Can an ordinary guy make extraordinary choices in a battle between humanity and unearthly evil?

Joe Mandel is a perfectly ordinary guy from a perfectly ordinary town—a college student and community volunteer who dreams of one day publishing a novel. When a series of strange intuitions leads him to a crime in progress, Joe jumps headlong into danger without hesitation. In the aftermath, he wonders about the uncanny impulse that suddenly swept over him.

Until new friend Portia Montclair, the strangely wise daughter of the local police chief, explains to him what sent him ricocheting around town like a crazy pinball. Portia tells of another reality, a reality more thrilling—and terrifying—than Joe ever imagined. Timeless, elemental forces of good and evil have come to the quiet town of Little City: a cosmic entity capable of infecting human beings, and the seeker who has chosen Joe to find it.

To stop the malevolent invader, this average Joe must be braver than he ever thought possible… and face the hardest decisions of his life.Two Ways to Read

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Лауреат Нобелевской премии Джон Голсуорси хорошо известен в нашей стране как автор знаменитой «Саги о Форсайтах». Однако его перу принадлежат не менее замечательные новеллы, рассказы и маленькие повести, проникнутые юмором, мягкой лиричностью и романтизмом.Salta Pro Nobis – рассказ-вариация из сборника «Моментальные снимки».

Something terrible is stirring in the wreckage of Chernobyl.The Chernobyl Sarcophagus is crumbling, and the Carapace project to contain the infamous reactor has stalled. Dr Victoria Cox must return to Pripyat, in the heart of the exclusion zone, to find out why. Confronted by corporate irresponsibility and greed, she soon finds herself in a race against time, fighting to prevent another radiological disaster of catastrophic proportions. As the human cost of the project mounts, the long shadows of pagan myth and nuclear folklore fall across the irradiated ghost town. Shadows through which Victoria must walk, if she is to discover the true nature of the danger that they face - and the price that must be paid to stop it.

By NASA’s best guess, the crew of Apollo 8 are an even money chance of dying.

A long list of things could go catastrophically wrong as they attempt to park their supersonic spacecraft into stable lunar orbit.

But they get it done, paving the way for one giant leap toward the surface.

They are the first men alive to see the far side of the Moon — the lunar face permanently turned away from Earth.

Inside the tiny capsule, astronaut Bill Anders points his camera at the lunar horizon and captures one of the most famous photographs of all time.

Our planet, lonely and fragile in the eternal darkness of space.

Lonely, but perhaps not alone.

Another photo is taken that day… one so sensitive even the NASA chiefs don’t know about it.

Sleeping Gods puts you right there on the first manned mission to the Moon.

You’ll be surprised and amazed by this alternate view of space history, a prelude to Matt Eaton’s acclaimed novel, Blank.

If you’ve pondered flying to the Moon, climb inside the capsule with the men who did it.

Then join astronaut Frank Borman on a journey even more incredible that begins shortly after splashdown.Coming soon… Apollo 8.1 — go one step beyond Sleeping Gods on a space trip no-one was ever told about.

“Matt Eaton does not let you down with his smooth writing style.”— Amazon reviewer

Ashton, son of The Tank Man, and his sister were forced to move to the Port in 1989. He was contented with his life in the Port, but everything changed on that day when he was deprived of the right to vote against the dissolution of the government, a plebiscite initiated by a group of people who called themselves freedom-pursuers.

His grudge against those freedom-pursuers, who he deemed as a bunch of hypocrites, prompted him to leave the country and start a new life in the place where he was born despite others’ objections, but it turned out to be a journey that he could never forget. And the chance of telling this story has only come to him after he passed away.

For the first time in English, a glittering novella about stardom from “one of the greatest avant-garde Japanese writers of the twentieth century” (Judith Thurman, The New Yorker)

All eyes are upon Rikio. And he likes it, mostly. His fans cheer from a roped-off section, screaming and yelling to attract his attention—they would kill for a moment alone with him. Finally the director sets up the shot, the camera begins to roll, someone yells “action”; Rikio, for a moment, transforms into another being, a hardened young yakuza, but as soon as the shot is finished, he slumps back into his own anxieties and obsessions.

Being a star, constantly performing, being watched and scrutinized as if under a microscope, is often a drag. But so is life. Written shortly after Yukio Mishima himself had acted in the film “Afraid to Die,” this novella is a rich and unflinching psychological portrait of a celebrity coming apart at the seams. With exquisite, vivid prose, Star begs the question: is there any escape from how we are seen by others?

David Conway leads a quiet life in picturesque Magenta Bay on the colony world of Chalcedony. Nothing much has happened for five years, but all that is about to change. First he meets the mysterious holo star Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna, who regrets the lost loves of her past and dreams of learning what the future might hold. Then Conway’s alien friend Kee heads inland to take part in an Ashentay ritual with potentially fatal consequences. What follows is a convoluted and poignant tragedy which entangles Conway and his friends.

That winter David Conway was enjoying a quiet life with his friends, not especially looking for love, but finding it anyway. The artist Matt Sommers was due to stage an exhibition of Epiphany Stones from Acrab IV, a show which attracted the attention of one Darius Dortmund, the famous empathy. Dortmund could see into the minds of men ‘some said into their very souls’ and when he met David and his friends, and looked into their minds, what he found there would lead to murder…

Starship Winter, the third volume in the Starship Seasons sequence, continues the quiet adventures of Conway and his friends on the backwater colony world of Addenbrooke, Delta Pavonis IV.

Welcome to the Subject 11 project.We are currently seeking 10 individuals to participate in a research study. Participants shall receive a sum to be discussed during initial telephone interview. Interested parties should email us via our contact page, subject11.webs.com, providing their telephone number and a brief biography of approximately 100 words, describing themselves in terms of gender, age, race, and occupation if any. The study will take place in a series of abandoned buildings rented for this purpose. Note: subjects involved in this test may find themselves experiencing certain psychological distortions. They may experience lapses in memory regarding others and themselves. Subjects may even forget how long this test is supposed to go on for. And please disregard any additional people you may feel you’ve sighted in the complex, beyond those in the test group. We thank you for your interest in our research…“Cutting right to the chase, Subject 11 is one of the best novellas I’ve read all year. Jeffrey Thomas is at his best in this eerie story following a group of ten people (five women and five men) taking part in a mysterious experiment… The mysteries are enticing, and Thomas brings them together for an ending that is sure to linger long in the minds of readers.”— Justin Steele, THE ARKHAM DIGEST“This book will mess with your mind, and you will feel that you have left a bit of your sanity behind after you finish… it is right at the top of my list for best story so far this year. You will not be disappointed and I give it my highest recommendation.”— LITERARY MAYHEM

A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.

Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley is building makes her own impossible decision—veering wildly off course and exploring the boundaries of the map. When the curious Riley extracts her code for closer examination, an emotional relationship develops between them. Soon Riley has all new plans for her spontaneous AI, including bringing Max into the real world. But what if Max has real-world plans of her own?

Blake Crouch’s Summer Frost is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Moving from school to school is never easy. You’re constantly struggling to catch up to the level of the other students. You’re forever meeting new friends just to have to leave them and establish new colleagues at the new schools. You always find yourself lost in the never-ending maze of corridors as you battle to get to grips with where everything is…But it’s worse when the more unfriendly students decide to take an instant dislike to you. Tormenting you each day… Pushing you to see how long it is before you’re going to snap. Wondering what you’re going to do in retaliation to their harsh words and cruel pranks. Are you going to stand up to them or are you going to be yet another pupil who goes out of their way to avoid them whilst crying yourself to sleep until you feel as though you can’t take the suffering anymore?You’re going to stand up to them of course. You’re going to turn the tables on them. You’re going to be the teacher to a very special class. A class where the lessons will be heard through-out the world… Lessons which will never be forgotten.This is your classroom now and lessons will be learned.

That day, the world turned upside down. We didn’t know why it happened. Some of us wondered whether it was our fault. Whether we had been praying to the wrong gods, or whether we had said the wrong things. But it wasn’t like that—the world simply turned upside down.

For fifteen years, Earth has had a scientific station on an exoplanet orbiting Gliese 876. It is humanity’s only presence outside the Solar System. But a new and powerful telescope at L5 can detect no evidence of Phaeton Base, even though it should be able to. So the US has sent Brigadier Colonel Bradley Elliott, USAF, to investigate. Twenty years before, Elliott was the first, and to date only, man to land on the Martian surface. What he discovered there gave the US the stars, but it might also be responsible for the disappearance of Phaeton Base…

Already acclaimed for providing unique insight into some of history’s greatest wrongs—and today’s issues of mass surveillance, neofascism, and the individual’s role in society—what does Wolfgang Hilbig have to add to contemporary questions about gender? A lot, it turns out. Acclaimed as one of Hilbig’s major works, The Females finds the lauded and legendarily irascible author focusing his labyrinthine, mercurial mind on how unequal societies can pervert sexuality and destroy a healthy, productive understanding of gender.

It begins with a factory laborer who ogles women in secret on the job. When those same women mysteriously vanish from their small town, the worker sets out on a uniquely Hilbiggian, hallucinatory journey to find them. Powerful and at times disturbing, The Females leaves us with some of the most challenging, radical, and enduring insights of any novel from the GDR.

A classic of Mexican literature in the twentieth century, The Hole is a dazzlingly devastating novella

Set in a Mexican prison in the late 1960s, The Hole follows three inmates as they plot to sneak in drugs under the noses of their ape-like guards. The inmates desperately need to secure their next fix, and hatch a plan that involves convincing one of their mothers to bring the drugs into the prison, inside her person. But everything about their plan is doomed from the beginning, doomed to end in violence…

Unfolding in a single paragraph, The Hole is a verbal torrent, a prison inside a prison, and an ominous parable about how deformed and wretched institutions create even more deformed and wretched individuals.

Veteran epidemiologist Carla Edwards has been dispatched by the C.D.C. to investigate a cluster of inexplicable mutations among the young people of Innsmouth, a sickly and destitute town on the Massachusetts coast. Initially skeptical, she rapidly discovers that the true mystery is older and more horrifying than anything for which her training has prepared her. As the danger mounts, a double helix of history and urban folklore draws her inexorably to the door of a sinister, evangelical cult – and beyond the limits of her science and belief.

A brand new stand-alone deep space adventure from Alastair Reynolds, featuring the author’s long-running character Merlin, who has previously appeared in “Merlin’s Gun” (1999), “Hideaway” (2000) and “Minla’s Flowers” (2007).

When Merlin encounters the derelict hulk of an old swallowship drifting in the middle of nowhere, he can't resist investigating. He soon finds himself involved in a situation that proves far more complex than he ever anticipated.

The Iron Tactician is the first in a new series of NewCon Press novellas. The series will be issued in sets of four, with each set featuring cover art by the same artist – one piece of artwork divided between the four covers.

The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window is an award-winning fantasy novella by Rachel Swirsky. It explores the conjunction of invocation, deep time, and culture shock. It was originally published in Subterranean Magazine, in the summer of 2010, and subsequently republished in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011 (from Prime Books) and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 5 (from Night Shade Books).Naeva—the Lady of the story’s title—is a sorceress in a matriarchy. After being fatally injured, she is persuaded to allow her spirit to be bound, so that she can be summoned and thus continue to advise her queen. However, after the queen has herself died, Naeva continues to be summoned… first by the queen’s successor, and then by people from civilizations later than hers.The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window can be read for free by following the official URL.LITERARY AWARDS:• Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella (2011)• Nebula Award for Best Novella (2011)

What’s more frightening: Not knowing who you are? Or finding out? A Bram Stoker Award–winning author explores the answer in a chilling story about identity and human consciousness.

Imagine you’ve woken up in an unfamiliar room with no memory of who you are, how you got there, or where you were before. All you have is the disconnected voice of an attentive caretaker. Dr. Kuhn is there to help you—physically, emotionally, and psychologically. She’ll help you remember everything. She’ll make sure you reclaim your lost identity. Now answer one question: Are you sure you want to?

Paul Tremblay’s The Last Conversation is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.