Category: Swords and Spaceships

Carlota Moreau is the daughter of a researcher who might be a brilliant scientist or an utter madman… or perhaps both, operating under the patronage of the wealthy Lizalde family. She knows only the hybrids, part-animal, part-human monstrosities created by her father, and the alcoholic overseer Laughton, but her life is peaceful enough. But when the charming — and careless — son of the Lizalde family, Eduardo, arrives, that peace quickly begins to unravel.

On a remote island at the edge of the Northern Atlantic, an outwardly harmonious community is infected by a strange disorder–and the infection causes the secrets of the islanders, from the banal to the dark, to come to light. When the island loses contact with the mainland, the inconvenience quickly becomes a nightmare and the community begins to unravel — and it becomes a real question of who will even survive.

In Seri’s world, the beasts prowl the forests and the valiant kill them to protect the People who live in trees. She’s the assistant to Eshai Unbroken, a famous commander who tries to keep the People safe… until she meets Tsana, a stranger from a world unknown who can communicate with the beasts. As she grows closer to Tsana, Seri begins to doubt everything she’s ever known… and she’ll have to find a way to craft a new peace.

The Tea Monk Sibling Dex and their friend Mosscap, a robot on a quest to discover what humanity needs, continue to travel to the villages of their home moon. It’s a peaceful journey of making friends, learning many new things, and… exploring the entropic nature of the universe.

A series of interconnected short stories by acclaimed writer and poet Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, which ranges from past to future, from living to dead, and covers robot assassins, a group of friends stalked by the bones of extinct animals, a world where the rain can kill, and a woman who turns into a man-eating monster when she returns to her repressive hometown.

A collection of science fiction short stories by eight Chinese authors, newly published in English. The stories are by Shuang Chimu 双翅目, Liu Xiao 刘啸, Yang Wanqing 杨晚晴, Hui Hu 灰狐, Congyun “Mu Ming” Gu 慕明, Liang Qingsan 梁清散, Shi Heiyao 石黑曜, and Liao Shubo 廖舒波.

Vesper is the child of failed revolutionaries. She’s already lost her mother, who was captured by the queen’s soldiers and chose to avoid death at the hands of the hangman instead by accepting the death of being flung into the endless, cursed storm that surrounds the city. Twelve years later, her father is caught and will soon face that same choice — if Vesper doesn’t save him by arming herself with dangerous magic and infiltrating the cold-hearted prince’s soldiers.

A retired soldier named Alex rushes to the ancestral home of the Ushers when they receive word that their childhood friend, Madeline Usher, is dying. What they find on arrival is terrifying wildlife possessed by fungus, and Madeline sleepwalking and streaking in voices that aren’t hers. It’s up to Alex to unravel this horrifying mystery before the fungus consumes them and everyone nearby.

When dragon prince Thuan and his demon husband Asmodeus go on a family holiday, they don’t expect to encounter anything more challenging than babysitting and the usual family politics. What they get instead is a hungry ghost haunting a ruined shrine, who is the only witness to a murder that happened there. It’s up to the husband team to solve the mystery–and hopefully keep everyone alive through it.

Raine has spent her life hiding, lying, and on the run, trying to keep her ability to see and speak with the dead hidden—because if she doesn’t, she’ll be killed for it. But one of the few times she tries to help someone, aiding an injured woman she finds in the snow, may well be her doom. The woman she helped is on the run, herself, from the monastery of Redwinter, and from the warrior magicians who live there, who will stop at nothing to reclaim what she’s stolen.

Tanvi was kidnapped and made into a dream runner for the realm of Nagalok seven years ago. With no memories or emotions, she and the other runners collect mortal dreams for the naga court’s entertainment. But when Tanvi suddenly recovers some of her memories during a dream harvest gone wrong, she turns to the only person she can think of in Nagalok: Venakt, the dreamsmith. But together, what they begin to figure out a terrifying truth that may turn dreams to nightmares.

The Logi are telepathic aliens who maintain a diplomatic presence on Earth. Lydia, a woman with few qualifications and fewer talents, works as the translator for the Logi cultural attaché, interpreting his thoughts into English. But when something terrible happens to the Logi, she finds herself in the middle of a locked room mystery that she is also deeply unqualified to handle… but she’d better figure it out if she wants to avoid jail.

Ivy is a normal suburban girl until her summer break starts off with a stranger appearing suddenly in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night — and things get weirder from there. From then on, Ivy must struggle with some strange happenings and corroded memories, all of which point to her mother being more than she’s ever admitted to. And she’s right to wonder; when Dana was sixteen, she stepped into the supernatural with two of her friends, and what was intended to be a summer fling turned far, far darker.

While the Gearbreakers might have won against the empire on Heavensday, the cost to them was incalculable and they survive only by hiding in the mountains. The victory also almost killed Eris, who has been held prisoner since–and things only become worse when she discovers the girl she loves, Sona, has been corrupted and cybernetically brainwashed by Zenith, the last surviving leader of Godolia. To win this war, Eris must find a way to bring Sona back to herself across the battle line.

The red-blooded rule the empire, their power defined by their blood. Sylah was once told she would spark the revolution against their tyranny while she grew up in the resistance. But when she meets Anoor, the disappointing daughter of the most powerful ruler of that empire, the spark between them will ignite more than change–and might immolate them both.

In a city that’s changing from one run by magic to one run by industry, Malinchen and her sisters live with their xenophobic wizard father and act like a tourist trap as the last true witches. The girls sneak out at night to explore the city and enjoy its thrills, until Marlinchen meets a ballet dancer who captures her heart. But her love is complicated by her tyrannical father–and the monsters that stalk the city’s streets.

An Austrian science fiction classic translated into English, this is the story of a middle-aged woman who is on vacation in the mountains. One day she finds her hunting lodge surrounded by a mysterious, invisible wall. She must learn to survive and cope with loneliness, with only a few domesticated animals as companions.

The leader of the worker rebellion, General Arika Cobane, makes a highly illegal play to win her people’s freedom that ultimately ends in failure. With her co-conspirator hanged for treason, she blacks out, only to awaken to a world where she’s been stripped of her power. The Kongo is now being lead by a traitor who will consign them all back to servitude in the name of peace. Arika must seek treatment for her blackouts and make new allies if she’s to save Kongo.

In the near-future, America has changed over to Universal Basic Income… and January 15th is the day that it’s paid out annually. Four women view this day very differently, each with their own context to her life, from a mother who used the UBI to escape an abusive husband to a college kid who is planning to waste it all spectacularly.

Morwood is a dark and evil house that eats secrets. When Asher Todd comes there to be the governess for the family, she has a revenge in mind, one that will choke the house on all the secrets she carries with her. But she’s not such a monster that she doesn’t become fond of her charges, or of the people of the Tarn, and soon she begins to doubt her plan… until the ghosts from her past become too hard to control.