Can a Necromancer save a dying world?The Viiminian Empire rots from within, its dominion mere walking corpses and fading memory. Everyone knows its glory is gone. Everyone except Rhea Phuul.Confronted with the painful decay of the once-mighty Empire, Rhea has taken up the mantle of the Eternals: the restoration of her society and its ancient faith. Only when long-forgotten duties are carried out might the Empire again find renewal.But Rhea must conv...

Hekate and Diana. Odin and Apollo. Freyja and the Witch-Lord. Eternal Haunted Summer was born in the late summer of 2009. It was created as a place where Pagans and polytheists and witches (and non-Pagans with a love of the old myths) could feature their short stories and poems and essays with those of a like mind and similar beliefs and practices. EHS has grown steadily over the years, due entirely to the wonderful contributors whose works fill its digital pages. Without their creativity ...

Welcome to the End of the World...and more importantly, what comes after.Disasters have occurred around the country and the world, but we're "getting through it", as Kiwi are apt to do. She'll be right. Life moves on, in some form.Things were bad here in Aotearoa, but in our isolation down under, we've escaped most of the chaos around the world. In fact, we might be the last bastion of humanity on the planet - anybody else home out there? R...

Here, between the realms of the Sky Father and Earth Mother, hellhounds race, ghosts drift aimless, and the taniwha stalks. Home fires drive them back, at the same time sparking stories and poems that traverse seconds, eons, and parsecs. Tales of gatekeepers, cloak wearers, and secret keepers. Of pigs with AK-47s or ruby-hued eyes, of love-struck moa, and unruly reflections. Stark truths, and beautiful possibilities…* WINNER * Sir Julius Vogel Award 2019 (SFFANZ) for Best C...

Read twelve postcombat-themed science fiction stories from award-winning authors!

Walking corpses and black-market liquor: the quiet life.Teltö Phuul, Necromancer and Library Clerk, likes his days safe and predictable. Not for him the intrigues of the Viiminian Empire, a gothic monstrosity held together by sheer force of will.Until the Empire's dreaded secret police come knocking. Caught in a web of schemes in the diseased heart of Kuolinako, the underground Imperial capital, Teltö can trust no-one. Not the Northern theocrats who abhor Necromancy, and ce...

A bonus short story featuring Silhara and Martise from Master of Crows.In The Light Within, Silhara of Neith, now known as "the god-smiter," travels as the guest of honor to the winter festival of his father's people.The crow mage who destroyed one god must ignite sacred fires in honor of another. Yet the winter festival only reminds Silhara that the brightest light within him isn't the fire of a deity but the devotion of one woman.A tale of hope and celebration.

A deeply moving and uplifting exploration of the power of nature - even urban nature - to heal the deepest hurts.Shortlisted for the ABIA Nonfiction Book of the Year'A tender, touching and at times bloody funny meditation on life. And death. And how to live.' David Wenham'For as long as I can remember, there has always been just the three of us. Three sisters. Only a year between each. Inseparable. It's been like that f...

Death gets a roommate...An electronic Pope faces a difficult theological question...A wicked vizier makes a terrible bargain...44 stories. 19 poems. No sparkly vampires. There's a thin line between genius and insanity, and James Hutchings has just crossed it - but from which direction?

Born to a harsh world, we Jokka have evolved three sexes to survive: neuter, male and female. Twice in our lives we may change from one to another. A change we accept with grace... or resignation. It was our way. ...until one female defied all tradition: Dlane Ashoi-anadi, revolutionary, intentionally childless, runaway.This is not her story.This is mine.I am Thenet Reña-eperu, female-guardian, voice of orthodoxy... and Dlane's first and dearest companion. This is t...

Eighteen more short stories of literary adventure fantasy from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the four-time Hugo Award and six-time World Fantasy Award finalist online magazine that Locus online calls “a premiere venue for fantastic fiction, not just online but for all media.”Authors include K.J. Parker, Carrie Vaughn, Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Richard Parks, Gemma Files, Gregory Norman Bossert, Rich Larson, and Fran Wilde. Includes “Grandmother-nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” by Rose...

Over the past three years Alice Oswald has been recording conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, she creates a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea. The voices are wonderfully varied and idiomatic - they include a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers and canoeists - and are interlinked with historic and mythic voices: drowned voices, drea...