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This novella was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, September/October 2021.

Read the full story for free at Asimov's.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 31, November-December 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This novelette originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Seven, November-December 2015.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

In Old Earths clandestine world of ambassador-spies, Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen were once a starring team. But ever since a disastrous mission, they have been living separate lives in a universe dominated by a ruthless Coalition one that is about to reunite them.

The pair are dispatched to New Amazonia as diplomatic agents. Allegedly, they are to return priceless art. Covertly, they seek to tap its energy supply. But in reality, one has his mind set on treason. And among the extraordinary women of New Amazonia, in a season of festival, betrayal, and disguise, he will find a new ally and a force beyond any that humans have known.

Locus Award-nominated short story

This short story has been anthologized in Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer; The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine edited by Jonathan Strahan; The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois; and The Long List Anthology: More Stories from the Hugo Awards Nomination List, edited by David Steffen.

Read this story for free at Slate.com.

Love has no time limits, but life does. Elizabeth Bear gives us a future where life and love and identity have so many more options than they do today.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2011, and was reprinted in Apex Magazine, March 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois
• More Human Than Human: Stories of Androids, Robots, and Manufactured Humanity (2017), edited by Neil Clarke

The story is included in the collection Shoggoths in Bloom (2012).

Read the full story for free at Apex.

It's hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, and a hundred times too big to be a ship. It looks like nothing anyone ever saw. And it's crashed just outside Tombstone with something alive inside.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Four, May-June 2015. It can also be found in the anthology Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore (2017), edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, January 2012, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton. It is included in the collection Shoggoths in Bloom (2012).

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 28, May-June 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Twelve Tomorrows (2018), edited by Wad Roush. It was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 105, February 2019. The story is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen (2019), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Four (2019), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

An academic's whimsical decision to take a DNA test leads her into uncharted territory, where she discovers some extraordinary truths about herself and new possibilities for her future.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #4 January 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Wings of Fire (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon. It is included in the collection Shoggoths in Bloom (2010).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 20, January-February 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2008. The story can also be found in the antholgies:

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan
• Year's Best Fantasy 9 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton
• The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume edited by Mary Robinette Kowal
• The Book of Cthulhu (2001), edited by Ross E. Lockhart
• New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (2011), edited by Paula Guran

It is included in the collection Shoggoths in Bloom (2012).

Short fiction from Elizabeth Bear, recipient of the "John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer." Includes her Hugo- and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning "Tideline" and Hugo-winning novelette, "Shoggoths in Bloom," as well as an original, never-published story. A World Fantasy, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick nominee, Bear is one of speculative fiction's most acclaimed, respected, and prolific authors.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2012) - essay by Scott Lynch
• Tideline - (2007)
• Sonny Liston Takes the Fall - (2008)
• Sounding - (2006)
• The Something-Dreaming Game - (2007)
• The Cold Blacksmith - (2006)
• In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns - (2012)
• Orm the Beautiful - (2007)
• The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe - (2006)
• Love Among the Talus - [The Eternal Sky] - (2006)
• Cryptic Coloration - (2007)
• The Ladies - (2012)
• Shoggoths in Bloom - (2008)
• The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder - (2008)
• Dolly - (2011)
• Gods of the Forge - (2011)
• Annie Webber - (2008)
• The Horrid Glory of Its Wings - (2009)
• Confessor - (2010)
• The Leavings of the Wolf - (2011)
• The Death of Terrestrial Radio - (2012)

From the start of her career, Elizabeth Bear has been one of the most distinctive voices in modern speculative fiction. Her debut novel, Hammered, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel in 2005, the same year she received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In the years since, she has produced an impressive array of standalone novels (Undertow) and multi-volume series (The Eternal Sky Trilogy, The New Amsterdam Series), along with a steady stream of stories and novellas, the best of which are gathered in this generous, absolutely necessary volume.

The Best of Elizabeth Bear contains 27 stories and novellas, many never before collected, that encompass an astonishing range of themes, settings, ideas and emotions. The collection opens with "Covenant," a tale of serial murder unlike any you have ever read, and closes with the extraordinary "Erase, Erase, Erase." The latter is a surrealist tour de force in which the unnamed narrator, a former cult member, reflects on her life, her nebulous but guilty past, and her constantly diminishing sense of self. In between these bookends are more than two dozen carefully crafted tales that never fail to resonate beyond the final page.

"Tideline," winner of both the Hugo and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, tells the surprisingly moving story of Chalcedony, a former "war machine" determined to preserve the memories of her dead human companions. "Shoggoths in Bloom," another Hugo winner, offers a fresh take on H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos, setting the action in a pre-WWII II world marked by racism and virulent anti-Semitism. "Faster Gun" is a tale of the Old West in which Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo encounter an impossible alien artefact. The long novella "In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns" takes place in Bangalore, India fifty years from now and tells the story of a murder in which the victim's body is literally turned inside out. In the affecting "Sonny Liston Takes a Fall," we are brought to an entirely new understanding of one of the iconic moments of boxing history.

These are just a few of the complex pleasures contained in this singular collection. Each of the remaining stories is a fully realized gem. Each one offers something new and unexpected. Whether you choose to read this book from end to end, or to parcel the stories out in a more leisurely way, The Best of Elizabeth Bear will provide you with endless hours of provocative, deeply intelligent entertainment. This is imaginative fiction in its purest, most highly developed form. It doesn't get better than this.

Table of Contents:
• Introduction • essay by C. L. Polk
• Covenant • (2014) • short story
• She Still Loves the Dragon • (2018) • short story
• Tideline • (2007) • short story
• The Leavings of the Wolf • (2011) • short story
• Okay, Glory • (2018) • novelette
• Needles • (2011) • short story
• This Chance Planet • (2014) • short story
• The Body of the Nation • [New Amsterdam] • (2012) • short fiction
• Boojum • [Boojum] • (2008) • short story by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette
• The Bone War • [The Eternal Sky] • (2015) • short story
• In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns • [Sub-Inspector Ferron Mysteries • 1] • (2012) • novella
• Shoggoths In Bloom • (2008) • novelette
• Skin in the Game • (2015) • short fiction
• Hobnoblin Blues • (2008) • short story
• Form and Void • (2012) • short story
• Your Collar • (2008) • short story
• Terrior • (2014) • novelette
• Dolly • (2011) • short story
• Love Among the Talus • [The Eternal Sky] • (2006) • short story
• The Deeps of the Sky • (2012) • short story
• Two Dreams on Trains • (2005) • short story
• Faster Gun • (2012) • novelette
• The Heart's Filthy Lesson • (2015) • novelette
• Perfect Gun • (2017) • short story
• Sonny Liston Takes the Fall • (2008) • short story
• Orm the Beautiful • (2007) • short story
• Erase, Erase, Erase • (2019) • novelette

A new collection by one of the most popular and prolific authors of the last few years covers a wide range of material, from time travel to cyberpunk to contemporary fantasy. Twenty stories and two poems, originally published in high profile places like SciFi.com and Asimov's.

In art as in life, you've got to change in order to live. Even when your audience--and maybe your friends--thinks it would be great if you stayed the same forever. In some cases, literally forever.

The author of over seventeen SF and fantasy novels published over the last half-decade, Elizabeth Bear won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005, and the Hugo Award and the Sturgeon Award in 2008 for her short story "Tideline."

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Book of Silverberg: Stories in Honor of Robert Silverberg (2014), edited by William Schafer and Gardner Dozois. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton.

This novelette originally appeared in Old Venus (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, June 2017. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

There's a harpy with bronze wings living in the dumpster behind Desiree's building. She's ugly and she eats garbage, but she has a little kingdom back there. Desiree wants something of her own, too -- something all hers. Can that foul old thing possibly help her?

This story can be found in the anthology New York Fantastic (2017), edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Aeon Seven, May 2006. It an also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Time Travel: Recent Trips (2014), edited by Paula Guran.

Auga, a wandering sorcerer, follows his brother's fate-thread into the village of Ormsfjoll, where he expects to deliver good news and continue his travels. What he doesn't anticipate is that to meet his brother he must first contend with the truth at the heart of the volcano that wreaks havoc on Ormsfjoll.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

"This Chance Planet" by Elizabeth Bear is a near future science fiction story about a young Russian waitress with ambitions to become an engineer and her musician boyfriend, who wants her to gestate a liver for money so his band can tour. Plus, there's a dog.

This story was first published by Tor.com in October 2014, and later anthologized in The Long List Anthology: More Stories from the Hugo Awards Nomination List, edited by David Steffen.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The story follows a sentient war machine, Chalcedony, which is the lone survivor of a previous and highly apocalyptic war that has reduced the human population virtually to cavemen and hunter gatherers.

This short story originally appeared on Strange Horizons, 3 January 2005. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (2007), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. The story is included in the collection The Chains That You Refuse (2006).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

A frontier world on the back end of nowhere is the sort of place people go to get lost. And some of those people have secrets worth hiding, secrets that can change the future - assuming there is one....

Andre Deschanes is a hired assassin, but he wants to be so much more. If only he can find a teacher who will forgive his murderous past - and train him to manipulate odds and control probability. It's called the art of conjuring, and it's Andre's only route to freedom. For the world he lives on is run by the ruthless Charter Trade Company, and his floating city, Novo Haven, is little more than a company town where humans and aliens alike either work for one tyrannical family - or are destroyed by it. But beneath Novo Haven's murky waters, within its tangled bayous, reedy banks, and back alleys, revolution is stirring. And one more death may be all it takes to shift the balance....

This short story originally appeare in the anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails (2008), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Year's Best SF 14 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton
• The Book of Cthulhu 2 (2012), edited by Ross E. Lockhart
• Space Opera (2014), edited by Rich Horton
• The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Lovecraft Unbound: Twenty Stories (2009), edited by Ellen Datlow, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #81 June 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton
• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edidted by Gardner Dozois
• New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (2011), edited by Paula Guran
• In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (2013), edited by Hank Davis

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in two installments in audio format at Drablecast, Augusts/September 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, and New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird (2015), edited by Paula Guran.

Listen to the full story for free at Drabblecast - Part 1 - Part 2.

On a broken ship orbiting a doomed sun, dwellers have grown complacent with their aging metal world. But when a serving girl frees a captive noblewoman, the old order is about to change....

Ariane, Princess of the House of Rule, was known to be fiercely cold-blooded. But severing an angel's wings on the battlefield-even after she had surrendered-proved her completely without honor. Captive, the angel Perceval waits for Ariane not only to finish her off-but to devour her very memories and mind. Surely her gruesome death will cause war between the houses-exactly as Ariane desires. But Ariane's plan may yet be opposed, for Perceval at once recognizes the young servant charged with her care.

Rien is the lost child: her sister. Soon they will escape, hoping to stop the impending war and save both their houses. But it is a perilous journey through the crumbling hulk of a dying ship, and they do not pass unnoticed. Because at the hub of their turning world waits Jacob Dust, all that remains of God, following the vapor wisp of the angel. And he knows they will meet very soon.

Sometimes the greatest sin is survival. The generation ship Jacob's Ladder has barely survived cataclysms from without and within. Now, riding the shock wave of a nova blast toward an uncertain destiny, the damaged ship-the only world its inhabitants have ever known-remains a war zone. Even as Perceval, the new captain, struggles to come to terms with the traumas of her recent past, the remnants of rebellion aboard the ship still threaten the crew's survival.

Yet as Perceval's relatives Tristen and Benedick play a deadly game of cat and mouse in pursuit of a traitor through a vast ship that is renewing itself in strange and dangerous ways, an even more insidious threat is building in a place no one ever thought to look. And this implacable enemy could change the face of the ship forever if a ragtag band of heroes cannot stop it.

Rife with intrigue and betrayal, heroism and sacrifice, Grail brings Elizabeth Bear's brilliant space opera to a triumphant conclusion.

At last the generation ship Jacob's Ladder has arrived at its destination: the planet they have come to call Grail. But this habitable jewel just happens to be populated already: by humans who call their home Fortune. And they are wary of sharing Fortune-especially with people who have genetically engineered themselves to such an extent that it is a matter of debate whether they are even human anymore. To make matters worse, a shocking murder aboard the Jacob's Ladder has alerted Captain Perceval and the angel Nova that formidable enemies remain hidden somewhere among the crew.

On Grail-or Fortune, rather-Premier Danilaw views the approach of the Jacob's Ladder with dread. Behind the diplomatic niceties of first-contact protocol, he knows that the deadly game being played is likely to erupt into full-blown war-even civil war. For as he strives to chart a peaceful and prosperous path forward for his people, internal threats emerge to take control by any means necessary.

Once Jenny Casey was somebody's daughter. Once she was somebody's enemy. Now the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes project and has Jenny in his sights. Suddenly Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the Internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half-man-made nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game before a brave new future spins completely out of control.

The year is 2062, and after years on the run, Jenny Casey is back in the Canadian armed forces. Those who were once her enemies are now her allies, and at fifty, she's been handpicked for the most important mission of her life-a mission for which her artificially reconstructed body is perfectly suited. With the earth capable of sustaining life for just another century, Jenny-as pilot of the starship Montreal-must discover brave new worlds. And with time running out, she must succeed where others have failed.

Now Jenny is caught in a desperate battle where old resentments become bitter betrayals and justice takes the cruelest forms of vengeance. With the help of a brilliant AI, an ex—crime lord, and the man she loves, Jenny may just get her chance to save the world. If it doesn't come to an end first…

Give Canada's Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an inch and she'll take a galaxy. That's just the kind of person a world on the brink of destruction needs. The year is 2063, and Earth has been brutalized. An asteroid flung at Toronto by the PanChinese government has killed tens of millions and left the equivalent of a nuclear explosion in its wake. Humanity must find another option....

Perched above the devastation in the starship Montreal, Jenny is still in the thick of the fray. Plugged into the worldwire, connected to a brilliant AI, her mind can be everywhere and anywhere at once. But it's focused on the mysterious alien beings right outside her ship. Are they there to help-or destroy? With Earth a breeding ground for treason and betrayal as governments struggle to assign blame, Jenny holds the fate of humankind in her artificially reconstructed hand...

"You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I'm one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It's French, so Beatrice tells me."

Hugo-Award winning author Elizabeth Bear offers something new in Karen Memory, an absolutely entrancing steampunk novel set in Seattle in the late 19th century--an era when the town was called Rapid City, when the parts we now call Seattle Underground were the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes bringing would-be miners heading up to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront. Karen is a "soiled dove," a young woman on her own who is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable's high-quality bordello. Through Karen's eyes we get to know the other girls in the house--a resourceful group--and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, who has a machine that can take over anyone's mind and control their actions. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap--a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper-type story of the old west with the light touch of Karen's own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

Readers met the irrepressible Karen Memory in Elizabeth Bear's 2015 novel Karen Memory, and fell in love with her steampunk Victorian Pacific Northwest city, and her down-to-earth story-telling voice.

Now Karen is back with Stone Mad, a new story about spiritualists, magicians, con-men, and an angry lost tommy-knocker--a magical creature who generally lives in the deep gold mines of Alaska, but has been kidnapped and brought to Rapid City.

Karen and Priya are out for a night on the town, celebrating the purchase of their own little ranch and Karen's retirement from the Hotel Ma Cherie, when they meet the Arcadia Sisters, spiritualists who unexpectedly stir up the tommy-knocker in the basement. The ensuing show could bring down the house, if Karen didn't rush in to rescue everyone she can.

The first in this series is a novel, but this volume is a novella of 40,540 words.

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #201 November-December 2005, and was reprinted in Subterranean Online, Summer 2007. The story is included in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. It was later incorporated in the fixup novel New Amsterdam (2007).

Listen to an audio version of this story read by Mary Robinette Kowal for free at Suberranean.

Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable--and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty. She has nothing, but obligations. Sebastien de Ulloa is the oldest creature she has ever known. He was no longer young at the Christian millennium, and that was nine hundred years ago. He has forgotten his birth-name, his birth-place, and even the year in which he was born, if he ever knew it. But he still remembers the woman who made him immortal. He has everything, but a reason to live. In a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where Holland finally ceded New Amsterdam to the English only during the Napoleonic wars, and where the expansion of the American colonies was halted by the war magic of the Iroquois, they are exiles in the new world--and its only hope for justice.

The wampyr has walked the dark streets of the world's great cities for a thousand years. In that time, he has worn out many names--and even more compatriots.

Now, so that one of those companions may die where she once lived, he has come again to the City of London. In 1938, where the ghosts of centuries of war haunt rain-grey streets and the Prussian Chancellor's army of occupation rules with an iron hand.

Here he will meet his own ghosts, the remembrances of loves mortal--and immortal. And here he will face the Chancellor's secret weapon: a human child.

For centuries, the White City has graced the banks of the Moskva River. But in the early years of a twentieth century not quite analogous to our own, a creature even more ancient than Moscow's fortress heart has entered its medieval walls.

In the wake of political success and personal loss, the immortal detective Don Sebastien de Ulloa has come to Moscow to choose his path amid the embers of war between England and her American colonies. Accompanied by his court--the forensic sorcerer Lady Abigail Irene and the authoress Phoebe Smith--he seeks nothing but healing and rest.

But Moscow is both jeweled and corrupt, and when you are old there is no place free of ghosts, and Sebastien is far from the most ancient thing in Russia.

For centuries, the wampyr has drifted from one place to another. From one life to another. It's 1962, and he's returned to New Amsterdam for the first time since he fled it on pain of death some sixty years before. On the eve of social revolution, on the cusp of a new way of life, he's nevertheless surrounded by inescapable reminders of who he used to be.

For a thousand years, he's chosen to change rather than to die. Now, at last, he faces a different future.

It all began with Ragnarok, with the Children of the Light and the Tarnished ones battling to the death in the ice and the dark. At the end of the long battle, one Valkyrie survived, wounded, and one valraven -- the steeds of the valkyrie.

Because they lived, Valdyrgard was not wholly destroyed. Because the valraven was transformed in the last miracle offered to a Child of the Light, Valdyrgard was changed to a world where magic and technology worked hand in hand.

2500 years later, Muire is in the last city on the dying planet, where the Technomancer rules what's left of humanity. She's caught sight of someone she has not seen since the Last Battle: Mingan the Wolf is hunting in her city.

For five hundred years the immortal Children of the Light, einherjar and valkyrie, have lived together in the North of Valdyrgard. They were born out of the Sea, each with a shining crystal sword in his or her hand; they are Angels of Light created in the formation of a new world. But three have come before them, from the death-throes of the old world, Midgard: the world-girdling Serpent, Bearer of Burdens; the Wolf Fenris, eater of the Sun, who now takes the form of an einherjar; and his demon sister, stealer of souls.

The Children spend their days feasting, fighting, hunting, and guarding their human charges. But one dreadful day a woman is washed up from the sea, a Lady who is no mortal, though she is not valkyrie either. Thus begins the breaking of the Children of the Light, the tarnishing of their power, and the death of Valdyrgard.

By the Mountain Bound is a prequel to Elizabeth Bear's highly acclaimed All the Windwracked Stars, and tells the painful tale of love and betrayal, sorcery and battle, that led up to the day when Muire was left alone in the snow at the end of the world.

This direct sequel to Elizabeth Bear's highly acclaimed All the Windwracked Stars picks up the story some fifty years after Muire went into the sea and became the new Bearer of Burdens.

Beautiful Cathoair, now an immortal warrior angel, has been called back to the city of Eiledon to raise his son--Muire's son as well, cast up on shore as an infant. It is seemingly a quiet life. But deadly danger approaches...the evil goddess Heythe, who engineered the death of Valdyrgard, has travelled forward in time on her rainbow steed. She came expecting to gloat over a dead world, the proof of her revenge, but instead she finds a Rekindled land, renewed by Muire's sacrifice.

She will have her revenge by forcing this new Bearer of Burdens to violate her oaths and break her bounds and thus bring about the true and final end of Valdyrgard. She will do it by tormenting both Cathoair and his son Cathmar. But Mingan, the gray wolf, sees his old enemy Heythe's return. He will not allow it to happen again.

Dark magic is afoot in the City of Jackals...

Eighty years Bijou the Artificer has been a Wizard of Messaline, building her servants from precious scraps, living with the memory of a great love that betrayed her. She is ready to rest.

But now her former apprentice, Brazen the Enchanter, has brought her a speechless feral child poisoned by a sorcerous infection. Now, Messaline is swept by a mysterious plague. Now the seeping corpses of the dead stalk the streets.

Now, finally, Bijou's old nemesis--Bijou's old love--Kaulas the Necromancer is unleashing a reeking half-death on Bijou's people. And only Bijou and her creatures wrought of bone and jewels can save the City of Jackals from his final revenge.

Bijou the Artificer is a Wizard of Messaline, the City of Jackals. She and her partner--and rival--Kaulas the Necromancer, along with the martial Prince Salih, comprise the Bey's elite band of trouble-solving adventurers.

But Messaline is built on the ruins of a still more ancient City of Jackals. So when two foreign Wizards and a bard from the mysterious western isles cross the desert in pursuit of a sorcerer intent on plundering the deadly artifacts of lost Erem, Bijou and her companions must join their hunt.

The quest will take them through strange passages, beneath the killing light of alien suns, with the price of failure the destruction of every land.

Temur, grandson of the Great Khan, is walking away from a battlefield where he was left for dead. All around lie the fallen armies of his cousin and his brother, who made war to rule the Khaganate. Temur is now the legitimate heir by blood to his grandfather's throne, but he is not the strongest. Going into exile is the only way to survive his ruthless cousin.

Once-Princess Samarkar is climbing the thousand steps of the Citadel of the Wizards of Tsarepheth. She was heir to the Rasan Empire until her father got a son on a new wife. Then she was sent to be the wife of a Prince in Song, but that marriage ended in battle and blood. Now she has renounced her worldly power to seek the magical power of the wizards. These two will come together to stand against the hidden cult that has so carefully brought all the empires of the Celadon Highway to strife and civil war through guile and deceit and sorcerous power.

The Shattered Pillars is the second book of Bear’s The Eternal Sky trilogy and the sequel to Range of Ghosts. Set in a world drawn from our own great Asian Steppes, this saga of magic, politics and war sets Re-Temur, the exiled heir to the great Khagan and his friend Sarmarkar, a Wizard of Tsarepheth, against dark forces determined to conquer all the great Empires along the Celedon Road.

Elizabeth Bear concludes her award-winning epic fantasy Eternal Sky trilogy in Steles of the Sky.

Re Temur, legitimate heir to his grandfather's Khaganate, has finally raised his banner and declared himself at war with his usurping uncle. With his companions-the Wizard Samarkar, the Cho-tse Hrahima, and the silent monk Brother Hsiung-he must make his way to Dragon Lake to gather in his army of followers. But Temur's enemies are not idle; the leader of the Nameless Assassins, who has shattered the peace of the Steppe, has struck at Temur's uncle already. To the south, in the Rasan empire, plague rages. To the east, the great city of Asmaracanda has burned, and the Uthman Caliph is deposed. All the world seems to be on fire, and who knows if even the beloved son of the Eternal Sky can save it?

A Companion to Wolves is the story of a young nobleman, Isolfr, who is chosen to become a wolfcarl -- a warrior who is bonded to a fighting wolf. Isolfr is deeply drawn to the wolves, and though as his father's heir he can refuse the call, he chooses to go.

The people of this wintry land depend on the wolfcarls to protect them from the threat of trolls and wyverns, though the supernatural creatures have not come in force for many years. Men are growing too confident. The wolfhealls are small, and the lords give them less respect than in former years. But the winter of Isolfr's bonding, the trolls come down from the north in far greater numbers than before, and the holding's complaisance gives way to terror in the dark.

Isolfr, now bonded to a queen wolf, Viradechtis, must learn where his honor lies, and discover the lengths to which he will to go when it, and love for his wolf, drive him.

In Iskryne, the war against the Trollish invasion has been won, and the lands of men are safe again... at least for a while. Isolfr and his sister, the Konigenwolf Viradechtis, have established their own wolfhaell. Viradechtis has taken two mates, and so the human pack has two war leaders. And in the way of the pack, they must come to terms with each other, must become brothers instead of rivals--for Viradechtis will not be gainsaid.

She may even be prescient.

A new danger comes to Iskryne. An army of men approaches, an army that wishes to conquer and rule. The giant trellwolves and their human brothers have never hunted men before. They will need to learn if they are to defend their homes.

Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear return with the third book in their Iskryne trilogy, An Apprentice to Elves. The trilogy began with A Companion to Wolves, and continued in The Tempering of Men. This novel picks up the story of Alfgyfa, a young woman who has been raised in the Wolfhall by her father Isolfr, who is the human leader of the queen-wolf Viridechtis' pack, and was the protagonist of the first book.

The warrior culture of Iskryne forbids many things to women--and most especially it forbids them bonding to one of the giant telepathic trelwolves. But as her father was no ordinary boy, Alfgyfa is no ordinary girl. Her father has long planned to send his daughter to Tin, a matriarch among the elves who live nearby, to be both apprentice and ambassador, and now she is of age to go.

Hugo Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear returns to her critically acclaimed epic fantasy world of the Eternal Sky with a brand new trilogy.

The Stone in the Skull, the first volume in her new trilogy, takes readers over the dangerous mountain passes of the Steles of the Sky and south into the Lotus Kingdoms.

The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.

Hugo Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear returns to the epic fantasy world of the Lotus Kingdoms with The Red-Stained Wings, the sequel to The Stone in the Skull, taking the Gage into desert lands under a deadly sky to answer the riddle of the Stone in the Skull.

The Gage and the Dead Man brought a message from the greatest wizard of Messaline to the ruling queen of Sarathai, one of the Lotus Kingdoms. But the message was a riddle, and the Lotus Kingdoms are at war.

The Lotus Kingdoms are at war, with four claimants to the sorcerous throne of the Alchemical Emperor, fielding three armies between them. Alliances are made, and broken, many times over--but in the end, only one can sit on the throne. And that one must have not only the power, but the rightful claim.

She is known as Seeker. Spellbound by the Faerie Queen, she has abducted human children for her mistress's pleasure for what seems like an eternity, unable to free herself from servitude and reclaim her own humanity.

Seeker's latest prey is a Merlin. Named after the legendary wizard of Camelot, Merlins are not simply those who wield magic--they are magic. Now, with the Prometheus Club's agents and rivals from Faerie both vying for the favor of this being of limitless magic to tip the balance of power, Seeker must persuade the Merlin to join her cause-or else risk losing something even more precious and more important to her than the fate of humankind....

Several years ago, Matthew the Magician ended an age-old war. It only cost him everything-and everyone-he knew and loved. Turning against his mentor, Jane Andraste, in the realm of Faerie left him physically crippled and his power shattered. But Matthew remains the protector of New York City. So when he finds a young woman brutally murdered by a Fae creature, he must bring her killer to justice before Jane uses the crime to justify more war-and before he confronts an even larger threat in the greatest Adversary of all...

On the heels of Hell and Earth...

Kit Marley, playwright and spy in the service of Queen Elizabeth, has been murdered. His true gift to Her Majesty was his way with words, crafting plays infused with a subtle magic that maintained her rule. He performed this task on behalf of the Prometheus Club, a secret society of nobles engaged in battle against sorcerers determined to destroy England. Assuming Marley's role is William Shakespeare- but he is unable to create the magic needed to hold the Queen's enemies at bay.

Resurrected by enchantment in Faerie, Marley is England's only hope. But before he can assist Will in the art of magic, he must uncover the traitor among the Prometheans responsible for his death...

Kit Marley and William Shakespeare are playwrights in the service of Queen Elizabeth, employed by the Prometheus Club. Their words, infused with magic, empower Her Majesty's rule. But some of the Prometheans, comprised of England's most influential men and mages, conspire to usurp the Queen.

Able to walk in both worlds, Kit seeks allies to aid him in his mission to protect Elizabeth - only to encounter enemies, mortal and monster, who will stop at nothing to usher in a new age. But despite the might of his adversaries, Kit possesses more power than even he can possibly imagine.

The One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King: personifications of the city of Las Vegas - its history, mystery, mystical power, and heart! When the Suicide King vanishes - possibly killed - in the middle of a magic-rights turf war started by the avatars of Los Angeles, a notorious fictional assassin, and the mutilated ghost of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel - his partner, the One-Eyed Jack, must seek the aid of a bizarre band of legendary and undead allies: the ghosts of Doc Holliday and John Henry the steel-driving man; the echoes of several imaginary super spies, decades displaced in time; and a vampire named Tribute, who bears a striking resemblance to a certain long-lost icon of popular music.

Haimey Dz thinks she knows what she wants.
She thinks she knows who she is.
She is wrong.

A routine salvage mission uncovers evidence of a terrible crime and relics of a powerful ancient technology, just as Haimey and her small crew run afoul of pirates at the outer limits of the Milky Way and find themselves both on the run, and in possession of ancient, universe-changing technology.

When the authorities prove corrupt, it becomes clear that Haimey is the only one who can protect her galaxy-spanning civilisation from its potential power - and from the revolutionaries who want to use it to seed terror and war. But doing so will take her from the event horizon of the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core to the infinite, empty spaces at its edge. Along the way, she'll have to uncover the secrets of ancient intelligences lost to time as well as her own lost secrets, which she will wish had remained hidden from her forever.

Meet Doctor Jens.

She hasn't had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years. Her workday begins when she jumps out of perfectly good space ships and continues with developing treatments for sick alien species she's never seen before. She loves her life. Even without the coffee.

But Dr. Jens is about to discover an astonishing mystery: two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a deadly embrace. The crew is suffering from an unknown ailment and the shipmind is trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can't resist a mystery and she begins doing some digging. She has no idea that she's about to discover horrifying and life-changing truths.