The Eternal Champion


Michael Moorcock - 1970
    Timeless, classic and beyond a doubt one of the foundations of modern Fantasy, the Eternal Champion is a series of stories that no Fantasy aficionado should pass up.Includes The Eternal Champion, Phoenix in Obsidian, To Rescue Tanelorn and The Sundered Worlds.

A Whisper in the Dark


Louisa May Alcott - 1996
    As we paused on the upland slope, that gave us a free view of the country for miles, Guy dismounted, and standing with his arm about the saddle to steady me in my precarious seat, began to talk.

Complete Ghost Stories


Charles Dickens - 1866
    He had always loved a good ghost story himself, particularly at Christmas time, and was open-minded, willing to accept, and indeed put to the test, the existence of spirits.His natural inclinations toward drama and the macabre made him a brilliant teller of ghost tales, and in the twenty stories presented here, which include his celebrated A Christmas Carol, the full range of his gothic talents can be seen.Chilling as some of these stories are, Dickens has managed to inject characteristically grotesque comedy as he writes of revenge, insanity, pre-cognition and dream visions, he indulges also in some debunking of contemporary credulity.

By Blood We Live


John Joseph AdamsBarbara Hambly - 2008
     And yet, there is an attraction, undeniable, to the vampire archetype, whether the pale European count, impeccably dressed and coldly masculine, yet strangely ambiguous, ready to sink his sharp teeth deep into his victims' necks, draining or converting them, or the vamp, the count's feminine counterpart, villain and victim in one, using her wiles and icy sexuality to corrupt man and woman alike... Edited and introduced by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams (Wastelands, The Living Dead), By Blood We Live gathers together the best vampire literature from the preceding three decades, authored by many of today's most renowned writers of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror. Contents: (Author, title (type, year of first publication, beginning page in print edition))01 - Neil Gaiman, Snow, Glass, Apples (short story, 1995, p3)02 - Anne Rice, The Master of Rampling Gate (novelette, 1984, p13)03 - Harry Turtledove, Under St. Peter's (novelette, 2007, p33)04 - Tad Williams, Child of an Ancient City (novelette, 1988, p43)05 - Michael A. Burstein, Lifeblood (novelette, 2003, p75)06 - Barbara Roden, Endless Night (short story, 2008, p88)07 - Garth Nix, Infestation (novelette, 2008, p106)08 - Carrie Vaughn, Life Is the Teacher (short story, 2008, p120)09 - Nancy Kilpatrick, The Vechi Barbat (short story, 2007, p134)10 - Kristine Kathryn Rusch, The Beautiful, The Damned (short story, 1995, p148) 11 - David Wellington, Pinecones (short story, 2006, p161)12 - Norman Partridge, Do Not Hasten to Bid Me Adieu (novelette, 1994, p165)13 - Sergei Lukyanenko, Foxtrot at High Noon (short story, 2008, p180)14 - Michael Marshall Smith, This Is Now (short story, 2004, p189)15 - Nancy Holder, Blood Gothic (short story, 1985, p199)16 - Jane Yolen, Mama Gone (short story, 1991, p204)17 - Joe Hill, Abraham's Boys (short story, 2004, p209)18 - Tanith Lee, Nunc Dimittis (novelette, 1983, p224)19 - Gabriela Lee, Hunger (short story, 2007, p240)20 - Caitlín R. Kiernan, Ode to Edvard Munch (short story, 2006, p250)21 - L.A. Banks, Finders Keepers (short story, 2008, p256)22 - Brian Stableford, After the Stone Age (short story, 2004, p275)23 - Kevin J. Anderson, Much at Stake (short story, 1991, p286)24 - Elizabeth Bear, House of the Rising Sun (short story, 2005, p297)25 - Lilith Saintcrow, A Stand-Up Dame (short story, 2008, p302)26 - Kelley Armstrong, Twilight (novelette, 2007, p316)27 - Eric Van Lustbader, In Darkness, Angels (novelette, 1983, p333)28 - Barbara Hambly, Sunrise on Running Water (novelette, 2007, p355)29 - Bruce McAllister, Hit (short story, 2008, p372)30 - Ken MacLeod, Undead Again (short story, 2005, p385)31 - Robert J. Sawyer, Peking Man (short story, 1996, p388)32 - Ben Lumley, Necros (short story, 1986, p396)33 - Catherynne M. Valente, Exsanguinations: A Handbook for the Educated Vampire by Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu (short story, 2005, p409)34 - Charles Coleman Finlay, Lucy, In Her Splendor (short story, 2003, p415)35 - John Langan, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky (short story, 2009, p426)36 - Stephen King, One for the Road (short story, 1977, p464)37 - Ross E. Lockhart, For Further Reading (By Blood We Live) (essay, 2008, p477)

The Country of the Blind and Other Science-Fiction Stories


H.G. Wells - 1911
    The Dover Thrift Edition:"The Country of the Blind" (1904)"The Star" (1897)"The New Accelerator" (1901)"The Remarkable Case of Davidson's Eyes" (1895)"Under the Knife" (1896)"The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper" (1932)

Scroogled


Cory Doctorow - 2007
    Since they cannot legally obtain access to all details of data fed by a user to Google, they get it indirectly from Google - by asking it to provide all contextual ads it has shown to a certain individual! Greg Lupinski is an ex-Google employee returning from vacation, & the new system has made him interesting to immigration security: "I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail." "But the ads don't mean anything... I get ads for Ann Coulter ring tones whenever I get e-mail from my friend in Coulter, Iowa!" "I understand, sir... Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently?" "Search for 'coffee fanatics.'" He'd been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was called Jet Fuel. "Jet Fuel" and "Launch"—that would probably make Google barf up some model rocket ads. Anyway, it takes him a lot of time getting out of airport. Later, he talks to Maya, a Google colleague, & gets some dark insights. We also learn that Google security cameras at public places are used by security agencies to track suspects. Including suspects tagged on flimsy criteria like above airport dialog. But Maya can help. She has built a kind of underground program (Googlecleaner) within Google. It normalizes the profile of an individual in various Google databases - basically tinkers data Google has been collecting about you over the years from your searches, visits to sites that show Google Ads, Orkut activity, & other Google properties. When done, you look like an angel of virtue! Some days later, a very worried Maya visits Greg. She is leaving the country & wants Greg to come. Looks like someone has found her underground program, has cleaned profiles of some elected officials in Washington, & she is now a marked woman. Greg wishes her luck; he himself will stay. Some days later, he gets visitors late at night - threatening him. Turns out they are not cops, but from Google's lobby firm. He has options - either go to jail for 10 years for tinkering with Google's data! Or cooperate & again become & employee of Google, & help turn Googlecleaner into something security people will be using more often!

Until Dawn


Erin Kellison - 2016
    During the live end-of-season Tell All episode of the reality television show, Witching Wild, cast member Judith Kress opens fan mail expecting the usual personal questions, but gets cursed instead. Vampire Calvin Blake is charged with saving her life and discovering the source of the curse, but ends up in deeper trouble than he thought possible. Survival is going to be a dangerous affair until dawn.

Dead Drop: A Lawson Vampire Bonus Story


Jon F. Merz - 2011
    A cynical, wise-cracking vampire charged with protecting the Balance between vampires and humans, he is part cop, part spy, and part commando—a James Bond with fangs. Lawson mixes shrewd cunning with unmatched lethality to get his job done. He tries his best to dismantle conspiracies, dispatch bad guys, and live long enough to get home.This time, Lawson has been given an easy assignment, a "dead drop." That is until an old enemy returns.

Cat's Karma


Christopher Moore - 1987
    I had been sending horror stories to mainstream magazines who rewarded me with a stack of rejection slips, many of which included a scribbled note: "A little too weird for our readers."My next step was to send these stories out to the men's magazines, who included "horror stories" in their listings in the Writer's Market. Once again I was rewarded with a stack of rejection slips with this note: "You write very well, but we do not publish any stories that do not include at least three explicit sex scenes." (By this time I'd papered most of my bathroom with rejection slips.) Ah-ha! I said. I shall write an erotic fable. Cat's Karma came out of that effort. Actually, after no one accepted the story I cleaned out the explicit sex scenes so I could show this story to my friends without them thinking I was a hopeless horndog, and this version is the end result. -- Christopher Moore

Joe Golem and the Copper Girl: A Short Story


Mike Mignola - 2012
    In Joe Golem and the Copper Girl, hard-nosed private detective Joe Golem and his employer are faced with one of their strangest cases yet. When a young mother named Rachael Blum arrives on their doorstep, frantic about the bizarre changes in her daughter's appearance and the terrible dreams plaguing the girl, it's up to Joe to separate nightmare from reality. But Joe Golem knows better than anyone that sometimes, the two are one and the same.

Beyond Lies the Wub


Philip K. Dick - 1951
    "It spoke!" The slovenly wub might well have said: Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools. Science Fiction – Alien Life and InteractionBeyond Lies the Wub was Philip K. Dick's first published story and appeared in the legendary ”Planet Stories” pulp magazine. Free download from LibriVox.org Play Duration: 00:16:14Down load file sizes[mp3@64kbps - 7.7MB][mp3@128kbps - 15.5MB][ogg vorbis - 11MB] Public Domain stories from Project Gutenberg, that are read by volunteers.

Guilty Needs


Shiloh Walker - 2009
    At least, that's how he wanted it to be. He didn't want to feel anything, not even when his wife's best friend, Bree, offered him solace. He just took off. But he couldn't outrun the pain and he couldn't outrun the dreams. Hot, sweaty dreams that threaten to drive him mad. He can't stop thinking about Bree. A year later, he returns home, determined to close the book on his old life. But those dreams-those dark, guilty needs-haven't gone away. They threaten to consume him. And it doesn't help that his wife's ghost is haunting him.encouraging him.

The Complete Scarlet Traces, Volume One


Ian Edginton - 2017
    Starting with their visionary adaptation of the original novel, the collection also includes the first of three sequel stories set a decade after the Martian invasion. Great Britain has cannibalised Martian technology and now Hansom cabs scuttle along on multi-limbed crab legs, and the Martian heat-ray has become the weapon with which the British Empire dominates the world. When the bodies of several young women are found washed up on the banks of the Thames Captain Robert Autumn, retired solider and adventurer,and his former Sergeant-Major Archie Currie are drawn into a mystery that leads them from gin palaces to the corridors of power and the very Hall of the Martian King.

Timecaster


J.A. Konrath - 2014
    With crime at an all-time low, Talon has little to do except give lectures to schoolkids--and obsess on his wife's profession as a licensed sex partner. Then one of her clients asks Talon to investigate a possible murder. When Talon uses the TEV to view the crime, the identity of the killer is unmistakable--it's him, Talon Avalon. Someone is taking timecasting to a whole new level and using it to frame Talon. And the only way he can prove his innocence is to go off the grid--which in 2064 is a very dangerous thing to do. Time is not on his side.

Star Hunter


Andre Norton - 1961
    As a deadly game of hide-and-seek begins to unwind, a man who does not know his own powers faces an interstellar safari determined to run him to ground -- dead or alive! "Nobody can top Andre Norton when it comes to swashbuckling science-fiction adventure." -- St. Louis Globe-Democrat