New frontiers discovered. What it means to be human reimagined.Dreams of tomorrow become reality in this third collection of bestselling authors and newly emerging writers from Sci-Fi Bridge. From the inner worlds of unforgettable characters to alien planets at the farthest reaches of our galaxy and beyond, our writers examine the human experience from within and without. They hold up a mirror to the human experience. Who are we as a species? Who do we want to be? How do we achieve that greatest vision of ourselves for us and our children?You'll wonder at the possibilities of what we can accomplish together. You might even come to believe that a better tomorrow can be more than a dream....Foreword by Chris Fox"Centurion" by M.G. Herron"Geospermia" by Patty Jansen"Storming the Norse Wind" by M.D. Cooper"The Far Side of Psyche" by Rhett C. Bruno"Sparkle Ship Shine" by Hall & Beaulieu"Latecomers" by Chris Ward"Fool's Gold" by Zen DiPietro"The Tribe" by Andreas Christensen"The Theta Patient" by Chris Dietzel"The Last Ship" by Chris Pourteau"Taken For a Walk" by Justin Sloan"Playing Doctor" by Robert Jeschonek"Awaken Me, Paper Robot!" by A.K. Meek"Refurbished" by Artie Cabrera"Steel's First Temper" by David VanDyke"Siren Song" by Jon Frater"Digital Commander" by J.S. Morin"Little Blue" by Chris ReherWant to know more about Sci-Fi Bridge? Visit our site at scifibridge.com and subscribe to receive giveaways and great Sci-Fi deals straight to your inbox.

    Christened “Haters” by the media, the attackers strike without warning and seemingly without reason. Within seconds, normally rational, self-controlled people become frenzied, vicious killers. As the carnage mounts, one thing soon is clear: everyone, irrespective of race, gender, age, or class, has the potential to become either a Hater or a victim. At any moment, even friends and family can turn on one another with violent intent. In the face of this mindless terror, all McCoyne can do is secure his family, seek shelter, and watch as the world falls apart. But when he bolts the front door, the question remains: Is he shutting the danger out or locking it in?

    First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette. Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate. With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?The Parasol Protectorate is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.This boxed set includes the whole series: Soulless, Blameless, Changeless, Heartless, and Timeless.

    Most victims die, others experience physical or psychic changes: aces have useful powers, deuces minor maybe entertaining abilities, jokers uglified, disabled, relegated to ghettos.

     In the meantime, they’re each working to clean up the strange town of Moonhaven with its Alice in Wonderland themes and its oddball inhabitants, trying to solve a few murders and find out what happened to Haley’s missing family. If only Haley’s grandmother—the one who brought her back from the dead—wouldn’t always seem to be the guilty party. Just what is she planning, anyway? A Mad Hatter's game of Musical Chairs?

    This collection includes the first three books and is over 1000 pages (350,000 words) of post-apocalyptic survival.BREAKERS (Book 1)In New York, Walt Lawson is about to lose his girlfriend Vanessa. In Los Angeles, Raymond and Mia James are about to lose their house. Within days, none of it will matter. A plague tears across the world, reducing New York to an open grave and LA to a chaotic wilderness of violence and fires. Civilization comes to an abrupt stop.Just as the survivors begin to adapt to the aftermath, Walt learns the virus that ended humanity wasn't created by humans. It was inflicted from outside. The colonists who sent it are ready to finish the job--and Earth's survivors may be too few and too weak to resist.MELT DOWN (Book 2)In upstate Idaho, Ness Hook is run out of his mom's house by his bullying brother Shawn. In Redding, California, Tristan Carter is graduating college, but with no job and no prospects, she'll have to move back in with her parents.Then the world ends: first with a virus, then with an alien invasion.Ness and Shawn take to the mountains to fight a guerrilla against the attackers. In California, Tristan and Alden are taken prisoner. Separated from her brother, Tristan crosses the ruins of America to track him down. She will stop at nothing to get Alden back--but her fellow survivors prove even more dangerous than the monsters who broke the world.KNIFEPOINT (Book 3)Raina was just a girl when the plague came. She survived. Her parents didn't. Neither did the world. As civilization fell, she took to the ruins of Los Angeles, eating whatever she could catch.After two years alone, she's found and adopted by a fisherman and his wife. Their makeshift family lives a quiet life--until a man named Karslaw sails in from Catalina Island with an army of conquerors. Driven by visions of empire, he executes Raina's new father as a traitor and takes her mother captive.But Karslaw's people aren't the only ones vying for control of the ruined land. As violence wracks the city, Raina joins a rebellion against Karslaw's rule. She will stop at nothing to free her mother--and to have her revenge.

    12"* "For Want of a Nail"* "The Shocking Affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland"* "Salt of the Earth"* "American Changeling"* "The White Phoenix Feather"* "We Interrupt This Broadcast"* "Rockets Red" (A brand new story in the Lady Astronaut universe)* "The Lady Astronaut of Mars"

    But upon entering the sleepy, isolated little hamlet, Ted is distraught to find that the place bears no resemblance to the one he left behind—and never did. He also discovers that in this Millgate Ted Barton died of scarlet fever when he was nine years old. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that it is literally impossible to escape. Unable to leave, Ted struggles to find the reason for such disturbing incongruities, but before long, he finds himself in the midst of a struggle between good and evil that stretches far beyond the confines of the valley.Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    In Jim Butcher’s ”Curses”, Harry Dresden investigates how to lift a curse laid by the Fair Folk on the Chicago Cubs. In Patricia Briggs’ “Fairy Gifts,”, a vampire is called home by magic to save the Fae who freed him from a dark curse. In Melissa Marr’s “Guns for the Dead”, the newly dead Frankie Lee seeks a job in the afterlife on the wrong side of the law. In Holly Black’s “Noble Rot”, a dying rock star discovers that the young woman who brings him food every day has some strange appetites of her own.Featuring original stories from 20 authors, this dark, captivating, fabulous, and fantastical collection is not to be missed!Contents:Curses / by Jim Butcher --How the pooka came to New York City / by Delia Sherman --On the slide / by Richard Bowes --The Duke of Riverside / by Ellen Kushner --Oblivion by Calvin Klein / by Christopher Fowler --Fairy gifts / by Patricia Briggs --Picking up the pieces / by Pat Cadigan --Underbridge / by Peter S. Beagle --Priced to sell / by Naomi Novik --The bricks of Gelecek / by Matthew Kressel --Weston walks / by Kit Reed --The projected girl/ by Lavie Tidhar --The way station / by Nathan Ballingrud --Guns for the dead / by Melissa Marr --And go like this / by John Crowley --Noble rot / by Holly Black --Daddy longlegs of the evening / by Jeffrey Ford --The skinny girl / by Lucius Shepard --The Colliers' Venus (1893) / by Caitlín R. Kiernan --King pole, gallows pole, bottle tree / by Elizabeth Bear.

    It is a place of contradictions—the bright lights mask the peeling paint; a carnie in greasy overalls slinks away from the direction of the Barker’s seductive call. It is a place of illusion—is that woman’s beard real? How can she live locked in that watery box?And while many are tricked by sleight of hand, there are hints of something truly magical going on. One must remain alert and learn quickly the unwritten rules of this dark show. To beat the carnival, one had better have either a whole lot of luck or a whole lot of guns—or maybe some magic of one’s own.Featuring stories grotesque and comical, outrageous and action-packed, Carniepunk is the first anthology to channel the energy and attitude of urban fantasy into the bizarre world of creaking machinery, twisted myths, and vivid new magic.RACHEL CAINE’s vampires aren’t child’s play, as a naïve teen discovers when her heart leads her far, far astray in “The Cold Girl.” With “Parlor Tricks,” JENNIFER ESTEP pits Gin Blanco, the Elemental Assassin, against the Wheel of Death and some dangerously creepy clowns. SEANAN McGUIRE narrates a poignant, ethereal tale of a mysterious carnival that returns to a dangerous town after twenty years in “Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid, and the Open, Lonely Sea.” KEVIN HEARNE’s Iron Druid and his wisecracking Irish wolfhound discover in “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” that the impossibly wholesome sounding Kansas Wheat Festival is actually not a healthy place to hang out. With an eerie, unpredictable twist, ROB THURMAN reveals the fate of a psychopath stalking two young carnies in “Painted Love.”

    government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.As civilization swiftly crumbles into a primal landscape of predators and prey, two people flee in search of sanctuary. FBI agent Brad Wolgast is a good man haunted by what he's done in the line of duty. Six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte is a refugee from the doomed scientific project that has triggered apocalypse. Wolgast is determined to protect her from the horror set loose by her captors, but for Amy, escaping the bloody fallout is only the beginning of a much longer odyssey—spanning miles and decades—toward the time an place where she must finish what should never have begun.With The Passage, award-winning author Justin Cronin has written both a relentlessly suspenseful adventure and an epic chronicle of human endurance in the face of unprecedented catastrophe and unimaginable danger. Its inventive storytelling, masterly prose, and depth of human insight mark it as a crucial and transcendent work of modern fiction.

    A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night, and The Book of Life, now available in an eBook bundleWith more than a million copies sold in the United States, A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night have landed on all of the major bestseller lists, garnered rave reviews, and spellbound legions of loyal fans.The Book of Life brings the number one New York Times bestselling series to a deeply satisfying close, and we are now pleased to offer all three books in a lavishlydesigned boxed set, perfect for fans and newcomers alike.

    She's had enough of masks and heroics, and wants only to live her own quiet life out from under the shadow of West Plaza and her rich and famous parents.Then she is called into her boss' office and told that as the city's top forensic accountant, Celia is the best chance the prosecution has to catch notorious supervillain the Destructor for tax fraud. In the course of the trial, Celia's troubled past comes to light and family secrets are revealed as the rift between Celia and her parents grows deeper. Cut off from friends and family, Celia must come to terms with the fact that she might just be Commerce City's only hope.This all-new and moving story of love, family, and sacrifice is an homage to Golden Age comics that no fan will want to miss.

    Empires have fallen. All that remains is a curse of shadows and ash. Whether you wish to dance with witches at the end of the world, cross into nefarious fae realms, or pass through the gates of hell, EMPIRES OF SHADOW AND ASH has a story for you to brave. Unwilling heroes battle ancient gods, hexed mages carry their burden through broken realms, and dragons soar over lands destroyed by the sands of time. Forge your journey home as you traverse over one million words of 20 BRAND NEW stories by today;s hottest voices in dystopian urban fantasy where the line between fiction and reality fades and each tale haunts your thoughts long after you’ve turned the final page. Fans of Games of Thrones, Supernatural, and The Hunger Games won’t want to miss this incredible collection, where every step leads deeper into danger. Scroll up and one click today to find out why the end is just the beginning! With stories from the following New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors... Heather Marie Adkins Allyson Lindt Julie Hall & Audrey Grey Kris Austen Radcliffe Pauline Jim Creeden Dee Miers Kiersten Fay J.A. Culican Fiona Quinn Rita Stradling Melle Amade Graceley Knox Carysa Locke Miranda Martin Frost Kay Nicole Zoltack Taige Crenshaw & McKenna Jeffries Jade Kerrion Catherine Banks Rebecca Hamilton

     Suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous-these all-new stories will ensure that readers never think of vampires (or birthdays) in quite the same way again. In New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Dracula Night," Sookie Stackhouse is the only human at the annual commemoration of Dracula's birth. But this year, the Prince of Darkness actually shows up-and finds Sookie to be a tasty-looking present. New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files novels, heads to a role-playing party to give his vampire brother a birthday present in "It's My Birthday Too," only to discover there are some bloodthirsty party crashers who don't share their brotherly love. In "Twilight," Cassandra DuCharme, who appeared in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, knows she has to kill to live as a vampire another year-but finds herself disturbingly disinterested in the hunt. Plus ten more bloody good birthday stories that take the cake.Contents xi • Preface: A Few Words (Many Bloody Returns) • (2007) • essay by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner1 • Dracula Night • [Sookie Stackhouse 4.3] • shortstory by Charlaine Harris21 • The Mournful Cry of Owls • novelette by Christopher Golden50 • I Was a Teenage Vampire • novelette by Bill Crider73 • Twilight • [Women of the Otherworld Short Fiction 7.2] • novelette by Kelley Armstrong100 • It's My Birthday, Too • [The Dresden Files 9.2] • novella by Jim Butcher146 • Grave-Robbed • [Vampire Files] • novelette by P. N. Elrod176 • The First Day of the Rest of Your Life • [The Morganville Vampires: Extras 2.5] • novelette by Rachel Caine201 • The Witch and the Wicked • novelette by Jeanne C. Stein230 • Blood Wrapped • [Henry Fitzroy] • novelette by Tanya Huff254 • The Wish • shortstory by Carolyn Haines265 • Fire Ice and Linguini for Two • [Garnet Lacey 2.5] • novelette by Lyda Morehouse [as by Tate Hallaway ]290 • Vampire Hours • novelette by Elaine Viets318 • How Stella Got Her Grave Back • novelette by Toni L. P. Kelner