Showing results for "sea" in Anthologies & Short Stories

First published in the US in 1988 and in the UK in 1990, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight unsettling stories that explore protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, and culminate in a disturbing and enigmatic ending. Aickman's "strange stories" (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia; his characters ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds. For fans of the horror genre, Robert Aickman is a must read.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A crotchety nightwatchman in a whaling museum contemplates Neptune the stuffed sea lion, originally owned by P.T. Barnum. In his admiration for the kingly animal, he studies ventriloquism to give Neptune a voice. When a field trip comes through the museum, he has an unexpectedly meaningful exchange with a precocious, like-minded child...and Neptune.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

England is a maritime nation. Our folklore and history is peppered with tall tales of the high seas: mysteries of the great ocean, the unknown world beneath the surface of the salt sea, and the liminal coast where the sea-gods meet our lives on the land. Here is a collection of traditional folk tales from the coasts and seas of England. Lisa Schneidau retells the old stories with a contemporary twist: dragons and monsters, sailor heroes and ghost ships, mermaids and shapeshifters.

In his Locus review of Two Worlds and in Between - the first volume of The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan - Gary K. Wolfe wrote, “...it makes you wish the second volume were here now.” Well, the long wait is over. This second volume completes this ambitious undertaking, collecting the finest of Kiernan’s stories from 2004 to 2012, selected by the author herself. The book includes 25 short stories and one poem, plus the short novel Black Helicopters - more than 200,000 words of fiction, including the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Prayer of 90 Cats”.

Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are distinctive tales not soon forgotten.

Port Royal, 1699. Orphaned and adrift, Elias Grey finds his way aboard Equilibre under the command of Captain Thaddeus Locke—a man whose law is his own and whose code is carved from salt and consequence. What begins as a simple voyage soon becomes a crucible of loyalty, survival, and faith upon waters where mercy carries a price.

Darcy Gallagher has always believed in the pull of fate, the magic of legend...and the importance of money. She longs to find a rich man who will sweep her away - into a world filled with glamour and adventure, and the exotic life that is her destiny... A wealthy businessman with Irish blood, Trevor Magee has come to Ardmore to build a theater - and to uncover the secrets hidden in his family’s past.

From atop the choppy waves to the choking darkness of the abyss, the seas are full of mystery and rife with tales of inexplicable events and encounters with the unknown. In this anthology we see a thrilling spread of narratives: sailors are pitched against a nightmare from the depths, invisible to the naked eye, a German U-boat commander is tormented by an impossible transmission via Morse Code, a ship ensnares itself in the kelp of the Sargasso Sea and dooms a crew of mutineers, seemingly out of revenge for her lost captain.

The literary world was shocked when, in 1890, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently in Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment not to promote a romance of empire but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in 19th-century fiction.

From the author of the Sweet Magnolias and Chesapeake Shores series, this bundle includes the complete Seaview Key duology.

Set in a variety of Southern landscapes, these startling stories excavate the ambiguous terrain of the human heart. Pizzolatto finds beauty in loneliness as his characters attempt to bridge the gulfs between themselves and others, past and present, and sometimes the even wider chasms that separate them from their true selves.

Beaten, bruised, and shot, Caleb Ledger dives off a burning yacht, desperately trying to cling to life. It doesn’t work. Instead of a briny death, Caleb finds himself reborn in the world of Avalon. A place of magic, levels, and quests filled with adventure involving mystery, rescues, dragons, and a revenge-obsessed warlock.

As the bold daughter of the Raider leader, Lila yearns to transform her people’s plundering ways into something noble. Her dream? To unite the Raiders with dragons as mercenaries defending merchant fleets and kingdoms. But fate has other plans. When Lila bonds with a wild, untamable dragon, their partnership sets her on a path of danger and discovery. A desperate plea from the West Witches sends Lila and Danu, a novice magician, to the Isle of Sebol to uncover a threat looming over the Western Isles. What they find could spell doom for all.

This anthology of short stories takes the listener to Connecticut, Boston, Guam, Savannah, Houston, San Francisco, Oregon, and overseas. Valiant tank crews, creative techs, brave officers, plucky drone operators, bold medics, cunning pararescue troops, determined ASHUR and Trident pilots, and daring militia units wage war along every coastline in the US.

Providence is flooded. An agoraphobic artist watches from his window as the sea takes the streets. But the ocean has brought more than storms, as the presence of something alien prods and grasps his mind. Can he find the courage to flee, or will his mind and body be taken by the storm and the creatures within? Even as the skies open and the streets fill, an international art thief takes one last job to steal from the legendary Miskatonic Library. His mission is the Incendium Malificarum, powerful enough to end the world, or to save it. But is he simply a pawn of powers greater than he knows?

In this remarkable collection the author has selected over two dozen of her best Lovecraftian tales ranging from 2000s “Valentia” to her more recent classic “A Mountain Walked” as well as including the complete Dandridge Cycle, as well as a new story, “M Is for Mars.” In short, this is a cornerstone volume for Kiernan fans and Mythos devotees alike.

Most readers are familiar with Jack London's stories of the frozen northland, such as White Fang and To Light a Fire, but many critics feel he should be equally acknowledged for his fascinating stories of the South Pacific. Here is another remote corner of the world, a background for his magnificently colorful and entertaining Tales of the South Pacific.

For Ahren, it's no longer a question of someone trying to kill him; it's who will try next. Still on the run for a murder he didn't commit, Ahren adapts to life as an outlaw as his reputation of the Black Raven grows. Yet nothing comes easily. Dogged by bounty hunters, he finds himself crossing steel with pirates on the high seas and battling monsters in subterranean cities. If that wasn't enough, he's paid to assassinate an immortal and must break out of a heavily fortified prison.