s the hellhole of America and has been ever since the magical world collided with our own. All the undesirables, those magical creatures and races who couldn’t fit into polite society, ended up there. Underground monster matches? Illegal enchantments? Monstrous ladies of the night? Potions that make you a god for a day? They can all be found in Brink City. And it’s my new playground.