Showing results by narrator "Amy Landon" in All Categories

The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions.

Aurora was raised to lead, with the expectation that she will one day become ruler of the Mer of Triste Island. There’s just one problem. Nobody’s bothered to ask Aurora if she wants to be queen. Chafing at the confines of her role, Aurora risks everything for a chance at a new life. Ready for adventure, Aurora washes up on Siren Island at the feet of one very bewildered video-game designer. The clock is ticking before the Royal guards find her, and Aurora is determined to experience everything that life on Siren Island can offer.

Aurora was raised to lead, with the expectation that she will one day become ruler of the Mer of Triste Island. There’s just one problem. Nobody’s bothered to ask Aurora if she wants to be queen. Chafing at the confines of her role, Aurora risks everything for a chance at a new life. Ready for adventure, Aurora washes up on Siren Island at the feet of one very bewildered video-game designer. The clock is ticking before the Royal guards find her, and Aurora is determined to experience everything that life on Siren Island can offer.

Not long after donning the uniform of the McCreary County Sheriff's department in Bone Gap, Tennessee, ex-Marine Brynn Callahan faces her first official homicide. On a cold February morning, a lone cross-country skier stumbles across the mutilated body of a young woman. Sent to investigate, Brynn is shocked when she recognizes the victim as a fellow Traveller, Maura Keene. Maura held a solid standing both within the Travellers’ insular community and among the settled townspeople - a fact that makes her murder all the more disturbing to Brynn, who also straddles the two worlds.

Wherever Hel looks, New York City is both reassuringly familiar and terribly wrong. As one of the thousands who fled the outbreak of nuclear war in an alternate US - an alternate timeline - she finds herself living as a refugee in our own not-so-parallel New York. The slang and technology are foreign to her, the politics and art unrecognizable. While others, like her partner Vikram, attempt to assimilate, Hel refuses to reclaim her former career or create a new life. Instead, she obsessively rereads Vikram's copy of The Pyronauts - a science-fiction masterwork in her world.

All his siblings have moved on from their troubling pasts, but Rusty McClane can’t leave his behind. Not even when his freedom is in jeopardy. Legal investigator Harper Blake can sense a bad boy. She’s drawn to them - like she is to her mysterious and brooding new client. The police believe that Rusty is involved with the case of a missing underage girl. Harper’s job is to find evidence to defend him. But is her sexy suspect a predator…or something else? If Rusty is guilty of anything, it’s of stirring something primitive in Harper.

In a desolate future built on virtual reality, Ginn is a romantic who yearns for something real. She designs environments for people who play at being Vikings. But when her project goes awry, she's stranded in the actual 10th century, on a storybook farm in Viking Iceland. Heirik is the young leader of his family, honored by the men and women who live on his land. But he is feared and isolated because of a terrible curse. Ginn and Heirik are two people who never thought they would find a home in someone else's heart.

Cursed with deadly spirits as her constant companions, curator Hadley Bacall must keep calm to hold her dangerous specters at bay and prevent them from lashing out at anything - or anyone. Trouble is, Lowe is driving her crazy, but her father needs the artifact he's transporting. While Hadley can feel the amulet's power, she can't fathom the destruction - or the desire - it's about to stir up.

Wellington Boarding School is home to human clones, an identity that Lexi Matthews once hoped to escape. Shattered by the loss of her father and then her best friend at the hand of Sandra Whitmeyer, the woman from whom she was created, Lexi Matthews is after one thing...revenge. When Sandra sends a series of threatening "gifts" beginning the night of Lexi's 18th birthday, she determines that Sandra will never stop destroying the lives of her and her friends. Once again Lexi must battle to grasp the complexities of her creation.

Secca, foster daughter of the Soprano Sorceress and now her successor as sorceress-protector of Defalk, must deal carefully with her willful master and wield her power to save his kingdom from the armies, fleets, and master sorcerers of the maitre of Sturinn.

Paranormal Hunter Dani Black wants nothing more ardently than she does revenge. A year ago, the rogue Necromancer Spectre murdered her partner during a hunt gone wrong, and she's been looking for a way to kill him - and keep him dead - ever since. When rumors of a weapon capable of killing anything surfaces in Dawson, Maryland, she sets out on a mission to get her hands on it. While unraveling a web of clues about her own past, Dani runs into the alluring Emilie Lockgrove, eldest daughter of a magical family who are inexplicably tied to Spectre.

In Victorian-era Louisville, the Home for Friendless Women is run by benevolent benefactors with one mission: to reform the fallen women who live there into pious mothers and wives through religious lessons and hard work. For Ruth, a college student who’s expelled after a campus sexual assault, the Home is a purgatory to endure before she can get her life back. For Belle, a queer sex worker who exchanged her bed at a brothel for one in the Home, it’s a safe place to rest her feet until she can track down her missing lover.

Savannah Wilde is a witch, a powerful one, and a member of C.R.O.N.E, an organization for hire that deals with supernatural threats using their magic. Following a whirlwind romance that surprised her friends and family, Savvy is all set to marry the love of her life when she notices her bridal party and her mom are freaking out minutes before the wedding.

Feyland is the most immersive sim-game ever designed, and Jennet Carter is the first to play the prototype. But she doesn't suspect the virtual world is close enough to touch - or that she'll be battling for her life against the Dark Queen of the faeries. Tam Linn is the perfect hero - in-game. Too bad the rest of his life is seriously flawed. The last thing he needs is rich-girl Jennet prying into his secrets, insisting he's the only one who can help her.

Prince Kentry of Raine knows that if only he can capture the magical White Hart, the creature will grant his heart’s desire. Entering the depths of the Darkwood, he chases his quarry down...only to become lost in a mystical forest, where he must fight for his life at the side of a moon-haired maiden who may hold the answer to his dreams.

Honorine's life as a maid at the Vidalia mansion is rather dull, dusting treasures from faraway places and daydreaming in front of maps of the world. But everything changes when she catches two brutish sailors ransacking Lord Vidalia's study and then follows a mysterious girl with wings out into the night. Suddenly Honorine is whisked into the middle of a battle between the crew of a spectacular steamship and a band of mythical constellations.

These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. After, all, a racist is the worst thing a person can be, right? But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction. Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy.

Emmy Quinn is West Texas through and through: her roots run deep in the sleepy small town of Steinbeck, where God sees all and football is king. She loves her community, but she knows that when she comes out as a lesbian, she may not be able to call Steinbeck—which is steeped in the Southern Baptist tradition—home anymore. After a disastrous conversation with her dad, Emmy meets Cameron, a charismatic, whip-smart grad student from Massachusetts who hates everything Texas. But Texas is in Emmy's blood. Can she build a future with a woman who can't accept the things that make Emmy who she is?

An alien threat lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is supposed to win a war against it. In a desperate attempt to find a diplomatic solution, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy to contact the mysterious invaders. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass - both still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire - face an impossible task. They must attempt to negotiate with a hostile entity, without inadvertently triggering the destruction of themselves and the Empire.

From Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter, a powerful and cathartic portrait of a country grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic - from fear and being overwhelmed to extraordinary resilience - told through voices of people from all across America.