Lucy Snyder’s stories are the sort that carry you away to unusual places, usually dark ones, and this collection is a perfect example. As the follow-up to the Bram Stoker Award winning collection Soft Apocalypses, it contains plenty of darkly imaginative tales. Many of these stories, including the title piece, are heavily influenced by the work of H.P. Lovecraft and The King in Yellow mythos. They whisper madly among each other creating weird echoes. Like the black stars of theoretical astronomy they are dense entities born from polarization so strong that instead of collapsing into nothingness, a black hole, they instead form dark constellations burning dimly with spectral light.
In the heart of Ohio, Jessie Shimmer is caught up in hot, magic-drenched passion with her roguish lover, Cooper Marron, who is teaching her how to tap her supernatural powers. When they try to break a drought by calling down a rainstorm, a hellish portal opens and Cooper is ripped from this world, leaving Jessie fighting for her life against a vicious demon that's been unleashed. In the aftermath, Jessie, who knows so little about her own true nature, is branded an outlaw. She must survive by her wits and with the help of her familiar, a ferret named Palimpsest. Stalked by malevolent enemies, Jessie is determined to find out what happened to Cooper. But when she moves heaven and earth to find her man, she'll be shocked by what she discovers—and by what she must ultimately do to save them all.
"Vivid characters, terrifying monsters, and world building as deep and dark as the ocean." --Victoria Aveyard, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Queen I am Henrietta Howel. The first female sorcerer in hundreds of years. The prophesied one. Or am I? Henrietta Howel can burst into flames. Forced to reveal her power to save a friend, she's shocked when instead of being executed, she's invited to train as one of Her Majesty's royal sorcerers. Thrust into the glamour of Victorian London, Henrietta is declared the chosen one, the girl who will defeat the Ancients, bloodthirsty demons terrorizing humanity. She also meets her fellow sorcerer trainees, handsome young men eager to test her power and her heart. One will challenge her. One will fight for her. One will betray her. But Henrietta Howel is not the chosen one. As she plays a dangerous game of deception, she discovers that the sorcerers have their own secrets to protect. With battle looming, what does it mean to not be the one? And how much will she risk to save the city—and the one she loves? Exhilarating and gripping, Jessica Cluess's spellbinding fantasy introduces a powerful, unforgettably heroine, and a world filled with magic, romance, and betrayal. Hand to fans of Libba Bray, Sarah J. Maas, and Cassandra Clare. "The magic! The intrigue! The guys! We were sucked into this monster-ridden, alternative England from page one. Henrietta is literally a 'girl on fire' and this team of sorcerers training for battle had a pinch of Potter blended with a drop of [Cassandra Clare's] Infernal Devices." --Justine Magazine "Cluess gamely turns the chosen-one trope upside down in this smashing dark fantasy." --Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Unputdownable. I loved the monsters, the magic, and the teen warriors who are their world's best hope! Jessica Cluess is an awesome storyteller!" --Tamora Pierce, #1 New York Times bestselling author "A fun, inventive fantasy. I totally have a book crush on Rook." --Sarah Rees Brennan, New York Times bestselling author "Pure enchantment. I love how Cluess turned the 'chosen one' archetype on its head. With the emotional intensity of my favorite fantasy books, this is the kind of story that makes you forget yourself." --Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen "A glorious, fast-paced romp of an adventure. Jessica Cluess has built her story out of my favorite ingredients: sorcery, demons, romance, and danger." --Kelly Link, author of Pretty Monsters
Exposed Nerves continues the explorations into dark poetry by Stoker Award winner and Shirley Jackson Award nominee Lucy A. Snyder, pairing the author's sly wordplay and imagery with grim introspection. By turns challenging, wryly amusing and gut-wrenching, Snyder's work plumbs bittersweet catharsis and maps a survivor's path through dangerous worlds, both the real and the horrifically imagined. "Exposed Nerves vibrates with energy and rewards with clarity of vision." -Mary Turzillo, Stoker-nominated and Elgin Award-winning poet Praise for Lucy A. Snyder's Stoker-winning poetry collection Chimeric Machines: "(This) may be the best collection of poetry I've read in years... There is not one poem in Chimeric Machines that doesn't fit in place like a delicately carved piece of a complex and consuming puzzle. ...There is no other writer working today quite like Lucy A. Snyder." -Hellnotes "What Snyder accomplishes in less than eighty pages is an emotional scoring that few can approach. ...This is (real life), given breath and teeth, stood out in front of the world in all its beautiful grime. Her work is emotional, powerful, and will shake a person's foundations ... I applaud this collection." -Scott A. Johnson, author of Shy Grove "Snyder is a massively talented writer-the sort who knows how to make you take a gulp when you hit the ending of a story or poem-and this poetry collection made me gulp with awe on virtually every page." -Michael A. Arnzen, author of Proverbs for Monsters "Her poetry is powerful, honest, playful ... this is not the first time she has walked dangerous, uncertain roads with her work and I hope it will not be the last." -Horror News
AN IGNYTE AWARD WINNER FOR BEST COMICS TEAM! "Where Black Stars Rise boldly pushes the limits of what a comic can do. ...It's a gorgeous work. I loved it." —Trung Le Nguyen, author of The Magic Fish Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger's Where Black Stars Rise is an eldritch horror graphic novel that explores mental illness and diaspora, set in modern-day Brooklyn. Dr. Amal Robardin, a Lebanese immigrant and a therapist in training, finds herself out of her depth when her first client, Yasmin, a schizophrenic, is visited by a nightly malevolent presence that seems all too real. Yasmin becomes obsessed with Robert Chambers’ classic horror story collection The King in Yellow. Messages she finds in the book lead Yasmin to disappear, seeking answers she can’t find in therapy. Amal attempts to retrace her patient’s last steps—and accidentally slips through dimensions, ending up in Carcosa, realm of the King in Yellow. Determined to find her way out, Amal enlists the help of a mysterious guide. Can Amal save Yasmin? Or are they both trapped forever? “Strange is the night where black stars rise, and strange moons circle through the skies. But stranger still is lost Carcosa...” —From The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Sixteen tales by bestselling and award-winning authors that explore the Black experience through fantasy, science fiction, and magic. Evoking Beyoncé's Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler's heirs, have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that centers Black women and gender nonconforming individuals. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels: the heroines of A Phoenix First Must Burn shine brightly. You will never forget them.
One of NPR's Best Books of 2016, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, the British Fantasy Award, the This is Horror Award for Novella of the Year, and a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards People move to New York looking for magic and nothing will convince them it isn't there. Charles Thomas Tester hustles to put food on the table, keep the roof over his father's head, from Harlem to Flushing Meadows to Red Hook. He knows what magic a suit can cast, the invisibility a guitar case can provide, and the curse written on his skin that attracts the eye of wealthy white folks and their cops. But when he delivers an occult tome to a reclusive sorceress in the heart of Queens, Tom opens a door to a deeper realm of magic, and earns the attention of things best left sleeping. A storm that might swallow the world is building in Brooklyn. Will Black Tom live to see it break? "LaValle's novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do." — Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All "[LaValle] reinvents outmoded literary conventions, particularly the ghettos of genre and ethnicity that long divided serious literature from popular fiction." — Praise for The Devil in Silver from Elizabeth Hand, author of Radiant Days “LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King, an echo of Lovecraft’s Dagon... [The Ballad of Black Tom] has a satisfying slingshot ending.” – Elizabeth Hand for Fantasy & ScienceFiction At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Installing Linux on a Dead Badger (and other Oddities) is a collection of Lucy Snyder's humorous essays, fiction and articles, some culled from places like "Strange Horizons" and "Spacesuits and Six-Guns" and some brand new. This collection of thirteen short stories, articles and essays from Lucy A. Snyder will appeal to any fan of zombies, aliens or installation manuals. Here's what Wikipedia said about Lucy, last time we checked: "Lucy A. Snyder is an American science fiction, fantasy, humor, and nonfiction writer. She grew up in San Angelo, Texas but moved to Bloomington, Indiana for graduate studies at Indiana University and currently lives in Columbus, Ohio with her husband Gary A. Braunbeck. Snyder served as an editor for HMS Beagle, an online bioscience publication produced by Elsevier. She has also contributed technical articles to publications such as Electronic Products."
A blood-witch's mission to assassinate the prince she is betrothed to is compromised by the discovery of a deadly plague--and the beautiful princess intent on stopping it.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets Stranger Things in award-winning author S. A. Hunt’s Burn the Dark, first in the Malus Domestica horror action-adventure series about a punk YouTuber on a mission to bring down witches, one vid at a time. Robin is a YouTube celebrity gone-viral with her intensely-realistic witch hunter series. But even her millions of followers don't know the truth: her series isn’t fiction. Her ultimate goal is to seek revenge against the coven of witches who wronged her mother long ago. Returning home to the rural town of Blackfield, Robin meets friends new and old on her quest for justice. But then, a mysterious threat known as the Red Lord interferes with her plans.... “Brilliant!” —Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author The Malus Domestica series #1: Burn the Dark #2: I Come with Knives #3: The Hellion At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
