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What happens when emotions like love and friendship span vast distances -- in space, in time, and in the heart? Science fiction often focuses on future technology and science without considering the ways social structures will change as tech changes -- or not. What will relationships look like in a complicated future of clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What stories emerge when we acknowledge possibilities of new genders and ways of thinking about them? The Reinvented Heart presents stories that complicate sex and gender by showing how shifting technology may affect social attitudes and practices, stories that include relationships with communities and social groups, stories that reinvent traditional romance tropes and recast them for the 21st century, and above all, stories that experiment, astonish, and entertain.
ON A COLLISION COURSE… It was supposed be a simple extraction from the Brussels2Rome party train. With an eclectic crowd, a willing target, and a lot of nuyen at stake, what could go wrong? Everything—as Makeda Red discovers the hard way. There’s more than one target on the train, and more than one shadowrunner team in play. When someone sabotages the tracks in the middle of the Swiss Alps, she’s forced to extract her client much earlier than planned. To complicate matters, other survivors are also fleeing the crash for their own reasons. One of them is trying to escape his corporate masters as well, and offers to pay Makeda to escort him to his safe haven. A paying client is a paying client, and his corp won’t be looking for three people traveling together. Makeda knows it’s a risk, but one she’s willing to take. In the shadows, however, nothing and no one is what they seem. Before it’s over, this already complicated run may be Makeda’s last...
THE WARRIORS OF TOMORROW… The battlefields of the 31st century are ruled by the BattleMech; twelve-meter-tall, 100-ton bipedal engines of pure destruction. Piloted by MechWarriors, commanded by neo-feudal officers, owned by national governments and band of mercenaries, these ’Mechs make every other ground combat vehicle obsolete. This is the warfare of fusion-powered giants. This is BattleTech. THRUST INTO BATTLE TODAY… Allegra Greene is no stranger to the military; her father is a general, after all. But when she enters the Nellus Military Academy, she finds far more than she expected. She finds a group of friends that will keep her going, challenging training, and instructors that push her to the edge and beyond. Unfortunately, that's not all she finds, and soon the endemic politics and warfare of the Inner Sphere reach the Nellus Academy. And when their spaceship is hijacked and crash-lands on a remote moon, Allegra and her friends find themselves in a life-or-death struggle just to survive!
THE LIFE OF A LIFESAVER... DocWagon—saviors of the needy, rescuers of the desperate. Willing to go anywhere, rescue anyone, as long as that “anyone” has forked out enough cash to justify the effort. Reporter Amelia Hart has embedded herself with a DocWagon team to see what their life is really like, and she’s in for a wild ride. From an OD’ing celebrity to an aggressive team of hackers, from pesky gangs to an extremely rich and powerful client teetering at death’s door, this night will give the team all they can handle. But will they survive long enough to remember that in the Sixth World, nothing is truly random? Full of memorable characters and rich Sixth World flavor, DocWagon 19 is a thrilling ride with the people struggling to save lives in a sprawl with a million ways to make people dead. Strap in, hold on, crank up the siren, and get ready for a crazy ride-along through the full chaos of the Shadowrun setting.
We've all heard the stories of what happens to those who go to lovers' lane and of the folly of flashing your lights at another car at night. We all know someone who knows someone that survived a meeting with Bloody Mary and another who picked up a hitchhiker that then disappeared. And we all know these stories aren't true. They're just urban legends. Right? Wrong. Sometimes the stories we hear are true. Often they're more than they seem. These are the urban legends with alien explanations and the alien encounters mistaken for urban legends. The line between one and the other is so blurred in this anthology of stories about Close Encounters of the Urban Kind that you will never look another urban legend the same way again. Featuring stories by Alma Alexander, Nathan Crowder, Carole Johnstone, Pete Kempshall, Jennifer Pelland, Erik Scott de Bie, Bev Vincent, and many others.
The bold investigators of Arkham Horror are humanity’s best hope against monstrous terrors from beyond the void, in this second collection of extraordinary eldritch novellas To Fight the Black Wind by Jennifer Brozek – psychologist Carolyn Fern’s treatment of a patient’s terrifying nightmares tears open a doorway into the Dreamlands and the Elder Gods. The Blood of Baalshandor by Richard Lee Byers – the arcane tomes of Miskatonic University are an irresistible lure for stage magician, Dexter Drake and his assistant Molly Maxwell, where they soon fall prey to dark forces. Dark Revelations by Amanda Downum – when author Gloria Goldberg visits Arkham to complete the unfinished novel of her fellow author, its words escape the page and transform Arkham. Also featuring the essential Investigator Origins stories, drawn from deep in the Arkham Horror archives.
Be Wary and Beware.... There are tales that every parent knows and must pass on to their child... Tales of warning and terror...of those who break their vows and kill for no reason other than malice. Tales of saving the lovely princess from a prince that is much less than charming...and what it takes to bring her home, of rescuing babes from parents not fit to raise them, and the reason no supernatural can truly win a bargain with such vile creatures. These are Human Tales. Tales by: Ivan Ewert, Matthew McFarland, Seanan McGuire, Ari Marmell, Chuck Wendig, Sara M. Harvey, Spencer Ellsworth, Ryan Macklin, Jess Hartley, Shannon Page, Dylan Birtolo, Deborah Brannon, Alma Alexander, Renee Stern, David Lee Summers, James Sutter, Nathan Crowder.
ALWAYS READY TO ROCK…AND RUN! It was supposed to be a Top Drek gig like any other: Play some tunes, have a fight, get wasted. How was I supposed to know the guy I cracked in two over a table was some corp bigwig? Like, not our usual crowd, y’know? (And look, I may be a bass player named Twinkle Toes, but I’m also a tall, red-skinned ork with a love for shouting, so there’s not way he didn’t see me coming.) So the corp gave us a choice: Do a job for them, or die. How the frag can I say no? I got my bandmates to look out for, including my adopted daughter (and amazing singer), Ametheest, her maybe-lover Silver, my best mate, Bleeding Blossom, and our loser keyboardist, Lance. But our spotlight is growing, dispelling the shadows we desperately need to hide in. Rock and roll might not jive with the corps…and Ottawa’s gonna get caught in the crossfire. In the end, only one question remains for all of us, chummer: You gonna be SINless…or soulless?
"This special edition features the first three books in Jennifer Brozek's Melissa Allen series: Never Let Me Sleep, Never Let Me Leave, Never Let Me Die as well as a previously unpublished short story, Never Let Me Feel"--Back cover.
Leaving the Dead is a collection of eighteen stories about the long slow dance with death and the heartbreak of life—no zombies allowed. When a writer runs into the ghost of his father who died of Alzheimer’s, death has restored his memory, and he’s eager to share. An unlikely couple and an abandoned-seeing eye dog find happiness after everyone else dies. A college freshman goes home for the holidays with her lover who claims to be a robot—and takes her to an abandoned factory on Christmas Eve where she was born. A cat on death’s door is miraculously healed by his owner, but lives on and on and never ages. When the broken dream factory shuts down, its most devoted worker has to fig...