These 23 stories take us on a twisted fun ride into some future times and parallel universes where characters as diverse as a one-legged International Actuarial Forensics specialist, a pharmaceutical guinea pig, and a far-sighted fetus engage in their own games of the survival of the fittest. From a new short story by William Gibson in which a teen disassociated from his body haunts his neighborhood through the decades, to Douglas Coupland’s balls-out satire of a slightly futuristic Surviv...

The tale begins with the fearless human hero, Arthurius, successfully defeating the dreaded "Demon" lord of Adhaircean, bringing an end to the long and bloody war. As a reward for his bravery, the Pope of light bestows upon him the lordship of Sneachta, a small town nestled in the mountains that was once under the rule of the Adhaircean. However, not everyone is pleased with this decision. The Adhaircean people view Arthurius as a ruthless killer and reject his presence in their territory,...

The narrator woke up one morning in someone else's body, exactly a week before his friend took his own life. The whole thing felt unreal and disturbing, but all he could think was, This is my chance to change what happened. At first, it seemed simple enough: figure out why, find a way to stop it. But it didn't take long before he realized there was a lot more going on. He kept bumping into hidden lives and buried secrets—stuff nobody ever talked about. Day by day, the pressure built up. Ea...

For fans of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, a brilliantly imagined story from the author of the international bestseller Life of PiWhat if Homer’s epics were not the only ancient tales of the Trojan War? In Son of Nobody, Yann Martel composes a new legend: the Psoad, an Ancient Greek epic in free verse that follows a goatherd’s son, Psoas of Midea, who leaves his wife and family to fight at Troy. Unlike Odysseus’s legend, thi...

Bordered by powerful neighboring kingdoms, Xisa has managed to maintain its autonomy through the shrewd diplomacy and strategic maneuvering of its kings. Zhanglong have to choose who will inherit the throne of Xisa after him. He first trough of one of his daughter, Yaoya, who had an uncanny ability to peer into the future but she refuse, telling him to choose one of his son, Lulong, as he is the only one who can unite all siblings to withstand the storm who is to come. Many of his sibling ...

Welcome to the dark and mysterious town of Ravenhout, where a sinister battle between vampires and vampire hunters unfolds in the shadows. Led by the formidable vampire lord, Guillemin Sanguine, the vampires seek to dominate the city and turn it into a haven for their kind. On the opposing side, the determined vampire hunters, under the leadership of Archbishop Hamlyn, are on a mission to rid the city of these bloodthirsty creatures. Join Archbishop Hamlyn and his eccentric yet valiant tea...

This is a personal story of living through a knee injury that slowly changed how I walked, moved, and lived my everyday life.What started as a simple pain gradually turned into instability, limited movement, surgery, and a long recovery process filled with uncertainty and setbacks.This book is not a medical guide. It is a real-life account of what it felt like to go through each stage—pain, fear, recovery, and rebuilding again.Inside, I share the journey from the fi...

In the bustling halls of the imperial academy, Luned stood out like a daffodil in a field of roses. Unremarkable and untalented, she was a mere speck among the elite students striving for noble status. Her father, a wealthy merchant with aspirations of nobility, had paved the way for her entry into the academy with a generous donation. But he had ulterior motives - he wanted his daughter to seduce a noble and secure their family's place in high society. However, poor Luned was lost in the ...

When Ethan picks up a secondhand phone from a charity drive, he finds it already inhabited, by a girl named Cara, whose music, photos, and messages are still there. He tries to reset it. The phone refuses.Then a message arrives: Hello? Is anyone there?What begins as a curiosity becomes, over fourteen weeks of late-night texts, something Ethan has no name for. Cara is funny and perceptive and pays attention to him in a way he has never been paid attention to. She al...

Mei-Lin Yap moves into a studio on Valencia Street in October, with seven boxes and the careful numbness of someone who has decided that wanting things is its own kind of risk.The east wall of Studio 2B is warm. Warmer than it should be. Warmer than any heating system explains.His name is Joaquin. He has been in the wall since 1961, sixty-three years, a muralist who died before he could finish the argument he was making on that very wall. He cannot leave. He has made peace ...

Waking up in the hospital, Chloe's world is turned upside down after a night of partying ends in a tragic accident. As a college student who loves to let loose, she never imagined she would be facing the reality of losing both of her legs just under the knees. Now, Chloe must navigate her new life one step at a time, learning to adapt and overcome the challenges that lie ahead.

When the crypto firm Linh Bui fronted collapses in fraud, she loses everything — her job, her apartment, her income, and the identity she spent twenty years building. She wasn't the architect of the fraud. She was its face. In Singapore, that turns out to be enough.What follows is a year of slow, unglamorous return: a small rental in Toa Payoh, a delivery rider's bicycle, the city learned from the service entrance up. And somewhere in the middle of it, a man from her secondary scho...