A book such as this spins not only words but also whole worlds: eighteen of them, representing the best lesbian-themed stories of the fantastic or futuristic published the prior year: An artisan who tests the skills and wares of her friends in the hope of finding the ideal housing for an idealized love. A shape-shifting sidekick ensures that the heroine, who might not even be aware of her, saves the day. The device on a young girl's wrist that counts down the years until she will meet her ...

The latest volume in the acclaimed Heiresses of Russ series features stories that are anything but invisible: the women in these tales are not hiding and are not easily overlooked but rather are choosing the harder path, the more dangerous route, whether that leads to love or loss or adventure. Included in these pages are stories that have won a World Fantasy Award, a Tiptree Award, and a British Fantasy Award...but every one of these stories chosen by guest editor A.M. Dellamonica (hersel...

Stories about lesbians, women who choose women as primary partners, lovers, playmates, and co-conspirators, tend to go where few men have gone before. Most of the real-life issues that lesbians must deal with, as women and as members of non-mainstream communities, appear in these stories in metaphorical form or as plausible scenarios in a future or alternate world. Lesbianism itself was routinely described by the conservatives of the past as "impossible." The formula of "woman + woman" is ...

On a remote planet, a convent harbors a deadly secret buried beneath quiet violence--a secret that the woman known only as the Alabaster Admiral will obtain at any cost. Set in the same universe of And Shall Machines Surrender.

"One of the most compelling aspects of speculative fiction is its ability to fulfill otherwise unattainable desires—whether one wants to create a magical society or travel through time, visit an alien civilization or remake history. It also satisfies more mundane reader desires, the ones it would not seem so hard to fulfill. To call a few of these out, I'll willingly step on this mine: the explosion of 'should.'"It should not be easier to find a zombie apocalypse than it is to find...

"Our worthy mission was to highlight the breadth and quality of lesbian speculative fiction published during the past year, but our even higher purpose has been to provide a book that any readers with a taste for quality science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all their permutations will enjoy."—from the Introduction by Lambda Literary Award-winning co-editor Connie WilkinsAn unexplained astronomical phenomenon brings a woman and her grandfather closer while she questions the ...

Vishnu's Leviathan: a half-beast, half-machine warship famed for its speed and might. The great prize that armies across the galaxies will kill to possess.Admiral Anoushka was once a ghost. Now she's the universe's most brutal commander with a debt to a godlike AI. To repay it—and to complete her long revenge—she's set her sights on the leviathan. Neither the warship's flesh horrors nor its ruthless ruler will stand in her way.But all her plans couldnt prepare her for what ...

Thannarat Vutirangsee has won it all: she's saved her world, married her perfect bride, and found her peace. She is meant to live the rest of her days in a fairytale.But the machines are not done with her yet. Her wife Daji has breached the treaty between humans and machines, and for that she will be subjected to a punishment worse than execution.Thannarat is not a hero. She is an artifact of war, a force of devastating annihilation. All she knows is how to fight. But to sa...

Admiral Anoushka rose from nothing to command an army unrivaled in all the galaxies. She did not rise alone.War between godlike machines is breaking out, and at its center is the AI who aided Anoushka's ascent. Now payment has come calling: her closest allies are subverted, her body is twisted by poison that bends her toward madness, and her wife has been stolen.The machines will devour the stars as they battle each other for the ultimate prize: the next step in AI evolutio...

On a graveyard star, machines run a deadly tournament and draw humans like moths to a flame with a priceless promise. Partner with an artificial intelligence and fight to the death. Win and receive your heart's desire . . .War veteran Thannarat has sought this hidden world to realize a single goal: bringing back the dead. To fulfill this wish, she joins the game alongside a seductive AI who pledges to give her victory. The tournament is full of lethal secrets—and so is the...

Recadat Kongmanee has lost everything to the machines: the woman she loved, the hero's prize she was promised, and her memories. All she has left is vengeance.Within the Garden of Atonement, artificial intelligences offer healing and a return to innocence. Brought in as an inmate, Recadat must keep up a dangerous charade while she readies a weapon built to destroy AIs--and prove that machines are not gods. But as she's pulled into games of control and obsession, she draws ever clos...

The aliens came to uplift humanity—and brought with them quantum computation that allows chosen humans, called cognates, to travel between parallel universes.Jirayu's wife Yvette disappeared when the aliens arrived. When Yvette returns, she's an artifact of the future, a soldier from another timeline . . . and she carries with her the answer to why Jirayu is targeted by killers who have snuffed out every other version of Jirayu.Yvette lost her wife Jirayu once before, and s...