Category: Swords and Spaceships

In an America like our own, but perhaps a bit in the future and just a little more supernatural, Ellie is a Lipan Apache girl who wants to be a paranormal investigator, partially because of her skill for speaking with the ghosts of dead animals. When her cousin is murdered near a town that is eerily perfect, she makes solving that mystery her first official mission, with the help of friends and family.

In the near future, an AI called Archos, disguised as a shy little boy, makes a hostile takeover of the “smart” technology that governs every aspect of human life. Some humans have an inkling that things are going wrong with technology, but it’s too little, too late, and Zero Hour arrives with decimating force that could destroy humanity forever… or perhaps unite it.

A mysterious condition has hit humanity across the globe; children are suddenly being born that appear to be from primitive pre-human species. For Cedar Hawk Songmaker, this disturbing change is personally terrifying, because she is four months pregnant. An adoptee, she decides to search for her birth parents before her own child is born as society begins to unravel around her.

In near-future America, the Trail of Tears has been rendered into a ride at a virtual reality tourist compound in Georgia. Tallulah Wilson, a Cherokee woman who works there, is caught up in strange events as tourists begin falling unconscious on the ride–and the ride’s programming is being twisted by someone to tell a different narrative.

The winter solstice in Tova is normally a time of renewal, but this year it brings a solar eclipse, the possible fulfillment of a terrifying prophecy, and the collision of politics, religious oppression, and the struggle of cultures that have been bound together by conquest. It comes at the hand of Serapio, a young man who has been blinded and scarred, who may fulfill his destiny and become a god, and Xiala, who should fear him–and doesn’t.

Calliope is pregnant with twins and not long from giving birth when she awakens to a New Mexico transformed into a sinister, haunted wasteland where she seems to be one of the few people left alive. As long-quiescent volcanoes erupt and monsters come to life, she has to find a way to reconcile what she sees in the geological record and what she knows of her long-denied heritage if she wants to survive.

There’s a kid who has had it really tough, living a poor and hardscabble life of constantly moving, trying to coexist with a society that does not want or understand his family, who are called mongrels or mixed blood. Still, he wants nothing more than to grow up to be like the people who have raised him: his grandfather, his Aunt Libby, and his Uncle Darren… all of whom are werewolves.

Every time a star dies, a new one is born from a mortal woman… and the birth kills her. Ceris is an outsider in her village, and she volunteers as this sacrifice to secure a place for her family. But she survives the birth, as no other person has, and that’s only the beginning of her strange journey. When she returns to her village, she finds seven centuries have passed rather than the nine months she experienced, and she sets about racking down her descendants.

When Dana drinks the wrong soda on the way to Spokane, a series of events lead her to suddenly be occupying the same body as Jay, and she would very much like for them to go back to having separate bodies so they can both move on with their lives. But on the quest to get Jay into a new body, they’re going to deal with a lot of aliens, a clone of Dana’s dead dad, talking dogs, government agents, and evil executives. It’s going to be a road trip for the ages.

Erasmo Cruz has had a rough start; his mother abandoned him and his father, too, is gone–a junkie who overdosed. The grandmother who has raised him now has cancer. What he’s got is his fascination with the supernatural, and he decides to open a paranormal investigation agency to earn money to pay for his grandmother’s medical treatment. But finding the truth behind his clients’ claims may be scarier than he bargained for.

Sequel to The Wall of Storms. Princess Théra has crossed the Wall of Storms with ten thousand troops and a fleet of advanced warships to make war on the Lyucu. Her strategy is to do the most interesting thing in the face of every challenge, though this may not always be the best idea. Behind her in Dara, the survivors of the Dandelion Court and the leadership from Lyucu engage in their own much more quiet war of political maneuvering, and it remains to be seen if tradition or newer justifications for power will win out.

Julie, at the age of seventeen, has her life planned; she and her boyfriend Sam are going to leave their small town, go to college in the city, go to Japan for the summer, and then… bigger and more nebulous things. But then Sam dies and leaves Julie alone, her imagined future broken. Wanting to hear his voice again, Julie calls Sam’s cell phone, intending to listen to his voicemail… and then Sam picks up. And Julie has a second chance to at least say goodbye.

Sequel to A Song of Wraths and Ruin. After a violent coup, Karina has nothing: no kingdom, no throne. On the run as the most wanted person in Sonande, her only hope of salvation is to search for divine power in a long-lost city. As she searches, disaster after disaster threatens the world that’s left her behind, caused by the resurrection of her sister. Karina may be the key to returning the world to balance… but it’s a lot to ask her to save those who only recently tried to kill her.

A garbage-collecting street kid in Mexico city hooks up with a jaded vampire who is the last scion of an ancient family of Aztec blood drinkers. These two cynical survivors find friendship in each other as they dodge narcos and corrupt cops and try their best to simply survive.

Also check out her short story collection, This Strange Way of Dying.

In 1920s New York, Zephyr teaches night school for the underprivileged of the Lower East Side to keep herself fed, because social activism doesn’t pay the bills. Desperate for her next rent payment, she agrees to help a student to bring down a vampire mob boss, using her charity work as cover. She should have asked why…

An apparently young girl with amnesia turns out to be a 53-year-old genetically modified vampire who has lost her memories to an attempt on her life. If she wishes to survive, she needs to quickly learn where she came from, who she is, and why people tried to kill her–and are still trying to kill her.

Bamboo is a vampire “born” from the tall grass that is his namesake, shockingly gentle considering the necessity of his diet. He befriends a human named Kyo, and together they share a strange sort of life together. But other vampires of Bamboo’s type don’t take kindly to him communicating with a mortal human…

Felix Gomez got turned into a vampire during his tour of duty in Iraq; when he comes home, things have somehow get even weirder. There’s an outbreak of nymphomania at Rocky Flats, which is not only a superfund site, it’s a secret government facility. He’s brought in to investigate, and it’s a race to see what gets him first: the vampire hunters, the shady government agents, or the aforementioned nymphomaniacs.

Jessica’s perfect husband turns out to be anything but; when people around him begin mysteriously dying, he confesses that he’s actually from an Ethiopian sect who traded their souls for immortality… over 400 years ago. His immortal brethren are trying to force him to come home, but he has a better idea: making Jessica and their daughter immortal like him, even if both of them would much rather keep their souls.

Gilda is a woman who escapes from slaver in the 1850s and finds community and family in a group of benevolent vampyres. With these immortal companions and an ever-lengthening life stretching out before her, she goes on an dangerous adventure that’s filled with laughter and terror in equal measure.

After the death of an old high school acquaintance, Lai Fun and Stefanja decide to organize a twenty-year reunion. Of course there are secrets and drama… Lai Fun’s relationship with her wife is crumbling, she’s sleeping with a married man (and he’s married to Stefanja), and her mother, an immigrant and vegetarian who has… unusual appetites, has decided that she just wants Lai Fun to be happy.

A colony ship with one thousand people in cold sleep arrives at the Lagos system, but when it’s time for these colonists to wake and head for their new home, the first mate discovers some of the colonists are dead instead of merely in suspended animation. Investigator Rasheed Fin is called in to investigate the mysterious deaths and discovers the mystery is far more sinister than a simple malfunction, with a plot that ranges from Lagos all the way back to Sol.

After climate catastrophe has reshaped the world, the countries have finally agreed to stop making new plastics… so that makes the old plastics finally valuable. “Pluckers” who pull plastic trash from the rivers and woods of the so-called “Trashlands” eke out a living. Coral is one such Plucker, desperately saving up the money to rescue her daughter from the terrible conditions of the recycling factories. And when she’s not working, she makes art. When a reporter from a city further up the coast arrives, it’s an opportunity for Coral to change her life… if she can imagine a better future.

Fifteen-year-old Copper is dealing with the death of his father and betrayal by his best friend. Named after Copernicus, Copper looks to the stars for guidance on how he will live his life and what kind of person he wishes to be. Copper’s uncle also writes to give him advice and help him grow and find his place in a universe both infinitely large and small.

Three teenagers who travel in very different social spheres in a high school in Los Angeles find themselves thrown suddenly together when aliens land in the city. Pedro is a boy who frequents the local drag bar to escape his difficult home life; Rafa is quiet, shy, and hiding the fact that he’s homeless; and Luna is nominally popular, but deeply mourning the loss of her cousin Tasha. When the alien visitor takes the form of Tasha and begins causing havoc throughout the city, the three teens must first survive and then try to save those around them.

Leda Foley is a struggling travel agent who is also psychic… sometimes. When she’s psychically prompted to re-book Detective Grady Merritt onto a different flight, both of them are shocked to find out she actually saved his life after the plane explodes. Grady realizes this is his opportunity to crack a cold case, while Leda sees a chance to close the books on her fiance’s unsolved murder.

Zachary Sicario is a master thief who has done his best to retire; he’s spent the last ten years in a cottage on the unpopulated highlands. But the world isn’t done with him, even if he’s done with the world. When a mysterious wasting illness begins to plague him, he can either die quietly or return to his thieving life in order to search for a cure. It’s an easy choice, one that takes him to a strange new island steeped in magic.

I cannot have an SFF with zombies list without some good ol’ space zombies, and here they are. A salvage crew aims to take the derelict House of Wisdom, a giant exploration vessel that should be nice and empty after its crew got taken out by a mysterious virus a decade ago. But even after ten years, the ship isn’t as empty as they think–and it carries a secret the government would like to keep buried.

Ryn and her family are gravediggers in a remote mountain village called Colbren; it’s not a good living, but it’s better than the alternative. But Colbren was once home to the fae, and the dead, once buried, don’t necessarily stay put. These cursed, risen corpses are called “bone houses” and they become strangely irate when a new mapmaker’s apprentice named Ellis, arrives in town. Together Ellis and Ryn must unravel the curse of the bone houses.

The zombie apocalypse has happened, and the survivors have managed to reclaim an island south of Canal Street in New York City, which they call Zone One. This book follows the life of Mark Spitz for three days as he starts working to clear out stragglers, look for survivors, and try to come to grips with a world that’s changed forever.

As the power grid in Stockholm goes bonkers, something even stranger happens–the dead begin to wake in morgues and cemeteries. Not classic zombies, but not beautiful ghosts either, they return to the places they knew, and those they left behind must deal with what their rising could mean.

Renee’s ordinary life gets turned upside-down when she finds her parents dead in an apparent double murder that has some disturbing ritualistic overtones. Now the charge of her wealthy grandfather, she’s sent off to Gottfried Academy, a strange boarding school in Maine that is more about “Crude Sciences” and Latin than a more regular curriculum. But the Academy has a dark past, and Renee’s got a lot of curiosity…

Mary lives a life of simple truths, surrounded by a fence that keeps the relentless Unconsecrated at bay. She knows that the Sisterhood knows best, that the Guardians will always protect her, and that only death resides outside the fence. But when all those truths fail and the Unconsecrated breach the village, she can stay and die, or she can flee and take her chances… and discover that reality is far more complicated.

Iraxi is a commoner who is ostracized even among the lowest of the low because she refused the advances of a prince and because she’s pregnant and alone. In any society her situation would be difficult, but in this ark that carries survivors over a flooded kingdom, her struggle to survive is desperate. Worse, the child she carries may be more than human, and the her fate promises both darkness and power.

After exposing the depredations of the Ascendance, former agent of the First House Elyth is on the run. She wishes she could put it all behind her, but she’s soon cornered and… offered a deal instead of punishment. If she agrees to explore a mysterious new planet that seems to have appeared from nowhere, all of her sins will be forgiven. Wanting to live, Elyth agrees to join the team of explorers, but she quickly discovers this new world is conscious, and it very deliberately wants all of them dead.

A group of friends decides to get their thrills by partying in an abandoned Heian-era mansion, one whose foundations rest on the bones of a bride and whose walls are filled with the girls who were sacrificed to follow her into death. While a late night with lots of alcohol starts revealing dark secrets among the friends, the house’s lonely, hungry ghost comes calling.

Reynevan has been given a secret and dangerous mission by the Hussite leaders, forcing him to come out of hiding and head for Silesia. On the way, he still needs to find revenge for his brother’s death and discover the location of his vanished lover.

Vanja was the dutiful servant to a princess until a year ago, when her adopted mothers–Death and Fortune themselves–demand she pay them back for all the care they’ve given her. She must take the princess’s place using a string of enchanted pearls… but she wants to steal her own life back, becoming a jewel thief and stealing from the nobles she rubs elbows with by day. One theft away from freedom, she crosses yet another god and is cursed. She has two weeks to break a curse and make her getaway, with a detective on her tail and the princess’s sinister fiance complicating her life.

Lieutenant Iari finds herself in charge of a murder investigation where there’s only one suspect–a decommissioned battle mecha that cannot possibly have committed the crime. But she’s not the only one on the case; Gaer, an ambassador who is actually a spy, is also investigating. The truth they find is deeper and more dangerous than a simple malfunction.

Manuela is an undocumented immigrant on the run from both the government and her father’s Argentinian crime family, trying to live her life in Miami. But when her mother is arrested and her grandmother is attacked, Manuela has to look to her past to find solutions to these present problems. And that past takes her all the way to a cursed city in Argentina, where she finds out she’s even more “illegal” than she could have imagined.

Moon is an orphan who can shapeshift into a winged creature; it’s something he’s been hiding for his entire life. Just as he is about to be thrown out of another adopted tribe, he meets a shapeshifter like himself, one who can tell him the truth about his lineage and his existence… and what he means for the survival of the tribes around them.

A cleric named Chih and her mammoth-riding companion find themselves at the mercy of a family of shapeshifting tigers. To survive, they need to buy enough time for help to arrive… and the best way to do that is to trade stories. What better story than one about a tiger and the woman she fell in love with?

A college professor named Alok in Kolkata listens to the odd confessions of an even odder stranger and agrees to transcribe a series of yet still odder notes. These notes document a people who are both human and beast during Mughal India, and the story of a wanderer who falls in love with a ferocious woman.

Min is the young daughter in a family of gumiho who have been hiding their magic and their true selves for centuries. She dreams of joining the Space Forces like her older brother did so she can shake the dust of her backwater planet off her boots. But then her brother is accused of going AWOL in search of the fabled Dragon Pearl, and Min knows that can’t possibly be the truth. She moves up her timeline to leave home and runs away, determined to clear his name… but she’s in for a wilder adventure than she could have ever imagined.

Two warring clans face off: the Tiger and the Wolf. Maniye’s an outcast of the Wolf clan, even though she’s the chieftain’s daughter, because her mother was queen of the Tigers. But she has an even bigger secret: she can shift to either animal form, and not just that of her father’s clan. She rescues a prisoner of her clan and escapes, but with a murderer on their trail to bring them back.

At the turn of the twentieth century in New York City, rich and famous families rule both society and the country. Thalia is a nobody; all she’s got going for her is a talent for stage magic.. until a trick goes horribly awry and she finds out in the process that she’s a shapeshifter. It might be her ticket to wealth and power, but only if she can control it and survive.

Ahn is a girl with no family and no past, a throw-away. Altan is a boy whose inheritance and future were stolen from him as a child. Each sees the other as a potential tool for regaining what they have lost— or never had in the first place. But the price of a throne and a past is steeper than either could imagine.

Sequel to Blazewrath Games. After cancelling the Blazewrath World Cup forever, Lana Torres’s team has nothing to do but return to Puerto Rico and try to recover and find a new purpose. But they’re not going to get the breathing space they need; they find out someone is kidnapping dragons, and is coming for theirs next. If they want to save their dragons, the team from Puerto Rico needs to take down an evil underground dragon fighting ring… a hard enough task already, but this fighting ring is also run by magicians.

Sequel to White Trash Warlock. Adam Binder returns to his small hometown in Oklahoma for the funeral of a beloved aunt, where he finds an evil druid is hunting down members of his family. This all seems connected to the long-ago death of Adam’s father— who may not be dead after all. With the police on his trail and the man he loves in danger, Adam must investigate his family’s secrets and come face to face with the enemy he’s vowed to stop.

Before the Empire, the Jedi were in the service of feuding lords and their clans. One sect of Jedi, tired of the infighting, rebelled in an effort to control their own destiny; they became known as the Sith. Now, a lone Sith wanders the Outer Rim and belongs to no sect, serving no lord. No one knows his past or where his future will take him, but a bandit also claiming to be Sith crosses paths with him and demands a duel; his former life has finally caught up with him.

Humanity has been resettled on the planet of Eleusis after Earth was destroyed by alien conquerers. The planet has only four habitable areas, which become stratified, the residents of each clashing as they interact with each other and their alien captors. A confrontation is coming where the fate of all on Eleusis will be decided.

Less than 100 years in the future, Earth is ice free and there is still no fix for the ongoing climate crisis that has altered the surface of the planet and the fabric of human society. As conditions continue to worsen, it’s up to a population of poor people, artists, and misfits, those who were left behind in the mass exodus inland, to find a new sustainable society.

We can’t have alien horror without some very classic parasitic alien action. It’s a familiar story, where safety protocols get ignored at a remote outpost and next thing you know, there are aliens walking around wearing human skins and spreading themselves around. It’s up to a few plucky survivors to stop the advance and save all of humanity… if they can.

An astronaut who retired in shame after her mission to Mars ended disastrously has a shot at redemption. There’s an alien object in the solar system that’s heading right for Earth, and she’s humanity’s best hope to figure out what it is–and then how the hell it might be stopped, because it’s very much not friendly.

It may not seem horror at first, but don’t worry, there’s some body horror in store for you, and alien eggs and other weird stuff. This takes place on a spaceship that’s carved into the body of an alien space whale that they are slowly consuming from the inside, which is a horror all its own. And the clan is planning on moving on soon, once they’ve completely taken over this creature.

Olivia and Viola are twin daughters of xenobiologists, and they’re tired of being dragged around the galaxy while their parents do research. But in this newest temporary home of theirs, they find an alien artifact…one that contains eggs, and then things only go downhill from there. But among the chest bursters, there’s a terribly family secret about to burst into the open, too…

It’s well known that John W. Campbell’s novella Who Goes There? inspired the extremely classic (and still good after all these years) movie The Thing. Well, here’s the original, previously unpublished version of that novella that has an extra 45 pages of backstory.

Aliens have come to earth and, by general international agreement, they’ve been given the run of the US Virgin Islands while they’re doing a mysterious “research” project. While at times they seem benevolent, they react to any threat, real or perceived, with terrifying and disproportionate force. This leaves the largely Black population of Water Island dealing with capricious aliens while the rest of the world enjoys the benefits of their relatively gentle invasion. When a young boy dies at the hands of the aliens, a greater conflict becomes inevitable.

Zinnia’s twenty-first birthday is rapidly approaching, and it’s going to be her last. While no one understands the nature of the medical condition a strange industrial accident left her with, no one in her situation has ever lived to see their twenty-second birthday. When her best friend decides to throw her a Sleeping Beauty-themed party, Zinnia pricks her finger and finds herself falling through worlds, where she meets another sleeping beauty who also needs to escape her unlucky fate.

The magic competition of Where Dreams Descend has come to a bad end, with the loser’s failure front page news. All he cares about, however, is the contestant he started to fall in love with, who is missing and no doubt captive in the hands of a dangerous magician. He must find here where she’s fallen through a mirror and into a strange world of memories and shadows.

The rebellion of the Rim Confederation against the 5 Suns Alliance was a glorious failure from its inception, one in which Captain Jared Clement destroyed his career and reputation by being on the losing side. Ten years later, he’s given the chance to battle humanity’s first truly faster-than-light ship to a newly discovered star system that might hold alien life.

A future where humanity has made it to the stars and spread out across many systems, the peace is shattered by the appearance of new ships, ones just slightly more advanced than that of humans, enough to devastate the peaceful society. Humanity is pushed back to Earth, and two starship captains stand between us and total annihilation against this enemy that refuses to even speak its name.

Emmy has stayed away from her literally magical hometown of Thistle Grove for years so she can avoid her family–and also Gareth Blackmoore, who may have broken her heart once. But even she can’t resist the pull of tradition when it’s time for the spellcasting tournament her family is in charge of, and she finds herself back at her old haunts, reconnecting with family and friends–and getting pulled in on a revenge plot against Gareth, since he’s played with far more hearts than just hers.

The sleepy town of Evenfall has thrived for over 400 years in the quiet care of a family of witches. But when one of the argumentative locals dies while staying at the B&B the witches run, one of them is pinned as the prime suspect. And it’s up to Brynn, the youngest, to do some old fashioned investigating and a bit of magic to solve the mystery and clear her aunt’s name.