The spotty fat teen nicknamed AnnaBall by the school bullies is long gone. But standing on the edge of the popular crowd, she still feels like that girl. That is, until Jack, her teen crush, starts flirting with her. Much to her amusement, he has mistaken her for Christy Blake, Annabel's chief tormenter before she moved to France in their last year.It's just a bit of fun at first, letting Jack believe she's Christy. After all, he was nuts about her before she said au revoir to England. And when he asks Annabel out, the fun becomes something even more interesting. The more they date the deeper they fall for each other. So what if Annabel has to fib a little to keep up the façade?As the lies start compounding, and she realizes that they're falling in love, she has to tell him who she really is. But she'll lose the love of her life if she does.

    It is an alluring, irresistible book. And it was written by xTx. That should be all you need to know. She is a master and we are her grateful subjects." -Lindsay Hunter, author of Ugly Girls

    Here's what you'll find in this issue:"Jenny's House" is a great place to play, but an unexpected playmate makes for a dark session of show-and-tell.Three kids seek to steal from a traveling carnival and get more than they bargained for in "A Lullaby for Caliban"In "The Last Nephew", Nephew yearns to be free of Uncle's depredations, but when Uncle leaves his pocket watch behind one night, it gives him the key to his escape.Crossing "The Cornfield" is harrowing on the best of winter nights, but this night, Jack turns to see eyes in the darkness, and knows that something is following him...In "The Ginger Men", mother is baking a special ingredient into a treat for father, an ingredient that gives her pie dough a life of its own. Featuring stories by Ada Hoffmann, Julie Jansen, Mark Onspaugh, Mike Trier, and Elizabeth Twist.Be sure to check out the other volumes in this ongoing anthology series, and watch for new volumes coming soon!

     Do you like puppets? Well, we have a marvelous one. This poor little thing was left all alone to die, only to wake up with a taste for revenge. If smiling, red-nosed clowns bore you, you’ve come to the right place. Just follow the bloody path of mutilated clowns, and it will lead you to a room filled with gruesome revelations. But that’s not all. Ready for a mind-bending experience? Wonderful! Our contortionist won’t just showcase her extreme flexibility, she’ll also shock you with her insatiable appetite. Want to know her secret? She’s cursed—but shhhhhh, don’t tell. So grab your friends and join us as we create the most bone-chilling atmosphere. Because we’re coming to your town… …and we’re bringing the Carnival of Fear.

    Your hosts are the Hugo Award-winning editors John Klima (Electric Velocipede) and Lynne M. Thomas (Apex Magazine), and the Hugo-nominated editor Michael Damian Thomas (Apex Magazine).Join glittery authors Christopher Barzak (One for Sorrow) and Daryl Gregory (Pandemonium) on the dance floor, drink cocktails with Maria Dahvana Headley (Queen of Kings: A Novel of Cleopatra, the Vampire) and Tim Pratt (Marla Mason series), and skate with Seanan McGuire (InCryptid series), Diana Rowland (Kara Gillian series), and Maurice Broaddus (The Knights of Breton Court series). The fantastic Amber Benson gets the party started with her floor-rattling introduction (Calliope Reaper-Jones series).We’re waiting.Table of ContentsIntroduction by Amber BensonSister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster by Christopher BarzakApex Jump by David J. SchwartzWith Her Hundred Miles to Hell by Kat HowardStar Dancer by Jennifer PellandOf Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane by Cat RamboSooner Than Gold by Cory SkerrySubterraneans by William Shunn & Laura ChavoenThe Minotaur Girls by Tansy Rayner RobertsUnable to Reach You by Alan DeNiroSuch & Such Said to So & So by Maria Dahvana HeadleyRevels in the Land of Ice by Tim PrattBess, the Landlord’s Daughter, Goes for Drinks with the Green Girl by Sofia SamatarBlood and Sequins by Diana RowlandTwo-Minute Warning by Vylar KaftanInside Hides the Monster by Damien Walters GrintalisBad Dream Girl by Seanan McGuireA Hollow Play by Amal El-MohtarJust Another Future Song by Daryl GregoryThe Electric Spanking of the War Babies by Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. JohnsonAll That Fairy Tale Crap by Rachel Swirsky

    A man discovers he has testicular cancer on the day that a Godzilla-like monster attacks the city he lives in; a kitchen-hand is put under terrible peer pressure in a restaurant for zombies; a husband and wife discover they are pregnant with 37 babies; and a man travels into the engine room of his own body to discover Busta Rhymes at the controls. The 14 stories are grotesque, hilarious, unnerving, and moving. No matter how outrageous the subject matter of the stories, they have at their heart genuine human experiences that are common to us all. Bonus BackLit materials will include two new stories and an interview with the author.

    Somewhere hot. Somewhere decadent. Somewhere far, far away from her complicated life in New York. Somewhere in Australia appears to be the answer, until Carina discovers her PA has booked her into the wrong resort.Cowboy Jake Richardson can cook a mean camp-oven roast, track wild horses, breed cattle and knows Australia’s rugged High Country like no other, but he needs to diversify if he wants to keep his land. Tourism seems like the answer, but his housekeeper just quit, the rooms aren’t ready and he doesn’t know a short black from a cappuccino.Then his first guest arrives. City slick Carina is smart, classy and disgruntled that her dreamy five-star retreat has been replaced by a rustic homestead beside the Barcoo Creek. Jake has seven days to convince Carina he can deliver all the items on her vacation checklist – including the five-step method to an everlasting relationship… With him.

    These eleven stories showcase Kyle’s keen eye for character, her humor, and her uncanny grasp of the loneliness, selfishness, and longing that underlie female experience. In "Nine," a young girl given to exaggeration escapes a humiliating ninth birthday celebration with the help of her father’s new girlfriend. The dubious benefits of sleeping with one’s boss are revealed when a bookstore manager defends an employee from an irate customer in the hilarious "Sex Scenes from a Chain Bookstore." A raid on a neighbor’s meth lab strengthens the unlikely friendship between a solitary woman and a Goth teenage girl in "Boys and Girls Like You and Me." And in a notable exception to the rule, "Captain’s Club" features a boy whose devotion to a lonely woman transforms his cruise vacation.In moments electric with sudden harmony or ruthless indifference, the girls and women in this collection provoke, beguile, and entertain. Writing with remarkable tenderness and wisdom, Kyle gives us a collection radiant with bittersweet revelations and startling insights, and secures her reputation as a major young talent.

    With a foreword by Robert Shapard and an afterword by Christopher Merrill, this book brings you fresh approaches to an exacting form that demands precision, a species of brevity that is surprisingly expansive. Writers say the pieces are hard to compose, but readers say they are easy to appreciate, a pleasure to envision, a wonder to watch life spun out and painted in small places. Real and surreal, lyrical and prosaic, here are 135 stories by 89 authors, certain to make you think.

    As a single mum to a special needs child, she juggles parenthood with renovating her dream home. She knows hard work is the only way through heartbreak, and the only man she needs in her life is the one she's raising her son to be. The ocean has always been Pastor Connor Dayton's haven. Or it had been, until it took away his only son and destroyed his marriage in the aftermath. Left broken and disillusioned, Connor withdraws from all he's known and finds refuge in a quiet, sleepy seaside town where he yearns to escape his grief and the relentless doubts swarming his mind. He didn't count on having his serenity interrupted by a tropical storm, nor did he expect to have his belief system tossed about when he meets the determined woman who owns the house next door. Amid the storm's devastation, can Connor find his way back to his first true love? Can Alecia let go of her pride and learn to trust again? Beyond the Deep, Book 2 in The Potter's House Books Series Two, is an uplifting and inspiring story of hope, redemption and second chances. Grab your copy and be encouraged today.

    We attach no manacles to the word truth to bind it to our visions. Instead we free it to find its own way through the minds of the two dozen writers who have shared their vision of the future in either sensitively written allegorical tales such as Relics by Louise Marley, a woman who grew up bucking hay in Montana and moved on to a talented musical performer and successful novelist; or the raw humor of Adam Troy-Castro in his Q & A, which takes on the verbal veracity of Donald J. Trump. Jim Wright (of Stonekettle Station) imagines Trump giving the Gettysburg Address. Blaze Ward, Daniel Kimmel, Janka Hobbs and I explore dystopias. Marleen Barr and Adam Troy-Castro envision humorous, kinky, and scatological endings. What can I say? It rocks.

    Here are stories culled from hundreds of writing programs such as the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Johns Hopkins and from summer conferences such as Sewanee and Bread Loaf—as well as a complete list of contact information for these programs. This collection showcases tomorrow’s literary stars: Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, David Benioff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, Jennifer Vanderbes, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. The best new American voices are heard here first.

    In Fortune Smiles - his first book since Orphan Master - he continues to give voice to characters rarely heard from, while offering something we all seek from fiction: a new way of looking at our world.In six masterly stories, Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. "Nirvana," which won the prestigious Sunday Times short story prize, portrays a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous" - first included in the Best American Short Stories anthology - a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind. Unnerving, riveting, and written with a timeless quality, these stories confirm Johnson as one of America's greatest writers and an indispensable guide to our new century.

    Featured writers include Ellen Hart, Judith Guest, William Kent Krueger and Carl Brookins. This is a must-have for mystery buffs.

    In “Vortex,” by Gregory Benford, astronauts find a once thriving microbial lifeform that carpets the caves of Mars dying off. A code monkey tracks down the vain creator of a pernicious software virus that people jack cerebrally in “RedKing,” by Craig DeLancey. In “Number Nine Moon,” by Alex Irvine, illicit scavengers on Mars are on a rescue mission to save themselves after one of their team members dies. A young girl’s thirst for vengeance becomes a struggle for survival when she is swallowed by a gigantic sea creature on an alien planet in “Of the Beast in the Belly,” by C.W. Johnson. In “The Seventh Gamer,” by Gwyneth Jones, a writer immerses herself into a MMORPG community to search for characters being played by real aliens from other worlds. A woman armed with a rifle stalks a herd of cloned wooly mammoths in British Columbia in “Chasing Ivory,” by Ted Kosmatka. In “Fieldwork,” by Shariann Lewitt, a volcanologist struggles with her research on Europa where both her mother and grandmother suffered dire consequences. A daughter pays homage to her mother with mega-engineering projects to deal with climate change over eons in “Seven Birthdays,” by Ken Liu. In “The Visitor from Taured,” by Ian R. MacLeod, a cosmologist in the near future is obsessed with proving his theory of multiverses. The citizens of a small town on a “Jackaroo” planet object to a corporation placing a radio telescope near local alien artifacts in “Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was,” by Paul McAuley. And finally, in “Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee,” by Alastair Reynolds, a graduate student defends her dissertation on a solar anomaly that threatens humanity.