When musician Matty DeYoung is kicked of his new girlfriend's apartment for pissing into a box fan and spraying her bedroom in a drunken sleepwalk, he finds himself unhoused, unskilled, and wandering the crumbling streets of late 2000s San Francisco. Lost in his rapid downward spiral, he spends his days and nights drenched in a cycle of self-loathing alcoholism and isolation. After pawning his prized guitar and participating in horrific medical tests to survive, a chance meeting with a desperate manager lands him a job at a local theater. There, he meets Austin, a fellow dirtbag who is determined to be Matty's friend despite his alienation, addictions, and demons. Through Austin, and the violent beauty of the streets they both call home, Matty finally discovers that the only way out of the void is to grab a helping hand and face the music.
A UFO appears in broad daylight above suburban Napanee, Indiana. Two neighboring couples will never be the same.Tommy, the cookout king, is so afraid of the watchers that he betrays himself to turn vegetarian. His high-strung wife, Cher, evolves into a genius of meditation despite herself.Next door, Jim denies everything he's seen, even after his repeated abductions. Meanwhile, his partner, Amy, who's sure we're not alone but needs answers, drags both couples to a UFO conference in Arkansas.Met with the cryptic Message in the Sky, Tommy, Cher, Jim, and Amy all struggle to make sense of their lives after normality shot away at an unlikely angle and an impossible speed.
Eternity is not concerned with why we are here; the eternal question remains, what are we doing with our brief existence?Moving between the mean streets of Los Angeles and the lazy green byways of rural Georgia... between madness and epiphany... between reality and something, not quite real... between ancient cosmic terror and the mundane horrors of the American experience... Eternity: The Long and Short of It is a collection of (mostly) short warnings. Warnings of things to come, and warnings of things that we can no longer escape.
A citizen of Alaska's Arcology 1 has gone missing.For the first time in any domed city, cybernetically enhanced gene-hounds fail to pick up the victim's scent.After three years behind a desk, Special Agent Julius Weaver takes the case and quickly finds himself tangled in an underground of fringe science that endangers not just him, but all citizens of Arc 1.Will one obsolete Federal agent be able to stand toe-to-toe with giants and secure justice for the forgotten?If he's lucky, he might elude a bullet to the back of the head from an underworld mobster, a fiery death from an ageless corporate fixer with murderous intent, and a frozen grave beneath the howling storm outside.And if he's not so lucky, he might be the next to vanish without a trace.
In the summer of 1961, an innocent America eagerly anticipates the opening of a mysterious new theme park-the Ickack Pleasure Gardens. This park is rumored to be the dying wish of elusive tycoon Elijah Zallman Ickack: a desire for a place that can restore the joy and wonder of childhood written into his last will and testament. His great-nephew and heir, Freddy, must come forward to claim this fantastic, profitable, and improbable throne. Without Freddy, there can be no Ickack Gardens. But Freddy knows that there is more to this will, this park, and this man than the adoring public wants to think...
When interstellar private investigator Richard Hart and his pilot, Eddie Macías, are combing a zetoi city for a fugitive insurance fraudster, the open-and-shut case takes an unexpected and deadly turn.They return to their spaceship, the Colibri, with a dangerous military secret that threatens to have dire consequences for everyone involved. Conflicts begin to brew, despite travel guide writer turned live-in consultant Alannah Jackson's eager attempts to keep tempers in check.As Richard and crew reconnect with a familiar Terran Defense Force intelligence officer, they discover a political game that requires their discretion, and may even throw humanity's peaceful unity into question.Join Colibri Investigations for a new adventure full of snarky banter, undercover agents, vendettas, coffee approximations of varying quality, and action straight out of a wendek crime show.There's no planet too distant, no job too strange, for Colibri Investigations!
"I'm all alone, Dr. Ghost. I turned my back on my people... a species that doesn't deserve to live."Maiara and the Arkonauts are getting closer to their new homeworld. When the mysterious Three emerges on board to take control of the Ark, everything the Arkonauts thought they knew about their mission is revealed to be a lie. Facing a new future they hadn't been prepared for, can the crew adapt and stay together?In the distant future, Callum is a traitor to his own kind, siding with aliens against the humans who joined the Larceny... including his former crewmates, the Arkonauts.Now he's waging war in an attempt to stop his own people from inflicting more suffering on the galaxy. In the end, will it be up to Callum to destroy his own people once and for all?
Turducken blends a variety of genres, from literary to comedy to horror, often within the same piece. This collection includes several of McLeod's most lauded short stories, including 'Them At Number Seventy-Four' (Pseudopod, '22), and Best Small Fictions nominated 'Cake By The Ocean' (The Razor, '22), as well as a wide assortment of new, boundary-pushing work. You'll meet a banal retired couple who decide to spice up their marriage with a spot of murder, a sentient three-in-one bird who decides to escape from the warped scientist who bred it, and a story of a lads' night out gone terribly, terribly wrong. McLeod's ability to shock and delight is only surpassed by her ability to keep you up late into the night.
April Nimitz is recently widowed and is on the road, from Texas to Connecticut, to live with her daughters. She hopes to escape the multitude of her misdeeds and memories of her life in the hills of Texas, which include her time as a prisoner in an internment camp for German Americans during the second World War. These memories have, over time, corroded her into someone two-faced, someone who could beam and charm, as well as someone who could degrade and dominate her own children. Before leaving her small town of Himmel Creek for New England, she lashes out one last, and possibly fatal time, and does her best to beam and charm, all the while outrunning her crimes and pushing her daughters farther and farther away. Her only confidante is her husband's ghost, who reminds her of who she was and what she has done.
Dean O'Leary, a hardened bank robber who's lost his nerve, tries to shake off his crimes in the dark recesses of Downtown Las Vegas. By a surreal twist of fate, Dean is shown a life of love and happiness he thought was impossible. When that salvation is violently ripped away, Dean falls deeper into depravity, and with nothing to lose, goes all in on one final crime.
It's 1945, and eighteen-year-old Harlem Markeson is still imprisoned in Lady Magdalena's brothel, withering beneath the masquerade of sultry stage lights, jazz, and beautiful dancing girls. Caught in a tangled web of glamorous greed and sex, she has no one to trust, and no way to escape. As Lady Magdalena's carefully woven tapestry begins to fray, and lascivious flames lap at the binds that keep Harlem, the Brown Betties, and other girls captive, young Miss Markeson must embrace the fire within her to start anew, losing the last of her family's fortune in the process. To change her life, Harlem must turn away from the spotlight and dive headlong into darkness. But first... one last dance.
Hil Mills is missing. Worse, her boyfriend Ronnie can't find out anything about her because she's been living off-the-grid since childhood, and doesn't even have an online profile. In a world loaded with Screens, where robots do almost every job, Ronnie and a team of misfits try to solve the mystery of Hil's disappearance. Through warehouse raves, transcendentalism-obsessed communes, and bougie corporate parties, Ronnie digs for answers. Meanwhile, Hil's busy saving herself from her past, and a future she never wanted. Is it a conspiracy, a terror plot, or just a bad break-up? Spoiler alert: it's all that and more.
Exiled from his home planet after exposure to a lycanthropic virus, orbit-salvager Lars Breaxface roams the cosmos as muscle for hire, the ultimate lone wolf.But when he meets a mysterious stranger in the far reaches of space, the wolfman finds himself in the middle of an alien plot he doesn't understand, breaking a lot of faces.With the galaxy hanging in the balance, can Lars tame the beast? Or is he only capable of super apocalyptic werewolf mass destruction?
"I reached out, trying to wrap my arms around all three of them; Mum, Dad, and Jack. Maybe if my hands met they would be taken with me."Callum Tasker isn't special. He isn't a genius, or a star athlete. He's not unique. But he, along with 257 other ordinary kids from around the globe, has been assigned to a spaceship that will flee an alien attack on the Earth. Callum will leave everything behind; his family, his friends, his country, to give humanity a new beginning on a new home world.However he's not safe. The journey will be long. The crew is inexperienced. There are forces from Earth that want nothing more than to stop them. Plus, their captain is the most dangerous man to ever live... if he's human at all. Can a crew of teenagers save the future? Or will the past be too fast to outrun?
At a major press conference, dressed in black and pacing in front of a forty-foot screen, Findability founder and CEO Maxim Brez announces to the world that he's built a rocket to Mars, and he follows up with a second bombshell, that he's initiating a contest to take a member of the Findability family with him.Suddenly the programmers and engineers are spending time at the gym, vying for the open seat and the chance to make history. Enter Peg Myers, meme specialist and lone female at the mostly male tech company. She's making new friends but never really considers herself in the running until it becomes increasingly evident that, for the sake of P.R, Findability is about to land the first woman on Mars.Now, Peg is training at Area 51, on a Mars set that looks too real, helmed by a famous sci-fi director who "just wants to see how it looks," casting uncertainty on the mission's authenticity. Meanwhile, the would-be astronauts have also been told to expect alien contact...
Greg Withers, an idle rich twentysomething, has decided to lend a philanthropic hand to the Pioneer Valley arts scene and his punk friend Decca is more than happy to help him redistribute his wealth. Unfortunately, the indie filmmaker they're working with accidentally summons an Ancient Unspeakable Eldritch Horror on the first day of filming. And the creature seems to have artistic ambitions of its own!As their art gallery begins to fill with monstrous fish-people who certainly aren't going to buy anything, Greg and Decca need to figure out how to stop an Elder God with poor taste before it costs them their lives. Or (arguably) even worse, their reputations."To Another Abyss! is a hilarious send-up of the post-post-modern art scene set in the eldritch world of Lovecraft's New England. Bartlett's debut crackles with smart-ass dialogue and lefty politics galore, as well as an unlikely set of characters you'll quickly grow attached to. Fuckin' A!" -- Erica L. Satifka, British Fantasy Award-winning author of Stay Crazy
IVY DAY sacrifices herself for each picture, coming back from death in one role to be resurrected for the next. IVY DAY is a movie star. IVY DAY is an icon. IVY DAY is immortal. These are the tenets of her fans, her devotees.A trio of girls' sole shared ambition is to take up her uniform, their savior's blonde hair and branded makeup, which promises beauty and grace. They treat and poke and prod themselves, ascetics of aesthetics, revealing inner and outer horrors…A quiet collector builds a shrine to IVY DAY in the back of an old video store, transfixed on reel after reel of her performances…And there is JOHN MARK. He is her newest, biggest fan. He is her champion.And he will stop at nothing to assure her immortality.
"I used to live in the future. Giant leeches ate my arms and then replaced them. Under the circumstances, this was actually a good thing. Anyway now I'm here and I'm looking for someone else from the future." Inspector Margo Chicago is the smartest, surliest art safety inspector in the Bublinaplex, and things aren't going her way. The guy she thinks she's in love with has been banished. Her boss has been poisoned. Her cyborg has a limp.Oh, and her arms have been devoured and replaced by a pair of enormous leeches.As if that isn't enough, it's now up to Margo to save the Bublinaplex from art terrorists whose newest installation could drive humanity to extinction.But things in the Bublinaplex are not as they seem. And when Margo uncovers the city's murderous secrets, she must face a choice: Should she save the Bublinaplex? Or should she join the revolution dedicated to destroying it?
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