Book picks similar to
The Wooden Baby by Graham Edwards


fantasy
short-stories
science-fiction
noir

The Beautiful People


Charles Beaumont - 1952
    She didn't want to be beautiful. And she wasted time doing mad things--like eating and sleeping...This story was the basis for a classic episode of "The Twilight Zone" TV show!

Pete, Popeye and Olive (Privateer Tales Shorts Book 2)


Jamie McFarlane - 2016
    When an opportunity to join the Mechanized Infantry presents itself, Pete is first in line. He knows that he's going to get shot at one way or another, but the idea of sitting in a warm and more importantly, dry mechanized suit appeals to him almost beyond reason. While still training in the jungle, Pete's squad is called out to intervene in a skirmish in a nearby village. Of course, the Marines haven't seen fit to certify his squad with ordnance. The fact that they'll be up against a platoon of squishies doesn't convince him that's it's any better of an idea and things turn quickly to crap when they discover the squishies are protected by grav-tanks. Pete, Popeye and Olive is a fast paced, short-story with plenty of action.

Strange Bodies


Marcel Theroux - 2013
    So when a man claiming to be Nicholas turns up to visit an old girlfriend, deception seems the only possible motive.Yet nothing can make him change his story.From the secure unit of a notorious psychiatric hospital, he begins to tell his tale: an account of attempted forgery that draws the reader towards an extraordinary truth – a metaphysical conspiracy that lies on the other side of madness and death.With echoes of Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick, Mary Shelley,Dostoevsky’s Double, and George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil, StrangeBodies takes the reader on a dizzying speculative journey that poses questions about identity, authenticity, and what it means to be truly human.

In the Night Garden


Catherynne M. Valente - 2006
    Welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time a lush and fantastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page.Secreted away in a garden, a lonely girl spins stories to warm a curious prince: peculiar feats and unspeakable fates that loop through each other and back again to meet in the tapestry of her voice. Inked on her eyelids, each twisting, tattooed tale is a piece in the puzzle of the girl's own hidden history. And what tales she tells! Tales of shape-shifting witches and wild horsewomen, heron kings and beast princesses, snake gods, dog monks, and living stars each story more strange and fantastic than the one that came before. From ill-tempered mermaid to fastidious Beast, nothing is ever quite what it seems in these ever-shifting tales even, and especially, their teller. Adorned with illustrations by the legendary Michael Kaluta, Valente's enchanting lyrical fantasy offers a breathtaking reinvention of the untold myths and dark fairy tales that shape our dreams. And just when you think you've come to the end, you realize the adventure has only begun.

Daphne Byrne #1


Laura Marks - 2020
    The sudden death of her father has left her alone with her irresponsible, grief-stricken mother-who becomes easy prey for a group of occultists promising to contact her dead husband. While fighting to disentangle her mother from these charlatans, Daphne begins to sense a strange, insidious presence in her own body...an entity with unspeakable appetites. What does “Brother” want? And could she even stop him if she tried?

Tears of the Anaren


C.W. Longbottom - 2021
    Longbottom, the Nebula Award-winning science-fiction and fantasy author and head writer of Mythic Quest. C.W. found literary fame with Inside the Caves of Beneroth and Tears of the Anaren, but even his most loyal fans don’t know that Tears of the Anaren began as a short story he wrote in the early 1970s while interning at Amazing Tales magazine.This never-before-published draft is now yours to discover, complete with C.W.’s (extremely) colorful commentary and an Introduction and Afterword by Ian Grimm, the iconoclastic creator of Mythic Quest. As sparks fly between heroic scoundrel Zeb and space seductress Merrith, we get a glimpse into the mind of a talented young man yearning for greatness. Like early Mozart, it is raw and green — but also magic.From Charlie Day, Megan Ganz, and Rob McElhenney, the Apple TV+ original comedy series, Mythic Quest, goes behind the scenes to follow the game’s creators. In a workplace focused on building worlds, molding heroes, and creating legends, the most hard-fought battles don’t occur in the game — they happen in the office. Rob McElhenney stars as Ian Grimm alongside Charlotte Nicdao and F. Murray Abraham.

The Doom That Came to Dunwich: Weird Mysteries of the Cthulhu Mythos


Richard A. Lupoff - 2017
    Think of what you’ve just read.” Lovecraftian stories are the bread and butter of the true horror fan. During his lifetime, Lovecraft himself encouraged other writers to develop stories in the vein we now call Lovecraftian: horror, based around the idea that Earth had been colonized by malign aliens in the remote past, long before mankind arose and became civilized, who eventually became worshipped and feared as evil Gods by their human servitors. Eventually these aliens had been “banished” to another dimensional limbo by a benign Elder Race, but might one day return to reclaim the Earth “when the stars are right.” That deep seated unease threads through this collection of Richard. A Lupoff's short stories that seem to share a common universe. Praise for Richard A. Lupoff: "Lupoff writes with intelligence, humour, wisdom, and a zest for life." - Joe Gorges, author of Hammett. Richard A. Lupoff began his writing career as a print and broadcast journalist while attending university. After earning his degree he served twice in the United States Army, first as an enlisted man, then as an officer. Following military service he worked for twelve years in the computer industry, while also serving as a guest lecturer at universities including the University of California (Berkeley) and Stanford University. As author and editor he has written more than fifty volumes, ranging from science fiction, mystery, fantasy, horror, and mainstream fiction to the evolution of cartooning and comics. He is a past winner of the Hugo Award, and a finalist for the Nebula and Oscar Awards. He has achieved the rare distinction of being represented in “Best of the Year” anthologies in three fields: science fiction, mystery, and horror.

The Illumination


Kevin Brockmeier - 2011
    I love the soft blue veins on your wrist. I love your lopsided smile. I love watching TV and shelling sunflower seeds with you. The six recipients - a data analyst, a photojour­nalist, a schoolchild, a missionary, a writer, and a street vendor - inhabit an acutely observed, beauti­fully familiar yet particularly strange universe, as only Kevin Brockmeier could imagine it: a world in which human pain is expressed as illumination, so that one's wounds glitter, fluoresce, and blaze with light. As we follow the journey of the book from stranger to stranger, we come to understand how intricately and brilliantly they are connected, in all their human in­jury and experience.

Star Wars: Classic Trilogy


Ryder Windham
    Become entranced with the basic struggle of good vs. evil as you travel to a galaxy far, far away.

The Room in Grandma's House


A.L. Jambor - 2014
    She discovers that grandma Edna was a "collector." As she boxes up the spare rooms full of junk, Tiffany gets to know her grandmother. She also gets to know the ghosts from Edna's past when she opens a room in the attic and they begin to appear whenever she goes inside. Approximate words: 11,000Page count: 41 pagesGenre: Mystery / ParanormalAges: New Adult / Adult

Witch: The Moondark Saga


Don McQuinn - 2014
    All the while, Gan Moondark has been struggling to keep his young empire alive. The kingdom suffers under constant attacks from enemies on all sides, and Gan's campaign for freedom may already be dead. As winter falls, The Three Territories' enemies have begun to conspire, planning a coordinated attack on Gan's castle. Church means to reassert it's power in the region and punish Sylah for heresy. Moondance wants nothing less than the total domination of Gan's kingdom. The Skan intend to raid the entire coast for slaves, looting the lands for all they are worth. Gan must once again turn to Conway and the other survivors to use their skills and weapons in the coming battle. They will need every advantage against the combined force of their enemies. But the people of Gan's kingdom are restless, fearful of their enemies and distrustful of the magic being produced by Sylah's books. Gan must convince his people to trust him, and the strangers, or his kingdom will be lost before the war has even begun. Read Witch today This box set continues the story that began with Warrior: The Moondark Saga, Books 1-3. Included in Witch: Malice (The Moondark Saga Book 7) Poison (The Moondark Saga Book 8) Renewal (The Moondark Saga Book 9)

The Ultimate Weird Tales Collection - 133 stories - Clark Ashton Smith (Trilogus Classics)


Clark Ashton Smith - 2011
    Howard and H.P. Lovecraft. Excluding only fragmentary notes, excerpts and synopses he never finished during his lifetime, this is perhaps the largest single collection of all his published and unpublished fiction.

Chronicle Worlds: Tails of Dystopia


Samuel PeraltaCheri Lasota - 2017
    Discover Tails of Dystopia.-----Proceeds from this volume of The Future Chronicles help support the charity Pets for Vets, which rescues and re-trains shelter animals and matches them with military veterans in need of a companion animal.

3 a.m.


Nick Pirog - 2013
    Henry Bins is awake for one. He wakes up each day at 3 a.m. then falls asleep at 4 a.m. Life is simple. Until he hears the woman scream. And sees the man leave the house across the street. But not just any man. The President of the United States.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 160 (January 2020)


Neil Clarke - 2020
    This was published as a Clarkesworld audiobook podcast in 2020.