A collection of nine short stories featuring an angel, unicorn, vampire, werewolf, and other unusual creatures.

    The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections is a Tor.com Original from fantasy author Tina Connolly.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Not even for the predatory meat that stalks its nights. Searching for victims who won't be missed, meat doesn't feel regret or pain--only thirst. But the meat remembers something more... doesn't it? is there more to eternal life than finding another drink?At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Unbeknownst to Fiona, this house has a melancholy history, and slightly more ghosts than she anticipated. In learning to live with her unexpected companions and their losses, Fiona might find a way to make peace with her own.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    But I cannot stop remembering my son.Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she's willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert's fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. "The train tried to kill us," he tells her.Rupert's terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?Published here for the first time in English, "Where the Trains Turn" won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti's annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.

    People are getting stuck in the past in mostly happy memories. They are straddling the line between now and then. Although the disease ends in death, the infected seem to go willingly. The epidemiologist seeks the answers to this viral mystery while she is falling in love and yet trying not to get infected.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Luke's Hospital for Lunatics believing God has commissioned him to write The Divine Poem. But years earlier, he made a bargain with Satan and the devil has come to collect his due--a poem that will bring about the apocalypse.Saving Smart's soul, and the rest of the world, falls to Jeoffry, the poet's demon-fighting cat and a creature of cunning Satan would be a fool to underestimate...At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Judy can see every possible future, branching out from each moment like infinite trees. Doug can also see the future, but for him, it's a single, locked-in, inexorable sequence of foreordained events. They can't both be right, but over and over again, they are. Obviously these are the last two people in the world who should date. So, naturally, they doSix Months, Three Days is the winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    When his assistant Tera recognizes the most recent waterlogged cadaver they bought off the street, though, he finds that his new body is carrying more trouble than he bargained for.

    His son has trouble at school. And he has to keep his sharp teeth hidden.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    In 2047, a first manned mission to Mars ended in tragedy. Thirty years later, a second expedition is preparing to launch. As housekeeper of the hotel where two of the astronauts will give their final press statements, Emily finds the mission intruding upon her thoughts more and more. Emily's mother, Moolie, has a message to give her, but Moolie's memories are fading. As the astronauts' visit draws closer, the unearthing of a more personal history is about to alter Emily's world forever.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Upon the distant shore prowls an ancient sea god kept captive by a generations-old spell, a spell that Meriel alone must protect.Meriel's life has been lonely and unchanging--until the arrival of Nor. Nor's shape is that of a woman, but her heart belongs to the sea. Even though Nor is also held captive by Meriel's spell, she shows kindness to the isolated witch. Nor sparks a passion within Meriel, defying every law that binds them both.This award-winning short story ("The Witch Sea" won first place in the "Kissed by Venus" Fresh Voices short story competition) is a dark fantasy tale of love, loss and the price of freedom.

    Squire. Hockey fan. Canadian. And Crown Prince to the entire continent of North America, known as “the Westlands” to the fae, currently ruled by his parents, High King Aethlin and High Queen Maida. Not that most people know that, since he’s a blind foster squired to a changeling—not exactly something that screams “hidden royalty.”But with a new Queen on the throne in the Mists, his parents have finally come to town to see how he’s doing…and to take him home with them. That’s going to be a problem, since Quentin doesn’t particularly want to leave, and his knight, Sir October Daye, doesn’t particularly want to let him go.Set after Chimes at Midnight and before The Winter Long, it’s finally time to meet the parents in our first-ever story narrated by Quentin himself.

    Faced with a gingerbread house, they're pretty sure that what's inside isn't nearly as sweet as the outside. It never is.

    Her bones grew into the foundation and pushed up through the walls, feeding his power and continuing the cycle. As time passes and the ones she loved fade away, the house and the master remain, and she yearns ever more deeply for vengeance.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.