Showing results by narrator "Joshua Saxon" in All Categories

In a medieval cookbook in a special-collections library, near-future London, jaded food-and-drink authority Nick Kippax finds an alluring stain next to a recipe for the mythical crandolin. He tastes it, ravishing the page. Then he disappears. 

The battle of Fredericksburg is usually remembered as the most lopsided Union defeat of the Civil War. It is sometimes called “Burnside’s folly”, after Union Commander Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside who led the Army of the Potomac to ruin along the banks of the Rappahannock River. But the battle remains one of the most misunderstood and misremembered engagements of the war. Burnside started with a well-conceived plan and had every reason to expect victory. How did it go so terribly wrong? 

Marked for death by a powerful demon mage, brother swordsman Kildare and Zedaine make their way toward the ancient city of Gallanse. When their journey takes a turn for the worst, they are left with no recourse but to trust in a wayward Triton of the Crystalline Sea in the hope he can lead them to their destination in time. Locked in a cell atop the Gray Spire, Princess Lydia stands accused of murder. Abandoned by her lover, the princess rises to the challenge and embarks on a desperate plan to win back her freedom.

Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, a devoted husband and father, and a devout Catholic, was executed in 1943 as a result of his refusal to serve in the Nazi army. Before taking this stand Jägerstätter consulted both his pastor and his local bishop, who instructed him to do his duty to the fatherland and to obey the law, an instruction that violated his conscience. 

In the chill Northern Wastes, near the ruins of a dead Dragon King's lair, the last remnants of the empire of the wolf gather at the summons of one of their own long thought slain. Through force of arms, blood magic, and the promise of an evil risen from the grave in the form of a great undead dragon, they intend to remake their realm no matter what the cost.

Prof. Ewart Masters spends his convalescence, following a car accident, at the home of his nephew Jason Masters, pursuing his studies of ancient civilizations, during which he makes startling discoveries about the hidden city beneath the Yorkshire moors. His search to unravel the mystery of the green figurines, his efforts to assess the implications of Robert Krug's manuscript, lead ultimately to Devil's Pool and the surviving world of Lh'yib, culminating in a series of dream-like adventures as he wanders through the nightmare corridors of his new environment. 

The Horror at Oakdeene and Others is another of Brian Lumley's collections of short stories, with many of them involving the Cthulhu Mythos.

Rome, 133 BC. Gaius Marius is back from war in the West. They fought for the peace and prosperity of Rome, but the legions return to find the Eternal City far less peaceful and prosperous than they had hoped. People are starving, homelessness abounds, war after war has overtaxed the legions. And the revolutionary tribune, Tiberius Gracchus, thinks he has a solution for everything. Political parties are developing, the people are up in arms, the senate is enraged. And Tiberius is at the center of it all.

Charlie Trace, professional thief, is no stranger to deceit and violence. But nothing in his life on the knife-edge of London's underworld could prepare him for the horror of Demogorgon. It is centuries old. Satan is its lord and master. It walks the earth in the guise of a man, but it is not a man: it is the very essence of evil. Across many years and nations, Demogorgon has sown the seeds of hell. Now, it is calling its children home. 

Here are 17 of the author's favorite stories, including Five Days in April, along with the preceding story "Ten Days in July" and a story published here for the first time, "These are the Moments I Live For". Hopkins also won Stokers for his novel The Licking Valley Coon Hunters Club, his novella El Dia de los Muertos, and the second volume of his Extremes anthology series. He is the author of several other collections, including Salt Water Tears, Phoenix, and Road's End, as well as two mystery novels.

Under the Poppy is a brothel owned by Decca and Rupert. Decca is in love with Rupert but he in turn is in love with her brother, Istvan. When Istvan comes back to town, louche puppet troupe in tow, the lines of their age-old desires intersect against a backdrop of approaching war. Hearts are broken when old betrayals and new alliances - not just their own - take shape, as the townsmen seek refuge from the onslaught of history by watching the girls of the Poppy cavort onstage with Istvan’s naughty puppets. 

The clash of armies in the American Civil War left hundreds of thousands of men dead, wounded, or permanently damaged. Skirmishes and battles could result in casualty numbers as low as one or two and as high as 10s of thousands. The carnage of the battlefield left a lasting impression on those who experienced or viewed it, but in most cases the armies quickly moved on to meet again at another time and place. When the dust settled and the living armies moved on, what happened to the dead left behind?

Riptide, Oregon, 1983. A sleepy coastal town, where crime usually consists of underage drinking down at a Wolf Point bonfire. But then, strange things start happening. A human skeleton is unearthed in a local park, and mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the town's beaches. The Mercy of the Tide follows four people drawn irrevocably together by a recent tragedy as they do their best to reclaim their lives - leading them all to a discovery that will change them and their town forever.

For more than 1600 years, Nick Medea has followed and guarded the Gate that keeps the mortal realm and that of Feirie separate, seeking in vain absolution for the fatal errors he made when he slew the dragon. All that while, he has tried and failed to keep the woman he loves from dying over and over. Yet in the 50 years since the night the dragon breathed over the city of Chicago, the Gate has not only remained fixed, but open to the trespasses of the Wyld, the darkest of the Feiriefolk. 

For 1600 years, Nick Medea has guarded the gate between our world and Feirie, preventing the Wyld - the darkest Feirie of all - from coming into Chicago to find human prey. But since he defeated Oberon, more and more Wyld have been slipping through. Nick and his Feirie companion, the shapeshifter, Fetch, have been busy hunting them down. Nick keeps coming across the Dacian Draco, the sign of his ancient enemy Galerius, including a tattoo worn by a human thug. Unfortunately, every trail ends as if years old.

No man is Boon’s equal, no gun more lethal. Boonsri Angchuan travels the trails, riding from town to town with her one and only friend, a portly Arkansan drunkard named Edward Splettstoesser. She has done nothing else for years, her only goal being revenge upon the one man who should have protected her but instead sold her and her mother into bondage. Boon and Edward navigate corrupt lawmen, hostile Kiowa, a mad judge, and countless gunmen aiming for their heads in Boon’s dogged pursuit of answers - and vengeance.

Before Julius Caesar ruled Rome, his uncle Gaius Marius was the most powerful man in the eternal city. Once a provincial nobody with a ruined family, Marius only had one way to power: the sword. Years later, he writes to his protege Quintus Sertorius, explaining to him how he rose through the ranks of the Roman legion to become the most powerful man in the Republic. He wants to encourage and inspire the young man but gets lost in the retelling of his first experience of war, love, and killing.

When the XSS Cousteau makes first contact with the Rheas, a pre-space flight alien race, it creates an opportunity for an economic windfall for Earth. After 300 years of paying tribute to their benefactor, the Vrene, humanity can use the relief. Only the Chzek already have a claim on the Rheas, who they want to enslave to serve their empire.

This lesser-known character isn't so much a typical Lumley hero as an innocent bystander, who all too often seems to be standing by in the wrong place at the wrong time - a man in collision with various weird horrors, who can never state definitely that the things he experiences are real. So here he is - the neither hero nor anti-hero narrator of these stories - though, in The Nonesuch and Others, he's at least seen to be brave, if not actually heroic.

From the award-winning author of The Cipher and Buddha Boy, comes Velocities: Stories, Kathe Koja's second electrifying collection of short fiction. Thirteen stories, two never before published, all flying at the speed of strange.