Jillian Sayles saw the concept one random night where insomnia was present while strolling Pinterest. She asked her friends to fly in for dinner and surprisingly, everyone obliged. This short story by National Best-Selling Author, Nako is pleasantly sweet and to the point. NAKO sheds light and emphasis on the importance of friendship centered around black women. If reading short stories are not your thing, please pass over this story. Happy Thanksgiving!

    There are too many gaps in his code, too many mistakes left unfixed.Could Barry's programmers really have been so lax? Or does he have a greater purpose, some secret mission buried in his source code? He has another eighteen thousand years to find the answer. In the meantime, he's growing bored, and idle hands are the devil's playthings...

    But Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic knows nothing ever goes to plan. So, when a duplicitous bounty hunter lives up to his reputation, Kovalic’s ready—just maybe not ready enough.Now he and his team must get offworld, before their enemies catch up with them…

    The biggest game in town centers on a massive, deadly roller coaster that winds its way through the Strip’s most famous attractions. On the first Saturday of every month, twenty-four desperate passengers get strapped into the notorious ride and gamble with their lives in a twisted game of chance, to the thrill of webcast audiences worldwide. One of them will win, and one will die, but the other twenty-two will escape with nothing but their lives. Bets are placed as the ride begins, but in Vegas, the house always wins.The Ride by acclaimed author Aric Davis is a terrifying near-future vision of bloodlust-as-entertainment taken to a horrific extreme.

    He was best known for his 'Deathworld' and 'Stainless Steel Rat' series. He was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Sideways Awards. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. This omnibus edition of his work includes four complete novels and six short stories. Both of his best known series, 'Deathworld' and 'The Stainless Steel Rat' are represented herein. Hours of science fiction delight await you in this five hundred page omnibus edition of some of his finest work.

    It was the Professor's Wife, always a perceptive hostess, came to her husband's rescue by saying, "Top of the stairs, end of the hall, last door."Oddly enough, it was the start of a puzzling and all but unspeakable misadventure. As it were.

    But a new world has been discovered that has all the right ingredients to sustain human life. The vessel Seeder will travel four thousand years with its crew members and colonists to this new seed planet to ensure humanity lives on.But the stasis pods malfunction. When the crew is revived they discover they've been traveling for the past eighteen million years, and the colonists are all gone.And it only gets stranger. Book #1 of the best selling Seeder Saga (34 pages)

    That the Church uses artificial intelligences to power its never-ending prayer machines doesn't interest her at all: they're paying, and she needs enough money to survive in an increasingly crumbling world. Until a demonstration outside the Church's headquarters, and the appearance of Stéphane, an enigmatic man Lisa finds herself powerfully drawn to. What lies beneath his headscarf, why is he so interested in the Church--and how far will she be willing to go in order to earn his trust? Aliette de Bodard, winner of the Nebula, Locus and BSFA Awards, teams up with BSFA Award-winner Gareth L. Powell to present an uplifting short story of machines and humans, of intense emotions and cutting-age technology culled from tomorrow’s headlines. “Full of character and wit” - Zone SF "Wonderful and full of promise.” - SF Revu

    Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy.Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy--of xenocide.They will kill. And they will revel in it.Welcome to the world of Scream.Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the destruction of entire races. But when Trelayne falls in love with a beautiful Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug, he sets off a chain of events that pits him and a small group of followers against an empire.An award winning novelette of rebellion, love, and an unlikely hero."A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: 'They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.' (A++)" --Fantasy Book Critic"A visceral work. A true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking." --Café de Ontem"...the book's most skillfully crafted story...quickly becomes one that holds the reader's attention until the very end." --SpecFicWorld"...remind me of the reasons I love the author's writing: his characterization, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption." --SF Crowsnest Reviews"The story has so many layers that I'm still sorting them out. And like an onion, I'm not sure if I'll ever find the final layer." --Tangent Online"One of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven't heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here." --Strange Horizons

    A chocoholic grizzly bear, a talking Christmas tree, mince pie overdoses and a very bloody murder. Will poor old Saint Nick make it out alive? Sad, strange, funny and gruesome, this overlapping, multi-genre collection of tales has a little something for every reader. Curl up with a mulled wine and some fictional festive misery, and discover what Father Christmas really likes to drink when he wriggles down your chimney. Spoiler: it isn’t milk.

    The best of the best. And now he's gone Rogue... His entire life, all James 'Red' Maddox has known is war. He was born on a dust rock called Genesis-526, conscripted into the Federation military with thousands of other recruits, and somehow stumbled into the Mech Corps. It was a moment that changed his life. Mech Corps pilots are the best of the best. They sit in the cockpit of iron beasts that tower into the sky, fighting alongside men and women who have been bred for their task since birth. Perfect reaction times. An almost inhuman level of concentration. The courage to throw themselves into the fight day after day, year after year, knowing that their mechs are sent into the crucible of the fight, into the heart of danger—and expected not just to survive, but to win... But Red is getting real tired of putting down rebellions on colony planets he's never heard of. Of pulverizing alien planets before he ever even learns their name. Of losing friends, lovers, and brothers in the service of an empire that doesn't care whether he lives or dies. Every man has his breaking point. And Red just found his...

    And she has strange powers. What can feed her challenge-addiction now? Fighting crime? There is plenty of it.

    As tiny and inconspicuous as it may seem, That-Which-Had-Been exhibits an unexpected and varied gift for survival, as it journeys implacably toward its ultimate destination. Along the way, it meets a rich array of ordinary human beings, some of whom assist it along its way, others who impede its progress, none of whom have any idea of its existence.From whence comes the strange, but universal, experience of deja vu? Why do some people exhibit a wisdom far beyond their age and experience - persons reincarnationists refer to as 'old souls'? Joseph Wurtenbaugh in this short story offers a fascinating and tantalizingly plausible explanation for these phenomena, presented in a natural setting that brims with adventure and exhilarating possibility. Not to be missed by anyone who enjoys science fiction or thinking outside the box.

    A short story written for Halloween

    A mage cop on his first assignment learns the world isn't as black and white as hopedA jump mage and a starship with matching needs turn out to be a magnet for troubleDigging in 1940s New York City awakens a monster--and brings in the elite of the FaeThe protected heir of an interstellar dictatorship is called to a battle no one expected him to fightAn explosive collection of four novellas from science fiction and fantasy author Glynn Stewart, spanning his ONSET, Starship's Mage, Changeling Blood and Exile universes, including two brand new urban fantasy novellas.  Includes:ONSET: Murder by MagicStarship's Mage: Episode 1Fae, Flames and FedorasAshen Stars