Gone are the cartoon images of wizened gray-haired men in pointy caps creating magic with a wave of their wands. Today's wizards are more subtle in their powers, more discerning in their ways, and-in the hands of modern fantasists-more likely than ever to capture readers' imaginations.In Neil Gaiman's "The Witch's Headstone," a piece taken from his much-anticipated novel in progress, an eight-year-old boy learns the power of kindness from a long-dead sorceress. Only one woman possesses two kinds of magic-enough to unite two kingdoms-in Garth Nix's "Holly and Iron." Patricia A. McKillip's "Naming Day" gives a sorcery student a lesson in breaking the rules. And a famished dove spins a tale worthy of a meal, but perhaps not the truth, in "A Fowl Tale" by Eoin Colfer.

    That version contains a new introduction by Bradley and one additional story.1 • Centaurus Changeling • (1954)50 • The Climbing Wave • (1955)121 • Exiles of Tomorrow • (1955)128 • Death Between the Stars • (1956)146 • Bird of Prey • (1957)181 • The Wind People • (1959)199 • The Wild One • (1960)215 • Treason of the Blood • (1962)231 • The Jewel of Arwen • (1973)241 • The Day of the Butterflies • (1976)253 • Hero's Moon • (1976)277 • The Engine • (1977)283 • The Secret of the Blue Star • (1979)303 • To Keep the Oath • (1979)331 • Elbow Room • (1980)349 • Blood Will Tell • (1980)

    Because she’s spent the better part of her life waiting for her best friend to realize she’s in love with him. Just when she’s worked up the courage to tell him how she feels, he returns from abroad with a hot Italian fiancé in tow.Now, after spending half her life waiting for the wrong man, she decides its time for a fresh start—at forty.And nothing says ‘fresh start’ like a change of scenery.But who knew that a simple day trip to Brewster, Massachusetts, would lead Simone directly into the magical world she’s always been destined for?Surrounded by two astonishingly hot immortals, a crazy plant lady and a gnomish bookseller, Simone finds herself at the center of supernatural mystery only she can solve. But as fun as it is being in the middle of a hot man-sandwich, Simone doesn’t know who she can really trust.Because in a world built on secrets and illusions—the true bad guys are hard to find.Curvy and Cursed, is the first book in the Enchanted at Forty Series featuring: a sassy, imperfect heroine. A group of magical misfits. And a few handsome supernatural love interests!For those who believe age doesn’t define you, and that there is no expiration date when it comes to finding love or fulfilling your dreams!

    Its hundreds of remarkable stories span from science fiction to fantasy to horror, and everything in between. Now Tor.com is making some of those worlds available for the first time in print.This volume collects some of the best short stories Tor.com has to offer, with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning short stories and novelettes chosen from all ten years of the program. Including stories by: Charlie Jane Anders, N. K. Jemisin, Leigh Bardugo, Jeff VanderMeer, Yoon Ha Lee, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Kai Ashante Wilson, Kameron Hurley, Seth Dickinson, Rachel Swirsky, Laurie Penny, Alyssa Wong, Kij Johnson, David D. Levine, Genevieve Valentine, Max Gladstone, and many others.TABLE OF CONTENTS:“Six Months, Three Days” by Charlie Jane Anders“Damage” by David D. Levine“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn“The City Born Great” by N. K. Jemisin“A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel” by Yoon Ha Lee“Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang“Elephants and Corpses” by Kameron Hurley“About Fairies” by Pat Murphy“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap“The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin“Reborn” by Ken Liu“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout“Ponies” by Kij Johnson“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong“A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica“In the Sight of Akresa” by Ray Wood“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar“The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo“Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan“Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill“This World Is Full of Monsters” by Jeff VanderMeer“The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan

    There are princesses dancing with dead suitors, a knight in love with an official of exotic lineage, and fortune’s fool stealing into the present instead of the future. In one mesmerizing tale, a time-traveling angel is forbidden to intervene in Cotton Mather’s religious ravings, while another narrative finds a wizard seduced in his youth by the Faerie Queen and returning the treasure that is rightfully hers. Bewitching, bittersweet, and deeply intoxicating, this collection draws elements from the fables of history and re-creates them in startlingly magical ways.

    This volume is compiled from free works on my website, stories written for various challenges and prompts, and other straggling tales. Some of these are my spins on familiar tales, like Cinderella and Ivan and the Wolf, others are simply based on well-known types of fairytales. Stories included in this volume: True Chivalry If the Shoe Fits Deeds Great & Small Challenge of Quests The Shining Knight The Prince's Champion The King's Challenges Knight of the Rose Three Questions The Witch in the Woods Ivan the Heartless Blood in the Water The Stable Boy Three Goats The Gardner The Good Son Play Me a Song 100 Words

    It is the first in a series of gothic m/m romance anthologies called gothika. The stories in this volume are:Made For Aaron by Sue BrownAs a teenager, Aaron Fox was sent to an asylum by his parents because he was gay, leaving him emotionally fragile after the treatment. However it gave him Damon Fox, the nurse he later married. For over twenty years, Damon’s devotion and strength has never faltered. When Damon is killed in a car accident, Aaron’s devastation soon gives way to confusion when he is shown Damon walking away from the hospital. Despite a desperate search, Damon isn’t seen again, and if Aaron can’t live with Damon, he may not want to live at all. But forces beyond Aaron’s understanding work behind the scenes, and if he can find the courage to unveil the secrets, he might get a second chance at happiness.Watchworks by Jamie FessendenHarland Wallace made his name as one of the premiere watchmakers in Victorian London, so he isn’t surprised when a handsome young gentleman named Luke Prescott comes to his townhouse to hire him for a repair job. He is apprehensive when he discovers it is not a watch Mr. Prescott wants repaired, but a complex prosthesis he has in place of a hand.As further repairs are needed, Harland begins to wonder how much of Mr. Prescott is real and how much is mechanical, but he cannot deny the growing attraction he feels toward him. When he learns Prescott’s household servants pose a threat to the man they see as a monster, Harland must choose between what his culture tells him is wrong and what his heart tells him is right.The Golem of Mala Lubovnya by Kim FieldingIn a small, 17th-century Eastern European town, a rabbi creates a man of clay—a golem—to protect the Jewish people from the threat of pogrom. Awaiting a call to duty, the golem spends a long time confined to an attic, lonely and sad. His only joys are watching the stonemason at work across the street and listening to a lovely voice singing prayers. When the golem meets the mason, Jakob, the two become friends, and Jakob names the golem Emet. But devout Jakob struggles with his attraction to Emet, and Emet dreads being used as an instrument for violence. Though Emet’s name means truth, honest love between a faithful man and a golem will only survive if they risk everything for a miracle.Reparation by Eli EastonOn the harsh planet of Kalan, weakness is not tolerated. When young spore farmer Edward suffers an carriage accident that kills his mail-order bride and his factory manager, Edward has little chance of survival, until Knox—an enormous “reconstitute” labor slave—plucks him from disaster. Recons are part machine, part human remains from executed Federation prisoners. But Knox is different from other recons. He can read and has flashes of brilliance. With no one else to rely on over the bleak winter, Edward forms an alliance with Knox, and against social taboos, they become friends. Edward struggles against his growing lust for the large humanoid, and while Knox thrives in his new life, memories of his past torment him.A twist of fate brought Knox and Edward together, but there will be a price to pay in blood when they learn how deeply their lives truly intersect.

    Lost worlds where T-Rex and Velociraptors still roam and man is now on the menu. Laboratories at the forefront of cloning technology experiment with dinosaurs they do not understand or are able to contain. The deepest parts of the ocean where Megalodon, the largest and most ferocious predator to have ever existed is stalking new prey. Plus many more thrillers filled with extinct prehistoric monsters written by some of the best creature feature authors this side of the Jurassic period.

    The problem is that no one believes her. Her talent gets young Samantha in trouble time after time as she grows from a young girl into a teenager. After leading a runaway tiger back to the zoo, she becomes a celebrity. Some think she's a fake. Some worship her. Some hate her. And a rogue government agency wants to use her. Her talent can give the United States a huge jump over other nations, but first she has to stay alive, second she must solve a decades-old, other-worldly enigma and last she has to convince everyone she is truly capable of all the demands being made on her. A novel that adults, young adults and anyone else will find fascinating. Author's preferred edition.

    He hires the husband-and-wife detective team of Ted and Cynthia Randall to follow him and find out. But Ted and Cynthia are mystified when they find that their own memories of what happens during their investigation do not match. There is a thirteenth floor to Jonathan's building that does not exist, there are mysterious and threatening beings living inside mirrors, and all of reality is not what they thought it was.Contents...And He Built a Crooked House... (1941)They (1941)The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag (1942)Our Fair City (1949)The Man Who Traveled in Elephants (1957)...All You Zombies... (1959)

     When he made the choice to save two lives in 11th century Vinland, Tate had no idea his decision would create a rift that must be fixed. With one more mission to Vinland, Tate could erase all that had happened – yet how could he erase the son he loved more than his own life? Will he correct the mistakes he made? Or will the rift haunt Tate forever?

    The Dapple has its origin beyond the Debatable Hills to the west of Lud-in-the-Mist, in Fairyland. In the days of Duke Aubrey, some centuries earlier, fairy things had been looked upon with reverence, and fairy fruit was brought down the Dapple and enjoyed by the people of Dorimare. But after Duke Aubrey had been expelled from Dorimare by the burghers, the eating of fairy fruit came to be regarded as a crime, and anything related to Fairyland was unspeakable. Now, when his son Ranulph is believed to have eaten fairy fruit, Nathaniel Chanticleer, the mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist, finds himself looking into old mysteries in order to save his son and the people of his city.

    One great Darkness that threatens to destroy the world. An epic adventure waiting to unfold.When the traders came to Xion’s village, he expected to listen to the stories and see all the amazing things that they had brought with them. Until the mages invited him to join them, and go to a city of magic so he could train to be a sorcerer. In the blink of an eye, his simple life becomes one of adventure, magic, terrifying encounters, and a dark future. With his newfound abilities, and a few friends, Xion must learn to balance learning magic and dealing with his overwhelming destiny, all while the mysterious Darkness looms closer.Can Xion take on this amazing burden, or is the Darkness destined to change Xion’s world forever?

    From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations. Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Ursula Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.

    It polices relations between the earthly realm and those beyond this world, enforcing immigration laws, the transfers of magical artifacts, and crimes against humanity.The agents who work for the NATO Irregular Affairs Division can’t tell anyone what they do, or how hard they work to keep us safe. It brings a colorful collection of men together:Agent Henry Falk, the undead bum. Agent Keith Curry, former carnivore chef turned vegetarian; Agent Rake, Babylonian demon with a penchant for easy living; and Agent Silas August, uncompromising jerk.Four cities, four mysteries, four times the romance. Is your security clearance high enough to read on?