Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Science Fiction

The sole survivor on a science vessel adrift in deep space, Zeus was adopted by the Emperor and Empress of the Mar'Sani, though he is both human and blind, and seen by most as unfit to join the royal family. Though they were able to repair his vision, Zeus does not trust his eyes and the nobles of his parents' court refuse to ever trust a frail human.

To be a Docile is to be kept, body and soul, for the uses of the owner of your contract. To be a Docile is to forget, to disappear, to hide inside your body from the horrors of your service. To be a Docile is to sell yourself to pay your parents' debts and buy your children's future. Elisha Wilder’s family has been ruined by debt, handed down to them from previous generations. His mother never recovered from the Dociline she took during her term as a Docile, so when Elisha decides to try and erase the family’s debt himself, he swears he will never take the drug.

Jupiter J’nell just wanted a place to belong since their own family kicked them out while they were still in high school. They thought they had found their place in Long Beach, CA, working as an educational consultant on games designed for autistic kids. Being autistic themselves and an avid gamer, it was their dream job. Instead, they were too autistic, and the West Coast was not as accepting as they had hoped. Would they ever find a place they could belong? Fired and more uncertain of themselves than ever, they were contacted by a mysterious individual...

Earth, 2142. A century has passed since his father's death, and Antonio Jameson has returned home to pay his respects to a man he never had a chance to know, but has always resented. Captain of the Jumpvessel Singularity, he has spent his entire adult life navigating the void between the stars, blissfully avoiding any part of the fate that the higher powers had decreed for him in the war between the White Wind and the Red. But in a world where immortality is commonplace, death is not always what it seems, and destiny is not so easily cast aside.

James Patterson is a gay accountant living in Keyes, Oklahoma - deep in the Bible Belt - the religious heartland of America. He's also the first person to make contact with an extraterrestrial intelligence seeking to understand our world, and that makes him the most important person on the planet.

When Darren’s charge-cart gets knocked off the Earth-to-Mars highway and lost in space forever, he thinks his day can’t get any worse. When Kelly sees Darren accidentally short-circuit a talking lamppost, and its camera captures her face as it expires, she thinks her day can’t get any worse. When Pamasonic Teffal, a sentient breadmaker, is sent on a top-secret mission into the depths of the Internet and betrayed by her boss, a power-crazed smartphone, she knows this is only the beginning of a day that isn’t going to get any better. Join Darren, Kelly, and Pam in an anarchic comic adventure.

A trip to the library prompts one woman to question her fate in this galvanizing short story. For a woman like Hadley, deemed not acceptable to procreate, there’s only one recourse. Unlicensed for motherhood, she can alleviate her grief and frustration at a “baby library,” where a curiously endless supply of infants is available for a two-week loan. But the borrowed life that serves as a temporary balm leads to a journey of self-discovery that will forever change the direction of Hadley’s future.

Kim could tell at a glance Angel wasn't the average attractive yet poorly disguised extraterrestrial scout sent to assess Earth's defenses before the inevitable alien invasion. Angel's memory loss cover story? Lame. Robbing a passing ruffian of his shirt to cover her naked body? NOT a good way to avoid attracting attention! As a science fiction geek, Kim felt herself uniquely qualified to watch Angel and thwart her dark mission...once the alien got around to it.

Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time...with the right person. Sarge is the short story of a burgeoning D/s relationship between two space marines stationed on an alien planet where an endless war drags on.

In Yellow Jessamine, shipping magnate Evelyn Perdanu controls the dying city of Delphinium with trade deals and secrets. But when mysterious sickness sparks death and obsession, all leading back to her, Evelyn's brittle existence is strained to breaking. She retreats to her estate, amidst paranoia and poisonous secrets, intent on rooting out this plague before it destroys everything she has built.

Andy is at the top of his military academy class. Nothing can stop him from graduating with honors except a late night visit from a general with a unique classified mission - to send Andy and a less than stellar tech student into an uncharted virtual world. Though the one thing the general neglected to tell Andy is that this twisted universe would change him into a her. It's a sci-fi fantasy with a mermaid, a centaur, and Amish people.

In his new collection, Bitter Waters, Brenchley has assembled stories queer and weird: a man with morbidly sensitive hearing sets sail to chart dangerous rocks called the Silences; a ship's chandler from among his shadowed stock gives an old friend a compass that guides through Hell rather than point north; a eunuch and his dwarf lover leave the Sultan's harem to visit the baths of a city poisoned by magic; a youth who climbed the echelons of power thanks to his looks and guile finds being on the losing side of war has forced his to return to his sordid, early life.

Claustrophilia is a genre-bending sci-fi Gothic that dives deep into the psyche’s need for love and control while exploring the darker side of human (and non-human) relationships. After the tragic death of his entire family, Thomas lives under a conservatorship overseen by his lover, Ethan. But Ethan’s job keeps him away. Isolated in the family’s decaying Connecticut mansion, Thomas lives a monotonous life under the watchful eye of a live-in security firm until one day, he discovers an alien hiding on the grounds of his estate.

Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own.

From terraformed outposts to magical realms, journey to worlds where deadly plants, rampant biodiversity, or failed colonies have created irresistible opportunities for those brave enough to seize them. New worlds, found family, mystical secrets, and deadly science weave together in this lesbian-centric anthology focusing on a very different kind of first time - a first encounter with a world, or being, entirely unlike our own.

When a change in collective conscious sends the Outsiders, a group of aliens, to the shadows below the city, humans reason that the demonetization of their peers is simply more “humane”. There’s no question nor doubt. Just acceptance. Lydia had embraced that sense of “truth” for as long as she can remember. The daughter of a powerful governor, she has been able to live her life with more comforts than most. Comforts can be suffocating, though, and when the opportunity to teach Outsider children in their private, “humane” community becomes available, she takes it.

An independent Omega wants to stay unmated and run his bakery in peace - too bad his fated mate won't let that happen. Avery Blue is a young Omega and the owner of the new bakery called the Halo Muffin. He's determined to stay unmated and show the world there's more to an Omega than just popping out babies and being toys for Alphas. Enter the walking wall of muscle named Lucas Kochalka, Alpha of the Kochalka Pact. He rushes into the store and tries to stomp away with his mate.

Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay.

What does it mean to be-in-kind with a nonhuman animal? Or, in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon’s case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject’s perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness: to see the world through animal eyes; smell the forest, thick with olfactory messages; even taste the blood and viscera of a fresh kill; and, above all, to feel the belonging of the pack.

A man in exile, banished to a planet far from home and cursed with immortality, discovers that a ship has crash-landed near his settlement. After two hundred years, his heart’s desire has come true. A visitor has finally arrived on his lonely little speck in the stars. He’ll have companionship again. Someone he could love forever. As the weary traveler heals, the two men form a tender bond. But all they’ve come to share may not be enough to curb the visitor’s irrepressible wanderlust.