This eighth volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features over thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including John Barnes, Elizabeth Bear, C.C. Finlay, Yoon Ha Lee, Kelly Link, Ian McDonald, Seanan McGuire, Vonda N. McIntyre, Geoff Ryman, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine, and many others. Selecting the best fiction from Analog, Asimov's, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Meeting Infinity, and other top venues,

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A collection of three holiday-themed novellas includes Leslie Meier's "Christmas Card Murder," in which the discovery of an old Christmas card with a nasty message finds Lucy Stone investigating a decades-old murder.

While on an antiquarian tour of New England, young historian Robert Olmstead happens upon the run-down seaside town of Innsmouth where strangers are entirely unwelcome. The town is inhabited by queer people who seem to adhere to a religious cult and who, Olmstead's investigation threatens to uncover, seem to be hiding a terrible secret from the deep. First published in 1936, “The Shadow over Innsmouth” is a horror novella by American author H....

The award-winning master of psychological suspense is in top form in this collection of diverse and diabolically clever stories - including one never-before-published novella. These brilliantly crafted stories of deception, murder, dangerous games, and love gone wrong - irrefutable evidence that Laura Lippman's riveting fiction will more than satisfy any crime reader. Print run 75,000. "In a suspenseful collection of stories featuring fierce women--including...

Nineteen CWA Dagger award-winning short stories from the best of the best in crime fiction Maxim Jakubowski has edited all the great names in crime fiction and stories from his anthologies have won the CWA Dagger six times. Now he has collected 19 Dagger award-winning stories in one volume, making it the first retrospective deep dive into the CWA's archive of Dagger Award winners.

"A genius of unrivaled aptitude, Stephen can learn any new skill, vocation, or art in a matter of hours. However, to contain all of this, his mind creates hallucinatory people--Stephen calls them aspects--to hold and manifest the information. Wherever he goes, he is joined by a team of imaginary experts to give advice, interpretation, and explanation. He uses them to solve problems . . . for a price. His brain is getting a little crowded and the...

Throughout his career Kornbluth like many science fiction writers of his generation struggled with the issue of art's role in an increasingly technologized and dehumanized society. Did the creative artist, the individual work, have any role in a culture which was increasingly devoted to replication, to the homogenization of audience, to the suppression of irregularity or individuality? Was art in fact necessary or merely a distraction? Kornbluth was...

**A Special Collection of books in the Trident Security series and its multiple spinoff series - Volume IIITickle His Fancy: Trident Security Book 8Last man standing…All around him, Brody Evans's Trident Security teammates have fallen in love. Ironically, they'd always thought their charismatic friend would be the first to fall.Fancy Maguire's world was destroyed when a horrific car accident claimed the lives of her husband and unborn child. Three...

When Nicholas James draws Stephanie Martin's name in their law firm's Secret Santa exchange he knows he's in for a merry Christmas—if he can figure out what to give the woman he's wanted for months. When he works late and finds a crumpled piece of paper listing Steph's personal wish list, he knows he's in luck. Because all Steph wants for Christmas is him, in a number of naughty ways.

And not-so saintly Nick is going to make every one of

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Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the east, there lies a desert, forever untroubled by man: all yellow it is, and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard lying in the sun. To the south, they are bounded by magic, to the west by a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Like a great wall is the...