Imperial Death Dealer Ethan Wolfe has been dispatched to kill a terrorist at the edge of the galaxy. It was a simple mission until the Emperor and his Lord Commander outlawed and condemned him to death, without any reason. But as he goes on the run, with Hope Adair, a former smuggler, Ethan learns that his dead father was not an archaeologist but an agent of the Empire with a terrible secret. And that secret will lead him on a quest to find an ex-Imperial soldier and a being called the Guardian. Little does he know that he has a big role to play in the coming Great War with the Fallen.

A start-up wastes a billion dollars making videos nobody wants to watch. A city rushes to build landing pads for flightless air taxi prototypes. Tech giants hire thousands of techies for fake projects to stop them working for rivals. The tech industry has a tendency to go crazy. In Siliconned, industry insider Emmanuel Maggiori decodes tech’s hysteria and explains why we all pay the price for it.

With Earth in the line of fire and invaders from the wider multiverse on their proverbial doorstep, the Milky Way has only limited time before the bridge to the wider multiverse establishes itself. What will our hero do? He peaces out, of course! Why would he join the frontlines? Instead, he finds an unexpected ally in Riseth, a fierce and clever demoness with whom he shares a powerful soul resonance.

Nathaniel's bus ride was supposed to be just another boring commute. Wrong. Now, he, 23 fellow passengers, and a corgi named Biscuit, are stuck in a "Hell Difficulty" Tutorial, battling monsters and leveling up to survive. Easy difficulty, anyone can handle. Normal difficulty, you've got to put up a fight to get by. Hard difficulty is where only the tough ones last. And Hell? That's where you have to be a bit out of your mind! With his terrifying talent for mana manipulation, Nathaniel decides to invest every stat point into mana.

An animatronic clown is more than what it seems, a terrible bedbug infestation, a film project between brothers gone wrong and beloved pet turtle taken. These are a few of the spooky creepypasta stories you'll find here. Inside this debut collection you'll find over 20 concise and creepy horror stories straight from the famous Nosleep forum on Reddit. Some you may have read before...some you haven't. Turn the lights down, immerse yourself, and enjoy!

Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission - and if he fails, humanity and the Earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn't know that. He can't even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he's been asleep for a very, very long time. And he's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place. Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits.

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.

Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent. Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down.

The world of Arden is vast, filled with ancient magics, opportunity, and brewing political disasters, but above all else it is permeated by an ever-existing and mysterious System that grants power to those who follow its rules. Peregrine Borncrest was fathered by a master druid and mothered by a renown swordswoman, both of near equal talent. Gifted with the power of recall as his unique, born trait, Pery finds himself grappling with the weight of so many expectations—many of which he has placed on his own shoulders.

With Earth in the line of fire and invaders from the wider multiverse on their proverbial doorstep, the Milky Way has only limited time before the bridge to the wider multiverse establishes itself. What will our hero do? He peaces out, of course! Why would he join the frontlines? Instead, he finds an unexpected ally in Riseth, a fierce and clever demoness with whom he shares a powerful soul resonance.

Giant fireblasts tear across the earth as the Gates of Hell are ripped open. In an instant, billions are killed. Human technology becomes utterly worthless in the face of the end of the world. Fortunately for Jaco, he barely survives the opening act of the Apocalypse. Unfortunately for him, he has to live through what comes next. Those who died in the initial blast are reincarnated as undead monsters. Massive fiery pits swallow up the center of every major city across the world.

Antonious King has been selected to beta-test what promises to be the best VR MMO of 2038. As one of three hundred in the "Ascendant Program" he'll take part in a bloody civil war between the King of the Gods, Ignacious and the God-Hero Auren, granted powerful relics, artifacts, and a near-immortal body. What's the catch? There's no Logging out. There is no game.

Every living creature wants to survive. For young Mason, his experiences of being beaten, bullied, and abandoned by his own family encouraged him to do just that. But after being caught up in a terrorist attack during a college tour, he finds himself in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by a new foe—the supernatural—and not even death can stop his primal instinct to live.

Jack Atlas, self-proclaimed 'World's Best Assassin', had a simple plan: retire in style and marry the girl of his dreams. Then he gets placed in The Tower—a divine deathtrap where gods pit their creations against each other for the ultimate prize: eternal paradise for you and your friends. The catch? If you lose, well, let's just say your chances of finding a decent bar in oblivion are slim.

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them. Marney Honeycutt, a luster-touched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns.

Against his will, Thaden was transported elsewhere in a big flash of light along with millions of other Humans from Earth, to a place where they would train to become Contenders in a whole new world. Unfortunately for him, something occurred during his transference into the “Training” program, and he was ejected from the whole training process and sent into the open mouth of an active volcano for bodily disposal.

Follow commands or save his renegade family... He must choose. No one defies the Protectorate. They’ve got relentless cyborg assassins who never quit and never fail to take out their targets. Until one defies them by becoming a parent. Camden 1192, and ninety-nine other killers, are assigned to locate and capture the traitor. Orders specify taking the child alive, if possible. Only, there's one problem. The traitor happens to be Camden's sister, and the child, his nephew.

A global crypto token manipulated by wealthy magnates and sentient trading AI sorts the haves from the have-nots, squeezing its citizens and leaving them to fight over the remains. Anyone can challenge the world order by competing in Char’s lethal gaming tournament, but predictably, the elites have the outcome rigged so that the winners join them or die.

The year is 2701. Following a near-fatal disaster, roughneck freelancer Roman Matthews becomes unwittingly trapped at the center of a harrowing conspiracy. Hunted by Deorum’s government, the Coalition for Prosperity, Roman must use his deadly skillset to survive against all odds.

Caesar, an undercover operative, enters Carmichael with the briefest of orders from his boss and a countdown on his phone. What will happen when the clock strikes zero? Deputy Amelia Miller is dispatched from a nearby city, and a series of events keeps her around much longer than she'd expected. In the middle of the night, something shifts, and the whole town disappears off the face of the Earth. Who caused the shift, and what lies beyond the veil of their settlement?

A sinister presence has reawakened in the forest, and the mystical felines who once guarded the woods cannot stand against the supernatural wolves sent by a dark being known as the Shadow. Crox and his loyal feline companion, Jax, are called upon to fight this evil force once again. As they delve deeper into the mysteries of their past, they discover something even more terrifying than they could have imagined: a portal to another dimension has been reopened.

Cast into a brutal military camp by his once loving master, Mateo feels like the last six wonderful years of his life have been a lie. With the mysteries surrounding him growing, Mateo knows that his only option is to become one of the supernaturally powerful Duelists and grow in power until he can take his fate into his own hands. That plan is thwarted from the beginning when he gets stuck with the lowest-ranked Root Card against his will, ensuring that his growth as a Duelist will always be excruciatingly slow.

Earth was chosen for Integration, but Ethan Hill knows from the second his Trial begins that the Integration is a lie. The beings giving Earth the 'honor' of access to their System Interface want something from Earth—he just doesn't know what. Now he's trapped on an alien planet and lost in a time loop, fighting for strength and for his own humanity. One thing's for sure: He'll die as many times as it takes to tear it all down.