How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher - a licensed, bonded professional whose job is to humanely dispatch those whose circumstances put them in death's crosshairs, so they can have a second chance to avoid the reaper. But when a fellow Dispatcher and former friend is apparently kidnapped, Tony learns that there are some things that are worse than death and that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge a supposed wrong.It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late...before not even a Dispatcher can save him.___Zachary Quinto - best known for his role as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the recent Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer, Sylar, in Heroes - brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this audio-exclusive novella from master storyteller John Scalzi.

    It doesn’t pay much—Alex Holliday’s stores have muscled out most of the independent sellers—but it helps him and his mom make rent.No one knows where the brilliant-colored spheres came from. One day they were just there, hidden all over the earth like huge gemstones. Burn a pair and they make you a little better: an inch taller, skilled at math, better-looking. The rarer the sphere, the more expensive—and the greater the improvement.When Sully meets Hunter, a girl with a natural talent for finding spheres, the two start searching together. One day they find a Gold—a color no one has ever seen. And when Alex Holliday learns what they have, he will go to any lengths, will use all of his wealth and power, to take it from them.There’s no question the Gold is worth millions, but what does it actually do? None of them is aware of it yet, but the fate of the world rests on this little golden orb. Because all the world fights over the spheres, but no one knows where they come from, what their powers are, or why they’re here.

    It belongs to his deadly enemy, but he never expected the voice to take him over, both mentally and physically. This supernatural force hijacks his body, takes it to his top-secret government office, and spills blood. With a helpless battle within, Jonathon must get control and escape from his own team before they execute him. Will a life in exile be his only choice? Or will the Exalls once again claim another victim?This is a short story spin off from Andre's debut novel, Followed Home. The story will be available for FREE to all subscribers to Andre's mailing list at www.andregonzalez.net

    Originally published as e-novellas, now, for the first time ever, they are together in one print volume.You already know the truth about the Garde and the Mogadorian invasion, yet there is still so much to learn. The stories in Secret Histories will help you get the answers you seek, but they will not help you stop the coming war. Only the Garde can save our planet.

    Perhaps there's some truth in both view points...or none at all. Imagine there was a politician whose only ambition was to corrupt and manipulate the very people who elected him, without them even knowing it. This was Byron T Casey’s ambition. It helped that he was the Prime Minister and had just acquired Emorfed, a substance that had the ability to alter a person’s soul. Sandy Logan was the only person capable of stopping him. But there was one problem. Sandy was dead. It complicated matters that his death had been aided by the mysterious Limpet Syndrome, which meant he wasn't dead dead. Very few people understood why Sandy’s soul had lingered on Earth, least of all Sandy. This presented a far more serious problem. A soul wandering aimlessly around the globe threatened the stability of the Universe itself. Sandy’s soul had to be recovered and the powers that be had decided there was only one man for the job, the recently deceased John Hewson. Obviously he’s not dead dead you understand. John would have to travel to Hell and back if he was going to work out the secrets of the Limpet Syndrome, locate Sandy’s soul and bring down a government. In his pursuit to discover the truth of his own death, John is about to find out that death isn't the end; it's just the beginning of the end.

    Losing the game or breaking the rules results in punishments. Painful punishments, either inflicted to oneself or by their friends. The masked stranger tells them there will only be one winner, and the prize is life.WARNING 18+ This is a violent book. It starts with a little gore and ends with a bunch of gore.

    Yet Gavin often dreams of what could have been—if only a consuming disease didn’t restrict his aspirations. Instead, fear caused him to pursue what others deemed appropriate, and he committed an unforgivable mistake. But after receiving a letter from his deceased father, Gavin needs to escape.Young Horemheb from ancient Egypt also desires to alter fate. He inspires Gavin through a lost tale that spans eons and cultures, weaving their lives together. Frightening enemies, magic, unexpected friendship, betrayal, love, and death emerge at every turn.But if either of them are to survive, they must choose between life, love, and the revealing of secrets from the ages.

    Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.These are the facts.Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

    Gabriel is the best Contract Enforcer the State has ever created, trained from childhood to efficiently identify and eliminate threats to society’s vital balance and ensure every citizen adheres to their Social Contract.Asa has spent his life in one of the State’s carefully planned farming communities, but he yearns for something more. The day after his twenty-first birthday, he sets out for the metropolis of Horizon—but compliance with his Social Contract turns out to be more complicated than he could have imagined. He soon meets the girl of his dreams, Eve, an outsider in Horizon who has learned to survive for years using her guile and beauty.When an unexpected tragedy forces Asa and Eve to go on the run, Gabriel is determined to track them down and deliver the State’s justice. Their joined paths will take them into the Waste, farther away from the State’s seemingly omnipresent gaze than any of them have ever been. The truths they uncover will force them to reexamine everything they know.

    Summer, 1947. A dame walks into a saloon . . .It’s not every afternoon that an enigmatic, comely blonde named Stilton (like the cheese) walks into the scruffy gin joint where Sammy "Two Toes" Tiffin tends bar. It’s love at first sight, but before Sammy can make his move, an Air Force general named Remy arrives with some urgent business. ’Cause when you need something done, Sammy is the guy to go to; he’s got the connections on the street.Meanwhile, a suspicious flying object has been spotted up the Pacific coast in Washington State near Mount Rainer, followed by a mysterious plane crash in a distant patch of desert in New Mexico that goes by the name Roswell. But the real weirdness is happening on the streets of the City by the Bay.When one of Sammy’s schemes goes south and the Cheese mysteriously vanishes, Sammy is forced to contend with his own dark secrets—and more than a few strange goings on—if he wants to find his girl.

    The magnet is his beloved older sister, Grace: always smart and charismatic even when she was rebelling, and always his hero. Now she is a promising graduate student in psychophysics and the centre of a group of friends who take "Little Brother" into their fold, where he finds camaraderie, romance, and even a decent job.But it soon becomes clear that things are not well with Grace. Always acerbic, she now veers into sudden rages that are increasingly directed at her adoring boyfriend, John, who is also her fellow researcher. When Grace disappears, and John shortly thereafter, the narrator makes an astonishing discovery in their apartment: a box big enough to crawl inside, a lab rat, and a note that says This is the only way back for us. Soon he embarks on a mission to discover the truth, a pursuit that forces him to question time and space itself, and ultimately toward a perilous confrontation at the very limits of imagination.This kinetic novel catapults the classic noir plot of a woman gone missing into the 21st century city, where so-called reality crashes into speculative science in a novel reminiscent of Danielewski's House of Leaves. Three Years with the Rat is simultaneously a mind-twisting mystery that plays with the very nature of time and the story of a young man who must face the dangerously destructive forces we all carry within ourselves.

    Occult detectives. Ghost hunters. Monster fighters. Humans who unravel uncanny crimes and solve psychic puzzles; sleuths with supernatural powers of their own who provide services far beyond those normal gumshoes, shamuses, and Sherlocks can. When vampires, werewolves, and things that go "bump" in the night are part of your world, criminals can be as inhuman as the crimes they commit, and magic can seep into the mundane - those who solve the mysteries, bring justice, or even save the world itself, might utter spells, wield wands as well as firearms, or simply use their powers of deduction. Some of the best tales of the last decade from top authors of the 21st century's most popular genres take you down mean streets and into strange crime scenes in this fantastic compilation.Contents (alphabetical by author):“Cryptic Coloration” by Elizabeth Bear“The Key” by Ilsa J. Blick“Mortal Bait” Richard Bowes“Star of David” by Patricia Briggs“Love Hurts” by Jim Butcher“Swing Shift” by Dana Cameron“The Necromancer’s Apprentice” by Lillian Stewart Carl“Sherlock Holmes and the Diving Bell” by Simon Clark“The Adakian Eagle” by Bradley Denton“Hecate’s Golden Eye” by P.N. Elrod“The Case of Death and Honey” by Neil Gaiman“The Nightside, Needless to Say” by Simon R. Green“Deal Breaker” by Justin Gustainis“Death by Dahlia” by Charlaine Harris“See Me” by Tanya Huff“Signatures of the Dead” by Faith Hunter“The Maltese Unicorn” by Caitlín R. Kiernan“The Case of the Stalking Shadow” by Joe R. Lansdale“Like a Part of the Family” by Jonathan Maberry“The Beast of Glamis” by William Meikle“Fox Tails” by Richard Parks“Imposters” by Sarah Monette“Defining Shadows” by Carrie Vaughn

    Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is directionless. Then an old acquaintance, the glamorous and capricious Kiran Thrash, blows back into Jane’s life and invites her to a gala at the Thrashes’ extravagant island mansion called Tu Reviens. Jane remembers her aunt telling her: “If anyone ever invites you to Tu Reviens, promise me that you’ll go.”What Jane doesn’t know is that at Tu Reviens her story will change; the house will offer her five choices that could ultimately determine the course of her untethered life. But every choice comes with a price. She might fall in love, she might lose her life, she might come face-to-face with herself. At Tu Reviens, anything is possible.

    They quickly learn that there is no way out, scarcely enough food and water to go around, and eerie music plays constantly in the background of every room. There is nothing to explain their mysterious incarceration except for a few scattered clues, a strange clock with twenty-four numbers and one single hour hand, and a leather-bound sheet of rules that makes their situation all the more fatal. The House Rules: Rule one: No escape. You can’t leave, plain and simple. Try to escape and you won’t like what you find on the other side. Rule two: Make what you have last. Whatever food and water you currently find in the house is all that you will be provided with during your stay. No more will be given to you under any circumstance. Rule three: When the music stops, someone must die. The music you can all hear in the background will cease between the hour of twenty-three and twenty-four; when this happens someone must die. Failure to comply with this rule will result in everyone’s death. Rule four: Only one, and only when the music stops! One death, and only one death, must occur in the allotted time between the hour of twenty-three and twenty-four. Again, failure to comply with this rule will result in everyone’s death. We hope you have a pleasant stay, and don’t forget: Redemption is the key to escape.

    No life form stands a chance, but Clyde Jackson is tougher than most. He's seen war and he's been in plenty of foxholes. Now he's living through the end of the world one day at a time in a panic room that has become his only refuge.Originally featured in The Absent Willow Review, "Dust" is the haunting meditation of a man recalling the final days of a once mighty and hopeful planet now quickly eroding to nothing under drifts of gray.