As a struggling artist in New York City, Ira is desperate to get her shot at the big time. When an invitation to a week long art residency on a private island in the Bahamas drops in her inbox, she leaps at the chance. But something is off about Turquoise Bay and its owner, The Curator. When Ira and seven other artists end up locked in an underground bunker, the only way out is to play the Curator's games.

"Early Adopter" is a collection of short stories from the edge of human progress. Eight stories hold dark mirrors to our own world—experience thought-provoking sci-fi, technologic tragedy, and pulse-pounding thrillers. To Run Again: Dr. Laura Brandie is ready to change the world. She's the lead researcher behind the KSE, a revolutionary cure for paralysis and neurodegenerative conditions. And now, by good fortune, she's found the perfect candidate for her first human trial: a man who suffers from locked-in syndrome.

When Claire finds herself drawn to Blackwood Manor, an abandoned Civil War plantation she just has to have it. One little problem—Blackwood Manor has a dark, torrid history of hauntings, accidents, and no owner has lived on site for longer than two years in more than a century. Claire doesn't care about any of that.

Brought to life with the assistance of Brandon Sanderson's Dragonsteel Productions, as well as the backing of over 130 other Fantasy and Sci-fi enthusiasts! From editor Dustin Bilyk, we bring you Summer of Sci-Fi & Fantasy: a treasure trove of speculative fiction that is sure to excite and captivate even the fussiest of goblins. Dragons, AI, gods, parasitic wyrms, hellhounds, aquatic dinosaurs, aliens, and energy monsters…

When a US expedition is attacked, three survivors—a professor, her student and a soldier—are saved by a mysterious vessel, the Naumtsev. The enigmatic Captain Nikto elects to keep the captives aboard, requiring each of their skills for his daring pursuits. But as evidence of a rogue submarine alerts the world's navies, the captives must work together to avoid annihilation.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A man who was forced to become an Assassin is interrupted just as he was to kill the last impediment to get to the Senator who sent him down the path. Earth has been chosen for Integration into the Multi-Versal System and reality itself will shift to a post apocalyptic scenario. It will not stop him from keeping the promise to end the Senator and bring justice for the broken women he left behind.

When 18-year-old Regan accidentally kills her father, she discovers some startling truths. First, she has the power of mind control. Second, she must use it for evil or else suffer one of two fates: insanity or death. Her solution is vigilante justice. To atone for her sins, she vows to protect her classmates from The Three Musketcheers, a vicious gang of cheerleaders who use lies, brute force, and blackmail as weapons in their quest to dominate the school.

Hannah Evans startles awake, covered in gore, in a place she doesn't know. Captured and restrained in the hands of strangers, she struggles frantically to remember who she is. And then she sees the needle she was injected with...and the bodies. Before long, she's thrust into a desperate struggle to survive. Navigating a crumbled landscape, fighting for her breath and her humanity, Hannah clings to the shallow hope that her family is still alive.

An EMP attack throws the nation into chaos. Ayden Miller received the call no son ever wants to hear—his mother is ill and not expected to make it. After saying goodbye to his girlfriend, Mia, and her three young sons, he returns to New York City, where he is suddenly thrust into a battle for survival when a devastating EMP attack cripples the nation, plunging it into total chaos. With chaos everywhere and society collapsing before his eyes, he'll have to risk everything to get his sister to safety and make it back to Wyoming and the people he loves.

The Abyssal Tower—an endless dungeon where the chosen earn their gods' favor. Here they are promised riches, skills, and legendary artifacts. Six divines, six factions, each competing with warriors from all across the realm. But what happens when an unknown seventh god comes out of retirement? Meet Adam Glow, a persecuted, down-on-his-luck necromancer with dreams of crafting a utopia. After a series of unfortunate events, he finds himself and his cat, Schrödinger, cornered by the dastardly forces of the Empire.

In a small town shattered by violent animal attacks, four first responders must confront their pasts and embrace their destinies as they become humanity's last line of defense against a supernatural threat.

The Queen of Smiles has long been a mystery, even to herself. A storm of steel wrapped in a human shell, she's spent decades crossing the continent in search of answers about her origin and the rules she has been forced to live by. Three years ago, under a bright New Mexico sun, she found those answers… and they were as unsatisfactory as they come. And so, she withdrew from the world, doing only small jobs for the people of the nearby town of Eclipse. But life carries on and the post-Break world won't stop spinning.

You don't become a hero for the money. The money's nice, sure, but you become a hero because something inside compels you, drives you to it. Defending people from monsters simply doesn't pay well enough to make it a good career move. As for hunting dragons goes... well, the money is usually good, but the job really bites. Burnout is all too common. Come along as a group of five professional heroes go into the lair of a dragon. Who will win? Spoiler: The dragon.

Fresh out of the egg, a young blue dragon, eldest of his clutch, finds himself thrust into the fast-paced and cutthroat world of dragons. As he and his younger siblings navigate a series of tests under the watchful eyes of their parents, he grapples with memories of another life and comes to learn more about himself—and the power that makes dragons the most feared creatures on the planet.

What does Control mean to you? Does it refer to how we respond to the situations we find ourselves in? Or our tendency to regulate everyone and everything around us? For Miles Gether, a former valiant member of the United States Armed Forces, this word highlights his purpose and how far he’s willing to go to establish himself within the gruesome, post-apocalyptic world that has unfolded in the months following his discharge from the Military.

The world has stopped turning. Burned by a blazing sun. Thrust into eternal winter. Life survives only in the Sunset Forest. For untold millennia, mankind lived subservient to the dryads, forced into worship of the Earth-Mother, Astea. Then one man ventured into the Scorched Desert and returned with the secret of fire. His rebellion brought the dryad empire to ash. In its place, he founded the Kingdom of Heartsong.

Darrell Donnelly and his daughter Laykin embark on their yearly hiking trip to a scenic and remote part of the Ocala National Forest. What started as a long weekend turned into a fight for survival as the hikers attempt to return home in the face of civil unrest and lawlessness, the aftermath of a coordinated attack on the power grid and most electronic devices.

A hulked-out wrath demon who eats gamer rage and loves cats, a shapeshifting lust demon who enjoys their food a bit too much, and a void demon who doesn’t see the point of any of this. They’re not the sort of mercenaries you'd hire on purpose, but Bex wouldn’t trust her life to anyone else. Ever since the ancient Mesopotamian king Gilgamesh decided death wasn’t for him, killed the gods, and conquered the afterlife, times have been rough for a free demon.

When Evelyn moves to Monterey Bay for college, she expects her biggest challenges to be making new friends and surviving freshman year. But her life takes a dark and unexpected turn when she's abducted and thrust into a terrifying world of monsters, magic, and ancient secrets.

With a knife in his gut, Rowan figured he was destined to become just another corpse littering the slums of Taureen. So he was fairly surprised to wake up in the back of a moving wagon with a couple of adventurers. Turns out that Rowan had been given something most street rats can only dream of—a second chance.