Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

Maya Hoshimoto was once the best art thief in the galaxy. For ten years, she returned stolen artifacts to alien civilizations—until a disastrous job forced her into hiding. Now she just wants to enjoy a quiet life as a graduate student of anthropology, but she’s haunted by persistent and disturbing visions of the future. Then an old friend comes to her with a job she can’t refuse: find a powerful object that could save an alien species from extinction. Except no one has seen it in living memory, and they aren’t the only ones hunting for it.

Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins—resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories—have only three unbreakable vows. First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade. Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out.

Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission. But Ada doesn’t care—all that matters to her is enjoying their fine food and sweet, sweet oxygen—until Rian White, the government agent in charge, starts to suspect that there’s more to Ada than meets the eye.

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions - slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere...else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she's back. The things she's experienced...they change a person. The children under Miss West's care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

In the darkest part of the solar system lies a wormhole. Nether. Astrophysicist Cammie Skoura has joined the first research team traveling to the Nether anomaly, eager to understand the mechanics of the wormhole and to explore its possibilities as a shortcut to Alpha Centauri. But another race of ancient beings has already been here—an impossibly long time ago—leaving remnants of their vast complexes and gigantic temples built for horrific beings beyond comprehension.

In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.

Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended (hint: badly). Only here’s the thing: That’s not how it ended at all. Romeo and Juliet are alive and well and the parents of seven kids. I’m the oldest, with the emphasis on ‘old’—a certified spinster at twenty, and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out … it’s exhausting.

Welcome to the Wanderlands. A vast machine made for reasons unknown, the Wanderlands was broken long ago. First went the sky, splintering and cracking, and then very slowly, the whole machine—the whole world—began to go dark. Meet the Failures. Following the summons of a strange dream, a scattering of adventurers, degenerates, and children find themselves drawn toward the same place: the vast underground Keep. They will discover there that they have been called for a purpose—and that purpose could be the destruction of everything they love.

Gav isn't really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing—from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess—is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he'll have to answer the hardest question of all—who does he want to be?

Ellie Briar is the first non-witch to be born into her family for generations. The Briar family of witches run the town of Silverton, caring for its inhabitants with their skills and magic. In the usual scheme of things, they would be burnt for their sorcery, but the church has given them dispensation in return for their protection of the borders of the Darklands, where the much-feared Leech Lords hold sway.

The year is 1901, and Nicky is attacked, then wakes on board the Ormen, a whaling ship embarked on what could be its last voyage. With land still weeks away, it’s just her, the freezing ocean, and the crew–and they’re all owed something only she can give them...

Sixteen-year-old Odile vies for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she’ll decide who may cross her town’s heavily guarded borders. To the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it’s twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness. When Odile recognizes two visitors she wasn’t supposed to see, she realizes that the parents of her friend Edme have been escorted across the border from the future, on a mourning tour, to view their son while he’s still alive in Odile’s present.

Christopher Golden's Ararat is the heart-pounding tale of an adventure that goes wrong - on a biblical scale. When an earthquake reveals a secret cave hidden inside Mount Ararat in Turkey, a daring, newly engaged couple are determined to be the first ones inside...and what they discover will change everything. The cave is actually a buried ancient ship that many quickly come to believe is Noah's Ark. When a team of scholars, archaeologists, and filmmakers make it inside the ark, they discover an elaborate coffin in its recesses.

So, here’s the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie.

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

Two astronomers have detected a strange, pulsing signal from deep space. Within hours, the US government goes into lockdown, restricting airspace and scrubbing scientific data. Was the signal an intercepted communication revealing alarming plans for an enemy’s military strike? Or has humanity at long last found proof of extraterrestrial life?

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

From the award-winning, internationally best-selling author, a beguiling romp of a novel, at once intimate and panoramic, about the adventures and misadventures of a nineteenth-century everyman.

Gav isn't really sure how he ended up with a castle full of goblins, or why he has a princess locked in a cell. All he can do is play along with his own evil plan in hopes of getting his memories back before he gets himself killed. But as he realizes that nothing—from the incredibly tasteless cloak adorned with flames to the aforementioned princess—is quite what it seems, Gav must face up to all the things the Dread Lord Gavrax has done. And he'll have to answer the hardest question of all—who does he want to be?

Holly Sherwin has been a struggling playwright for years, but now, after receiving a grant to develop her play Witching Night, she may finally be close to her big break. All she needs is time and space to bring her vision to life. When she stumbles across Hill House on a weekend getaway upstate, she is immediately taken in by the mansion, nearly hidden outside a remote village. It’s enormous, old, and ever-so eerie—the perfect place to develop and rehearse her play.

On a snowy December night, single mother Rebecca Carter drives her van into a snowbank to avoid hitting an elk on a desolate mountain highway. She is at the end of her rope, out of money and food. Still, she refuses help from a man in a pickup truck—Rebecca’s adolescent daughter, Moonflower, is on the run from a grisly secret, and the last thing they can afford is to be remembered by anyone they meet.

Anna Sinjari—refugee, survivor of genocide, disaffected office worker—has a close encounter that reveals universe-threatening stakes. While humanity reels from disaster, she must join a small team of civilians, soldiers, and scientists to investigate a mysterious broadcast and unknowable horror. If they can manage to face their own demons, they just might save the world.

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the most revered and influential writers of the 20th century. Her Earthsea books have sold millions of copies and been translated into numerous languages, while her trailblazing novel The Left Hand of Darkness was a landmark in feminist science fiction and ranks among the greatest SF novels of all time. This BBC collection brings together the magical radio retellings of both these seminal classics.

Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she's concerned by just how many killers she's had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count...but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural. When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth.

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them. Marney Honeycutt, a luster-touched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns.

It is the year 1715, and Thomas True has arrived on old London Bridge with a dangerous secret. One night, lost amongst the squalor of London's hidden back streets, he finds himself drawn into the outrageous underworld of the molly houses. Meanwhile, carpenter Gabriel Griffin struggles to hide his double life as Lotty, the mollies' silent guard. When the queen of all 'he-harlots', Mother Clap, confides in him about a deadly threat, he realises his friends are facing imminent execution. To the horror of all mollies, there is a rat amongst them.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students?

Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg. The egg—as eggs are wont to do—decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.” But England has not seen a dragon since…well, ever.

Dragons are common in the backwater kingdom of Bellemontagne, coming in sizes from mouse-like vermin all the way up to castle-smashing monsters. Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (who would much rather people call him Robert) has recently inherited his deceased dad’s job as a dragon catcher/exterminator, a career he detests with all his heart in part because he likes dragons, feeling a kinship with them, but mainly because his dream has always been the impossible one of transcending his humble origin to someday become a prince’s valet.

In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance. Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family’s addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals still thrive.

1348. As the Black Plague ravages Italy, Ginevra di Gasparo is summoned to Florence after nearly a decade of lonely exile. Ginevra has a gift—harnessing the hidden powers of gemstones, she can heal the sick. But when word spread of her unusual abilities, she was condemned as a witch and banished. Now the same men who expelled Ginevra are begging for her return.

“I’ll be dead in three months. Come tell my story.” So writes Sebastian Trapp, reclusive mystery novelist, to his longtime correspondent Nicky Hunter, an expert in detective fiction. With mere months to live, Trapp invites Nicky to his spectacular San Francisco mansion to help draft his life story . . . while living alongside his beautiful second wife, Diana; his wayward nephew, Freddy; and his protective daughter, Madeleine. Soon Nicky finds herself caught in an irresistible case of real-life “detective fever.”