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The Scattered Pearls Belt is a string of habitats on the edge of a huge galactic empire--a glittering, decadent society rife with corruption. Now, one of its victims--Qu?nh, a scholar betrayed and left for dead--has come back for her revenge, under the guise of the glamorous and enigmatic Alchemist of Streams and Hills.

Qu?nh's path intersects that of Minh, the daughter of one of her oldest enemies, who chafes at her own lack of freedom; and of Hoà, a near-destitute engineer who poses a threat to all Qu?nh's careful plans. Qu?nh finds herself inexorably attracted to Hoà, even as her plans upend the fragile political equilibrium of the Belt.

Falling in love wasn't part of Qu?nh's plans; but will she be able to grasp this second chance at happiness, or will she cling on to a revenge that may well consume her whole?

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 11, July-August 2016.

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Short story in De Bodard's Xuya universe. It originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #195, March 17, 2016. It is also included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #219 December 2008. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology To Shape the Dark (2016), edited by Athena Andreadis, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2017.

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Novelette in De Bodard's Xuya setting. It originally appeared in Space and Time, #111, Summer 2010.

A Xuya universe story. Winner, Locus and Nebula Award, 2012; shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the British Science Fiction Association Award, 2012.

The story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #69 June 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan
  
• Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edtied by Kij Johnson
• The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Meeting Infinity (2015), and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 22, May-June 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke.

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Jockeying navigator clans guide spaceships through the Hollows: an area of space populated by the mysterious but deadly creatures known as Tanglers. When a Tangler escapes the Hollows for the first time in living memory, each clan must send a representative to help capture it - but the mission may be doomed and the hearts of two clan juniors may be in danger too.

Vi?t Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is a problem when the Rooster clan sends her on the mission against her will, forcing her to work with an ill-matched group of squabbling teammates from rival clans, including one who she can't avoid, and maybe doesn't want to.

H?c Cúc of the Snake clan has always been better at poisoning and stabbing than at making friends, but she's drawn to Nhi's perceptiveness and obliviousness to social conventions?including the ones that really should make Nhi think twice about spending time with her.

But when their imperial envoy and nominal leader is poisoned, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together - fast - before the invisible Tangler can wreak havoc on a civilian city and destroy the fragile reputation of the clans. Along the way, Nhi and H?c Cúc will have to learn the hardest lesson of all: to see past their own misconceptions and learn to trust their growing feelings for each other.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

For generations Prosper Station has thrived under the guidance of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the station's artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives.

But war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper's brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor; and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station's resources. As deprivations cause the station's ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honoured Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe. What Quyen does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure; and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance...

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales (2016), edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

This story in de Bodard's Xuya universe originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #64 January 2012. It has been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2013 Edition, edited by Rich Horton and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Neil Clarke.

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Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.

Sunless Woods is a mindship – and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She's come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân's resolute integrity.

When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân's student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship – and to the devastating secrets they've kept from each other.

2012 Nebula Award Nominee. Aztecs in space and more...

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

Short story in de Bodard's Xuya universe. It originally appeared in Interzone, #241 July-August 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A Xuya science fantasy story published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 2014. Finalist for a Nebula Award for Best Short Story (2014). It can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey, and The Long List Anthology: More Stories from the Hugo Awards Nomination List, edited by David Steffen.

Read this story online for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Locus Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran.

Short story set in de Bodard's Xuya universe. It was originally published in Subterranean Magazine, Spring 2014. I can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois and Warrior Women (2015) edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies (2017), edited by John Joseph Adams, and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 27, March-April 2019. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

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Originally published in Asimov's, July 2010 issue.

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

When tech scavenger Xích Si is captured and imprisoned by the infamous pirates of the Red Banner, she expects to be tortured or killed. Instead, their leader, Rice Fish, makes Xích Si an utterly incredible proposition: an offer of marriage.

Both have their reasons for this arrangement: Xích Si needs protection; Rice Fish, a sentient spaceship, needs a technical expert to investigate the death of her first wife, the Red Scholar. That's all there is to it.

But as the interstellar war against piracy rages on and their own investigation reaches a dire conclusion, the two of them discover that their arrangement has evolved into something much less business-focused and more personal... and tender. And maybe the best thing that's ever happened to either of them--but only if they can find a way to survive together.

A Xuya universe story. Winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award, 2010. The story originally appeared in Interzone, #231 November-December 2010, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, #124, January 2017. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace.

Read this story online for free at Interzone (PDF), or at Clarkesworld.

Nebula Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated Novella

Welcome to the Scattered Pearls Belt, a collection of ring habitats and orbitals ruled by exiled human scholars and powerful families, and held together by living mindships who carry people and freight between the stars. In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood.

A transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her.

As they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past--and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars...

A Xuya universe story. Nebula Award for Best Novelette, 2013. Shortlisted for the Hugo and Locus Award, 2013. It was originally published in the anthology The Other Half of the Sky (2013), edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt. It has been reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois, the Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear, and Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read this story online for free at the author's website, at Lightspeed, or at Clarkesword.

This BSFA winning story in De Bodard's Xuya universe originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 100, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This story was originally published in Solaris Rising 1.5: An Exclusive Ebook of New Science Fiction (2012), edited by Ian Whates. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell.