Nuclear brinksmanship, psychological warfare, spies, double agents, femmes fatales, and dead drops… The Cold War - a terrifying time when nuclear war between the world's two superpowers was an ever-present threat, an all-too-real possibility that could be set off at the touch of a button - provides a chilling backdrop to this collection of all-new short stories from today's most celebrated mystery writers.

It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart.

Just After Sunset - call it dusk, call it twilight, it's a time when human intercourse takes on an unnatural cast, when nothing is quite as it appears, when the imagination begins to reach for shadows as they dissipate to darkness and living daylight can be scared right out of you. It's the perfect time for Stephen King.

A single visit to a West Virginia prison can't resolve the tragic pasts of convicted child-killer Will Hatfield and his former sweetheart Karin. While she struggles with haunting regrets, Will vows to wait for her, no matter how long it takes.

Brilliant, beautiful, and stunningly effective, psychologist Dr. Grace Blades has a special gift for treating troubled souls and healing tormented psyches - perhaps because she bears her own invisible scars. Only five years old when she witnessed her parents die in a bloody murder-suicide, Grace took refuge in her towering intellect and found comfort in the loving couple who adopted her. But as an adult, Grace's accomplished professional life vies with a covert, high-risk dark side, played out harrowingly. And when Grace's two worlds shockingly converge, her past returns with a vengeance.

A glittering landscape of twenty-five speculative stories that challenge oppression and envision new futures for America - from N. K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, and more.

In infancy, Junior Thibodeaux is encoded with a prophesy: A comet will obliterate life on Earth in 36 years. Alone in this knowledge, he comes of age in rural Maine grappling with the question: Does anything I do matter? While the voice that has accompanied him since conception appraises his choices, Junior's loved ones emerge with parallel stories - his anxious mother.

The well-meaning protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara are caught - to both disastrous and hilarious effect - in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. Ben Fountain's prize-winning debut speaks to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.

Claire Huntley and her brother, Poe, were on a midnight hike in Montana when the woods went wild. A blinding, devouring light and a rumbling pulse that blasted them off their feet left both kids with little memory of what happened. Their father insisted it was a violent extraterrestrial abduction; his wild obsession would tear their family apart in the wake of the trauma. Fourteen years later, Claire, who’s battled anxiety attacks since that fateful hike, wants to heal her relationship with her brother, which has been damaged by his years of addiction.

Imagine "Back to the Future" fused with the chaos of an alien invasion, told with the narrative brilliance of John Scalzi or Octavia Butler. Time is not just a dimension, but a playground of fate and destiny. Faer Michelson is a man blessed and cursed with vivid and inescapable memories. From a childhood accident that opened a door to another realm, to mysterious encounters with a woman whose hair holds the colors of the rainbow, Faer's life has been anything but ordinary.

Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse is a new anthology of postapocalyptic literature from some of the most renowned authors in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres today, including George R. R. Martin, Hugh Howey, Junot Díaz, David Brin, and many more. This eclectic mix of tales explores famine, death, war, pestilence, and harbingers of the biblical apocalypse.

A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past 20 years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling his teenage dream of living in Africa. Love, Africa is the story of how he got there - and of his difficult, winding path toward becoming a good reporter and a better man.

To all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted. When the storm makes landfall, it triggers a descent of another sort. Their home destroyed, two of its members missing, and finances abruptly cut off, the family finds everything they assumed about their lives now up for grabs.

Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.