Separated from his real father and home in London, he's come to live with his mother and her new husband in an old house near the sea. He spends his days alone, trying to master the skateboard, while other boys his age are in school. He hates the unwanted stepfather who barged into Mark's life to rob him of joy. Worst of all, his once-vibrant mother has grown listless and weary, no longer interested in anything beyond her sitting room. But on a damp and chilly evening, an accident carries Mark into the basement flat of the old woman who lives at the bottom of his stepfather's house. She offers tea, cakes, and sympathy . . . and the key to a secret, bygone world. Mark becomes caught up in the frenetic bustle of the human machinery that once ran a home, and drawn ever deeper into a lost realm of spirits and memory. Here below the suffocating truths, beneath the pain and unhappiness, he finds an escape, and quite possibly a way to change everything. A richly evocative, poignantly beautiful modern-day ghost story, The Servants marks the triumphant return of Michael Marshall Smith—the first novel in a decade from the multiple award-winning author of Spares.

    Kite-class cargo ships like Menkalinan get burned-out veterans, techs who’ve been warned off-planet, medics who weren’t much good on the ground. The Gliese-D run isn’t quite the end of the line, but it’s getting there. No cachet, no rewards, no future; their trading posts get Kites full of cargo that the crew never ask questions about, because if it’s headed for Gliese-D, it’s probably something nobody wanted.A year into the Deep, Amadis Reyes wakes up. Menkalinan is sounding the alarm; something’s wrong. The rest of the crew are dead.That’s not even what’s wrong.

     Featuring stories by Amy Cross, Mike Duke, Matthew Brockmeyer, Lex H. Jones, J.C. Michael and Kevin J. Kennedy.

    Anacondas, piranha, giant crocodiles/alligators/lizards, mutated bears near nuclear power stations, prehistoric sharks. All featured heavily in books and films of the 70s and 80s, when bio-horror was at its modern peak. This anthology of military-bio-horror stories takes you back to those classic days. Think Greg McLean’s Rogue, Lake Placid, Eight-legged Freaks, Anaconda, Meg, Prophecy, Deep Blue Sea, and other films/books where people (in this case soldiers) are fighting against mutated or ultra-dangerous animals. Join some of the best writers working today, along with some SNAFU favourites, for an unnaturally good time. TOC: 1. Here There Be Monsters - Dave Beynon 2. Unborn - Justin Bell 3. The Weavers in Darkness - James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge 4. Kill Team Kill - Justin A Coates 5. Restless - Lee Murray 6. A Hole in the World - Tim Lebbon & Christopher Golden 7. Cargo - B. Michael Radburn 8. Vermin - Richard Lee Byers 9. The Valley of Death - David W. Amendola 10. Venom - Michael McBride