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With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017. 

Sometimes the most frightening thing is not the wind howling through the trees… but what’s lurking there. Xander Corey is certain that what his husband, Lorne MacBain, the chief of police in their little town of Osprey, is seeing outside their kitchen window is nothing to worry about. It’s concerning that whenever Xander looks, there’s nothing there, but really, it could be anything. Why borrow trouble and assume the worst? Besides, it’s midwinter, after all, and everything is sleeping. Or should be.

An awkward swan shifter walks into a barre… after he’s already walked into the door, two people on the street, and a rack full of tiny pink tutus. While bumping into the handsome dance instructor—multiple times—is no hardship, it’ll take a miracle to overcome Kiran’s clumsiness curse and get him dance-floor ready in time to partner his ballerina sister at her wedding without knocking her on her ass. Miracles? Hardly ex-minion demon Taj Sekani’s scene. But with Kiran in his arms, the perfect pas de deux might finally be within his grasp. But then Taj’s old master demands a favor.

DI Nathaniel Caslin’s life is a mess. He works the minimum, abuses substances to survive the day and drinks his nights away. A once-promising career is in freefall. Investigating the death of an ex-serviceman in police custody reveals the disappearance of a young family. No-one noticed. No-one seems to care.

When the mutilated remains of a woman are retrieved by local fishermen, it falls to DI Tom Janssen and his team to identify how she came to be in the water and what put her there. Joined on the case by his new permanent boss, DCI Tamara Greave, it remains to be proven if the woman's death was a result of foul play or a tragic accident.

In 2003, an independent film called The Room - starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau - made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles.

Described by one reviewer as 'like getting stabbed in the head', the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Over a decade later, The Room is an international cult phenomenon whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising, and plastic spoons.

The war on drugs has been lost but for want of the courage to face the fact that the whole world is rapidly becoming one vast criminal network. From pop stars and princes to crack whores and street kids. From the Groucho Club toilets to the poppy fields of Afghanistan, we are all partners in crime.

Tactics provides the game plan for defending your faith and artfully communicating the truths of Christianity with confidence and grace. This expanded anniversary edition of the classic book of Christian apologetics includes updates and expansions of existing tactics, as well as the addition of...

Dante Jacoby is a slave to the trappings of the modern world. Twenty-six years old and hopelessly addicted to booze, cigarettes, and procrastination, he’s squandered every ounce of his potential. His corporate raider father, Dorian, reaches the end of his tether and cuts Dante off as heir to the Jacoby family fortune. His mother, Fiona, is smarter than her husband: she hasn’t spoken to Dante in months. But Dante’s no victim. He knows he brought this on himself.

Silent film actor Casimir Moreau had imagined that life as a vampire would be freewheeling and glamorous. Instead, he’s plunged into a restrictive society whose rules he runs afoul of at every turn. To “rehabilitate” him, the vampire council orders him mated to an incubus with impeccable breeding. As an inactive beaver shifter, construction engineer Rusty Johnson has fought - and overcome - bias and disrespect his entire life. Rusty can’t face returning to his clan, and Cas needs somebody on his arm to keep the council happy, so they agree to pretend to be married.

Dr Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter’s research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, this story follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world.

Finn Lassiter is a werewolf without a pack. Or a roof over his head. Or more than five bucks to his name. He’s exhausted every lifeline except the one that makes him want to howl: begging his cousin, the supreme alpha, for charity. After the way Finn behaved for their entire lives, it’s entirely possible he’ll be turned down flat or banished forever when he makes that call tomorrow. So today he’s blowing his last dollar at Nectar & Ambrosia—he needs one more smile from the bakery’s beautiful owner to weather the bleak years ahead.

Through the years, Nash Miller has watched all his buddies fall in love and get married. It was romantic, and he’d wondered when he himself would find the one. Now, older, wiser, he realizes that what he’s always wanted—a husband and a family—just isn’t in the cards for him. And that’s all right. He has wonderful friends, a good life, and he gets to help people, which has always been his true calling. So when the time comes to protect a family in a tiny town in Washington State, he’s more than willing to get on his white horse and ride.

On my last stakeout for Quest Investigations, I nearly got clotheslined by a grove of angry dryads. I expected my bosses to reprimand me, but instead they handed me my first solo assignment. Me! Matt Steinitz, the only human on the Quest roster! Okay, so the mission isn’t exactly demanding. Obviously, the bosses wanted to give me something they think I can’t screw up. I’m determined to show them what I can do, however, so I dive right in with no complaints.

Xander Corey lives simply, sustainably, on the outskirts of Osprey, a small, quaint town in Upstate New York. He’s a librarian when the town’s budget can afford him, a good friend, kind neighbor, and also, a witch. And while that’s of no concern to anyone around him, there are others, non-humans, who have a vested interest in Xander’s family land. Xander knows something dark and dangerous is brewing. He’s just not quite sure what.

On a muggy August day in 2001, Alexandra Lind was unexpectedly thrown backwards in time, landing in the year of Our Lord 1658. Catapulted into an unfamiliar and frightening new existence, Alex could do nothing but adapt. After all, while time-traveling in itself is a most rare occurrence, time-traveling with a return ticket is even rarer. Fortunately for Alex, she lands at the feet of Matthew Graham. No woman could ask for a better guide or protector in this strange new world of hers.

Chasing discomfort in the underbelly of Japan, Dante Jacoby is running from the coward he used to be. A chance encounter with a shopkeeper in Sapporo sets him on a path of destruction through the ranks of the yakuza. Only when he has the chance to stop and draw breath does he receive a distress call from the other side of the world.

Camera Shy is a boss/employee, fake-engagement, right-in-front-of-your-nose romantic comedy featuring a former child model-turned-PA who is so done with cameras, a cocky LGBTQ activist/talk show host who does not lose, more scarves than midwinter in Boston, and banter. So. Much. Banter.

Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ESSENTIALISM COMES A GUIDE TO MAKING THE MOST IMPORTANT TASKS EFFORTLESS The intricacy of modern life has created a false dichotomy between things that are 'hard and important,' and those that are 'easy and trivial.'...

When the silent spacecraft arrived and took the light from the world, no one knew what to expect. When the Overlords finally showed themselves it was a shock but one that humankind could now cope with, and an era of peace, prosperity and endless leisure began. But the children of this utopia dream strange dreams of distant suns and alien planets, and soon they will be ready to join the Overmind...and, in a grand and thrilling metaphysical climax, leave Earth behind.