Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

Miriam Beckstein is happy in her life as a successful reporter. When she gets iron-clad evidence of a money-laundering scheme, Miriam thinks she's found the story of the year. But when she takes it to her editor, she's fired on the spot and gets a death threat from the criminals she's uncovered. Before the day is over, she's received a locket left by the mother she never knew - the mother who was murdered when she was an infant. The knotwork pattern within has a hypnotic effect on her.

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

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.

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth - from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds - collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot.

Prolific novelist Stross pauses to collect short stories that have not (yet) been stitched up into his longer work. Stories that move the US - USSR conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy (Locus Award-winner "Missile Gap"), offer a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox ("MAXOS"), and suggest clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland ("Snowball's Chance") demonstrate Stross's ability to crisscross genres, blending SF, fantasy, horror, and espionage.

With Glasshouse, Stross pens a Kafkaesque tale set in a 27th-century of teleport gates and mind-attacking network worms. After Robin awakes in a clinic, he struggles to summon details of his life, but too many of his memories have been wiped clean. More troubling is the stark awareness of immediate danger: someone is trying to kill him. On the run, Robin makes a desperate gamble and volunteers for what he hopes is the sanctuary of an unusual study at the Glasshouse. Once there, however, he realizes the true terror has only begun.

In Saturn's Children, Freya is an obsolete android concubine in a society where humans haven't existed for hundreds of years. A rigid caste system keeps the Aristos, a vindictive group of humanoids, well in control of the lower, slave-chipped classes. So when Freya offends one particularly nasty Aristo, she's forced to take a dangerous courier job off-planet.

The year is 2012, and China, India, and the United States are waging an infowar for economic domination. With innocent gamers mere pawns in the hands of electronic intelligence agencies, programmer Jack Reed is tasked with ferreting out the plot of those who would gladly trade global turmoil for personal gain.

Drunk customers. Shoplifting raccoons. Otherworldly visitors. As night-shift clerk at the 24-hour gas station at the edge of town, Jack has pretty much seen it all. That is, until his best friend reveals the body of a local politician hidden in the trunk of a car, setting off a chain of events with apocalyptic potential. Soon, Jack finds himself entangled in a supernatural conspiracy involving monster hunters, sociopaths, doomsday cultists, and...garden gnomes?

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world.

STOP. You should not have touched this flyer with your bare hands. NO, don't put it down. It's too late. They're watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you'll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the future. But it's too late. You touched the book. You're in the game. You're under the eye. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read this book, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why?

A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires....

There's a reason We Are Legion was named Audible's Best Science Fiction Book of 2016: Its irresistibly irreverent wit! Bob Johansson has just sold his software company for a small fortune and is looking forward to a life of leisure. The first item on his to-do list: Spending his newfound windfall. On an urge to splurge, he signs up to have his head cryogenically preserved in case of death. Then he gets himself killed crossing the street. Waking up 117 years later, Bob discovers his mind has been uploaded into a sentient space probe with the ability to replicate itself.

When Michael Moorcock began chronicling the adventures of the albino sorcerer Elric, last king of decadent Melniboné, and his sentient vampiric sword, Stormbringer, he set out to create a new kind of fantasy adventure, one that broke with tradition and reflected a more up-to-date sophistication of theme and style. The result was a bold and unique hero: a rock-and-roll antihero who would channel all the violent excesses of the '60s into one enduring archetype.

Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

Espionage. Blackmail. Revenge. Cunning. Slapstick. State secrets dating back to the fall of the Berlin Wall. All this and more in a tight package of five novellas by Mick Herron, CWA Gold Dagger-winning author of Slow Horses.

Nobody knows the seedy underbelly of Las Vegas like Daniel Faust, a sorcerer for hire and ex-gangster who uses black magic and bullets to solve his clients' problems. When an old man comes seeking vengeance for his murdered granddaughter, what looks like a simple job quickly spirals out of control. Soon Daniel stands in the crossfire between a murderous porn director; a corrupt cop with a quick trigger finger; and his own former employer, a racket boss who isn't entirely human.

When a forgotten journal materializes decades after Drake Ramsey's father vanished in the Amazon jungle, Drake decides to follow in his footsteps and search for the legendary treasure of the Inca empire hidden in the lost Inca city of Paititi.

The new novel by the author of the best-selling The World Walker series. 'My name is Daniel Harbin, and I'm a child of The Deterrent.' What if a superhuman turned out not to be so super...or even human? Britain's superhero, The Deterrent, was unveiled to the world in 1979 and disappeared two years later. The truth about his origins has never been revealed. The rumours about his children - those that survived - and their mysterious abilities have never been confirmed. Until now....

What do you buy and sell when the global markets reach saturation point? The markets themselves. Thirty years from now the big players in global capitalism have moved on from commodities. The big money is in conflict investment. The corporations keep a careful watch on the wars of liberation and revolution that burn constantly around the world. They guage who the winners will be and sell them arms, intelligence, and power. In return for a slice of the action when the war is won.

Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2014 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

Growing up, Bianca St. Ives knew she was different from all her friends. Instead of playing hopscotch or combing her dolls' hair, she studied martial arts with sensei masters and dismantled explosives with special-ops retirees. Her father prepped her well to carry on the family business. Now a striking beauty with fierce skills, the prodigy has surpassed the master.

Meet John Milton. He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder. Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list. In this second dip into his case files (see 1000 Yards for a further novella), Milton is sent to Italy to investigate the death of a colleague from Group 15.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

In the 25th century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person's consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or "sleeve") making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

In the future, there are many parallel Earths - but only one of them has time travel. Known as Primetime, its criminals break into the pasts of other worlds, far beyond the reach of conventional police. Blake Din is the top agent of the Cutting Room, the group tasked with stopping these trespassers. After a mission to undo the murder of a young boy, he uncovers extensive damage to another world's timeline - and a conspiracy that reaches all the way back to Primetime.

After dying and being revived with the experimental drug Returne, Bryn Davis is theoretically free to live her unlife - with regular doses to keep her going. But Bryn knows that the government has every intention of keeping a tight lid on Pharmadene's life-altering discovery, no matter the cost. Thankfully, some things have changed for the better; her job at the rechristened Davis Funeral Home is keeping her busy and her fragile romance with Patrick McCallister is blossoming.

Armed camps of eco-survivalists battle purveyors of technology in this exclusive, original production featuring five sci-fi masters and five all-star narrators.

Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of the secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg. Libriomancers are gifted with the ability to magically reach into books and draw forth objects. When Isaac is attacked by vampires that leaked from the pages of books into our world, he barely manages to escape. To his horror he discovers that vampires have been attacking other magic-users as well, and Gutenberg has been kidnapped.

Bob Howard is a computer-hacker desk jockey, who has more than enough trouble keeping up with the endless paperwork he has to do on a daily basis. He should never be called on to do anything remotely heroic. But for some reason, he is.

In 1984, Derek Reilly was just another spotty teenage dungeon master growing up in middle England. But then a secret government agency tasked with suppressing magical intrusions received a tip-off—and one midnight raid later, his life was turned upside down by the Satanic D&D Panic. Decades later Derek, now middle-aged and institutionalized, is a long-term inmate at Camp Sunshine, a center for deprogramming captured Elder God cultists. After 25 years, Derek finally has reason to escape: a nearby D&D convention.

In the 21st century, the perfection of faster-than-light travel and the rise of a prodigious artificial intelligence known as the Eschaton altered the course of humankind. New civilizations were founded across the vastness of space. Now, the technology-eschewing world known as the New Republic is besieged by an alien information plague. Earth quickly sends a battle fleet - but is it coming to the rescue, or is a sinister plot in motion?

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

When Makara Angel winds up in post-apocalyptic LA, she was looking for a home, not trouble. Now Makara finds herself in the middle of a gang war, fighting for survival in LA's decaying streets. Even after she falls in with the Lost Angels and their charismatic leader, safety is no guarantee. The Black Reapers are ramping up their aggression against the Angels, and Makara finds herself in the crossfire.

In Saturn's Children, Freya is an obsolete android concubine in a society where humans haven't existed for hundreds of years. A rigid caste system keeps the Aristos, a vindictive group of humanoids, well in control of the lower, slave-chipped classes. So when Freya offends one particularly nasty Aristo, she's forced to take a dangerous courier job off-planet.

To win an impossible war, Captain Kel Cheris must awaken an ancient weapon and a despised traitor general.

Captain Kel Cheris of the Hexarchate is disgraced for using unconventional methods in a battle against heretics. Kel Command gives her the opportunity to redeem herself by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a star fortress that has recently been captured by heretics. Cheris' career isn't the only thing at stake. If the fortress falls, the Hexarchate itself might be next.

Prolific novelist Stross pauses to collect short stories that have not (yet) been stitched up into his longer work. Stories that move the US - USSR conflict onto a massive disk in another galaxy (Locus Award-winner "Missile Gap"), offer a spam-filter solution to the Fermi paradox ("MAXOS"), and suggest clever bargains with the devil in a newly frozen Scotland ("Snowball's Chance") demonstrate Stross's ability to crisscross genres, blending SF, fantasy, horror, and espionage.

And so it begins.... In the United States, the Department of Defense and the NSA computer networks have been hacked. A nuclear-armed CIA drone has lost all flight control. North Korea...Iran...Russia...and soon the gates of Hell will open. Humanity's most terrifying nightmare has become reality. Bombs are detonated, missiles are launched, counterstrikes are ordered, and within minutes, untold thousands of megatons have left countless millions dead or dying. Devastation of biblical proportions has fallen over the land...and the USA has been hit the hardest.

With Glasshouse, Stross pens a Kafkaesque tale set in a 27th-century of teleport gates and mind-attacking network worms. After Robin awakes in a clinic, he struggles to summon details of his life, but too many of his memories have been wiped clean. More troubling is the stark awareness of immediate danger: someone is trying to kill him. On the run, Robin makes a desperate gamble and volunteers for what he hopes is the sanctuary of an unusual study at the Glasshouse. Once there, however, he realizes the true terror has only begun.