Homesick: Stories


Nino Cipri - 2019
    In stories that foreground queer relationships and transgender or nonbinary characters, Cipri delivers the origin story for a superhero team comprised of murdered girls; a housecleaner discovering an impossible ocean in her least-favorite clients’ house; a man haunted by keys that appear suddenly in his throat; and a team of scientists and activists discovering the remains of a long-extinct species of intelligent weasels. In the spirit of Laura van den Berg, Emily Geminder, Chaya Bhuvaneswar, and other winners of the Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize, Nino Cipri’s debut collection announces the arrival of a brilliant and wonderfully unpredictable writer with a gift for turning the short story on its ear.

Burning Girls and Other Stories


Veronica Schanoes - 2021
    We also brought our demons. In Burning Girls and Other Stories, Veronica Schanoes crosses borders and genres with stories of fierce women at the margins of society burning their way toward the center. This debut collection introduces readers to a fantasist in the vein of Karen Russell and Kelly Link, with a voice all her own.Emma Goldman--yes, that Emma Goldman--takes tea with the Baba Yaga and truths unfold inside of exquisitely crafted lies. In Among the Thorns, a young woman in seventeenth century Germany is intent on avenging the brutal murder of her peddler father, but discovers that vengeance may consume all that it touches. In the showstopping, awards finalist title story, Burning Girls, Schanoes invests the immigrant narrative with a fearsome fairytale quality that tells a story about America we may not want--but need--to hear.Dreamy, dangerous, and precise, with the weight of the very oldest tales we tell, Burning Girls and Other Stories introduces a writer pushing the boundaries of both fantasy and contemporary fiction.With a foreword by Jane Yolen

Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens


Marieke NijkampKatherine Locke - 2018
    With stories in various genres about first loves, friendship, war, travel, and more, Unbroken will offer today's teen readers a glimpse into the lives of disabled people in the past, present, and future.The contributing authors are awardwinners, bestsellers, and newcomers including Kody Keplinger, Kristine Wyllys, Francisco X. Stork, William Alexander, Corinne Duyvis, Marieke Nijkamp, Dhonielle Clayton, Heidi Heilig, Katherine Locke, Karuna Riazi, Kayla Whaley, Keah Brown, and Fox Benwell. Each author identifies as disabled along a physical, mental, or neurodiverse axis―and their characters reflect this diversity.

Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology


Joamette GilHannah Lazarte - 2017
    The book is over 160 pages long, black and white, and contains 15 original stories blending fantasy, drama, humor, and romance.Cover by Ashe Samuels

Silk & Steel


Janine A. SouthardK.A. Doore - 2020
    In this anthology, seventeen authors find new ways to pair one weapon-wielding woman and one whose strengths lie in softer skills.“Which is more powerful, the warrior or the gentlewoman?” these stories ask. And the answer is inevitably, “Both, working together!”Herein, you’ll find duels and smugglers, dance battles and danger noodles, and even a new Swordspoint story!From big names and bold new voices, these stories are fun, clever, and always positive about the power of love.Contents:“Margo Lai’s Guide To Dueling Unprepared” by Alison Tam“Princess, Shieldmaiden, Witch and Wolf” by Neon Yang“Elinor Jones vs. the Ruritanian Multiverse” by Freya Marske“Plan Z” by Django Wexler“Little Birds” by Cara Patterson"Positively Medieval" by Kaitlyn Zivanovich“Book and Hammer, Blade and Bone” by Ann LeBlanc“What Finds You in the Deep” by K.A. Doore“The Sweet Tooth of Angwar Bec” by Ellen Kushner“Danger Noodle” by S.K. Terentiev“Chicago Iron” by Chris Wolfgang“In the Salt Crypts of Ghiarelle” by Jennifer Mace“The City Unbreachable” by Yoon Ha Lee“The Commander and the Mirage Master’s Mate” by Elaine McIonyn“The Epic Fifth Wedding Anniversary of Zaynne The Barbarian and Tikka the Accountant ” by Elizabeth Davis“The Parnassian Courante” by Claire Bartlett“The Scholar of the Bamboo Flute” by Aliette de Bodard

Shut Up You're Pretty


Téa Mutonji - 2019
    These punchy, sharply observed stories blur the lines between longing and choosing, exploring the narrator's experience as an involuntary one. Tinged with pathos and humour, they interrogate the moments in which femininity, womanness, and identity are not only questioned but also imposed.Shut Up You're Pretty is the first book to be published under the imprint VS. Books, a series of books curated and edited by writer-musician Vivek Shraya featuring work by new and emerging Indigenous or Black writers, or writers of colour.

Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea


Sarah Pinsker - 2019
    The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses. They feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy.

Girls of a Certain Age


Maria Adelmann - 2021
    What is the right way to handle an abusive partner? An unexpected pregnancy? A toxic friendship? Chronic unemployment? A family member going to war? A disability? Anger? Loneliness?  Finding themselves in disempowering, frightening, or otherwise unendurable circumstances, the girls and women in Maria Adelmann's stories look for ways to free themselves into new lives or, at the very least, new states of feeling. Sometimes they do this by hurting someone else or getting hurt; sometimes by submitting, other times by mounting a rebellion. With a special talent for pressing the sharp up against the tender, Adelmann explores the many pathways through the titular condition. Ranging in style from the magical to the terrifying to the calm tones of a self-help manual, GIRLS OF A CERTAIN AGE captures the spectrum of strategies we apply to the pain of life, strategies that we persist in pretending might actually work.

Painting Their Portraits in Winter: Stories


Myriam Gurba - 2015
    A Mexican grandmother tells creepy yet fascinating ghost stories to her granddaughters as a way to make them sit still ("How Some Abuelitas Keep Their Chicana Granddaughters Still So That They Can Paint Their Portraits in Winter"). A Polish grandfather spends the night in a Mexican graveyard after a Día de Muertos celebration to discover if ghosts really do consume the food that has been left for them ("Even This Title Is a Ghost").Unforgettable characters inhabit these cross-border tales filled with introspection and longing, as modern sensibilities weave and wind through traditional folktales creating a new kind of magical realism that offers insights into where we come from and where we may be going.A native Californian, Myriam Gurba earned a BA with honors from UC–Berkeley. Her writing has been published by Manic D Press, Future Tense, City Lights, and Seal Press. Her first book, Dahlia Season, won the Publishing Triangle's Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. She blogs often for the Rumpus and Radar Productions.

Fireheart Tiger


Aliette de Bodard - 2021
    Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate—and her own?

Siren Queen


Nghi Vo
    In every world, it was a kind of magic.“No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.” Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn’t care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.But in Luli’s world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.

A People's Future of the United States: Speculative Fiction from 25 Extraordinary Writers


Victor LaValleTananarive Due - 2019
    K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, and more. For many Americans, imagining a bright future has always been an act of resistance. A People's Future of the United States presents twenty never-before-published stories by a diverse group of writers, featuring voices both new and well-established. These stories imagine their characters fighting everything from government surveillance, to corporate cities, to climate change disasters, to nuclear wars. But fear not: A People's Future also invites readers into visionary futures in which the country is shaped by justice, equity, and joy.Edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, this collection features a glittering landscape of moving, visionary stories written from the perspective of people of color, indigenous writers, women, queer & trans people, Muslims and other people whose lives are often at risk.Contributors include: Violet Allen, Charlie Jane Anders, Ashok K. Banker, Tobias S. Buckell, Tananarive Due, Omar El Akkad, Jamie Ford, Maria Dahvana Headley, Hugh Howey, Lizz Huerta, Justina Ireland, N. K. Jemisin, Alice Sola Kim, Seanan McGuire, Sam J. Miller, Daniel José Older, Malka Older, Gabby Rivera, A. Merc Rustad, Kai Cheng Thom, Catherynne M. Valente, Daniel H. Wilson, G. Willow Wilson, and Charles Yu.

Happiness, Like Water


Chinelo Okparanta - 2012
    Here are characters faced with dangerous decisions, children slick with oil from the river, a woman in love with another despite the penalties. Here is a world marked by electricity outages, lush landscapes, folktales, buses that break down and never start up again. Here is a portrait of Nigerians that is surprising, shocking, heartrending, loving, and across social strata, dealing in every kind of change. Here are stories filled with language to make your eyes pause and your throat catch. Happiness, Like Water introduces a true talent, a young writer with a beautiful heart and a capacious imagination.

The Starlit Wood


Dominik ParisienKarin Tidbeck - 2016
    It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start.Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts.Now a new generation of storytellers have taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying.Packed with award-winning authors, this anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror.From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles.

The New Voices of Fantasy


Peter S. BeagleAmal El-Mohtar - 2017
    The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.