Book picks similar to
The Mussel Eater by Octavia Cade


short-stories
fantasy
horror
short-story

The Empress of Salt and Fortune


Nghi Vo - 2020
    Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully.Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for.At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.Librarian Note: Older cover of B07VH6Y4JD.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015


P. Djèlí Clark - 2019
    Senior Agent Hamed al-Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

The Very Best of Charles de Lint


Charles de Lint - 2010
    Compiling favored stories suggested by the author and his fans, this delightful treasury contains the most esteemed and beloved selections that de Lint has to offer. Innovative characters in unexpected places are the key to each plot: playful Crow Girls who sneak into the homes of their sleeping neighbors; a graffiti artist who risks everything to expose a long-standing conspiracy; a half-human girl who must choose between her village and her strange birthright; and an unrepentant trickster who throws one last party to reveal a folkloric tradition. Showcasing some of the finest offerings within the realms of urban fantasy and magical realism, this essential compendium of timeless tales will charm and inspire.Contents IntroductionIn Which We Meet Jilly Coppercorn Coyote Stories Laughter in the Leaves The Badger in the Bag And the Rafters Were Ringing Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood The Stone Drum Timeskip Freewheeling A Wish Named Arnold Into the Green The Graceless Child Winter Was Hard The Conjure Man We Are Dead Together Mr. Truepenny's Book Emporium and Gallery In the House of My Enemy The Moon Is Drowning While I Sleep Crow Girls Birds Held Safe by Moonlight and Vines In the Pines Pixel Pixies Many Worlds Are Born Tonight Sisters Pal o' Mine That Was Radio Clash Old Man Crow The Fields Beyond the Fields

Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales


Kelly LinkNalo Hopkinson - 2014
    Welcome to a world where humans live side-by-side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling, to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these, and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.Moriabe's Children / Paolo Bacigalupi --Old souls / Cassandra Clare --Ten rules for being an intergalactic smuggler (the successful kind) / Holly Black --Quick hill / M.T. Anderson --The diabolist / Nathan Ballingrud --This whole demoning thing / Patrick Ness --Wings in the morning / Sarah Rees Brennan --Left foot, right / Nalo Hopkinson --The Mercurials / G. Carl Purcell --Kitty Capulet and the invention of underwater photography / Dylan Horrocks --Son of abyss / Nik Houser --A small wild magic / Kathleen Jennings --The new boyfriend / Kelly Link --The woods hide in plain sight / Joshua Lewis --Mothers, lock up your daughters because they are terrifying / Alice Sola Kim

Your Orisons May Be Recorded


Laurie Penny - 2016
    And sometimes the answer is "let me talk to my manager and get back to you." From author Laurie Penny (Unspeakable) comes the Tor.Com Original novella, Your Orisons May Be Recorded. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Wickeds


Gayle Forman - 2020
    But maybe there’s more to the stories than even the Wickeds know. Is it time to finally get revenge? After all, they’re due for a happily-enough-ever-after. Even if they have to write it themselves.

Hazel and Gray


Nic Stone - 2020
    A beckoning mansion in a dark clearing. A short modern-day retelling of Hansel and Gretel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dear Martin.It’s bad enough that Hazel and Gray have defied the demands of Hazel’s foul stepfather. The Monster has forbidden their romance. Now they’ve awakened in the forest, phones dead, hours past curfew. But not far away is a grand estate in the middle of nowhere. The door is open. In this short story about choosing your own path, the fury of the Monster that awaits them back home may be nothing compared to what lies ahead.

The Hanging Game


Helen Marshall - 2013
    In bear country young Skye learns just how far she is willing to go to play the game properly in order carry on the traditions that came before her and will most likely continue long after she is gone.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

Galatea


Madeline Miller - 2013
    Now his wife, Galatea is expected to be obedience and humility personified, but it is not long before she learns to use her beauty as a form of manipulation. In a desperate bid by her obsessive husband to keep her under control, she is locked away under the constant supervision of doctors and nurses. But with a daughter to rescue, she is determined to break free, whatever the cost...

The Tangleroot Palace


Marjorie M. Liu - 2021
    In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.Sympathy for the bones --The briar and the rose --The light and the fury --The last dignity of man --Where the heart lives --After the blood --Tangleroot palace

Tender


Sofia Samatar - 2017
    Some of Samatar’s weird and tender fabulations spring from her life and her literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void.

The Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half-Savage


Alix E. Harrow - 2016
    By tracing rivers in ink on paper, Oona pins the land down to one reality and betrays her people. Can she escape the bonds of gold and blood and bone that tie her to the Imperial American River Company?At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

They're Made Out of Meat


Terry Bisson - 1991
    Here’s the correct version, as published in Omni, 1990." -- Terry Bisson

Silver Birch, Blood Moon


Ellen DatlowIndia Edghill - 1999
    An embittered mother cares for her dying son who is trapped in a thicket that guards a sleeping beauty... In a bleak and desolate industrial wasteland, a group of violent outcasts lays the tattered myths of one Millenium to rest, and gives terrifying birth to those of the next.Erotic, compelling, witty, and altogether extraordinary, these stories lay bare our innermost demons and desires--imaginatively transforming our youthful fantasies into things darker, slyer, and more delightfully subversive. The "Snow White, Blood Red" Collection #1. Snow White, Blood Red #2. Black Thorn, White Rose #3. Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears #4. Black Swan, White Raven #5. Silver Birch, Blood Moon #6. Black Heart, Ivory Bones

The Bad Graft


Karen Russell - 2014
    All aspects, all directions. On either side of Highway 62, the sand cast up visions of evaporated civilizations, dissolved castles that lay buried under the desert. Any human eye, goggled by a car’s windshield, can graft such fantasies onto the great Mojave. And the girl and the boy in the Dodge Charger were exceptionally farsighted. Mirages rose from the boulders, a flume of dream attached to real rock.And hadn’t their trip unfolded like a fairy tale? the couple later quizzed each other, recalling that strange day, their first in California, hiking among the enormous apricot boulders of Joshua Tree National Park. The girl had got her period a week early and was feeling woozy; the boy kept bending over to remove a pebble from his shoe, a phantom that he repeatedly failed to find. Neither disclosed these private discomforts. Each wanted the other to have the illusion that they might pause, anywhere, at any moment, and make love. And while both thought this was highly unlikely—not in this heat, not at this hour—the possibility kept bubbling up, every place they touched. This was the only true protection they’d brought with them as they walked deeper into the blue-gold Mojave.On the day they arrived in Joshua Tree, it was a hundred and . . .