The Fourth Zaldizko by Veronica Purcell (2020)

The sequel to Zaldizko, and book two of the Seriphyn Knight saga.

Healing Rites by Mattea (2021)

Lexie was once one of England's most powerful mages. Until a stroke left xem unable to access xeir magic. Waking up with only limited speech and hemiplegia would be bad enough but the loss of magic is devastating to Lexie. These 6 stories chart Lexie's coming to terms with the changes in xeir life and those xe helps recover, especially Erica, a carer with a rather unusual relationship to her body. Multiple Enby characters! Magic! No magical recovery minimising disability! Friendly dead people! Survivors of trauma and illness living well! The PDF and ebook are hyperlinked and bookmarked for convenience. The preview file contains the prologue and the first story, Hollowed, where Lexie and Erica meet and they both start their journeys of coming to terms with how life can be changed so completely from what we knew before. It is not bookmaarked and doesn't have much in the way of formatting. All six stories are original to this anthology, which forms a complete story in itself. Content warnings (Numbers in brackets signify that only those numbered stories contain that content): Descriptions of violence (1), Abusive relationship dynamics (emotional abuse) (1, 3), Body Horror (1, 3, 5), Discussions of euthanasia (2), Death, Addiction (3, 6), Self Harm (6), Alcohol mentioned (4), Body image (1, 3, 5), Mental health, unreality/hallucinations,

Ship of Theseus by Dale Johnson (2020)

Ship Of Theseus: A Novel written and illustrated by Jeremiah Strickland is the tale of a grieving writer who has a terrifying existential crisis in the haunted apartment of an art-dealer before traveling 150 years into the future of another universe to meet Skyrat, the superhero he created when he was 7. It’s a darkly funny, disturbing, action packed, mind-fuck of a ride that’s being called “Wildly entertaining,” and “Unlike anything I’ve ever read.”

The Shivering Ground & Other Stories by Sara Barkat (2021)

The Shivering Ground & Other Stories is a National Indie Excellence Awards finalist, a collection of weird fiction with a steampunk aesthetic. In "The Door at the End of the Path" a young girl discovers her parents' secret in their gothic house with a garden behind it... in "Conditions" a man with Frankenstein-ian aspirations gets a visit from his twin sister, who tells him about the disappearance of her ex-lover. "The Eternal In-Between" details a narrator's dream during the plague, while "The Mannequin" explains a medical procedure that involves taking out one's heart. "Brianna" retells Sleeping Beauty with a dark twist, and "Noticing" is post-apocalyptic fiction about a man and an alien creature obsessed with extinct birds, stuck on earth during the end of it all. "Entanglement" tells the story of love between two soldiers, and "The Day Before Tomorrow" tells the story of friendship between two young girls in an ordinary suburb, that is being slowly eaten away by a vastness of char and bones. "It's Already Too Late" is a fatalistic group of people's response to the changes in their world, and "The Shivering Ground" creates a narrative between a guard and their winged captive in a post-war city, intertwined with music. "A Universe Akilter," the collection's only novella, a love story in epistolary format, tells of the meetings, through dreams, between a failed playwright and a young painter who live in different dimensions.

Tu sueño imperios han sido by Álvaro Enrigue (2022)

Hernán Cortés entra en Mehxicoh-Tenoxtitlan con sus nueve capitanes, sus dos traductores –el fraile Aguilar y Malinalli, intérprete y amante–, su tropa y sus caballos. Allí los agasaja con una comida la princesa Atotoxtli, hermana y esposa de Moctezuma, acompañada por los sacerdotes, y más adelante el propio emperador Moctezuma recibirá al caudillo Cortés. Unos no han visto jamás en su vida caballos, los otros nunca hasta ahora han probado el chocolate. Los españoles son bien recibidos en la ciudad, pero uno de los subalternos de Cortés, Jazmín Caldera, no se atreve a decirle que lo preocupante nunca había sido cómo llegar a Tenoxtitlan, sino cómo salir una vez que estuvieran adentro. El ocho de noviembre de 1519 se produce el encuentro entre Cortés y Moctezuma, a quien nadie puede mirar directamente a la cara si él no le da primero su permiso. Es el encuentro entre dos mundos, dos imperios, dos idiomas, dos cosmovisiones. ¿Qué sucedió? ¿Qué pudo suceder? ¿Dónde acaba la verdad y empieza la leyenda? ¿Cómo abordar la historia desde la ficción? Álvaro Enrigue ha escrito una poderosa narración: una versión posible del encuentro que cambió la historia del mundo, una novela envuelta en misterios, violencia, ansias de poder y sueños que han sido imperios.

If You Could See the Sun by Ann Liang (2022)

Alice Sun has always felt invisible at her elite Beijing international boarding school, where she’s the only scholarship student among China’s most rich and influential teens. But then she starts uncontrollably turning invisible— actually invisible. When her parents drop the news that they can no longer afford her tuition, even with the scholarship, Alice hatches a plan to monetize her strange new power—she’ll discover the scandalous secrets her classmates want to know, for a price. But as the tasks escalate from petty scandals to actual crimes, Alice must decide if it’s worth losing her conscience—or even her life.

My Glass is Runn by Die Booth (2016)

Some things are worth the risk… A reclusive genius builds a menagerie in the woods. Two greedy generations fall foul of a family curse, and Bertie discovers just exactly what is at the bottom of the ball pit. An underestimated fashion model becomes the architect of her own eerie design. The only survivors of a modern epidemic are the ones who can’t hear the voices. Hypnotherapy removes Bill’s fear – or so he thinks, until he realises it’s been replaced with something worse. And is Carmen Bren’s best friend, or a symptom of his addiction? From the Cheshire Prize for Literature finalist and author of Spirit Houses and 365 Lies, come fourteen creepy tales for grown-ups who never grew up. Make sure you leave the light on – and whatever you do, remember to check under the bed…

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones (2017)

Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew. The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost.

The Beasts of Electra Drive by Rohan Quine (2018)

***THE BEASTS OF ELECTRA DRIVE*, a novel by Rohan Quine** http://www.rohanquine.com/the-beasts-of-electra-drive/ **From Hollywood Hills mansions and Century City towers, to South Central motels and the oceanside refinery, *The Beasts of Electra Drive* by Rohan Quine spans a mythic L.A., following seven spectacular characters (or Beasts) from games designer Jaymi’s game-worlds. The intensity of those Beasts’ creation cycles leads to their release into real life in seemingly human forms, and to their combative protection of him from destructive rivals at mainstream company Bang Dead Games. Grand spaces of beauty interlock with narrow rooms of terror, both in the real world and in the incorporeal world of cyberspace. A prequel to Quine’s existing five tales, *The Beasts of Electra Drive* is a unique explosion of glamour and beauty, horror and enchantment, exploring the mechanisms and magic of creativity itself.** Jaymi is an independent games designer living on Electra Drive in the Hollywood Hills. Opposed to him are his former colleagues at Bang Dead Games. Their mounting competitiveness regarding his own extravagant game-creation reaches a point where they attack him physically with a flying drone. Bang Dead is preparing the global release of a game called *Ain’tTheyFreaky!*, centring on five tabloid-flavoured social-media “Newsfeeds” for the victimisation of certain people by others—the “Gal Score”, “Guy Score”, “Trivia Score”, “Arts Score” and “Cosy Score”. Jaymi decides to fight back, for self-protection and to counteract this game’s destructive effects. He takes an irrevocable step: after creating Amber, the most dangerous of the characters (or Beasts, as he calls them) who will populate Jaymi’s project *The Platinum Raven*, he releases Amber from that game, such that Amber slithers out of Jaymi’s computer monitor. Appearing human, this now-incarnated Beast is sent to stalk *Ain’tTheyFreaky!*’s creators in real life—developer Dud Guy, visual designer Kelly, IT boss Ashley and programmer Herb. While Amber terrorises them, Jaymi creates a second Beast, Evelyn, a woman of ease and freedom, from his project *The Imagination Thief*. Incarnated too, she joins Amber in sabotaging a Bang Dead venture in the physical world. As Jaymi’s output spawns three more titles—*The Host in the Attic*, *Apricot Eyes* and *Hallucination in Hong Kong*—he jumps into the creation cycles and subsequent incarnations of five more varied and human-seeming Beasts. These are Shigem, Kim, the Platinum Raven, Scorpio, and his own simulacrum the Jaymi Beast. Targeted by a more lethal drone attack than the first one, he decides that his Beasts’ missions must escalate: they will infiltrate the very substance of *Ain’tTheyFreaky!*. Evelyn, Shigem and Kim therefore sneak into one of the game’s visual environments (a mythically seedy Downtown L.A.), where they try to put an end to some of the casually-programmed cruelty in the game. Shigem shames one Bang Dead programmer into secretly working for Jaymi instead; and Kim persuades another high-ranking Bang Dead employee to join Jaymi likewise. Five of the Beasts proceed to sabotage *Ain’tTheyFreaky!* at code level, turning its own server farm into a radically different kind of environment from before. Their sabotage takes aim at the game in such a way as to break it down into its constituent glyphs and pixels—then electrifies these, recombining them into brand-new forms of such enchanted love and wickedness and originality that they’d certainly have been forbidden by Bang Dead. Amid the resultant conflict, a Beast is sent to kill a human; a Beast is arrested, before escaping and wreaking revenge; and another human is lashed to the top of the transmitter tower above the Hollywood Sign, where… After the ensuing convulsions of destruction and violent creation have run their course, Jaymi’s Beasts slip away to their appointed onscreen destinations, one by one; and he is left alone again, just as he was before he brought them into being. As he fires up his newly-completed game *The Imagination Thief* for the first time, however, it is clear that neither he nor the world around him will ever quite be as before.

Dead by Morning by Kayla Krantz (2018)

"He was real, and he was a monster." Obsession is deadly. No one learns that better than Luna Ketz, a pessimistic high school senior. Caught between the intentions of her stern father and business-minded mother, boys are the last thing on Luna’s mind, but this fact doesn’t detour mysterious bad boy Chance Welfrey from trying to gain her affection. Luna doesn’t think twice about him until girls at their high school begin to disappear. Girls who tended to hurt her. Girls she wished would disappear. When she receives a call from a long-lost friend, normalcy goes out the window as she’s plunged into the paranormal. There’s a world beneath the surface of the unconscious mind, and the killer knows how to navigate it. Luna is in danger and although she can avoid the killer in reality, she cannot avoid him in her dreams. *Rated for mature adult themes and depictions of violence*

salt slow by Julia Armfield (2019)

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

저주 토끼 [Jeoju tokki] by Bora Chung (2021)

From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique and imaginative, blending horror, sci-fi, fairy tales, and speculative fiction into stories that defy categorization. By turns thought-provoking and stomach-turning, here monsters take the shapes of furry woodland creatures and danger lurks in unexpected corners of everyday apartment buildings. But in this unforgettable collection, translated by the acclaimed Anton Hur, Chung’s absurd, haunting universe could be our own. “The Head” follows a woman haunted by her own bodily waste. “The Embodiment” takes us into a dystopian gynecology office where a pregnant woman is told that she must find a father for her baby or face horrific consequences. Another story follows a young monster, forced into underground fight rings without knowing his own power. The titular fable centers on a cursed lamp in the shape of a rabbit, fit for a child’s bedroom but for its sinister capabilities. No two stories are alike, and readers will be torn whether to race through them or savor Chung’s wit and frenetic energy on every page. Cursed Bunny is a book that screams to be read late into the night and passed on to the nearest set of hands the very next day.

The Changeling by Victor D. LaValle (2017)

"The wildly imaginative story of one man's thrilling odyssey through an enchanted world to find his wife, who has disappeared after having seemingly committed an unforgivable act of violence, from the award-winning author of The Devil in Silver and Big Machine"-- "Apollo Kagwa has had strange dreams that have haunted him since childhood. An antiquarian book dealer with a business called Improbabilia, he is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange. Disconnected and uninterested in their new baby boy, Emma at first seems to be exhibiting all the signs of post-partum depression, but it quickly becomes clear that her troubles go far beyond that. Before Apollo can do anything to help, Emma commits a horrific act--beyond any parent's comprehension--and vanishes, seemingly into thin air. Thus begins Apollo's odyssey through a world he only thought he understood to find a wife and child who are nothing like he'd imagined. His quest begins when he meets a mysterious stranger who claims to have information about Emma's whereabouts. Apollo then begins a journey that takes him to a forgotten island in the East River of New York City, a graveyard full of secrets, a forest in Queens where immigrant legends still live, and finally back to a place he thought he had lost forever. This dizzying tale is ultimately a story about family and the unfathomable secrets of the people we love"--

The Girl I Was by Jeneva Rose (2021)

Alexis Spencer will use any inspirational quote to rationalize her failures and shortcomings. Her closest friends are a distant memory, and her college debt is still as high as the day she left. But that's all fine and dandy, because "whatever will be, will be." However, when Alexis loses her job and her relationship on the same day, there's no quote strong enough to get her through that. In typical fashion, she blames the world for her problems, including her younger self, who should have tried harder. Feeling sorry for herself, Alexis finds a bottle of vodka from her college days and goes on a bender, blacking out in the process. Only this time, she doesn't wake up at home, or in the right city. In fact, she isn't even in the right year. Alexis is back in her college town in the year 2002. Convinced this is her chance to do things over, she heads to her dorm--and comes face-to-face with her eighteen-year-old unruly self, who goes by Lexi because it's "sexier." Getting acclimated to life in the early 2000s is the easy part. Dealing with Lexi is where things prove difficult. They might be the same person, but they couldn't be more different from one another. Now Alexis and Lexi must learn to get along and come to terms with the fact that alone, they will never make things right, but together, they could change their life for the better.

Лисьи броды by Анна Старобинец (2022)

«Лисьи Броды» — новый роман Анны Старобинец, приключенческий мистический триллер про затерянное на русско-маньчжурской границе проклятое место, в котором китайские лисы-оборотни встречаются с советскими офицерами, а беглые зэки — с даосом, владеющим тайной бессмертия. Захватывающее и страшное путешествие в сердце тьмы, где каждый находит то, что он заслужил: кто-то — любовь, иные — смерть, и абсолютно все — свою единственно верную, предначертанную то ли богом, то ли чертом судьбу.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (2020)

Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day. Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (2023)

Finding seeds of inspiration in the stories of the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers—characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose. In “The White Cat’s Divorce,” an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which child will become his heir. In “The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear,” a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In “Skinder’s Veil,” a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers—or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche. Twisting and turning in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable—these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the realm of short fiction.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova (2023)

Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses-though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care-threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.

Weyward by Emilia Hart (2023)

**KATE, 2019** Kate flees London – abandoning everything – for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century. **VIOLET, 1942** Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever. **ALTHA, 1619** Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated. But Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed… Weaving together the stories of three women across five centuries, Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

The King of Evil by Eileen Gillick (2024)