Download or read book Steampunk An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories written by Gavin J. Grant and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2011-10-11 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first major YA steampunk anthology, fourteen top storytellers push the genre's mix of sci-fi, fantasy, history, and adventure in fascinating new directions. Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and re-craft a world of automatons, clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that never were. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, utopian revolutionaries, and intrepid orphans solve crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships. Here, fourteen masters of speculative fiction, including two graphic storytellers, embrace the genre's established themes and refashion them in surprising ways and settings as diverse as Appalachia, ancient Rome, future Australia, and alternate California. Visionaries Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant have invited all-new explorations and expansions, taking a genre already rich, strange, and inventive in the extreme and challenging contributors to remake it from the ground up. The result is an anthology that defies its genre even as it defines it.
Download or read book Monstrous Affections written by Gavin J. Grant and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen top voices in speculative fiction explore the intersection of fear and love in a haunting, at times hilarious, darkly imaginative volume. Predatory kraken that sing with — and for — their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side by side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you’ll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today’s top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders. With monstrous stories by M. T. Anderson Paolo Bacigalupi Nathan Ballingrud Holly Black Sarah Rees Brennan Cassandra Clare Nalo Hopkinson Dylan Horrocks Nik Houser Alice Sola Kim Kathleen Jennings Joshua Lewis Kelly Link Patrick Ness G. Carl Purcell
Download or read book To Say Nothing of the Dog written by Connie Willis and published by Bantam. This book was released on 1998-12-01 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel . . . Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He’s been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It’s part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past. Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right—not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.
Download or read book The Difference Engine written by William Gibson and published by Spectra. This book was released on 2011-07-26 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1855: The Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race toward a rendezvous with history—and the future: Sybil Gerard—a fallen woman, politician’s tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator Edward “Leviathan” Mallory—explorer and paleontologist Laurence Oliphant—diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for…. Part detective story, part historical thriller, The Difference Engine is the collaborative masterpiece by two of the most acclaimed science fiction authors writing today. Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, it is a startling extension of Gibson’s and Sterling’s unique visions—and the beginning of movement we know today as “steampunk!”
Download or read book Rags Bones written by Melissa Marr and published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best writers of our generation retell classic tales. From Sir Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories, the ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them, the ones that have become ingrained in modern culture, and the ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these stories and boil them down to their bones, and reassemble them for a new generation of readers. Written from a twenty-first century perspective and set within the realms of science fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, and realistic fiction, these short stories are as moving and thought provoking as their originators. They pay homage to groundbreaking literary achievements of the past while celebrating each author's unique perception and innovative style.
Download or read book Boy Parts written by Eliza Clark and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023 'Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp.' JESSICA ANDREWS 'Will make most readers howl with laughter and/or shut their eyes in horror.' GUARDIAN **Pre-order Eliza Clark's next novel, PENANCE, now** Irina is in a rut. She obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts from the streets of Newcastle while her dead-end bar job slips away; she's more interested in drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. When she's offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery which promises to revive her career in the art world, it should feel like an escape. But the news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, drawing in her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention . . . BOY PARTS is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboos of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century. 'Smart, stylish, and very funny.' LARA WILLIAMS 'Boundaries are for breaking and if anyone can crash through and reinterpret the fear of our time, Eliza Clark can.' MSLEXIA 'A carnival funhouse ride: terrifying, feverish, hilarious.' JULIA ARMFIELD WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: 'A dark, funny, nasty book. Brilliantly written, annoyingly good.' 5* reader review 'I am obsessed.' 5* reader review 'Both shocking and darkly funny, this razor-sharp debut is unlike anything I've read before.' 5* reader review 'I loved this, properly loved it!!' 5* reader review 'Left me both in awe and totally disturbed. Wow.' 5* reader review
Download or read book 13 Little Blue Envelopes written by Maureen Johnson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-06 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s funny, heartbreaking, and utterly romantic tale gets a great new cover! Ginny Blackstone never thought she’d spend her summer vacation backpacking across Europe. But that was before she received the first little blue envelope from Aunt Peg. This letter was different from Peg’s usual letters for two reasons: 1. Peg had been dead for three months. 2. The letter included $1000 cash for a passport and a plane ticket. Armed with instructions for how to retrieve twelve other letters Peg wrote—twelve letters that tell Ginny where she needs to go and what she needs to do when she gets there—Ginny quickly finds herself swept away in her first real adventure. Traveling from London to Edinburgh to Amsterdam and beyond, Ginny begins to uncover stories from her aunt’s past and discover who Peg really was. But the most surprising thing Ginny learns isn’t about Peg . . . it’s about herself. Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it’s all because of the 13 little blue envelopes. Look for the sequel, The Last Little Blue Envelope!
Download or read book The Book of Magic written by George R. R. Martin and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new anthology celebrating the witches and sorcerers of epic fantasy—featuring stories by George R. R. Martin, Scott Lynch, Megan Lindholm, and many others! Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois’s acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf . . . and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda . . . and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore . . . and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped—or misshaped—by the potent magic they seek to wield. Yet though their abilities may be godlike, these men and women remain human—some might say all too human. Such is their curse. And their glory. In these pages, seventeen of today’s top fantasy writers—including award-winners Elizabeth Bear, John Crowley, Kate Elliott, K. J. Parker, Tim Powers, and Liz Williams—cast wondrous spells that thrillingly evoke the mysterious, awesome, and at times downright terrifying worlds where magic reigns supreme: worlds as far away as forever, and as near as next door. FEATURING SIXTEEN ALL-NEW STORIES: “The Return of the Pig” by K. J. Parker “Community Service” by Megan Lindholm “Flint and Mirror” by John Crowley “The Friends of Masquelayne the Incomparable” by Matthew Hughes “The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror: Chapter Two: Jumping Jack in Love” by Ysabeau S. Wilce “Song of Fire” by Rachel Pollack “Loft the Sorcerer” by Eleanor Arnason “The Governor” by Tim Powers “Sungrazer” by Liz Williams “The Staff in the Stone” by Garth Nix “No Work of Mine” by Elizabeth Bear “Widow Maker” by Lavie Tidhar “The Wolf and the Manticore” by Greg Van Eekhout “The Devil’s Whatever” by Andy Duncan “Bloom” by Kate Elliott “The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril” by Scott Lynch Plus George R. R. Martin’s classic story “A Night at the Tarn House” and an introduction by Gardner Dozois Praise for The Book of Magic “In The Book of Magic, you get everything you expect and more! Assembling seventeen great authors in one place is a difficult job but this book, with a lot of help from editor Gardner Dozois, does just that. . . . This compilation is a treat for any who love a good fantasy tale.”—Geeks of Doom
Download or read book lost boy lost girl written by Peter Straub and published by Random House. This book was released on 2003-10-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son—beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill—vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death. After his sister-in-law’s funeral, Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house on Michigan Street whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story, and Tim Underhill comes to fear that in investigating its unspeakable history, Mark stumbled across its last and greatest secret: a ghostly lost girl who may have coaxed the needy, suggestible boy into her mysterious domain. With lost boy lost girl, Peter Straub affirms once again that he is the master of literary horror.
Download or read book Pretty Monsters written by Kelly Link and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crossover literary sensation...now in paperback! Through the lens of Kelly Link's vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. From the multiple award- winning "The Faery Handbag," in which a teenager's grandmother carries an entire village (or is it a man-eating dog?) in her handbag, to the near-future of "The Surfer," whose narrator (a soccer-playing skeptic) waits with a planeload of refugees for the aliens to arrive, these ten stories are funny and full of unexpected insights and skewed perspectives on the world. Kelly Link's fans range from Michael Chabon to Peter Buck of R.E.M. to Holly Black of Spiderwick Chronicles fame. Now teens can have their world rocked too!
Download or read book The Steampunk User s Manual written by Jeff VanderMeer and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2015-11-25 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive guide to Steampunk creations of all kinds offers inspiration and practical tips for bringing your own retro-futuristic visions to life. Whether you’re a newbie to the world of Steampunk, or a long-time enthusiast of airships, goggles, and mad scientists, The Steampunk User’s Manual is essential reading. The popular subgenre of science fiction has grown into a cultural movement; one that invites fans to let their imaginations go wild. In this volume, Jeff VanderMeer—the renowned expert in all things Steampunk—presents a practical and inspirational guidance for finding your own path into this realm. Including sections on art, fashion, architecture, crafts, music, performance, and storytelling, The Steampunk User's Manual provides a conceptual how-to guide on everything from the utterly doable to the completely over-the-top.
Download or read book The Freedom Maze written by Delia Sherman and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Multilayered, compassionate, and thought-provoking." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Thirteen-year-old Sophie isn’t happy about spending the summer of 1960 at her grandmother’s old house in the bayou. Bored and lonely, she can’t resist exploring the house’s maze, or making an impulsive wish for a fantasy-book adventure with herself as the heroine. What she gets instead is a real adventure: a trip back in time to 1860 and the race-haunted world of her family’s Louisiana sugar plantation. Here, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation is still two years in the future and passage of the Thirteenth Amendment is almost four years away. And here, Sophie is mistaken, by her own ancestors, for a slave.
Download or read book Stories of Your Life and Others written by Ted Chiang and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2010-10-26 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Exhalation, an award-winning short story collection that blends "absorbing storytelling with meditations on the universe, being, time and space ... raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human" (The New York Times). Stories of Your Life and Others delivers dual delights of the very, very strange and the heartbreakingly familiar, often presenting characters who must confront sudden change—the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens—with some sense of normalcy. With sharp intelligence and humor, Chiang examines what it means to be alive in a world marked by uncertainty, but also by beauty and wonder. An award-winning collection from one of today's most lauded writers, Stories of Your Life and Others is a contemporary classic. Includes “Story of Your Life”—the basis for the major motion picture Arrival
Download or read book Speaking from Among the Bones written by Alan Bradley and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From award-winning author Alan Bradley comes the next cozy British mystery starring intrepid young sleuth Flavia de Luce, hailed by USA Today as “one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.” Eleven-year-old amateur detective and ardent chemist Flavia de Luce is used to digging up clues, whether they’re found among the potions in her laboratory or between the pages of her insufferable sisters’ diaries. What she is not accustomed to is digging up bodies. Upon the five-hundredth anniversary of St. Tancred’s death, the English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacey is busily preparing to open its patron saint’s tomb. Nobody is more excited to peek inside the crypt than Flavia, yet what she finds will halt the proceedings dead in their tracks: the body of Mr. Collicutt, the church organist, his face grotesquely and inexplicably masked. Who held a vendetta against Mr. Collicutt, and why would they hide him in such a sacred resting place? The irrepressible Flavia decides to find out. And what she unearths will prove there’s never such thing as an open-and-shut case. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Alan Bradley’s The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches. Acclaim for Speaking from Among the Bones “[Alan] Bradley scores another success. . . . This series is a grown-up version of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and all those mysteries you fell in love with as a child.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune “The precocious and irrepressible Flavia . . . continues to delight.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Fiendishly brilliant . . . Bradley has created an utterly charming cast of characters . . . as quirky as any British mystery fan could hope for.”—Bookreporter “Delightful and entertaining.”—San Jose Mercury News
Download or read book In the Night Room written by Peter Straub and published by Random House. This book was released on 2004-10-26 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his latest soul-chilling novel, bestselling author Peter Straub tells of a famous children’s book author who, in the wake of a grotesque accident, realizes that the most basic facts of her existence, including her existence itself, have come into question. Willy Patrick, the respected author of the award-winning young-adult novel In the Night Room, thinks she is losing her mind–again. One day, she is drawn helplessly into the parking lot of a warehouse. She knows somehow that her daughter, Holly, is being held in the building, and she has an overwhelming need to rescue her. But what Willy knows is impossible, for her daughter is dead. On the same day, author Timothy Underhill, who has been struggling with a new book about a troubled young woman, is confronted with the ghost of his nine-year-old sister, April. Soon after, he begins to receive eerie, fragmented e-mails that he finally realizes are from people he knew in his youth–people now dead. Like his sister, they want urgently to tell him something. When Willy and Timothy meet, the frightening parallels between Willy’s tragic loss and the story in Tim’s manuscript suggest that they must join forces to confront the evils surrounding them.
Download or read book Once Upon a Time in the Weird West written by Astrid Amara and published by Dreamspinner Press LLC. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you like your westerns with a splash of magic, a touch of steampunk, and plenty of passionate romance between men, hold on to your hat! The West is about to get weird.
Download or read book Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales written by Brian Jacques and published by Red Fox. This book was released on 2014-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a wonderfully creepy collection of stories featuring vampires, mummies and ghouls galore. And like all the best tales, the troublemakers always receive a grisly comeuppance!
