Book picks similar to
Tales from the Woeful Platypus by Caitlín R. Kiernan
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dark-fantasy
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The Poison Eaters and Other Stories
Holly Black - 2010
. . ? Find them all here in Holly Black’s amazing first collection.In her debut collection, New York Times best-selling author Holly Black returns to the world of Tithe in two darkly exquisite new tales. Then Black takes readers on a tour of a faerie market and introduces a girl poisonous to the touch and another who challenges the devil to a competitive eating match. Some of these stories have been published in anthologies such as 21 Proms, The Faery Reel, and The Restless Dead, and many have been reprinted in many “Best of ” anthologies.The Poison Eaters is Holly Black’s much-anticipated first collection, and her ability to stare into the void—and to find humanity and humor there—will speak to young adult and adult readers alike.A Junior Library Guild Pick. Illustrated by Theo Black.Holly Black is the author of Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults) and two related novels, Valiant (Norton Award winner) and New York Times bestseller Ironside. Her latest novel, Black Heart is the third of a new series, The Curseworkers. She and Tony DiTerlizzi created the best-selling Spiderwick Chronicles. Holly lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Theo, in a house with a secret library.
The Third Bear
Jeff VanderMeer - 2010
Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.
Trick or Treat Free For All!: A Halloween Kids Book
M.K. RadicanScott Peters - 2020
BowmanA GOOD TRICKA Haunted Library StoryBy Dori Hillestad ButlerHALLOWEENINGA Tales of the Spooky Folk StoryBy J.K. CampbellSTICKY FINGERSFeaturing characters from The Boy Who Cried GhostBy Richard ClarkA KANDY BRAINZ HALLOWEENFeaturing characters from Books Make Brainz Taste BadBy Eli CranorSIDE QUESTA Magic Eaters StoryBy Connor GraysonA TRICKSTER HALLOWEENA Prentiss Twins StoryBy Deb LoganTHE MYSTERY OF THE HAUNTED EGYPTIAN KITCHENA Kid Detective Zet StoryBy Scott PetersFLYING SOLOBy D.M. PotterAuthor of the You Say Which Way SeriesTRICKING THE TREAT WITCHA Zombie Reconstruction Squad StoryBy M.K. Radican
Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors
Livia Llewellyn - 2011
Freud's Todestrieb, his statement that ''libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards....The instinct is then called the destructive instinct, the instinct for mastery, or the will to power.'' Few authors have spun stories of Thanatos and Eros as skillfully and powerfully as Livia Llewellyn. In his introduction to this volume, Laird Barron writes ''Scant difference exists between exquisite pleasure and pain.'' An orphan girl with a mind for anthracite falls into the hands of a cult worshipping an entombed god. In the Pacific Northwest, evergreens lull prepubescent girls into their trunks to serve as wombs. A suburban housewife troubled by her present encounters the sixteen year-old girl she ached to touch in her dreams. These ten stories promise to indulge a reader's sensibilities, their fears and desires.
How To Be A Badass Vigilante: Book Three
Michael Anderle - 2021
Because the other way lies a painful end.
Typhon Pact: The Khitomer Accords Saga: Plagues of Night, Raise the Dawn, and Brinkmanship
David R. George III - 2012
For almost three years, the Federation and the Klingon Empire, allied under the Khitomer Accords, have contended with the nascent coalition on a predominantly cold-war footing. But as Starfleet rebuilds itself, factions within the Typhon Pact grow restive, concerned about their own inability to develop a quantum slipstream drive to match that of the Federation. Will leaders such as UFP President Bacco and RSE Praetor Kamemor bring about a lasting peace across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, or will the cold war between the two alliances deepen, and perhaps even lead to an all-out shooting war?
Raise the Dawn
After the disastrous events in the Bajoran system, Captain Benjamin Sisko must confront the consequences of the recent choices he has made in his life. At the same time, the United Federation of Planets and its Khitomer Accords allies have come to the brink of war with the Typhon Pact. While factions within the Pact unsuccessfully used the recent gestures of goodwill—the opening of borders and a joint Federation-Romulan exploratory mission—to develop quantum-slipstream drive, they have not given up their goals. Employing a broad range of assets, from Romulus to Cardassia, from Ab-Tzenketh to Bajor, they embark on a dangerous new plan to acquire the technology they need to take control of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. While UFP President Bacco and Romulan Praetor Kamemor work feverishly to reestablish peace, Captains Sisko, Jean-Luc Picard, and Ro Laren stand on the front lines of the conflict...even as a new danger threatens the Bajoran wormhole as it once more becomes a flashpoint of galactic history.
Brinkmanship
The Venette Convention has always remained independent, but it is about to become the flashpoint for a tense military standoff between the two power blocs now dominating interstellar space—the United Federation of Planets and the recently formed Typhon Pact. The Venetan government turns to the Typhon Pact’s Tzenkethi Coalition for protection in the new order, and has agreed to allow three of their supply bases for Tzenkethi use. But these bases—if militarized—would put Tzenkethi weapons unacceptably close to Federation, Cardassian, and Ferengi space. While Captain Ezri Dax and the crew of the U.S.S. Aventine are sent to investigate exactly what is happening at one of the Venette bases, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise are assigned to a diplomatic mission sent to the Venette homeworld in order to broker a mutually acceptable resolution. But the Cardassian delegates don’t seem particularly keen on using diplomacy to resolve the situation, which soon spirals out of control toward all-out war. . .
Moon Knight, Vol. 1: From the Dead
Warren Ellis - 2014
A lot. Be there as Moon Knight punches ghosts(!), investigates a sleep experiment that’s driving its patients insane, travels to the mushroom graveyard planet(!!), faces the Black Spectre and takes on twenty mob enforcers to save an abductee…alone. Marvel’s most mind-bending adventure begins as Moon Knight sleuths his way to the rotten core of New York’s most bizarre mysteries!Collecting: Moon Knight 1-6
She Walks in Shadows
Silvia Moreno-GarciaAngela Slatter - 2015
The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath?Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!TABLE OF CONTENTS“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin“Body to Body to Body” Selena Chambers“Magna Mater” Arinn Dembo“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful“Hairwork” Gemma Files“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961″ Sharon Mock“The Eye of Juno” Eugenie Mora“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer“Lockbox” E. Catherine Tobler“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes“Queen of a New America” Wendy N. Wagner
Soul Full of Guns
John Birmingham - 2016
Thankfully not. Super Dave is dumpster fire of regret and disappointment for anyone who relies on him. Colonel Ekaterina Varatchevsky of the Russian GRU doesn't want to rely on him. A deep cover agent operating in the US as Karen Warat, a successful New York art dealer, Karin is gifted with superpowers courtesy of killing a Threshrend Daemonum which attacks her gallery and eats rather a large number of Manhattan's 1%. Now she doesn't have to rely on Dave any more. She has to target him. This is her story. Not told by Dave. Because you can't trust that guy.
Welcome to the Funhouse
Kelly Brocklehurst - 2021
With twelve grisly stories of coming-of-age terror, carnival cruelty and fairground frights, this collection brings together the best and most exciting talents in the horror community. Roll up! with the following stories:"Mirrors" by Robin Grieve"Candy Apple Smiles" by Christopher Robertson"The Cyclone Sisters' Travelling Circus" by Angela Sylvaine"Anna and Abby" by L. Pine"The Prop" by Nikki R. Leigh"The Viperess of Las Cruces" by C.W. Blackwell"The Golden Tickets" by Roxie Voorhees"Dance With Us" by Kelly Brocklehurst"No Strings" by Jamie Stewart"Family Outing" by Briana Morgan"Mirrored" by Dave Musson"Smile at All the Good Times We Had" by Spencer HamiltonWith a foreword from the editors.
The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies
Karen Joy FowlerJoy Fowler - 2004
Award. Created in 1991 to honor the innovative fiction of Alice Bradley Sheldon (who wrote under the pen name James Tiptree), the Tiptree Award is presented to speculative fiction that explores and expands gender roles—and in the process touches on the most fundamental of human desires: the need for sex, for love, and for acceptance. This collection includes thought-provoking essays by Suzy McKee Charnas, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Murphy, and Joanna Russ.ContentsIntroduction by Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler"Boys" by Carol Emshwiller"Birth Days" by Geoff Ryman"The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Anderson"Everything but the Signature Is Me" by James Tiptree, Jr."'Tiptree' and History" by Joanna Russ"The Lady of the Ice Garden" by Kara Dalkey"What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler"Travels With the Snow Queen" by Kelly LinkExcerpts from Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff"The Catgirl Manifesto: An Introduction" by Richard Calder"Looking Through Lace" by Ruth Nestvold"The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill" by Sandra McDonald"Judging the Tiptree" by Suzy McKee Charnas"Genre: A Word Only the French Could Love" by Ursula K. Le Guin
Defy the Dark
Saundra MitchellCourtney Summers - 2013
The secrets of the core of the earth. Dreams of other people’s lives. A girl who goes mad in the darkness. Monsters in Bavaria. A generational spaceship where night doesn’t exist. And other mysteries and oddities. The contributors to the enthralling collection are: Sarah Rees Brennan, Tessa Gratton, Rachel Hawkins, Christine Johnson, Valerie Kemp, Malinda Lo, Myra McEntire, Saundra Mitchell, Sarah Ockler, Jackson Pearce, Aprilynne Pike, Dia Reeves, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan, Jon Skovron, Courtney Summers, and Kate Espy, winner of the Defy the Dark new author contest.
Bauchelain and Korbal Broach
Steven Erikson - 2009
The first three tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the famed necromancers from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, collected in one volume.Contents:Blood Follows (2002)The Healthy Dead (2004)The Lees of Laughter's End (2007)