Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Publishing" in Science Fiction & Fantasy

A short story magazine that assembles a thrilling new mix of stories from genres including horror, science-fiction, comedy, and suspense. Buried at the heart of every story in the magazine is a unique artifact, an object that has inspired our storytellers to create a big idea, an irresistible question, a new immersive world, or a sense of wonder. Unearth your next great story with Assemble Artifacts.

When Lady Mae turns eighteen, she’ll inherit her mother’s ghastly job as the Butcher: dismembering Settlement Five’s guilty criminals as payment for their petty crimes. But then their leaders, known as the Deputies, come to Lady Mae’s house, and there in the living room they murder her mother for refusing to butcher a child. Within twenty-four hours, now alone in the world, Lady Mae begins her gruesome job. But a chance meeting years later puts her face to face with the Deputy that murdered her mother.

River is gone and Athens abandoned … With nowhere else to go, the Tartans evacuate both their citizens and the Hawaiian refugees to Galveston, the capital city of New Texas. Surrounded by pre-wave technology, Felicity has never been more uncomfortable while Winter thrives in her position as Assistant Director of the New Anaphedarin project. The shift in Tartan dynamics has caused some friction between the years-long group of friends, but as uncomfortable as the Athenians are, the Hawaiians are having an even harder time adjusting; particularly Zac.

Trey returns from another visit to the Moore estate with nothing but more anger and less room in his head to stow it. Old coping mechanisms no longer work. Not with a newborn in the mix. And Liv, who’s had enough. Liv has found what’s missing: a memento of her past she’s worked hard to forget. It unearths memories of a different man—a stable partner, a loving father. As it draws her in, Trey’s new anger drives her away.

Sloane Bevan and two-week-old Trey are kidnapped by strangers who speak her rare language and know her family’s secrets. She suspects these men are the ones who murdered her husband nine months ago. Now it’s her son they want, to raise as one of them. To keep under their control. Imprisoned in the Moores’ opulent estate, Sloane cultivates a plan using her family’s ancient magic right under her captors’ careful watch. Escape is one thing. Ensuring the Moores won’t target her family again is another.

Captive in the Moore estate, Sloane Bevan sees an image that evokes her grandmother’s warning: When the moon aligns with the oak, a danger will come for you. To her family she’s a warrior. To the Moores a destroyer. But she holds knowledge of magic the Moores lost, knowledge they want to extract before they kill her. Rex Moore is out of patience. He has trained his whole life to battle and end Sloane Bevan. Now she’s in his house and his family has ordered him to wait. This is the first order he’ll defy, the last order they’ll give.

Across forty years, three continents, and a past incident in 1560 France, Serafina Olegario tests the boundaries of love, power, and corruption as she fights to escape her life of poverty and abuse. Serafina’s quest begins in Brazil when she’s possessed by the warrior goddess Yansã, who emboldens her to fight yet threatens to consume her spirit. Fueled by power and enticed by Exú, an immortal trickster and intermediary to the gods, Serafina turns to the seductive magic of Quimbanda. It’s dangerous to dance in the fire. But when you come from nothing, you have nothing to lose.

Liv’s role in the war between the Bevans and the Moores is as solid as the motif carved in her protective amulet. The problem? She never volunteered. Her connection with Trey happened too fast. She can’t trust in love built by magic. Trey’s place in the war has shifted. No longer the target, he’s just someone in the way. Not if he can help it. He’s packed and ready to return to the Moore estate. This time, he can’t bring Liv, but he can’t leave her to battle Moore-trained assassins alone.

Eleanor understands the harsh realities of women’s lives in her kingdom, so she turns her energies to a school for impoverished girls, until an evil magician’s deception destroys the school and unleashes a festering plague. From the fire-iron walls of Eclatant Palace to the slums of Meggett Fringe, no one, magical or mundane, is safe from the fever-induced delirium of the Great Burning. Not even Eleanor’s children.

When Eleanor Brice loses a glass slipper, she unexpectedly gains a royal fiancé and a way out of her abusive stepmother’s house. Unfortunately, eight years of mistreatment, isolation, and clandestine book learning hardly prepared Eleanor for life at Eclatant Palace, where women are seen, not heard. According to Eleanor’s eavesdropping parrot, no one at court appreciates her unladylike tendency to voice her opinion. To make matters worse, Gregory Desmarais, Crown Prince of Cartheigh, spends his last night of bachelorhood on a drunken whoring spree.

Eleanor’s old nemesis, Ezra Oliver, forms a mysterious alliance with an army of vicious, bloodthirsty ogres, pushing Cartheigh to the brink of war. His magical finagling exposes strange connections between Eleanor’s world and our own, and places her precocious, enigmatic daughter, Natalie, in terrible danger.

Crystal was born of a bloodline both mortal and magical, raised to one day become a wizard and to defeat a long-hidden evil that threatened the realm of Ardhan. Through many dangerous adventures and lethal deceptions, she was finally victorious. And peace was at hand. Yet it was not so for Crystal. As the last living wizard, she soon found herself living a life without meaning. For while the people of Ardhan prospered in the world she had delivered, Crystal—with her still-growing powers—could find little solace. She was alone.

He’s killed three men in the few days she’s known him. Yes, it was self-defense, but when he tried to kill her, it wasn’t. Her peaceful mountain refuge has been invaded, her inexplicable nausea linked to his physical presence. She’s captive in his house for her “protection,” with a churning stomach, his bad attitude, and no safe way home. All that changed the night the stars aligned. Now he’s talking about ancient bloodlines and celestial alignments…and other things she only believes because of what she’s seen him do.

Adam Jeffson is the first man to ever reach the North Pole but, south of him, a deadly purple vapor spreads, passing over the world and wiping out all living creatures. The sole survivor on Earth, Adam embarks on an epic journey across the silent and devastated planet, piecing together a life from the flotsam and jetsam of his former existence. The Purple Cloud serves as one of Adam’s journals, and in it he documents his lonely adventures, his descent into madness, and his suspicion that this fatal event was no random act of nature: His survival was no accident.

The four stories narrate the struggles of the tiny island nation of Buron to resist the onslaught of its much bigger neighbor, Garsia, via any means necessary. “Green Monkey Syndrome” describes the disaster of a pathogenic weapon leaked among indigenous tribespeople; “The Gaoka Case” tracks through case files a pharmaceutical offensive designed to take advantage of the enemy’s patriarchal culture; “I Love Thee Winona” and “The Lost Bird” describe campaigns to manipulate disastrous weather patterns and deliver bioweapons through migrating birds.

A strange vine is uncovered beneath the remains of a lost civilization. Before anyone can examine the alien plant, pink pollen erupts from its huge buds. Moments later, 99 percent of the archeological team freeze like statues, but only for a minute. They brutally attack anyone unaffected by the phenomenon, dragging victims away for what becomes a chilling evolutionary process beyond anyone’s worst nightmare. As this happens, the pollen drifts toward the wider world.

When Dan, sixteen, runs away from a terrible home life to join a circus, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. Based on Dante’s Inferno, The Ninth Circle follows a young man’s coming-of-age as he travels with the circus through nine states. With the Ringmaster as his guide, Dan finds himself falling in love with the Bearded Lady but hated by almost everyone else, including the Strong Man, the Lion Tamers, and the Sword Swallower.

Joey Hawke’s life is turned upside down when a future version of himself drags him into a bathroom stall. Together, they have 72 hours to save humanity. And they have to do it against the biggest, most bizarre con the world has ever seen. Failure means the poisonous destruction of every city in the world. But Joey and his future self fail, and things rapidly descend into an unstoppable extinction-level event. Only he holds the key to saving billions of lives by turning back the clock...if he knew how.

Portland book artist Neve Kelly is having weird visions - vivid daydreams of lovers on a battlefield that yank her out of reality. A couple weeks before Halloween, a confused, strangely dressed man appears in her living room. He drops a slip of paper that describes a dream much like her own before disappearing without a trace.

In the 25th century, the effects of overpopulation and global warming on Earth have led to the formation of human colonies on the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system, yet the limited number of viable places forces humanity to look to the stars. A crash program has been developed to send Protos 1, a giant multigenerational starship, to a newly discovered Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star.