Christine Harmon is not afraid of anything. Dr. Blau wants to know why. He subjects her to a seemingly endless series of experiments, testing her reactions to spiders, rollercoasters, and being buried alive. Christine's boyfriend, Carl, a professional archer turned party-entertainer, doesn't care why. He subjects her to a seemingly endless series of increasingly dangerous party tricks. As the experiments and tricks grow weirder and more dangerous, Christine is forced to come to terms with ...

On a searing summer Friday, Eddie Chapman has been stuck for hours in a traffic jam. There are accidents along the highway, but ambulances and police are conspicuously absent. When he decides to abandon his car and run home, he sees that the trees along the edge of a stream have been burnt, and the water in the streambed is gone. Something is very wrong.When he arrives home, the power is out and there is no running water. The pipes everywhere, it seems, have gone dry. Eddie and his...

In a time defined by uncertainty, change and inequality, speculative fiction is fast-becoming the genre of the 21st century. Straddling genres such as fantasy, science fiction, dystopia, alternative history, and horror, this book is a comprehensive introduction to the art of writing in this imaginative, fluid, and inclusive mode. An all-in-one textbook combining a craft guide with an extensive, diverse anthology, Speculative Fiction explores the multiplicity of in...

The remarkable new novel in the Doc Ford series by New York Times–bestselling author Randy Wayne White.Doc Ford’s old friend, General Juan Garcia, has gone into the lucrative business of smuggling Cuban baseball players into the U.S. He is also feasting on profits made by buying historical treasures for pennies on the dollar. He prefers what dealers call HPC items—high-profile collectibles—but when he manages to obtain a collection of letters written by Fi...

One woman finds herself the target of a twisted predator who may be masked behind a familiar screen name—from the bestselling author of All the Way Home.During the darkest period of her life, Landry Wells found solace in a group of bloggers who had been in her shoes and lived to tell the tale. She's shared things with her online friends that even her husband and children didn't know. Things that now, looking back, make her uneasy.One of the bloggers ...

A determined, (down on her luck,) mother caring for her handicapped son becomes entangled in a murderous conspiracy to keep a twenty year old secret buried in this blistering thriller, set during the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, from Andrew Gross, the New York Times bestselling author of 15 Seconds and No Way Back.While driving along a suburban back road, Hilary Blum, who's just lost her job and whose deadbeat husband has left her alone to care fo...

In Black Horizon, a riveting and timely thriller drawn from tomorrow's headlines, New York Times bestselling author James Grippando brings back popular Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck in an international case involving a devastating oil spill that pits him against his most villainous adversaries yet.Three summers after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, oil is again spewing into the ocean—from a drilling explosion in Cuban waters sixty miles off the F...

Stephen King teams up with long-time friend and award-winning author Richard Chizmar for the first time in this original, chilling novella that revisits the mysterious town of Castle Rock.There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs. Every day in the summer of 1974, twelve-year-old Gwendy Peterson has taken the stairs, which are held by strong—if time-rusted—iron bolts and zig-zag up the preca...

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises. Women can’t lie or fall in love. Fathers feed their children ghost preser...

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF—and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.This month, we present our special anniversary issue, Women Destroy Science Fiction!, an all-science fiction extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by women.Gu...

WINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PRIZE FOR LITERATUREWINNER OF THE 2021 VICTORIAN PREMIER’S LITERARY AWARDS PRIZE FOR FICTIONA SLATE AND SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE 2021 ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARDOut on the road, no one speaks, everything talks.Hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, and allergic to bullshit, Jean is not your usual grandma. She’s never been good at getting on with other humans, apart from ...

It's easy for people to write about their feelings in a journal. It's more difficult, however, to convert personal experiences into stories worthy of publication-fiction, non-fiction, or poetry. Filled with engaging exercises, Write from Life guides writers in identifying story-worthy material and transforming their raw material into finished pieces, through conquering fears associated with personal exposure, determining a story's focus, shaping the material into a cohesive whole,...