It used to be if someone wanted to mug you, they had to look you in the face and make a threat. Not anymore. Hackers can wipe a bank account without ever having to risk drawing blood. Bad people use technology for personal gain. Nothing's new about that. What is new is the ways technology opens up opportunities for exploitation.New technology is coming on-line all the time, creating new opportunities for creative criminals and dissidents. Stolen elections, companies held hostage by hackers, and acts of terror have all been committed with technology that didn't exist a few short years ago. Join leading edge speculative fiction authors on an exciting walk into darkness where people and machines plunder, cheat, kill, and steal in ways we can't even imagine with tools that may not even exist, yet. But, they're coming.

The Way of the Laser: Future Crime Stories

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Vernacular Books

The world was more mysterious in Technicolor. The flicker of the camera reel sputtered to life, the scene was set, and the players wandered into the uncanny and unknown, where artificial light cast dark shadows. The stylish and sleek medium of film has inspired generations of writers, readers, and fans of all things that go bump in the night. In homage to classic horror films that inspired generations, join ten award-winning and visionary master storytellers as they journey through ruined castles, haunted houses, and encounter the darkness of the human soul that will inspire new generations to fall in love with the macabre. Lock your doors and turn on all your lights.

Evil in Technicolor

Literature & Fiction

United States

Winner of the 2021 Manly Wade Wellman Award for Speculative Fiction. When Anna Pendragon was born, Merlin prophesied: "Through all the ages, and in the hearts of men, you will be forgotten."Married at twelve, and a mother soon after, Anna - the famed King Arthur's sister - did not live a young life full of promise, myth, and legend. She bore three strong sons and delivered the kingdom of Orkney to her brother by way of her marriage. She did as she was asked, invisible and useful for her name, her status, her dowry, and her womb.Twenty years after she left her home, Anna returns to Carelon at Arthur's bidding, carrying the crown of her now-dead husband, Lot of Orkney. Past her prime and confined to the castle itself, she finds herself yet again a pawn in greater machinations and seemingly helpless to do anything about it. Anna must once again face the demons of her childhood: her sister Morgen, Elaine, and Morgause; Merlin and his scheming Avillion priests; and Bedevere, the man she once loved. To say nothing of new court visitors, like Lanceloch, or the trouble concerning her own sons.Carelon, and all of Braetan, is changing, though, and Anna must change along with it. New threats, inside and out, lurk in the shadows, and a strange power begins to awaken in her. As she learns to reconcile her dark gift, and struggles to keep the power to herself, she must bargain her own strength, and family, against her ambition and thirst for revenge.

Queen of None

Barron, Natania

Fantasy

Ki is a petty thief. Her best friend wills her his solo-flyer-call it a space motorcycle: temperamental, fast as hell, and expensive to maintain. Any reasonable person would sell it to get off the street, but Ki isn't reasonable.Margot is a military vet at loose ends. She blows her entire back pay on a solo-flyer, adecision she instantly regrets but can't bring herself to undo. Margot meets Ki and thinks she's the sympathetic friend she needs when she feels most alone. Ki thinks Margot is an easy markfor food money. They're both right, but lunch leads to a joy ride to planet Ratana, whereMargot is arrested by border control.Ki enlists Ratanese local Zuleikah, a bored rich girl who can think of no stupider, and therefore better, way to spend her time than busting someone out of jail. Together they rescue Margot, but find themselves trapped on a hostile planet on the cusp of civil war.When Zuleikah convinces them that their best bet for escape is to kidnap-er, rescue-Prince Thane from his dreary role in the crumbling monarchy, it results in a chase across the desert and into the farthest reaches of the universe. If they can learn to trust each other, and if the repo men, cops, and three different galactic governments don't catch them, the Galactic Hellcats might just use their solo-fliers to carve a place for themselves among the stars.

Galactic Hellcats

Marie Vibbert

The world is cursed. A monstrous fog consumes and remakes all things infected with the black fog. A community of Seers push back against the curse. These seers are all women who have been orphaned. They live and train together in an ancient temple past the bone labyrinth. They perform elaborate and beautiful rituals to appease the ghosts of the world, and hold back the tide of the curse.Their leader, Naomi, is missing.Mazi, her adopted daughter, and her friend, Talia, embark on a dangerous quest to the center of an infected city, seeking out their lost mother. Without knowing it, they enact a deadly drama as old as time, where ghost hearts, curses, wicked prophets, and seers, all wrestle with the fabric of reality, itself.

The Silence That Binds

Paul Jessup

Genre Fiction

Jealous of the attention lavished upon the puppetry talents of his dear sister-and tormented by visions of her torture at the hands of the mysterious Uncle Pavan who recruited her for his arcane school-Elias is determined to learn the true nature of occult puppetry, no matter the hideous costs, in order to exact vengeance.

Master of Rods and Strings

Jason Marc Harris

Kesh is afraid-of his classmates, his abilities, and his prospects for the future. Born into Meridian Colony, where corporate values dictate human worth, Kesh longs to escape. Then, his classmates kidnap and dump him in the middle of the alien rainforest. Alone. Faced with certain death, Kesh locates the sansik, giant bugs native to the planet. Though the sansik seem to care for him at first, they set off a horrific metamorphosis in Kesh, and when they trade him back to Meridian, he becomes a living scientific curiosity. A bleak future of analysis without autonomy awaits him. Trapped between the grasp of Meridian's laboratories and a harsh alien world, Kesh must escape to have any chance of finding his purpose-and place-in the world.

The Wasp Child

Rhiannon Rasmussen

So Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion

Caren Gussoff Sumption

Review\n"Varied yet intricately connected by themes of memory and loss, these stories are as memorable as they are creative."-Buzzfeed\n"Her remarkable talent for crafting short fiction is on full display here, with stories that range from the dark and twisted to the outright strange. Fans of fiction writers such as Jeffery Ford and Kelly Link are sure to enjoy this dark collection."-Booklist\n"These extraordinary tales prove to be both spine-chilling and profound."-Kirkus\n"No collection has any business being this good, start to finish."-Locus\nBones of extinct species wander a campground, stalking a group of friends in love with the same woman. The object of their affection seeks solace with a couple in a world with rain that kills. A woman moves away from her repressed home town, only to transform into a man-eating monster when she returns. A robot assassin avenges women ruined by capitalism.\nJourney to the liminal space with acclaimed author Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam where interconnected stories span from past to future among the dead and the living.\n"A welcome entry to a flourishing tradition of fabulist short fiction in the vein of Kelly Link and Aimee Bender."-Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark\n"Heartbreakingly haunting, Where You Linger is Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam's testament to the ghost of the relationships that never quite leave you."-Jordan Kurella, I Never Liked You Anyway\n"Stufflebeam's voice is an undaunted guide in a wilderness of whispering bones and lingering dreams that will not release the visitor. Do not turn away from this journey."-Andrew S. Fuller, Editor, Three-Lobed Burning Eye magazine\nBonnie Jo Stufflebeam's fiction and poetry has appeared in over 90 publications such as LeVar Burton Reads and Popular Science, as well as in six languages. By night, she has been a finalist for the Nebula Award. By day, she works as a Narrative Designer writing romance games.

Where You Linger

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

"I Never Liked You Anyway brings a hypnotic, propulsive update to an enduring myth. Kurella's striking prose and sharp perspective makes this an irresistible read." - Sarah Gailey\n"A vivid tapestry of music, young love, friendship, and relationships gone awry, with some delicious snark woven in." - Alex Shvartsman\n"I Never Liked You Anyway is heartfelt and stunning, a lively life-after-death journey that will resonate with anyone whose voice is unheard. Kurella's prose sings through grief and laughter alike, and he effortlessly weaves together the myths of rockstars and gods. This novella doesn't miss a beat." - Lauren Ring, author of (emet)\n"This novella re-imagines the Afterlife in a way you haven't seen before. It is a fun and poignant ride towards discovering one's purpose and identity. But ultimately, a love letter to life itself." - Eugenia Triantafyllou\n﻿ 
Eurydice is dead, and hell is a school. She has to learn Hauntings, Baking Disasters, Threads of Fate, and all the other classes a newly dead soul needs to master before they're ready for what comes next. Eurydice is still processing the disastrous relationship that sent her into the land of the dead almost as soon as she was married to the brilliant love of her life, Orpheus. She'll tell you how he swept her off her feet, and how their polyamourous group swept each other up in music and art and art theory and a life of creation from destruction, but mostly just destruction. But, this isn't their story. Eurydice is dead, and failing all her classes, and she knows Orpheus is coming to get her out. Not that he cares, but that's not what she wants. And, she's the only one who truly knows how Orpheus and Eurydice's story ends.

I Never Liked You Anyway

Jordan Kurella

Erotica

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