A missing intergalactic artifact valuable enough to inspire murder. A cartoon gag gone bad that leads to a gruesome death. Greek deities unraveling a divine mystery in New York City. A human detective navigating the temptations of Faerie in pursuit of a magical killer. Call them sleuths, call them gumshoes, call them shamuses or dicks or beagles—these private investigators prowl the back alleys of imagination, explaining the unexplainable, seeking answers and justice for two hundred dollar...

A skilled conjurer in pre-Revolutionary Boston is hired to find a killer in this thrilling debut novel of magic and intrigue."A lean, elegant, intricate tale of a conjurer and a world on the brink of revolution. Fabulous!" —Faith Hunter, bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock seriesBoston, 1765: Revolution is brewing as the British Crown imposes increasingly onerous taxes on the colonies, and intrigue swirls around firebrands like Samuel...

A ship lost with all hands on icy Titan. A dying woman’s soul linked with the fate of an interstellar vessel. A wrecked ferry possessed by the ruin-demon who grounded her. A haunted space cruiser of legend again terrorizing those who travel among the stars. A pirate-ravaged frigate concealing magical secrets that can doom the wicked, or redeem the worthy. An inexplicably empty cruiser arriving at a space station amid the panic of a system-wide pandemic.There is an allure to the gho...

Join us for a feast!Step into a roadside diner run by witches. Attend a banquet with aliens who are as crass as they are brutal. Eat oysters on the half shell with a pair of conjurers, or scratch out a meal with warring pilots marooned on a desolate planet. Pity the ghost who must cook her way to freedom, and mourn with the warrior who seeks a final delicacy for his lost love. Search the far reaches of space for sustenance or descend into a hellscape of culinary horrors.In ...

One man’s insurgent is another man’s freedom fighter…From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Hunger Games, everyone enjoys a good rebellion. There is something compelling about a group (or individual) who throws caution to the wind and rises up in armed defiance against oppression, tyranny, religion, the government—you name it. No matter the cause, or how small the chance, it’s the courage to fight against overwhelming odds that grabs our hearts and has us pumping our fists in the...

What does it mean to be “temporally deactivated?”Experience a historical moment through the intervention of a time travel agency. Be trapped inside a time bubble—willingly—so that you can save the universe from Darkness over and over again. Step outside of time at the order of your queen in order to stop a traitor…or to keep an assassin from destroying the future. Or travel forward into the future in order to kill off timelines to save your son…or backwards to halt an accident to s...

Stop right there!If you like your fantasy filled with fellowships and noble quests, this anthology is not for you. And if you love lengthy tales of politics and power, then it won’t be to your taste either. But if you like a little intimacy with your evil, and your vengeance short and sweet, with perhaps a pinch of silliness in the witchcraft, then these fourteen delicious sweetmeats of sword and sorcery will prove right up your alley. And it will be a dank, twisting, fetid alley, ...

In D. B. Jackson's novels Thieftaker and Thieves' Quarry, as well as in the story "A Spell of Vengeance," which was published on Tor.com, Kaille has had to deal with a variety of crimes and their perpetrators. The story that follows is one from Kaille's early days as a thieftaker in Boston. In it, he must face a formidable foe, one of a most unexpected sort, whose own powers, very different from his own, prove the equal of Ethan's.Ethan Kaille is a Thieftaker in B...

An old cowboy, Clayton Todd, and a teenage boy, Bobby Earl Lee, take a ride out into the West Texas desert. Bobby, known as Early, assumes it will be a relaxing day with an old friend. What Early doesn't know is Clayton does not plan to return.It's a poignant and heartwarming story of an old man at the end of his life and a kid at the beginning of his, and the moments they share coming to terms with knowing there will be no tomorrow to deal with things unsaid.

When Eustace Robertson signs onto a buffalo hunt to earn money for his destitute family, he experiences freedom and paid work for the first time in his life. Just before the sun comes up, he finds himself caught up in a buffalo stampede, riding for his life.

The Oxbow Wolves is a story of the struggle between a small wilderness family and a pack of displaced wolves, both looking to survive in a hard environment where there is only room for one or the other. The final conflict comes down to a standoff between the mother of two small children and the matriarch of the wolf pack, both willing to fight to the death to protect their offspring. The final resolution is a heart-rending denouement that could only be reached by two strong mothers.

Calvin Bonner and his wife lose a newborn child the same year they lose their cattle to a great freeze-up. Destitute and out of options, he turns to robbery. At first, just wayward travelers on a lonely highway— and then he graduates to trains, and finally a bank.The bank job provides him with enough money to quit his life of crime, but fate has more in store for him until he eventually has to come to terms with his wrongdoings in a plot twist we do not see coming.It's a raw ...