Beyond the familiar tropes of knights and castles, elves and dragons, there is a whole world of possibilities for fantasy literature. This anthology collects fantasy stories whose inspiration lies beyond the traditional medieval European basis. It brings exciting new stories and overlooked voices into the fantasy genre.This volume contains stories based on real cultures (or their magical analogues) from all over our world.A Chinese ex-soldier is confronted by the ghos...

The province is British Columbia. The village is Nelson. On its streets walks nary a soul. Where are the village's inhabitants? Dead from a mutated plague. Beyond the desolate town lives Vee, a woman desperate to make sense of a post-apocalyptic world. Vee is neither a hunter-gatherer nor a settler, but one with well-developed skills for survival. One plant, one tree, one animal, and one weapon at a time, Vee fortifies her isolation as she awaits her enemies.

Laris is a young orphaned ex-refugee gifted with the beast master ability allowing her to communicate with animals. Her closest companion is a remarkably intelligent and mysterious cat-like creature named Prauo, whose origin is shrouded in mystery. Laris, having made a home for herself with the Quades, a family of Arzor ranchers, also has become friends with beast masters Tani and Hosteen Storm, who help her develop her beast master skills.When Laris inherits a spaceship from a dist...

Lyn McConchie transports us to Victorian London, where Sherlock Holmes and John Watson must solve two cases involving Poisonous People.A POISONING AT THE PUBLISHER: Maid and occasional cook Mary Fellowes has been accused of attempting to poison her employers and the evidence against her is damning -- or is it? Is she the scheming and vengeful woman that others describe? Or is she innocent, caught in a web of deceit? Holmes and Watson must follow the evidence, exposing long-buried f...

Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Miss Emily and Mandalay the cat return in this new mystery novella!Once again, Miss Emily Jackson’s brown Burmese cat, Mandalay, returns from his wanderings with a prize—an old leather bag containing… a bar of soap. But the soap hides a secret that proves dangerous. Miss Emily calls in Holmes and Watson, and the mystery turns into murder.A family tragedy and a series of burglaries and assaults spark a desperate hunt to find the killers. Can Miss...

Master storyteller Lyn McConchie returns with two tantalizing tales for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. This time our heroes must dig deep to unearth long-buried family secrets in Familiar Crimes.When Bradon Riggston decides to write his family history, he is shocked to find that many of his relatives and their friends have died by unfortunate accidents. Are Riggston family members and their close associates just unlucky, or is there some sinister power working behind the scenes? ...

The thirteenth Tarot card is Death, and he is a symbol not of the end, but of transformation and rebirth. This is the genesis and root of Thirteen: Stories of Transformation. The twenty-eight authors of this collection are voices—new and old—who are not afraid to explore what comes next. Whether it be a life after death, a life without love, a life filled with hunger, or the life shared by a ghost. These are stories of the weird, the mythic, the fantastic, the futuristic, the supe...

When the world's civilizations collapse from a lethal pandemic, being old can mean you have the experience and wisdom to survive and to see that friends and family do as well. Donal and Sheila McArn are seventy when most of the world is dying, and they must hold the line for everything they know. They may not have long, but so long as they live, they're going to do their best – and anyone against them had better step back. NOW!

Bodie, Arizona can be a difficult place to locate on a map. Some say it's because Bodie has been home to inventors who meddled in things humans weren't meant to know. Others say it's the visitors from the stars who seem to frequent Bodie. It's just possible Bodie has become unstuck in time, making it a difficult place to pinpoint. Being unstuck in time, Bodie may have drifted close to the boundaries between life and afterlife. Whatever the case, Bodie is a wild place. In this collection, L...

An exciting new fantasy in the tradition of Andre Norton's Witch WorldLyn McConchie, the coauthor of The Duke's Ballad and Silver May Tarnish, returns with The Questing Road, a new fantasy that captures the spirit of her successful collaborations with Andre Norton.Searching for a stolen foal, several farming folk inadvertently cross through a gateway into a different world. Not long after, the lord and lad...

He's seventeen, the world is dying around him, while half the country lies between him and his surviving family. He has a good dog, a child, a dying farmer, and decent ranchers to help him – against him are vicious bikers, the greedy, the foolish and the evil. But Jason is learning every step of the way.

Cities can seem like living, breathing organisms. They have networks of roads, power, and plumbing. They can have their own personalities. They can grow and change with time. And yet, cities can also seem timeless. It's possible a city can hold all of the times and all of the places it has ever been, and that if you look sideways in just the right way, sometimes you can see those other times and places. And sometimes, if you need to do it badly enough, you can see a time and a place that i...