When a storm reveals a mysterious cave behind a waterfall, the young mystic’s apprentice and her wolf investigate. Inside, she discovers a secret place containing a pile of human bones and the young girl makes what could be a fatal mistake. In this Legends of the First Empire prequel, we witness the events that helped shape the woman who would one day become Suri the Mystic, the first Rhune Artist, and a hero to a generation

Sacred artists follow a thousand Paths to power, using their souls to control the forces of the natural world. Lindon is Unsouled, forbidden to learn the sacred arts of his clan. When faced with a looming fate he cannot ignore, he must rise beyond anything he's ever known...and forge his own Path.

Nikolai Lantsov has always had a gift for the impossible. No one knows what he endured in his country’s bloody civil war - and he intends to keep it that way. Now, as enemies gather at his weakened borders, the young king must find a way to refill Ravka’s coffers, forge new alliances, and stop a rising threat to the once-great Grisha Army. Yet with every day a dark magic within him grows stronger, threatening to destroy all he has built.

The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around - and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old, he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

Some of the parchment pages were the color of cream, thick and substantial, made to last many, many lifetimes. Other pages were thin and desiccated, positively yellow from age, and crackled alarmingly as Van Richten turned them over. There were no ornate illuminations, no fussy borders, only lines of plain text in hard black ink. The flowing handwriting was a bit difficult to follow at first; the writer's style of calligraphy had not been in common use for 300 years. No table of contents, but from the dates it looked to be some kind of history.

A mage's soul is forged in the crucible of magic. Raistlin Majere is six years old when he is introduced to the archmage who enrolls him in a school for the study of magic. There the gifted and talented but tormented boy comes to see magic as his salvation. Mages in the magical Tower of High Sorcery watch him in secret, for they see shadows darkening over Raistlin even as the same shadows lengthen over all Ansalon. Finally, Raistlin draws near his goal of becoming a wizard. But first he must take the drea Test in the Tower of High Sorcery. It will change his life forever - if he survives.

In a world beset by plagues, Tyrus of Kenatos has made it his life’s work to end the devastation. Yet when he first ventures into the Scourgelands to uncover the secret of the plagues’ origin, he barely makes it out alive after being ambushed by a mysterious, unseen enemy. Tyrus knows the plagues will rise again - more powerful than ever before - and he is determined to complete his mission. To aid in his new quest, he summons his nephew Annon and his niece Hettie - both of whom possess an innate magic called the fireblood - and a pack of unlikely allies.

Listen to the best new science-fiction and fantasy short stories from up-and-coming writers. Established in 1983 by L. Ron Hubbard expressly for the aspiring writer, Writers of the Future has become the most respected and significant forum for new talent in all aspects of speculative fiction.

Not bound as a book. Free. Like Unfettered before it, the contributing writers of Unbound were allowed to submit the tales they wished fans of genre to hear - without the constraints of a shackling theme. The result is magical. Twenty-three all-original stories are sure to captivate you - some will move you to tears while others will keep you listening long into the night. The power of Unbound lies in its variety of tales and the voices behind them. If you are a fan of discovering new writers or hearing the works of beloved authors, Unbound is for you.

It will soon be the Night of the Eye, a rare time when all three moons align in high sanction over the lands of Krynn. On the eve of Guerrand DiThon's political marriage to a rival family, the young noble is visited by a strange, powerful mage who knows more about him than he does himself. Seduced by promises of wizardly might, Guerrand slips away beneath the triple moons and journeys for the Tower of Wayreth. No one thinks he will survive the deadly trek to the tower, but he does. It's only then that Guerrand realizes that he has made many enemies in his journey....

It’s hard to be a drunken idiot when the world keeps burning down around you. Cairn, the charming-yet-utterly-irresponsible heir to the Uskarrion throne, is all too happy to toss the crown aside. But an invasion, conspiracy, and rise of a terrifying villain result in his untimely death. Then, Cairn reawakens. It's a decade earlier, and he's in his childhood body. But he remembers everything...there's much to accomplish. First, however, he'd really love to stop himself from dying.

Leones Ansteri was only sixteen when they came to kill him for the heresies his father had committed against the Archons—the mighty demigods who keep the peace in the Civilized Lands and prevent the evil Goetia from enslaving all of humanity. But even as the flames of the Magisters burned everything Leones knew to the ground, they awakened in him a power he didn’t know he possessed: the ability to manipulate time. But as Leones grows more confident in his temporal abilities, he realizes all is not well in Odena.

Fueled by visions promising him prolonged life and political power, the dying Corajidin, leader of a millennia-old dynasty, has brought the nation of Shrian to civil war. But is his bright destiny assured, or do the events unfolding around him promise a more ignoble, and finite, future? Indris, warrior-mage of the Seq Scholars and scion of a rival Great House, is caught in the upheaval. Driven by loyalty and conscience to return to a city that haunts his past, Indris reluctantly accepts the task of finding a missing man, the only one able to steer the teetering nation toward peace.

When Tea accidentally resurrects her brother from the dead, she learns she is different from the other witches in her family. Her gift for necromancy means that she's a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community. But Tea finds solace and guidance with an older, wiser bone witch, who takes Tea and her brother to another land for training.

Star-crossed lovers, meddling immortals, feigned identities, battles of wits, and dire warnings: these are the stuff of fairy tale, myth, and folklore that have drawn us in for centuries. Fifteen best-selling and acclaimed authors reimagine the folklore and mythology of East and South Asia in short stories that are by turns enchanting, heartbreaking, romantic, and passionate. From fantasy to science fiction to contemporary, from romance to tales of revenge, these stories will beguile listeners from start to finish.

Hot on the heels of Gardner Dozois's acclaimed anthology The Book of Swords comes this companion volume devoted to magic. How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped - or misshaped - by the potent magic they seek to wield.

It isn’t easy being Sunday’s child, not when you’re the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true. When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deepens into something magical. One night, Sunday kisses her frog goodbye and leaves, not realizing that her love has transformed him....

Star-crossed lovers, meddling immortals, feigned identities, battles of wits, and dire warnings: these are the stuff of fairy tale, myth, and folklore that have drawn us in for centuries. Fifteen best-selling and acclaimed authors reimagine the folklore and mythology of East and South Asia in short stories that are by turns enchanting, heartbreaking, romantic, and passionate. From fantasy to science fiction to contemporary, from romance to tales of revenge, these stories will beguile listeners from start to finish.

Rhapsody is a woman, a singer of some talent who is swept up into events of world-shattering import. On the run from an old romantic interest who won't take no for an answer, Rhapsody literally bumps into a couple of shady characters: half breeds who come to her rescue in the nick of time. Only the rescue turns into an abduction, and Rhapsody soon finds herself dragged along on an epic voyage--one that spans centuries and ranges across a wonder-filled fantasy world.

She was born in poverty, in a dusty village under the equatorial sun. She does not remember her mother, she does not remember her own nameher earliest clear memory is of the day her father sold her to the tall pale man. In the Court of the Pomegranate Tree, where she was taught the ways of a courtesanand the skills of an assassinshe was named Emerald, the precious jewel of the Undying Dukes collection of beauties. She calls herself Green.

After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, 17-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boardinghouse. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house's mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.

N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights listeners with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

Ferius Parfax has a simple plan: Kill every last inhabitant of the spell-gifted nation that destroyed her people, starting with the man who murdered her parents. Killing mages is a difficult and dangerous business, of course, but when she meets the inimitable and extraordinary Durrall Brown, she discovers that physical strength is not the only way to defeat evil of all kinds. So Ferius undertakes to study the ways of the Argosi: the loosely-knit tribe of tricksters known for getting the better of even the most powerful of spellcasters.

In this unique YA anthology, 13 acclaimed, best-selling authors team up with 13 influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like Medusa, Sherlock Holmes, and 'Jack and the Beanstalk' provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage - and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!

Niklaus, master swordsman, has not aged a day since being chosen by his mercurial goddess. A slave to her will, he moves from one cryptic mission to the next in the hope of ascending to become her equal. But even a man who has lived for centuries can sometimes find himself out of his depth. When Niklaus is sent to kill a sorcerer of the Tainted Cabal, overconfidence leads to a fatal mistake, and neither experience nor skill with a blade can prevail against the forces unleashed against him.

For Portier de Savin-Duplais, failed student of magic, sorcery's decline into ambiguity and cheap illusion is but a culmination of life's bitter disappointments. Reduced to tending the library at Sabria's last collegia magica, he fights off despair with scholarship. But when the king of Sabria charges him to investigate an attempted murder that has disturbing magical resonances, Portier believes his dreams of a greater destiny might at last be fulfilled.

A god has died, and it’s up to Tara, a first-year associate in the international necromantic firm of Kelethras, Albrecht, and Ao, to bring him back to life before his city falls apart. Her client is Kos, recently deceased fire god of the city of Alt Coulumb. Without him, the metropolis’ steam generators will shut down, its trains will cease running, and its four million citizens will riot. Tara’s job: resurrect Kos before chaos sets in.

Seyonne is a man waiting to die. He has been a slave for 16 years, almost half his life, and has lost everything of meaning to him: his dignity, the people and homeland he loves, and the Warden's power he used to defend an unsuspecting world from the ravages of demons. Seyonne has made peace with his fate. With strict self-discipline he forces himself to exist only in the present moment and to avoid the pain of hope or caring about anyone.

When a piece of the crown prince's soul is stolen by a traitorous warlock, disgraced knight Torsten Unger makes it his sworn duty to get it back and save the last hope for the kingdom. But he can't do it alone. Self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Thief" Whitney Fierstown sits in the castle dungeon, destined for the gallows until Torsten offers this choice: rot and die in a dank cell or join him on a dangerous expedition to put his skills to good use and earn his freedom.

There is another world than our own - one no closer than a kiss and one no further than our nightmares - where all the stuff of which dreams are made is real and magic is just a step away. But once you see that world, you will never be the same. Dreams and Shadows takes us beyond this veil. Once bold explorers and youthful denizens of this magical realm, Ewan is now an Austin musician who just met his dream girl, and Colby, meanwhile, cannot escape the consequences of an innocent wish.