Tordotcom – serie

In his training as a spy, Ro was warned: you will always be living a lie.Jumping into a Star Eater's mind in the first place requires a moment of perfect psychic connection, and he has studied all his life to comprehend their species. Admires them, respects them, is reverent at the idea of being one of them—the only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for lightyearspanning space travel. The species all others crave to know more of, but who have notoriously shared so very little. The species Ro's own small civilization, with its dwindling resources and withering reach, needs to know more about.It will feel real, his elders impressed upon him. It will never be real.But Ro's certainty runs deep: he will be different. Ro will not be an imposter hiding the truth of his past, because his heart will be one of them. He will be one of them.To understand is to become. It never occurs to him that the mere act of understanding can destroy.

Ignyte Award-winning author C. L. Clark brings fantasy to the fens with Fate's Bane, a tragic sapphic adventure.Warring clans. Burning hearts. Deadly fate.The clans of the fens enjoy a tenuous peace, and it is all thanks to Agnir, ward and hostage. For as long as she can remember she has lived among the enemy, learning their ways, growing strong alongside their children. When a burgeoning love for the chieftain’s daughter lures them both to a hidden spring, a magic awakens in them that could bind the clans under one banner at last—or destroy any hope of peace. By working their intentions into leather, they can weave misfortune for their enemies… just like the Fate’s Bane that haunts the legends of the clans.Ambitions grow in their fathers’ hearts, grudges threaten a return to violence, and greedy enemies wait outside the borders, seeking a foothold to claim the fens for themselves. And though their Makings may save their families, the legend that gave them this power always exacts its price.

"Nghi Vo is so good."—NPR on The Brides of High HillEvery story begins somewhere.On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst—lazy, violent, unwanted—while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.Cleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric’s job is to listen andrecord, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.In the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.The novellas of the Singing Hills series are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.The Empress of Salt and FortuneWhen the Tiger Came Down the MountainInto the RiverlandsMammoths at the GatesThe Brides of High HillA Mouthful of Dust

At a Halloween party in 1999, a writer slept with the devil. She sees him again and again throughout her life and she writes stories for him about things that are both impossible and true.Lima lures readers into surreal pockets of the United States and Brazil where they’ll find bite-size Americans in vending machines and the ghosts of people who are not dead. Once there, she speaks to modern Brazilian-American immigrant experiences of ambition, fear, longing, and belonging - and reveals the porousness of storytelling and of the places we call home.With humour, an exquisite imagination, and a voice praised as “singular and wise and fresh” (Cathy Park Hong), Lima joins the literary lineage of Bulgakov and Lispector and the company of writers today like Ted Chiang, Carmen Maria Machado, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil includes: “Rapture,” “Ghost Story,” “Tropicália,” “Antropógaga,” “Idle Hands,” “Rent,” “Porcelain,” “Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory,” and “Hasselblad.”A great next read for fans of Carmen Maria Machado's Her Body and Other Parties and V. E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.Recommended reading by Chicago Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and more!

Shirley Jackson and Nebula Award finalist author Eden Royce pens a Southern Gothic historical fantasy story of a contentious funeral in her adult fiction debut.Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well.When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp—the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.

Forged in FIYAH showcases the extraordinary talent and innovation of contemporary Black science fiction and fantasy. Coinciding with the tenth anniversary of FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, this collection ofeighteen stories features tales from mainstays of genre fiction alongside the dynamic, groundbreaking work of several of FIYAH's most promising newcomers.From pop-up funeral homes between worlds to magical healing silks; from second chance afterlives to creepy, sinister dolls; and from kindhearted killing machines to a vampire with a conscience, these stories of science fiction, fantasy, and horror are unlike anything you have read before.Hopeful, defiant, glorious, and joyful, Forged in FIYAH is a landmark celebration of everything Black speculative fiction has to offer!Featuring stories by: Maurice Broaddus, MH Ayinde, Tonja K Johnson, C.L. Clark, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, WC Dunlap, Veronica G. Henry, Sheree Renée Thomas, Tonya R. Moore, Brent Lambert, Tobi Ogundiran, Tade Thompson, Nelson Rolon, Eden Royce, Eboni Dunbar, Yvette Ndlovu, Emmalia Harrington, and LD Lewis

This is How You Lose the Time War meets Ex Machina: Seth Haddon's science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the alert goes out that a lucrative piece of tech lies hidden on a nearby planet, she calls on all the swiftness of her prey-animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized and realized: I was alive.Masks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole. Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.

"A gorgeously tender exploration of human connection in a post-human universe."—The Washington Post, on Volatile MemoryWith her identity erased from the Corporate Federation, Wylla is a ghost in the machine: untraceable, unpredictable, and fueled by vengeance. She fights alongside Sable, the digital consciousness she loves in ways no system could ever define. Together, they’ve built a reputation for tearing through VisorForge’scarefully constructed lies.But notoriety has a cost.When one of their attacks draws the attention of the Edenic Order—a clandestine eco-resistance whose insurgents bloom with Old Earth flora—Wylla and Sable are offered something more than revenge: a chance to dismantle VisorForge from the roots up.As they fall deeper into the Order’s radical vision, tensions rise. Wylla: aching to change the world yet seduced by thoughts of a quiet life, free of bloodshed. Sable: pushed to her morals’ limits when what she’s wanted since death is at her fingertips.To survive, they’ll need to embrace what makes them dangerous: two minds, one body, and a shared resolve to bring down a corporatized dystopia—no matter the cost.

For three hundred years, humanity’s greatest works of art have been on loan at the Greenwood Museum. It was finally time for them to come home...but the alien curators were disinclined to return them.Force was out of the question. Earth’s government was clear: they were not going to press the issue. So, all we had was guile and hubris to fuel our little intergalactic art heist.My old friend Tarquin was our leader, but not the captain. That was Tchik-tchik, though whether Tchik-tchik was our insectoid pilot’s name or species is still unclear to me. Misora, with her extremely illegal biotech mods, was our muscle.Jack was there to hack the security systems of the biggest museum in the galaxy. He was a sensynth, a sentient synthetic being, and the most powerful machine intelligence on Earth uncorrupted by alien technology.My name is Fennel Tycho. I’d like to tell you I was there because of my expertise in Art History. Truth is, I was there because without me, Jack would not have agreed to go. He was notorious for being difficult to work with—but it was a mistake to think I could make things any easier.A meditation on the nature of love, life, and the "culture of the copy," And Side by Side They Wander asks the question: In a future where there are clones, androids, and a sentient mycelium that creates fungal simulacra, who is real and what is fake?

A trio of witches (local priest, local crank, local magic shop owner) work to save the sleepy hamlet of Lychford—and by extension, the world!—from supernatural forces bent on its destruction.And the village is gradually waking up to the fact that Lychford lies on the boundaries between worlds, and that the destruction of the border will open wide the gateways to malevolent beings beyond imagination.Can the witches and the leaders of the local village council hold out against unimaginable forces form beyond the... well, from beyond lots of places, actually!

An Amazon Editor's Best Sci-Fi & Fantasy PickWith nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the alert goes out that a lucrative piece of tech lies hidden on a nearby planet, she calls on all the swiftness of her prey-animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized and realized: I was alive.Masks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.

Come one, come all to the dinosaur rodeo!Tif Tamim wants nothing more than to be a dinosaur buckaroo. An orphan in search of a place to rest his head and a job to weigh down his pockets, Tif has bounced from circus to circus, yearning for a chance to ride a prehistoric beauty under the sparkling lights of a big-top.To become a buckaroo, Tif needs to learn the tools of the trade, yet few dino maestros want to take a scrawny nobody from nowhere under their wing. But when Tif frees a dino from an abusive owner and braves the roving gangs of the formerly-American west to bring the dino to safety, he catches someone’s eye. And boy, how those eyes dazzle Tif from the back of a bucking carnotaur.

O Lord, deliver us.Doctor Liz has just been acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota when she's kidnapped.They're not just any kidnappers, but a fundamentalist cult, deep in the rural west, without respect for law or decency, and in desperate need of an OB/GYN.Guarded, isolated, without access to the outside world, Liz nevertheless is treated with respect as the only doctor on the compound, but she is very aware of what happened to the last obstetrician they kidnapped.She must escape, and bring help to the girls trapped at the compound, if it's the last thing she does.

Book 4: In an Absent DreamBook 5: Come Tumbling DownBook 6: Across the Green Grass FieldsChildren have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.Meet Lundy, who makes an ill-fated bargain in a goblin market; reunite with Jack as she realizes a scientist has done something truly mad to her; and meet Regan who discovers a world of centaurs, kelpies, and other magical equines.Three worlds, three adventures, three sets of lives destined to intersect.Eleanor West's Home for Wayward ChildrenNo Solicitations / No Visitors / No QuestsBut quests are what these children do best...