Showing results by publisher "Lethe Press" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

The Nameless Dark debuts a major new voice in contemporary weird fiction. Within these minutes, you'll find whispers of the familiar ghosts of the classic pulps - Lovecraft, Bradbury, Smith - blended with Grau's uniquely macabre, witty storytelling, securing his place at the table amid this current Renaissance of literary horror.

Long out-of-print, this novella is Ganymede's life story - unapologetic in its ribald details of Greek gods in disguise, trying to seduce the most beautiful youth in the Ancient world. When a prince of Troy is born with perfect proportions, not only does every man he meets desire him, but the Immortals want him as their lover. Ganymede loses his virginity to Hermes at 12, at 14 he captures the attention of Ares and Apollo...can Zeus be next?

His practice newly established, metaphysician Ned Mathey can't afford to turn away any clients. But the latest Londoner to seek Ned's magical aid gives him pause: Mr. Edgar Nevett, an arrogant banker, is the father of the bully who made Ned's life hell at boarding school. Nevertheless, Ned accepts the commission to ensure the Nevett family silver bears no ancient or modern curses, and then prepares to banish the Nevett family to unpleasant memory again.

Are you prepared to enter acclaimed author Hal Duncan's world of scruffians and scamps and sodomites? Beware, for it is filled with the gay pirate gods of Love and Death, immortal scoundrels, and young men who find themselves forced to become villains. But who amongst us does not adore a gamin antihero? These fantastical tales from the fringes of an imaginative realm of supernatural fairies and human fey will captivate the listener.

What has been missing from the daring tales of fairy tale heroes is quite simply some heft. In Burly Tales, Lambda Literary Award-winning editor Steve Berman has gathered a dozen stories of whimsy and romance that feature gay men with plenty of curves and fur. Run away with us to enchanted woods, where the cubs and bears are not going to eat you (not without informed, enthusiastic consent), where no one will judge if you take up residence in a house with seven bearded men and only one bed.

With one diagnosis, editor James Daniels learns that he's literally running out of time. Looking at his life, he sees one regret: Andy, the one that got away. Andy was the first man that James ever loved, but Andy has been gone for years, and might not want to be found.

Underworld Dreams is Daniel Braum’s third short story collection of genre transcending, strange, and sinister stories full of tension between the supernatural and psychological. Within the audiobook, Braum’s multi-dimensional characters face dark underworlds and strange experiences that illuminate the human condition and world (we think) we know. Occult detectives, cursed fur coats, a treasure hunt in an abandoned mental institution, and sharks learning to hunt on land are among the scares awaiting listeners.

The speculative shines bright in the dark with these stories by Matthew Bright: A boy with a secret begins work at a strange library housing all the books never written; Dorian Gray's love of beauty struggles in the face of AIDS-era San Francisco and the Castro; the tomb of the empress is adrift in space and hungry for the concubines aboard her; two men in an old film finally realize that they are trapped, but still they seek the means for finally declaring their love for each other. 

Acres of Perhaps collects acclaimed and thrilling fiction writer Will Ludwigsen's recent and most heartfelt stories; these are tales that delve into what crime means, alternative history, whether a person could live a different life than the one of the moment, what humanity can do about the big and small evils of the world...as well as inspired serial killers, haunted presidents, cursed lead figurines, and a weird late-night '60s television show that meant much more to the fabric of reality than it let on. These stories are the collision of imaginative and brutal realism.

Scotsman Derek Maclaine has fallen in love with his adopted West Virginia home and its burly native son, Matt Taylor. But a local mining company's recent efforts to destroy the land spell an end to all that Matt holds dear. Derek happens to be an immortal, a creature of the night, a vampire who does not know satiety. After many years without equal, Derek believes stopping a corporation of weak men will be easy. But Alpha Coal employs more than thugs: they are literally demonic.

Has something gone amiss at the home of the Clam sisters? In the early years of the 20th century, one sister purchases a rare blue spong from a songbird dealer without realizing its strange provenance. Soon, the aristocratic sisters and their staff find themselves exposed to a flying koan, provoking them to cast off their commonplace mores, their staid lives, for something altogether bold and ribald: criminal activities, same-sex affairs, even political agitation!

Everyone tells Jordan Fontaine not to worry about the summer camp that isn't really a summer camp, not to worry about the survival statistics she's been calculating since elementary school, or about the quickly averted eyes and frowning mouths of her peers when she tells them her Liaison is coming to visit her and her brothers. She does not dare to tell anyone that her pulse quickens when she looks at the beautiful Liaison.

Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are distinctive tales not soon forgotten.

Sandy Blunt is a witch with big dreams, but C-average magic skills. Her only noteworthy talent is for paying extravagant compliments to women. Trouble is, when she uses that gift, she unwittingly foretells the future for a pretty princess. And, the punishment for prophesying about one of royal blood is death... With the help of her ill-assorted companions, Sandy has a year and a day to travel to far-flung places, collecting the weird and magical items needed to turn her prophecies into promises and evade the executioner.

Dust Devil on a Quiet Street chronicles the remarkable life of Boston-born, New York City-reared author Richard Bowes's childhood and adolescent brushes with dramatic spirits and hustlers, large and small, paved the way for his adult encounters with the remarkable, the numinous, the supernatural.

Disturbed By Her Song collects the work of Esther Garber and her half-brother Judas Garbah, the mysterious family of writers that Tanith Lee has been channeling for the past few years. Possibly autobiographical, frequently erotic and darkly surreal, their fiction takes place in a variety of eras and places, from Egypt in the 1940s, to England in the grip of the Pre-Raphaelites, to gaslit Paris and to the shadowy landscapes carved by the mind and memory.

A house inches 800 miles to confess its horrible crime. The last resident of a mental institution discovers he's not alone. A middle-schooler performs an experiment to determine how much time we fit in dreams. Boys looking for wonder find more than they're expecting in the Adirondacks with Charles Fort. A detective learns everything he's ever wanted to know...and some things he hasn't. In Will Ludwigsen's short stories of strangeness and mystery, the universe has a way of being weird in just the ways we need it to be.

Set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era, Ji Yuan, a Chinese youth who immigrated to America with his brother to seek his fortune but has found only disappointment. Now, his brother lays sick, dying, and Yuan must seek the help of two local spirits. But being tricksters, nothing these spirits tells the youth is ever the whole truth. To save his brother, Yuan was uncover the means to return their servant, a hatchet-man, from jail...dead or alive.

A madman. A secret, generations old. Another missing boy. They called the sadistic killer The River Rat, and he'd struck again. In a desperate search for his neighbor's son, Ted Lewis came face to face with the killer and survived, but his life was irrevocably altered.

Lily is a girl who discovers she has the ability to see how others will die simply by touching them. Only she doesn't want this gift, and takes extreme measure to protect herself from it. When her mother - because every fairy tale has to have a wicked stepmother - sells Lily's services to an evangelical preacher and his wildly popular travelling tent revival, Lily is torn away from the idyllic place she's always known as home and thrust into a world of greed and manipulation.