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Welcome to Mexico City... An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires...

Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eeking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.

Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.

Her plan doesn't include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.

And then there's Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.

Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?

We like to imagine the end. How we might survive. How we might live after the fateful moment that changes everything. That moment has arrived--welcome to Canada, after the apocalypse!

Fractured is a collection of stories by more than 20 writers who imagine life after the end of days. The waters have risen around Vancouver, nuclear disasters have devastated the Prairies, a strange sickness has relocated the capital of the nation to Yellowknife, aliens have invaded Manitoba, and even ghosts have returned to exterminate the living. Across this vast nation, a country fractured and rent asunder by disasters both natural and unnatural, come the stories of survivors, of the brave and the wicked, the kind and the hostile. These are tales that reveal the secrets at this critical point for humanity, exploring a diversity of scenarios and settings from small rural communities to large cities and protagonists from all walks of life.

Postapocalyptic literature finds its stories in each generation that has something new to reflect upon: Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man is considered the first work of modern apocalyptic fiction, and many have followed in her footsteps in both print, with The Hunger Games, I Am Legend, The Road, and OryxandCrake, and film, with Mad Max, Waterworld, The Book of Eli, and others. Contributors to this volume include T. S. Bazelli, David Huebert, Hilary Janzen, Arun Jiwa, Claude Lalumière, Michael Pack, Morgan M. Page, Miriam Oudin, Frank Westcott, A. C. Wise, and more.

Table of Contents:

• Kalopsia - short story by E. Catherine Tobler
• Jenny of the Long Gauge - short story by Michael Matheson
• Snow Angel - short story by A. M. Dellamonica
• Persistence of Vision - short story by Orrin Grey
• Keeper of the Oasis - short story by Steve Stanton
• Maxim Fujiyama and Other Persons - short story by Claude Lalumière?
• Saying Goodbye - short story by Michael Pack
• Of the Dying Light - short story by Arun Jiwa
• Edited Hansard 116 - short story by Miriam Oudin
• @shalestate - short story by David Huebert
• The Body Politic - short story by John Jantunen
• Brown Wave - short story by Christine Ottoni
• Dog for Dinner - short story by dvsduncan
• Manitou-Wapow - short story by GMB Chomichuk and Curtis Janzen and Thomas Turner
• D-Day - short story by T. S. Bazelli
• Ruptures - short story by Jamie Mason
• City Noise - short story by Morgan M. Page
• River Road - short story by Amanda M. Taylor
• Matthew, Waiting - short story by A. C. Wise
• The Dome of St. Macaire - short story by Jean-Louis Trudel
• No Man Is a Promontory - short story by Hilary Janzen
• White Noise - short story by Geoff Gander
• Last Man Standing - short story by Frank Westcott

SPECIAL EDITION HARDCOVER: Contains three stories and 10 illustrations not included in paperback or e-book edition. A collection of fungal wonders... and terrors. In this new anthology, writers reach into the rich territory first explored by William Hope Hodgson a century ago: the land of the fungi. Stories range from noir to dark fantasy, from steampunk to body horror. Join authors such as Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Nick Mamatas, W.H. Pugmire, Lavie Tidhar, Ann K.Schwader, Jesse Bullington, Molly Tanzer and Simon Strantzas through a dizzying journey of fungal tales. Feast upon Fungi.

Contents:

• Cordyceps zombii - poem by Ann K. Schwader
• Where Dead Men Go to Dream - short story by A. C. Wise
• Last Bloom on the Sage - short fiction by Andrew Penn Romine
• His Sweet Truffle of a Girl - short fiction by Camille Alexa
• First They Came for the Pigs - short story by Chadwick Ginther
• Dust from a Dark Flower - short fiction by Daniel Mills
• Out of the Blue - [The Black Lands] - short fiction by Ian Rogers
• Wild Mushrooms - short fiction by Jane Hertenstein
• Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose - (2004) - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Hyphae - short fiction by John Langan
• A Monster in the Midst - short fiction by Julio Toro San Martin
• The Pilgrims of Parthen - short fiction by Kristopher Reisz [as by Kris Reisz]
• Gamma - short story by Laird Barron
• The White Hands - short fiction by Lavie Tidhar
• The Pearl in the Oyster and the Oyster Under Glass - short story by Lisa M. Bradley
• Tubby McMungus, Fat from Fungus - short fiction by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer
• The Shaft Through the Middle of It All - short fiction by Nick Mamatas
• Our Stories Will Live Forever - short fiction by Paul Tremblay
• Letters to a Fungus - short fiction by Polenth Blake
• Goatsbride - short story by Richard Gavin
• Go Home Again - short story by Simon Strantzas
• Kum, Raúl (The Unknown Terror) - b. 1925, d. 1957 - short fiction by Steve Berman
• Midnight Mushrumps - short fiction by W. H. Pugmire
• New Feet Within My Garden Go - short fiction by E. Catherine Tobler
• The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire - short fiction by J. T. Glover
• Big Guy and Little Guy's Survivalist Adventure - short fiction by Claude Lalumière
•  Fungi - interior artwork by Bernie Gonzalez

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather's house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather's room. She opens it--and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea's demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City--and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

This short story originally appeared in AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review, January 28th 2018, and was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, October 2018.

Read the full story for free at AE or Lightspeed.

He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemí. You have to save me.

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find - her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 27, March-April 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Amelia dreams of Mars. The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she's trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story.

And yet there's Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life.

This novella can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

They emerge from the shadows, to claim the night.... Women from around the world delve into Lovecraftian depths, penning and illustrating a variety of Weird horrors. The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath? Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!

Table of Contents:

• "Bitter Perfume" by Laura Blackwell
• "Violet is the Color of Your Energy" by Nadia Bulkin
• "Body to Body to Body" by Selena Chambers
• "Magna Mater" by Arinn Dembo
• "De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae" by Jilly Dreadful
• "Hairwork" by Gemma Files
• "The Head of T'la-yub" by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
• "Bring the Moon to Me" by Amelia Gorman
• "Chosen" by Lyndsey Holder
• "Eight Seconds" by Pandora Hope
• "Cthulhu of the Dead Sea" by Inkeri Kontro
• "Turn out the Light" by Penelope Love
• "The Adventurer's Wife" by Premee Mohamed
• "Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961" by Sharon Mock
• "The Eye of Juno" by Eugenie Mora
• "Ammutseba Rising" by Ann K. Schwader
• "Cypress God" by Rodopi Sisamis
• "Lavinia's Wood" by Angela Slatter
• "The Opera Singer" by Priya Sridhar
• "Provenance" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• "The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad" by Molly Tanzer
• "Lockbox" by E. Catherine Tobler
• "When She Quickens" by Mary Turzillo
• "Shub-Niggurath's Witnesses" by Valerie Valdes
• "Queen of a New America" by Wendy N. Wagner

Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mix tape.

Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends - Sebastian and Daniela - and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. The three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love...

Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns alone for her estranged father's funeral.

It's hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, reviving memories from a childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? Is there any magic left?

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all-but-invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend...

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristan might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies...

Antonina Beaulieu is in the glittering city of Loisail for her first Grand Season, where she will attend balls and mingle among high society. Under the tutelage of the beautiful but cold Valerie Beaulieu she hopes to find a suitable husband. However, the haphazard manifestations of Nina's telekinetic powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

Yet dazzling telekinetic performer and outsider Hector Auvray sees Nina's powers as a gift, and he teaches her how to hone and control them. As they spend more and more time together, Nina falls in love and believes she's found the great romance that she's always dreamt of. But Hector's courtship of Nina is deceptive.

Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a researcher who is either a genius or a madman.

Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.

The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor's labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.

All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau's patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.

For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and, in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.

Locus Award nominated novella.

Yalxi, the deposed Supreme Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, is on a desperate mission. Her lover and confidant seized her throne and stole the precious diamond heart, the jewel that is the engine of her power. Yalxi sets out to regain her magic and find a weapon capable of destroying the usurper. But this will mean turning to unlikely allies and opening herself up to unpleasant memories that have been suppressed for many years. For Yalxi is no great hero, but a cunning sorceress who once forged her path in blood--and must reckon with the consequences.

Spanning a variety of genres -- fantasy, science fiction, horror -- and time periods, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's exceptional debut collection features short stories infused with Mexican folklore yet firmly rooted in a reality that transforms as the fantastic erodes the rational. This speculative fiction compilation, lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human.

Perplexing and absorbing, the stories lift the veil of reality to expose the realms of what lies beyond with creatures that shed their skin and roam the night, vampires in Mexico City that struggle with disenchantment, an apocalypse with giant penguins, legends of magic scorpions, and tales of a ceiba tree surrounded by human skulls.

This short story originally appeared in the collection Love & Other Poisons (2014), and was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The latest edition of the very best science fiction and fantasy as selected by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

The Nebula Awards Showcase is an anthology of the winners and nominees for the SFWA Nebula Awards. The anthology has been published continuously since 1966 and has featured the very best of science fiction and fantasy.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2019) - essay by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ - (2017) - short story by Rebecca Roanhorse
• A Series of Steaks - (2017) - novelette by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
• Weaponized Math - (2017) - novelette by Jonathan P. Brazee
• Utopia, LOL? - (2017) - short story by Jamie Wahls
• Fandom for Robots - (2017) - short story by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
• All Systems Red - (2017) - novella by Martha Wells
• Wind Will Rove - (2017) - novelette by Sarah Pinsker
• Dirty Old Town - (2017) - novelette by Richard Bowes
• The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard) - (2017) - short story by Matthew Kressel
• Carnival Nine - (2017) - short story by Caroline M. Yoachim
• Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time - (2017) - novelette by K. M. Szpara
• Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand - (2017) - short story by Fran Wilde
• A Human Stain - (2017) - novelette by Kelly Robson