Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Anthologies & Short Stories

A collection of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's short stories, including Prime Meridian and The Return of the Sorcerers or the Diamond Heart.

The costume Valentine's party is the hot ticket in the Mississippi Delta. But Tinkie's title of Queen Bee of Delta Society becomes jeopardized when her Valentine's guests are all robbed. There's nothing for it but that Tinkie and Sarah Booth Delaney find out what happened to the very handsome Cupid (who failed to appear at the party) and where the short, hairy, Pan-like Cupid (who crashed the party) came from. Certainly not Central Casting.

Christmas is six days away - and Sarah Booth Delaney has her hands full! To honor a group of international investors, Shaw, Mississippi, resurrects the old custom of drifting miniature, lighted Christmas floats down Silver Bayou. The Italian delegation from Venice may bring much-needed new jobs and commercial opportunities. Among the investors is notorious womanizer, Enzo Aceto. He is handsome, witty, and eager for new conquests. Then Enzo disappears. Rumors of murder are buzzing.

In this acclaimed collection of short stories, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Stephen Millhauser shares the dark suspense and humor that have gained him a cult following. Millhauser’s imagination and creativity are on full display with stories featuring artists gone mad, egomaniacal architects, and a historical society that’s given up its chronicling of history. Characterized by “phenomenal clarity and rapacious movement” each story “focuses on the misery wrought by misdirected human desire and ambition.” ( Publishers Weekly)

A wonderful collection of stories that captures the spirit of Mexican culture and its peoples.

At the turn of the century, the short story form gained enormous popularity. Against the frozen Alaskan landscape of "To Build a Fire", a miner struggles to survive the splintering whiteness of sub-zero temperatures. "Isle of Voices" captures the Hawaii of old, where magic transports a young man to an island of powerful spirits. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" pits a mongoose against a cobra in the steamy beauty of an Indian garden. Recorded Books’ award-winning narrators turn these stories into absorbing productions.

Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill are the biggest names in the urban fantasy subgenre—where elves, banshees, trolls, and even stranger creatures walk modern city streets, their presence, and even their existence unsuspected by the human inhabitants. Now these two present a volume of all new urban fantasy, with a stellar lineup of the best new fantasy writers, such as Roberta Gellis, Dave Freer and Eric Flint, Diana Paxton, and more—including two new stories and an afterword by Mercedes Lackey herself, as well as a story by Rosemary Edghill.

Orson Scott Card, Kevin J. Anderson, and Larry Niven have seen the future. Now you can, too. A constellation of the brightest lights in the science fiction and fantasy firmament have judged these authors to be the best, the brightest, the truest emerging stars in the field.

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and with it the enormity of the universe, realizing that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen with tragic results, it's hard science-fiction where a sense of discovery is most often found and where science-fiction's true heart lies.

Toni L.P. Kelner and Leigh Perry are two authors in one. As Toni L.P. Kelner, she's the author of eleven novels: eight Laura Fleming mysteries set in Byerly, a small North Carolina town filled with Laura's extended family members, and three "Where are they now?" mysteries, about a freelance entertainment reporter who specializes in stories about the formerly famous. She's also the co-editor of seven urban fantasy anthologies with Charlaine Harris.

He talks smooth and kisses even better, but musician Sanjay Thomas can no longer live by his "hit it and quit it" motto. His past has caught up to him like an eighteen-wheeler with a massive payload—and it's not pretty. Sanjay never expects to fall head over heels in love with superstar author Celeste Francois. Now, fifteen years later, he's got to face the music with her—and explain the lie he committed so her career could flourish.

Traffic is piling up, and strange things are headed your way in this new story collection by World Fantasy Award-winning author Tobias S. Buckell. In these twenty-four stories you’ll find inhabitants of a small town who won’t vaccinate against a zombie plague, a lone sentry keeping motorists from stumbling into something ancient and evil, a man who puts stranded ghosts to rest, an ex-soldier traveling the seas who trades his new life of hardship for a return to swords and blood, and many more tales of speculative fiction.

Adam Soto, author of the debut novel This Weightless World, which Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” returns with Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep. The stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, strange and unsettling, explore the quiet spaces where the living and the dead alike haunt one another through their choices, dreams, and institutions.

An elderly woman in early 22nd-century Lagos is called in to help test the artificial intelligence built from her genius mother’s mind, but all is not as it seems. Exiled from Earth for a crime of passion, a young man must learn to survive a barely habitable prison planet. From the bustling streets of Lagos to the icy moons of Jupiter, this debut collection of twenty stories from the vivid imagination of the award-winning Wole Talabi explores what it means to be human in a world of accelerating technology, diverse beliefs, and unlimited potential from a uniquely Nigerian perspective.

Drawing heavily on Lovecraftiana and myth, these are tales of devil’s bargains, love songs to monsters, and the people—human and otherwise—who inhabit liminal spaces. Ghosts, gods, and ghouls make their way as best they can, one step sideways from the mortals around them. Many are connected; some are puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit. Spanning a decade of writing, Still So Strange is Amanda Downum's first collection of short fiction, and includes stories originally released in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales, as well as original, unpublished work.

There is an African proverb, “Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi,” which translates as “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” This is why we continue to remember the tales of struggle and tales of perseverance, even as we look to tales of hope. What a people choose to remember about their past, the stories they pass down, informs who they are and sets the boundaries of their identity. We remember the pain of our past to mourn, to heal, and to learn. Only in that way can we ensure the same mistakes are not repeated.

From a single mother who gets lured into her pastor’s twisted den of lies, to a deadly revenge plot gone wrong, and an illicit affair that leaves a bloody trail of evidence, author and filmmaker N’Tyse presents Chain of Fools: Prison Bids, her most gripping, collaborative work thus far - featuring crime-of-passion tales served by best-selling authors Briana Cole, Shakir Rashaan, Brandie Davis, Erick S. Gray, and India Williams.

Twenty-one years after the publication of his landmark debut collection Yellow, Don Lee returns to the short story form for his sixth book, The Partition. The Partition is an updated exploration of Asian American identity, this time with characters who are presumptive model minorities in the arts, academia, and media. Spanning decades, these nine novelistic stories traverse an array of cities, from Tokyo to Boston, Honolulu to El Paso, touching upon transient encounters in local bars, restaurants, and hotels.

This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. These evocative, often prescient, stories showcase new and emerging writers from across Africa to investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more. In Disruption, authors from across Africa use their stories to explore the concept of change - environmental, political, and physical - and the power or impotence of the human race to innovate our way through it.

Come meet a utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken - not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique 21st-century fabulist.