The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.

    The men grow horns, and obey females until they "choose". She inherits her gran’s Calgary junk shop with fey mailboxes and the Monkey's Paw. Leprechaun Joe can help sell yo-yos. Tabloid reporter Graham bats very blue eyes and beds her. But when dragons fly overhead can even the Aunties save the day?

    But before Odd’s destiny is revealed, this exclusive eBook short story looks back — way back — to where it all began for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, two souls who are destined to be together forever. Amid the dizzying rides, tantalizing games of chance, and fanciful attractions of a state fair, two teenage sweethearts on the cusp of life and love’s pleasures find their way to a shadowy carnival tent brimming with curiosities. There, from the bizarre and enthralling Gypsy Mummy, a mechanized merchant of dreams and prognosticator of tomorrows, the young couple learns what fate promises for them. But fate, for Odd Thomas and Stormy Llewellyn, is something altogether different: full of dark corners, sharp edges, and things no seer or soothsayer could ever anticipate. And for Odd Thomas, a gallant fry cook from a sleepy California desert town, the future beckons—to listen to unquiet spirits, pursue unsettling mysteries, and learn shocking truths . . . for a purpose far greater than himself.

    In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. The elven are adapted to life in the extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient.Their scientific advancements have yielded great inventions -- time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great distances. They’ve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they have lived in peace.Until now.An elven known as The Cold One has divided his people. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The ColdOne and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elvenknown as...Claus.

    But now, freed from the spells of the wicked bloodmages, magic—both good and evil—returns. And Aren of Fallbrook feels her own power of sight strengthen and grow…Overcome by visions of mayhem and murder, Aren vows to save her village from the ruthless raiders who have descended upon it—and killed her family. With the return of wildlings to the hills and forests, she strikes a bargain with the Hob, a magical, human-like creature imbued with the power of the mountains. But the Hob is the last of his kind. And he will exact a heavy price to defend the village—a price Aren herself must pay…

    But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and Kate’s genetic ability to time-travel makes her the only one who can stop him. Risking everything, she travels to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the killing and the chain of events that follows.Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost, however—if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does she have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?

    Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.From the imaginative mind of debut author Charlie N. Holmberg, The Paper Magician is an extraordinary adventure both dark and whimsical that will delight readers of all ages.

    Before long Russ discovers he's developed incredible superpowers, and he’s not the only one. Three other young people—beautiful Mallory, arrogant Jameson, and mysterious Nadia—have had the same experience and all of them now have powers of their own. Mallory can control peoples’ minds, Jameson moves objects with his thoughts, and Nadia has empathic abilities.At first the four relish their newfound gifts, but things become serious when they learn they are being hunted by an organization that wants them for its own nefarious purposes. When Russ’s family is threatened, he’s forced into action. What transpires will change all of them in ways they never imagined.

    "I Was a Teenage Bigfoot" takes place circa Deadbeat. "Bigfoot on Campus" takes place between Turn Coat and Changes.Chicago wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden is used to mysterious clients with long hair and legs up to here. But when it turns out the long hair covers every square inch of his latest client’s body, and the legs contribute to a nine-foot height, even the redoubtable detective realizes he’s treading new ground. Strength of a River in His Shoulders is one of the legendary forest people, a Bigfoot, and he has a problem that only Harry can solve. His son Irwin is a scion, the child of a supernatural creature and a human. He’s a good kid, but the extraordinary strength of his magical aura has a way of attracting trouble.In the three novellas that make up Working For Bigfoot, collected together for the first time here, readers encounter Dresden at different points in his storied career, and in Irwin’s life. As a middle-schooler, in “B Is for Bigfoot,” Irwin attracts the unwelcome attention of a pair of bullying brothers who are more than they seem, and when Harry steps in, it turns out they have a mystical guardian of their own. At a fancy private high school in “I Was a Teenage Bigfoot,” Harry is called in when Irwin grows ill for the first time, and it’s not just a case of mono. Finally, Irwin is all grown up and has a grown-up’s typical problems as a freshman in college in “Bigfoot on Campus,” or would have if typical included vampires.

    One fall night in Boston, the Hunt starts again, resulting in Soul's fifteenth death and triggering a chain of events that sends him on the run with Reid Hasley, a former US Marine and his human business partner. From Paris to Prague, their search for answers leads them deep into the Immortal societies and brings them face to face with someone from Soul’s past. Shocking secrets are revealed and fresh allies come to the fore as they uncover a new and terrifying threat to both immortals and humans.To defeat his enemies, Soul must embrace his tortured fate and become the Hunter. But time is running out. Can he protect the ones he loves and prevent another Immortal War before his seventeenth and final death?Hunted is the first installment in AD Starrling’s bestselling supernatural thriller series Seventeen. If you like high-octane, fast-paced adventures that combine science and fantasy then you’ll love the world of Seventeen.

    Make your own destiny. Reychel is a slave girl surrounded by magic, lies, and manipulation. Her best friend disappears in the middle of the night leaving Reychel to face her fifteenth birthday, the day her master burns his brand into the back of her bald head, alone. Sheltered from the outside world and without any hope for escape, can Reychel learn to believe in herself?

    Not only is her family missing, but another family is living in her house and claims to have lived there for weeks. As Morgan desperately works to figure out what has happened, she finds society has become obsessed with weight in a way she has never seen before. The more she searches for answers, the more she begins to wonder if she has somehow ended up in another world—a world she doesn't want to be a part of. Can she survive in this world until she can get home?Gone does not contain any profanity or sexual content and is appropriate for all ages.

    and shopping. She ought to. She had every reason to believe that she was groomed to rule. But her next lesson is in betrayal...The sudden arrival of her betrothed, a prince from the kingdom of Misdev, has forced Tess's parents to come clean: She's no princess. Their real daughter was raised in a nunnery for fear of assassins. Tess is nothing but a beggar's child bought off the streets as an infant and reared as a decoy.So what's a royal highness to do when she discovers she's a royal target? Ditch the Misdev soldiers occupying the palace, use magical abilities she didn't even know she had, restore the real princess to the throne, and save her own neck. But first, Tess has to deal with the scoundrel who's urging her to run away from it all, and the Misdev captain who's determined to thwart her plans...

    And it isn’t even the strangest thing to happen to him that week.Nick and his Dungeons & Dragons-playing friends are used to living in their imaginations. But when a new girl, Mia, joins the group and reality becomes weirder than the fantasy world they visit in their weekly games, none of them are prepared for what comes next. A strange—yet curiously familiar—man is following Nick, with abilities that just shouldn’t exist. And this man bears a cryptic message: Mia’s in grave danger, though she doesn’t know it yet. She needs Nick’s help—now.He finds himself in a race against time to unravel an impossible mystery and save the girl. And all that stands in his way is a probably terminal disease, a knife-wielding maniac and the laws of physics.Challenge accepted.

    The volatility of these alien overlords is something with which Tess Soerensen is all too familiar. Her brother, Charles, rebelled against them at one time and was rewarded by being elevated into their interstellar system—yet there is reason to believe they murdered his and Tess’s parents.Struggling to find her place in the world and still mending a broken heart, Tess sneaks aboard a shuttle bound for Rhui, one of her brother’s planets. On the ground, she joins up with the native jaran people, becoming immersed in their nomadic society and customs while also attempting to get to the bottom of a smuggling scheme she encountered on her journey there. As she grows ever closer to the charismatic jaran ruler, Ilya—who is inflamed by an urgent mission of his own—Tess must choose between her feelings for him and her loyalty to her brother.Jaran is the first volume of the Novels of the Jaran, which continues with An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword, and The Law of Becoming.