There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about space ships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever—to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor N. K. Jemisin, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Jemisin bringing her lyrical, endlessly curious point of view to the series’ latest edition.Rivers Run Free / Charles Payseur --Destroy the City With Me Tonight / Kate Alice Marshall --You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych / Kathleen Kayembe --Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities / Lettie Prell --Loneliness is in Your Blood / Cadwell Turnbull --The Hermit of Houston / Samuel R. Delany --The Last Cheng Beng Gift / Jaymee Goh --Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn / A. Merc Rustad --The Resident / Carmen Maria Machado --The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant / Rachael K. Jones --Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast / Gwendolyn Clare --Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue / Charlie Jane Anders --Church of Birds / Micah Dean Hicks --ZeroS / Peter Watts --Carnival Nine / Caroline M. Yoachim --The Wretched and the Beautiful / E. Lily Yu --The Orange Tree / Maria Dahvana Headley --Cannibal Acts / Maureen McHugh --Black Powder / Maria Dahvana Headley --Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance / Tobias S. Buckell

    The secrets of the core of the earth. Dreams of other people’s lives. A girl who goes mad in the darkness. Monsters in Bavaria. A generational spaceship where night doesn’t exist. And other mysteries and oddities. The contributors to the enthralling collection are: Sarah Rees Brennan, Tessa Gratton, Rachel Hawkins, Christine Johnson, Valerie Kemp, Malinda Lo, Myra McEntire, Saundra Mitchell, Sarah Ockler, Jackson Pearce, Aprilynne Pike, Dia Reeves, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan, Jon Skovron, Courtney Summers, and Kate Espy, winner of the Defy the Dark new author contest.

    Cheerleaders are seriously injured and even killed at a higher rate than other high school sports. Their stunts are performed in skimpy uniforms without the benefit of proper safety equipment…and yet they love them, glittery eyeshadow, spirit bows, and all.And then there are the Fighting Pumpkins, who take that injury rate as a challenge. Students of Johnson’s Crossing High School, they answer to a higher calling than the pyramid and the basket toss, pursuing the pep rally that is rising up against mysteries and monsters, kicking gods with the pointed toes of professional athletes chasing a collegiate career.Meet Jude, half-vampire squad leader; Laurie, who can compel anyone to do as she asks; Heather, occasionally recreationally dead; Marti, strong enough to provide a foundation for any stunt; Colleen, who knows the rule book so well she may as well have written it; and Steph, who may or may not be the goddess of the harvest. The rest of the squad is ready to support them, and braced for the chaos of the big game, which may have a big body count. Prepare to jump high, yell loud, and look pretty with the Fighting Pumpkins, those glorious girls in the orange and green, whose high kicks could still be enough to save the world.And if they’re not, it isn’t going to be for lack of trying.Dying with Her Cheer Pants On includes three stories appearing for the first time anywhere: "Tryouts," "Trial by Fire," and "Compete Me."

     - At a Kansas carnival, fun and games turns to murder and mayhem, thanks to soul-snatching demons and flesh-craving ghouls luring visitors into an all-too-real house of horrors. - Verily, in olde England, striking up a friendship with William Shakespeare lands both Atticus and the Bard in boiling hot water with a trio of infamous witches. - During the Gold Rush, the avatar of greed himself turns the streets of San Francisco red with blood and upsets the elemental Sequoia. Atticus may have to fight fire with fire if he's going to restore balance.More, you say? Indeed there is--including bogeymen, vampire hordes, wrathful wraiths, and even a journey to the realm of the dead. Prepare to be besieged with nine tantalizing tales--not to be missed, never to be forgotten.

    Nine writers, including James P. Blaylock, Peter Dickinson, Patricia A. McKillip, P C Hodgell and the editor, Robin McKinley, have written stories where the land is crucial to the tale: the armchair traveller will find the best of fantasy on this grand tour of imaginary lands.1 • Paper Dragons • [Land of Dreams] • novelette by James P. Blaylock23 • The Old Woman and the Storm • short story by Patricia A. McKillip35 • The Big Rock Candy Mountain • novelette by Robert Westall59 • Flight • novelette by Peter Dickinson91 • Evian Steel • [Merlin's Booke] • novelette by Jane Yolen125 • Stranger Blood • novelette by P. C. Hodgell155 • The Curse of Igamor • short story by Michael de Larrabeiti169 • Tam Lin • novelette by Joan D. Vinge199 • The Stone Fey • novelette by Robin McKinley

    But when the world gets weird, there's no one who's better to have on your side...Is a renegade dragon harassing the men laying the rails of the great railroad? Are headless Indian spirits driving you from your land? Is that volcano threatening to destroy your settlement? Then Mad Amos is the man for you.Plus, two new, never-before-published stories in the Mad Amos canon:NEITHER A BORROWER BE: When a horse thief sets his sights on stealing Amos' faithful mount Worthless, he gets more than he expects...for Worthless isn't exactly an ordinary horse...THE PURL OF THE PACIFIC: Mad Amos takes to the high seas on a whale of an adventure and thwarts a vengeful South Pacific island shaman at his own game...Ten delightful stories of dragons, jackalopes, snake-oil salesmen, iron horses, and, of course, the incomparable Mad Amos Malone from the incredible imagination of world-class storyteller and bestselling author Alan Dean Foster!

    First introduced into the West in 1704, the stories of The Thousand and One Nights are most familiar to American readers in sanitized children's versions. This modern edition, based on Richard F. Burton's unexpurgated translation, restores the lushness of the original Arabic. Here are the famous adventures of Sinbad, "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," and "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp." Here too are less familiar stories, such as "Prince Behram and the Princess Al-Datma," a delightful early version of The Taming of the Shrew, and "The Wily Dalilah and her Daughter Zaynab," a hilarious tale about two crafty women who put an entire city of men in their place. Intricate and imaginative, these stories-within-stories told over a thousand and one nights continue to captivate readers as they have for centuries. "Arabian Nights: The Marvels and Wonders of The Thousand and One Nights, Volume 2 of 2, Adapted By Jack Zipes"

    Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century's worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu's "Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers").In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth's history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end. The Time Traveler's Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.

    1 Flight (Samaria) To be chosen as the lover of an angel is the highest honor in Samaria, but narrator Salome knows the hidden dangers of such a life and tries to warn her niece Sheba.2 Blood (Heart of Gold) As a gold-skinned gulden man, Kerk values race and pride above all, until he meets blue-skinned Jalcie and his decades-past well-missed runaway mother.3 Gold (Summers in Castle Auburn) On the eve of war, royal guard Orlain escorts his beloved Princess Zara, narrator to seductive elvish Alora, that lures her away.4 Flame (Twelve Houses) Roaming Mystic Senneth rescues a town from burning but a rogue fire power forces her into captivity.

    48 tales from all over the world include The Emperor's New Clothes, The Tinder-box, How to Tell a True Princess, and The Nightingale, from Andersen, Grimm, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Germany, France, England, American Indians, and Iceland.

    Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline. The villagers' lives are inseparable from nature and its enchantments.Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm, unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull and dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms, haunted by horses and her father's wishes.As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation, their earthy desires, resentments, idle gossip and painful losses create a staggeringly original world. Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore, but entirely, wonderfully, her own, Zoe Gilbert's Folk is a dark, beautiful and intoxicating debut.

    Wealthy cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars. A fork-tongued princess. The origins of the first ymbryne. These are but a few of the truly brilliant stories in Tales of the Peculiar—known to hide information about the peculiar world—first introduced by Ransom Riggs in his Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children series.Riggs now invites you to share his secrets of peculiar history, with a collection of original stories, as collected and annotated by Millard Nullings, ward of Miss Peregrine and scholar of all things peculiar.

    Delve into the fascinating world of witchcraft and magic and let this enthralling compilation act as your guide to a realm beyond anything you’ve experienced, as you explore the stunning world of hexes, sorcery, and powerful enchantments.

     In "The Kelpie," by Patricia A. McKillip, a carefree circle of bohemian artists is confronted by a being more powerful than any muse. Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder weave a tale of two sisters long-exiled from their magical realm who must survive in ours, in "Except the Queen." In Tanith Lee's "UOUS," a young woman with a rotten family is granted three wishes by a handsome elf-and learns that nothing good comes free of charge. A hapless slob finds his world turned upside-down when an eager brownie moves in and proceeds to clean house, in Megan Lindholm's "Grace Notes." Kim Newman introduces an intrepid government investigator whose latest case pits him against a sinister brood of fairy folk known as "The Gypsies in the Wood." And the serenity of the Elves is tested in a wry fable of a long-suffering magical apprentice who can't catch a break, in Craig Shaw Gardner's "The Embarrassment of Elves.

    Take a highly caffeinated ride through the Empire of Ice Cream. If you dare, hunt feral archetypes deep within a haunted English forest. Or conquer the New World with a band of geographically-challenged Norsemen.Tired of the same old fantasy? Here are the stories you’ve never imagined possible. Nineteen extraordinary writers offer much-needed antidotes to clichéd tales of sword and sorcery. Combining the best of the old and new, these instant classics will inspire even the most jaded of readers. Beloved author and anthologist Peter S. Beagle reveals the secret: fantasy is back and it’s better than ever.Contents:Introduction by Peter S. Beagle“Ancestor Money” by Maureen F. McHugh “Scarecrow” by Gregory Maguire “Lady of the Skulls” by Patricia A. McKillip “We Are Norsemen” by T. C. Boyle “The Barnum Museum” by Steven Millhauser “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” by Stephen King “Bears Discover Fire” by Terry Bisson “Bones” by Francesca Lia Block “Snow, Glass, Apples” by Neil Gaiman “Fruit and Words” by Aimee Bender “The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford “The Edge of the World” by Michael Swanwick “Super Goat Man” Jonathan Lethem “John Uskglass and the Cumbrian Charcoal Burner” by Susanna Clarke “The Book of Martha” by Octavia E. Butler “The Vita Æterna Mirror Company” by Yann Martel “Sleight of Hand” by Peter S. Beagle “Mythago Wood” by Robert Holdstock “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson “The Critics, the Monsters, and the Fantasists” by Ursula K. Le Guin “The Making of the American Fantasy Genre” by David Hartwell