Crimson Elite


T.L. Smith - 2020
    Enter at your own risk, and always remember our number one rule—You must never speak of Crimson Elite—the punishment is severe. BOOK 1 (CAVALIER)Creed ‘Too Hot for Words’ Christopher If God created the perfect man he would closely resemble Creed, on the outside that is. He’s as cavalier as they come. Unconcerned. Cold. Dismissive. I wonder if he has any feelings at all. And when his lips touch mine, everything goes black. He takes me into his world, and it’s the most magical thing I’ve ever experienced. And I’m sucked in time and time again. Like a moth to the flame, I am ready to be set alight. Elicea ‘F*cks With My Head’ BeckhamElicea is a firecracker. She has piqued my interest, and no one piques my interest anymore.Beautiful women are what I do—it’s my work. Not one of them has managed to get their claws into me the way she does. It’s as if she’s seeing my icy heart and trying to melt it, set it alight with each touch of her sinful lips. But that can’t work, it won’t work. Not in my world.BOOK 2 (ANGUISHED)It wasn’t meant to be this way—she shouldn’t have fallen for my brother and left me for him. But she did. And now I’m left to pick up the pieces of my shattered, broken heart. And to top it off, they want me to come to their wedding. Do they think I’m a pushover? Do they think of me as a joke? The old saying stands true, ‘Why have enemies when you can have family.’I understand it now, better than I ever have in my life. There’s one unexpected surprise though: Storm. She blew in just like one and makes the pain diminish. She’s exactly as her name describes her—she is a storm. A beautiful and powerful one. But not all things are meant to last. Like a storm that wreaks havoc, some things cause anguish, and in my life she may very well be one of them.

Into the Dark


Jason Halstead - 2015
     Aden Garrett is fresh out of security academy and looking for a little excitement. A little more than walking security at local space station bars and a little less than the job that got him kicked out of the academy. Meshelle and Janna are Vagnosian sisters that run a small transport and special operations ship, and they're looking to replace a fallen crew member. Chance brings them together and puts them work for one of the mysterious Kesari merchants who's looking for some expendable assets for a special job. It's a perfect match, except the crew of the Uma, Janna's ship, doesn't agree to being disposed of when the job is done. What follows is a game of cat and mouse through the galaxy with twists and turns at every solar system. Lost alien civilizations, six limbed insectoid warriors, plasma rifles, and more await. Much, much more… Keep your eye out for future Dark Universe novels: Book 1: Into the Dark Book 2: Out of the Dark Book 3: Chasing the Dark

London 2012 : What If?


Ian C.P. Irvine - 2017
    But when he wakes up the next morning and goes to work, his world has changed. Where have his wife and two children gone? How is it possible that the building where he works every day…has vanished? What has happened to the rest of Canary Wharf, the financial centre of London – where has it gone? And how can it be that his father, long dead and buried, is now very much alive? Has James gone mad? Or is there something far more sinister happening? This book may scare you, will make you laugh and cry, and everyone that reads it will ask the simple question: ‘What if this happened to me?’ What people have been saying about this book:- 'I have never read a book so quickly in my life! What a brilliant book! This is a real page turner!' 'This was one of the fastest paced books that I have ever read. It pulled me into it and dragged me along at breakneck speed. I felt such sympathy for the main character that I was quite exhausted by the time I finished it. Excellent read.' '…It was one of those books that I found myself talking about to friends all the time.' 'This book was chosen for my book club and we were not disappointed. It's well written and the story makes you think "What If". I could not put it down and it brought a good hour or so of discussion to the table when we reviewed it. The story is simple yet brilliant, and I enjoyed reading it through to the end. I would recommend this book to anyone; all can enjoy and you should.' 'This is such a great piece of work. I am dyslexic and often find it a struggle to read and get into a story. I bought this a couple of days ago.... I literally could not stop reading.. The first day I read until 2:30am! Then started the next morning and finished it by lunchtime. The story is fascinating and brings up many questions, it really gets you to think about your own life. The science is well researched and stands up well. I really can't wait to read the next in the series. ' '5 stars are not enough! Brilliant!' Please note: Book One of Two Parts: Please note that Book One continues seamlessly into and is concluded in Book Two. Alternatively, readers are recommended to purchase the full omnibus edition containing both Book One and Book Two. Readers may now borrow Book Two free with Kindle Unlimited.

The Found Duet


Laurelin Paige - 2016
     Book 1: From the NYT bestselling author of the Fixed Trilogy... I wasn’t supposed to be working the night I met JC. Before him, I’d been content with the daily grind, managing one of NYC’s top nightclubs. So what if my life didn’t have a happily ever after? I didn’t believe in that anyway. Then JC showed up. Sexy, rich and smooth-talking, JC is nothing more than a distraction. I’m not interested in a night-in-shining latex so it’s easy to push the playboy away. Or it is until my life spins unexpectedly out-of-control. Then he’s there for me, offering a new method of survival, one based on following primal urges and desires that requires me to abandon my constant need for control. His no-strings-attached lessons obliterate my carefully built walls. And as I discover freedom, I start to feel things for him that I shouldn’t. Things that make me fear for my newly vulnerable heart. Because JC has secrets of his own, and his secrets don’t want to set him free. Book 2: I came to The Sky Launch to begin fresh, away from the horrors of my past. The circumstances that brought me here were not the best, but I’ve become good friends with Alayna and Hudson Pierce, and my family has healed in ways I never thought they could. With them around me, I’ve never felt more at home. But starting anew means letting go. And there are some things I don’t want to leave behind – like JC, the man who taught me how to let loose. The man I wasn’t supposed to love. The man I don’t want to lose. My life is safe now. The threats from before have become less menacing, and I’m faced with a choice: either move on completely or keep holding to the hope that JC loves me enough to come and find me. This series can be read alone or with the Fixed Trilogy.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019


John Joseph Adams - 2019
    By sending us to alternate universes and chronicling ordinary magic, introducing us to mythical beasts and talking animals, and engaging with a wide spectrum of emotion from tenderness to fear, each of these stories challenge the way we see our place in the cosmos. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 represents a wide range of the most accomplished voices working in science fiction and fantasy, in fiction, today—each story dazzles with ambition, striking prose, and the promise of the other and the unencountered.

Shadows Beneath: The Writing Excuses Anthology


Brandon Sanderson - 2014
    On the deadly island of Patji, where predators can sense the thoughts of their prey, a lone trapper discovers that the island is not the only thing out to kill him.Mary Robinette Kowal’s “A Fire in the Heavens” is a powerful tale of a refugee seeking to the near-mythical homeland her oppressed people left centuries ago. When Katin discovers the role the “eternal moon” occupies in the Center Kingdom, and the nature of the society under its constant light, she may find enemies and friends in unexpected places.Dan Wells’s “I.E.Demon” features an Afghanistan field test of a piece of technology that is supposed to handle improvised explosive devices. Or so the engineers have told the EOD team that will be testing it; exactly what it does and how it does it are need-to-know, and the grunts don’t need to know. Until suddenly the need arises.Howard Tayler’s “An Honest Death” stars the security team for the CEO of a biotech firm about to release the cure for old age. When an intruder appears and then vanishes from the CEO’s office, the bodyguards must discover why he is lying to them about his reason for pressing the panic button.For years the hosts of Writing Excuses have been offering tips on brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, and revision, and now they offer an exhaustive look at the entire process. Not only does Shadows Beneath have four beautifully illustrated fantastic works of fiction, but it also includes transcripts of brainstorming and workshopping sessions, early drafts of the stories, essays about the stories’ creation, and details of all the edits made between the first and final drafts.Come for the stories by award-winning authors; stay for the peek behind the creative curtain.

The Traveler


Fredric Shernoff - 2014
    Dan Wells is a normal guy with a dysfunctional marriage and a job he hates. Like many others, he spends much time thinking about the past and what he could have done differently. When he discovers his ability to time travel, Dan wins a chance to revisit his past and alter his life’s development. But a fatal mistake triggers a murderous chain reaction that threatens to ruin his life forever. A fun, scary and sophisticated game of reflections and doppelgangers Now, Daniel will have to dive deeper into time and try to make things right. But when he meets the beautiful Suzy will he turn his back on the present? Action, romance and destiny merge in an intense and readable time-travel novel like you have never read before Fredric Shernoff, author of Atlantic Island, has created a new and brilliant spin on the time- travel genre and sends his readers into a nuanced drama in a gripping sci-fi universe. Enjoy this thought-provoking time-travel romance that grabs you, excites you and asks the question: If you found in your past what you missed in your present, would you abandon your real life forever? Get your copy of The Traveler now!

Scorch Atlas


Blake Butler - 2009
    Entire neighborhoods drown in mud, glass rains from the sky, birds speak gibberish, and parents of young children disappear. Millions starve while others grow coats of mold. But a few are able to survive and find a light in the aftermath, illuminating what we’ve become. In "The Disappeared", a father is arrested for missing free throws, leaving his son to search alone for his lost mother. A boy swells to fill his parents’ ransacked attic in "The Ruined Child". Rendered in a variety of narrative forms, from a psychedelic fable to a skewed insurance claim questionnaire, Blake Butler’s full-length fiction debut paints a gorgeously grotesque version of America, bringing to mind both Kelly Link and William H. Gass, yet imbued with Butler's own vision of the apocalyptic and bizarre.

Pastoralia


George Saunders - 2000
    Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.

The Beautiful Land


Alan Averill - 2011
    A great gig—until information he brought back gave Axon the means to maximize profits by changing the past, present, and future of this world.   If Axon succeeds, Tak will lose Samira Moheb, the woman he has loved since high school—because her future will cease to exist. A veteran of the Iraq War suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Samira can barely function in her everyday life, much less deal with Tak’s ravings of multiple realities. The only way to save her is for Tak to use the time travel device he “borrowed” to transport them both to an alternate timeline.   But what neither Tak nor Axon knows is that the actual inventor of the device is searching for a timeline called the Beautiful Land—and he intends to destroy every other possible present and future to find it.   The switch is thrown, and reality begins to warp—horribly. And Tak realizes that to save Sam, he must save the entire world…

Blitzed


Robert Swindells - 2002
    But he discovers the reality is very different from how he had imagined it when a school trip to the war museum leads to a timeslip -- and George is in London at the time of the Blitz.

Six Months, Three Days


Charlie Jane Anders - 2011
    Judy can see every possible future, branching out from each moment like infinite trees. Doug can also see the future, but for him, it's a single, locked-in, inexorable sequence of foreordained events. They can't both be right, but over and over again, they are. Obviously these are the last two people in the world who should date. So, naturally, they doSix Months, Three Days is the winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Word Puppets


Mary Robinette Kowal - 2015
    12"* "For Want of a Nail"* "The Shocking Affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland"* "Salt of the Earth"* "American Changeling"* "The White Phoenix Feather"* "We Interrupt This Broadcast"* "Rockets Red" (A brand new story in the Lady Astronaut universe)* "The Lady Astronaut of Mars"

The Outcasts of Time


Ian Mortimer - 2017
    With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and go to Hell. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries – living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last.   John and William choose the future and find themselves in 1447, ignorant of almost everything going on around them. The year 1546 brings no more comfort, and 1645 challenges them still further. It is not just that technology is changing: things they have taken for granted all their lives prove to be short-lived.   As they find themselves in stranger and stranger times, the reader travels with them, seeing the world through their eyes as it shifts through disease, progress, enlightenment and war. But their time is running out – can they do something to redeem themselves before the six days are up?

What I Didn't See, and Other Stories


Karen Joy Fowler - 2002
    In the award-winning title story, the narrator recounts the events of an expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1928 to collects gorillas for the Louisville Museum of Natural History. A mother invents a fairy-tale world for her son in 'Halfway People'. Twin sisters backpacking through Europe receive a mysterious invitation. A rebellious teenager is sent to a brutal reform school hidden away in paradise. A young woman inherits the family submarine. In 'The Dark', a researcher tracking plague outbreaks finds himself in the Viet Cong tunnels of Vietnam. A mystery writer visits an archaeological dig in Egypt and sets a curse in motion. In two stories, 'Booth's Ghost' and 'Standing Room Only', Fowler explores the circumstances of Lincoln's assassination from the perspectives of John Wilkes Booth's family and friends.Fowler, perhaps best known for her novels, is a master of the short story form: the secret history, the account of first contact, the murderous, ordinary tensions of family life. She draws on fairy tales, historical narratives, and war reportage, measuring the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness in the fantastic tradition of writers such as Shirley Jackson, T.H. White, Karen Russell, and Ursula K. Le Guin.