An act of compassion puts a trapeze master in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power.

Not all things are built to obey… Reprinting Sarah Gailey’s “Bread and Milk and Salt,” originally published in Robots Vs. Fairies (Saga Press, 2018).

A Wild Cards story. A failed contestant of the superhero reality TV show, American Hero, Robin Ruttiger now works as a high school guidance counselor to reluctant students. Things change, however, …

When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely.

Paxton and the neighbor’s kid are inseparable—sweethearts, even, and Paxton barely six. He doesn’t mind her antennae and clicking mandibles at all….

Life on the transdimensional ship Skidbladnir is a strange one. The new janitor, Saga, finds herself in the company of an officious steward-bird, a surly and mysterious engineer, and the shadowy Ca…

When an alien walks into a human kite maker’s store, coveting her kites, the human struggles with her guilt over her part in the alien massacres…

Connor is a food crafter just getting back into the business after his mother’s death. To cope with his grief, Connor spends day after day recreating her potstickers, but they are never quite what …

Does a renewed world still have a place for those who only know how to destroy? While defending a tea-growing commune in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, one person seeks an answer.

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. The floor of Borderlands Books had been polished to mirror brightness. A nice trick with old knotty pine, but Penauch would have been a weapons-grade obsessive-compulsive if he’d …

Charlie is dealing with complicated grief, and even his therabot is out of ideas. But the back-alley grief counselors might have something to help: it looks like blue asparagus, and it’s call…

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. At a time now past, a cat was born. This was not so long after the first cats came to Japan, so they were rare and mostly lived near the capital city. via Pocket

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Hurricanes did not perturb Horacio Gorrión, nor did rumors of an impending government assault on a barbarous drug cartel in the island’s interior rain forest. via Pocket

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Inspector Wilde was in a fine mood when he arrived at the headquarters of Salmagundi’s Legion of Peace, carrying three paper-wrapped sandwiches and an armload of printed broadshee…

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Gretel was Gottlieb’s most troubling patient. She was clairvoyant. She was also, he feared, quite mad. via Pocket

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Sam Gregory woke up one morning and found, to his dismay, that he had turned into a big cockroach. “Oh, no,” he thought. He had some idea of what was happening because of the Kafk…

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Whatever else one might have said about the Apocalypse, it was thorough. via Pocket

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. They pushed me out of the portal, dumped me into the sage and manzanita. The great orb’s pastel colors glowed against the clear night sky. via Pocket

Charlie is dealing with complicated grief, and even his therabot is out of ideas. But the back-alley grief counselors might have something to help: it looks like blue asparagus, and it’s call…

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. Ten years after my parents died, my therabot, Bob, informed me that I should seek help elsewhere. I blinked at his suggestion. via Pocket

The eerie thing about Paige Adolpha wasn’t just that she turned up right when I was reading about her in the paper. It wasn’t her fame as the star witness in the big local werewolf trial. via Pocket

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers. My sword arm is mighty. via Pocket

In the year after Lorraine’s death I contemplated suicide six times. Contemplated it seriously, I mean: six times sat with the fat bottle of Clonazepam within reaching distance, six times failed to reach for it, betrayed by some instinct for life or…

We hope you enjoy this reprint, originally published in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance, ed. Trisha Telep, Running Press, 2008. I met my client at a seedy, unpleasant bar. via Pocket

We hope you enjoy this reprint, originally published in Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy, edited by Dana Stabenow, Ace Books, 2008. Sam Spade’s splayed body was a symphony in black and white on the hellfire-orange carpet of the Infer…

My name is Rose Sullivan. Although I’ve been on the earth for two hundred years, I was turned on my twenty-fifty birthday. I am eternally frozen in the physical form of a twenty-five year old. Blonde hair, blue eyes, five feet two inches tall, one h…

Cthulhu, they call me. Great Cthulhu. Nobody can pronounce it right. via Pocket

Xareed had been waiting for the water truck for two days, seated in the dirt at the edge of the camp, his family’s plastic ten-liter water-jug tied to his ankle. He didn’t like being on the edge of the camp. Except for the piece of cardboard he carr…

Lawrence’s cubicle was just the right place to chew on a thorny logfile problem: decorated with the votive fetishes of his monastic order, a thousand calming, clarifying mandalas and saints devoted to helping him think clearly. via Pocket

In a universe of harsh interstellar conflict, the practice of interspecies diplomacy—when possible—is important. So being a Colonial Union officer attached to an interplanetary diplomatic mission sometimes means taking a fall. Literally. Lieutenant …