Fantasy Anthology

That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.

SKIN - An anthology of dark fiction. A collection of stories from some of the best up-and-coming authors of horror.

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery will take the classic tropes of tales of witchcraft and infuse them with fresh, feminist perspective and present-day concerns - even if they're set in the past. These witches might be monstrous, or they might be heroes, depending on their own definitions. Even the kind hostess with the candy cottage thought of herself as the hero of her own story. After all, a woman's gotta eat.

Kabu kabu - unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis - generally get you where you need to go. Nnedi Okorafor's Kabu Kabu, however, takes the listener to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations you didn't know you needed. This debut short-story collection by an award-winning author includes notable previously published material, a new novella cowritten with New York Times best-selling author Alan Dean Foster, six additional original stories, and a brief foreword by Whoopi Goldberg.

Travel to alien worlds, brave dystopian futures, and unravel the mysteries of time itself. Whether it’s sentient robots, powerful witches, or daring explorers, these stories—written by the next generation of speculative fiction stars—come alive through immersive narration.

In Virginia DeMarce's witty and touching "Pastor Kastenmayer's Revenge", a Lutheran pastor gets even with the American who eloped with his daughter by scheming to gain new adherents through eight separate arranged marriages between Lutheran down-timers and American up-timers. Also included: Gorg Huff's "Other People's Money", plus much more.

Somewhere in Russia… Boris Petrov in his glory days had a career in the Russian secret service but now he is well past his prime and just a bored police officer. Annoyed by obnoxious colleagues and petty crimes he languishes in his filthy office. An emergency call changes everything. He is the only available officer and he reluctantly takes up the case. He locates the origin of the emergency call by EMMA in the middle of nowhere. He is greeted by an obscure professor in a secretive building full with high-tech equipment and the darkest secret he could never have imagined even in his ...

A collection of twenty-six horror/thriller stories with surprise endings to thrill you and chill you to the bone. The creepers include: REST STOP: Martin loved the story The Lady or the Tiger so much he started playing the game with real people and hybrid beasts. THE CURSE: When Rebecca found the pharaoh's tomb, she refused to leave no matter how many perished. TILL DEATH DO US PART: Isabelle discovered her new husband had been married before, and all ten brides had disappeared without a trace. THE EXECUTION: Myers has a crazy dream he's on death row, waiting to be executed. LIFE TO THE ...

Weeds by Stephen King: When a meteorite lands on his property, Jordy Verrill envisions an easy payday. Unfortunately for Jordy, this is no ordinary rock - and the uncompromising force inside has found its first target.

Join the Librarian as he does his best to make the post-apocalyptic world a better place by protecting the weak, fighting injustice, squaring off against a group of former renaissance fair workers who have established a kingdom in the Rocky Mountains, and so on. Can one man make a difference in the face of such murderous cannibals and super smart bears? Probably not.

On the island of Avalon, everyone has magical abilities. Except Selena Pearce. As if being the only nonmagical person on the island isn’t bad enough, her parents happen to be the king and queen of Avalon - and the most magical people alive. She’s never felt like she fit in on Avalon, but that all changes when she leaves the island and meets Julian - a mesmerizing, mysterious human.

Adventurers, scientists, artists, workers, and visionaries - these are the men and women you will encounter in the short fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson. In settings ranging from the sunken ruins of Venice to the upper reaches of the Himalayas to the terraformed surface of Mars itself, and through themes of environmental sustainability, social justice, personal responsibility, sports, adventure, and fun, Robinson's protagonists explore a world which stands in sharp contrast to many of the traditional locales and mores of science fiction, presenting instead a world in which Utopia rests within our grasp.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

The apocalypse is coming. There's only one way off Earth. When a small-moon-sized asteroid is discovered hurtling toward Earth, billionaire scientist Darien Trass must deal with the hardships of finding the select few who will join him on his voyage to escape the apocalypse and rekindle civilization on another world.

In Zombies, the absurdity of both life and death are on full display as the best and brightest of a high school prep school become tragically addicted to the latest drug craze - electric shocks from cardiac defibrillators. Funny, caustic, bizarre, poignant - this story represents everything listeners have come to love and expect from Chuck Palahniuk.

"Red Wine and Blood": The Blood Wars raged for centuries across Boston. Witness a brief glimpse into the brutal history of the Wars with Ignacio Salvatore and the vampire he loves, Ashwin Metcalfe, in 1897. "A History of Trouble": Angel was joking when he asked O'Malley if someone resurrected a mammoth. Little did he know that was exactly what someone did. "A Dragon in the City": What happens when Eroch goes adventuring in Beacon Hill without Angel? Chaos, pure chaos. "Fae's Gold": Daniel is helping the newly-resurrected fae, Ruairi Brennan, become accustomed to modern-day living.

Expect fast-paced action, aliens, and more aliens, planet hopping, a mysterious quest, and a bossy spaceship who likes to meddle. Includes all four books in the Space Gypsy Chronicles.

As a primal conjurer, Ryn Xaven is a rare sorcerer who can use all types of magic. When he bonds beautiful mages as his protectors and companions, his power grows. Together they'll root out devils, protect their world from demonic invasion, and keep each other warm on cold nights.

Jane Yellowrock, her best friend Molly Trueblood, an earth witch, police detective Paul "Brax" Braxton, and Molly's husband Evan go after a blood-family of rogue-vampires who killed a local family.

While training for a manned mission to Mars, Dr. Sophie Winston and her team of scientists find themselves cut off from the rest of the world. Trapped inside a biosphere deep within the confines of Cheyenne Mountain, Sophie and crew discover they are the survivors of a brutal alien invasion. But as they struggle to stay alive, they realize their safe haven is far from safe and that they must team up with other survivors around the world to defeat the aliens before it’s too late for humanity and the Earth.