Literary Science Fiction

A collection of short stories, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories was first published in 1979 and awarded the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize. This Audible exclusive adaptation is narrated by legendary actors, Richard Armitage and Emilia Fox, who take on different chapters of the audiobook. Among these are 'The Bloody Chamber', 'The Courtship of Mr Lyon', 'The Tiger's Bride', 'Puss in Boots', 'The Erl-King', 'The Snow Child', 'The Lady of the House of Love', 'The Werewolf' and 'Wolf-Alice'.

Step up to the gates. After years in the wilds, Lenk and his companions have come to the city that serves as the world's beating heart. The great charnel house where men die surer than any wilderness. They've come to claim payment for creatures slain, blood spilled at the behest of a powerful holy man. And Lenk has come to lay down his sword for good. But this is no place to escape demons.

The people suffer under the centuries-long rule of the Moon Throne. The royal family—the despotic emperor and his monstrous sons, the Three Terrors—hold the countryside in their choking grip. They bleed the land and oppress the citizens with the frightful powers they inherited from the god locked under their palace.

From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Beautiful You is Palahniuk's much-anticipated satire of the emerging erotic thriller genre, a mash-up of mommy porn and chick lit à la Sex and the City, and fantasy lit à la Clan of the Cave Bear. Imagine if Ira Levin had a baby with Jean Auel.

Urmag’Tal’s Puzzle is slated to open for the first time in 100 years, and considering his connection with it, Thorn can’t afford to be absent. Heading to the Temple of Man will throw him into the whirlpool of political intrigue that dominates the city of the Saints. Even as Thorn seeks to build alliances, he finds himself gaining enemies as the forces of the Council of Gods conspire against him.

For a vampire killer like Jane, having Leo Pellisier as a boss took some getting used to. But now, someone is out to take his place as Master Vampire of the city of New Orleans, and is not afraid to go through Jane to do it. After an attack that’s tantamount to a war declaration, Leo knows his rival is both powerful and vicious, but Leo’s not about to run scared. After all, he has Jane. But then, a plague strikes, one that takes down vampires and makes their masters easy prey.

The exhilerating tale of Takeo continues in book II of the internationally best-selling Tales of the Otori trilogy, a sweeping saga set in a mythical, medieval Japan.

In a world where the human population has suffered devastating losses, a handful of survivors cling to what passes for life in a postapocalyptic, dying landscape. A world where humans wander, drugged and lulled by electronic bliss. A dying world of no children and no art, where reading is forbidden.

Being immortal is not all it once was. Yes, the 12 Greek gods of Olympus are alive and well in the 21st century, but they are crammed together in a London town house: and are none too happy about it. Even more disturbing, their powers are waning.

In fifty years, Myrra will be free. Until then, she's a contract worker. Ever since she was five, her life and labor have belonged to the highest bidder on her contract—butchers, laundries, and now the powerful, secretive Carlyles.

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system.

Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies.

Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision and try to create such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.

Things have been going pretty badly for Theo Bernstein. An unfortunate accident at work has lost him his job (and his work involved a Very Very Large Hadron Collider, so he's unlikely to get it back). His wife has left him. And he doesn't have any money. Before Theo has time to fully appreciate the pointlessness of his own miserable existence, news arrives that his good friend, a renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, has died. By leaving the apparently worthless contents of his safety deposit box to Theo, however, the professor has set him on a quest of epic proportions.

The Great Tribulation unfolds as the forces of evil and the armies of God prepare for mankind's ultimate battle. Millions of Christians are protected by God as the anger of the Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, burns against them.

The Master of Natchez, Mississippi has a nasty problem on his hands. Rogue vampires - those who follow the Naturaleza and believe that humans should be nothing more than prey to be hunted - are terrorizing his city. Luckily, he knows the perfect skinwalker to call in to take back the streets. But what he doesn’t tell Jane is that there’s something different about these vamps. Something that makes them harder to kill - even for a pro like Jane.

It is the present day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking, and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: The Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshal Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four". On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right—with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself.

In less than a year, Kelsea Glynn has transformed from a gawky teenager into a powerful monarch. As she has come into her own as the Queen of the Tearling, the headstrong, visionary leader has also transformed her realm. In her quest to end corruption and restore justice, she has made many enemies - including the evil Red Queen, her fiercest rival, who has set her armies against the Tear.

The year 1904. On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there is a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. In a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.

Eulan- has raised his niece ever since the death of her parents. He's trained her in the way of their people, the Ohrs, from the planet, Arets Yesna, even though they are stationed on earth. Now, nearly ten years later, he knows she is closer than ever to starting her work, as a protector. Knowing this, he tries to prepare himself to let her go when she is called. Will he be able to let her go out on her own? Or will he be pulled into something bigger in order to help her complete her mission? Echo- has waited impatiently for years to be summoned to do what it is she has trained for all of ...