With the southern portion of the kingdom in rebellion, the Crown has begun accepting commoners as candidates for its elite fighting force, the Prince's Legion. Tyna decides to ask if they are also willing to take a woman.It’s Volume 4 of TIW shorts! The fourth collection and possibly the last of totally pointless exactly 500 Challenge and exactly 200 Weekend Quickie flash fiction stories/scenes word nonsense (plus a few specials, relays, newsflashes from the TIW blog and collaborations) to entertain you while doing whatever you do when reading. For myself, it was a long and tricky half year in The Iron Writer. Through troubles and difficulties, there was always the TIW Challenge waiting for me.I hope you enjoy these short snippets just as much as I enjoyed writing them, and thanks again to Brian and all the other Iron Writers for allowing me into their community…I wouldn’t.

Once every one year and fourty-three weeks (Or one year, fourty two weeks and six days if it is a leap year) along with a near death experience Christina is able the make the journey to Hell. There she will find those suffering eternal tormend based on their sins on earth, along with her close friends Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ and the fallen one himself, Satan.'What if Satan is lonely?"'Christina's Inferno' tells the story of Christina, a young linguistics student who once every one year and fourty-three weeks (Or one year, fourty two weeks and six days if there is a leap year) along with a near death experience Christina is able the make the journey to Hell. There she finds people suffering cruel and everlasting torments based on the sins committed during their time on Earth. She makes the journey down the circles to the darkest depths to find her friends Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus Christ, and the Prince of Darkness himself Satan.Along the way she encounters the harshness of everyday life for the damned and those who watch over them.Follow Christina as she looks at an old depiction of hell inspired by 'The Divine Comedy' and looks upon it with modern eyes and a contemporary perspective.

You’re walking down the street, all alone, in the dead of night. Darkness swallows everything around you except for the one streetlight that illuminates a small patch of the sidewalk. You begin to get the feeling that something is following you, so you start moving faster. You don’t run but you quicken your pace, just to be safe. That’s when you hear a low growl...You’re walking down the street, all alone, in the dead of night. Darkness swallows everything around you except for the one streetlight that illuminates a small patch of the sidewalk. You begin to get the feeling that something is following you, so you start moving faster. You don’t run but you quicken your pace, just to be safe. That’s when you hear a low growl that makes all of the hair on the back of your neck stand straight up. You turn around, regretting the decision immediately, to see a bear standing before you about to swallow you whole. Ha. I’m just kidding, that would be ridiculous…it’s really a werewolf. My life hasn’t changed: I hunt down horrifying monsters, that haunt you in stories and your dreams, and kill them, then I look for the next monsters terrorizing people and kill them too. It is a dazzling lifestyle. But now there are ancient creatures no one even knew existed rising from the depths of who knows where. Whatever the monsters are gathering for is going to happen soon and it is not going to be pleasant.I might be able to stop the horror that is coming to us, but I might not. I guess the only way for you to find out is to read this. Beware, however, for my stories are not for the feint of heart.This book is a collection of short stories that were originally posted on my blog. You can visit there, cjpikebooks.wordpress.com, for more hunting.

The Sins of Acheryn tells the tale of the cataclysmic fall of a vanished empire. As the legendary Kings of Acheryn moved to consume the nations of the ancient world, her pride and violence rose to the thrones of heaven. At the pinnacle of her power, three judgments would punish the greatest empire of a world now lost to myth and time. (Short Story. Approximately 4200 words).Percival Ratham is not a nice man. This bothers him not at all, as niceties interfere with getting what he wants. And what Percival wants now is a meal to surpass all others. And Percival gets exactly what he wants.One in a series of short stories by Shawn McDaniel that explore the dark thoughts and desires we hide behind thin masks of civility and humanity.

The first in an all-new futuristic fantasy series from Keri Arthur—the New York Times bestselling author of the Souls of Fire novels. When the bombs that stopped the species war tore holes in the veil between this world and the next, they allowed entry to the Others—demons, wraiths, and death spirits who turned the shadows into their hunting grounds. Now, a hundred years later, humans and shifters alike live in artificially lit cities designed to keep the darkness at bay.... As a déchet—a breed of humanoid super-soldiers almost eradicated by the war—Tiger has spent her life in hiding. But when she risks her life to save a little girl on the outskirts of Central City, she discovers that the child is one of many abducted in broad daylight by a wraith-like being—an impossibility with dangerous implications for everyone on earth. Because if the light is no longer enough to protect them, nowhere is safe...

'Curiosity is the most fleeting of pleasures; the moment is satisfied, it ceases to exist and it always proves very, very expensive.' Angela Carter's playful and subversive retellings of Charles Perrault's classic fairy tales conjure up a world of resourceful women, black-hearted villains, wily animals and incredible transformations. In these seven stories, bristling with frank, earthy humour and gothic imagination, nothing is as it seems. This book includes Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty of the Wood, Cinderella: or, The Glass Slipper, Ricky with the Tuft and The Foolish Wishes.

Gillengaria seethes with unrest. In the south, hostility toward magic and its users has risen to a dangerous level, though King Baryn has ordered that such mystics are to be tolerated. It is whispered that he issued the decree because his new wife used her magic powers to ensnare him… The King knows there are those in the noble Twelve Houses who could use this growing dissent to overthrow him. So he dispatches the mystic Senneth to assess the threat throughout the realm. Accompanying her is a motley band of magic-users and warriors including Tayse, first among the King’s Riders—who holds a hard view of mystics in general, and Senneth in particular. But as the unlikely allies venture farther into the south, they will face death in a land under the sway of a fanatical cult that would purge Gillengaria of all magic users. And they will come to realize that their only hope of survival lies in standing together…

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues--technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism--have only become more pressing with the passage of time. The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is--you!

How do you find a new way to approach a story as familiar as any in the English language? If you're Jack Whyte, you begin your retelling of the Arthurian saga by taking one giant step backward to the latter days of the Roman Empire in Britain, sometime between the first breaching of Hadrian's Wall and the legendary days of King Arthur. Publius Varrus is the last legionnaire in Britain, and The Skystone is in many ways his story. He is a common man with aristocratic friends, and successful both as a soldier and an ironsmith. As the Roman world slowly crumbles around them, and Publius becomes involved in a political and personal vendetta, he and his friends seek to establish a refuge, a valley where the old Roman virtues will be kept alive and the empire's many faults be avoided. A finely crafted historical novel, The Skystone pays close attention to the details of everyday life in fourth-century Britain. As the first book in Whyte's Camulod Chronicles, it makes few allusions to the usual details of the Arthurian legends until Publius comes into contact with a sword, a stone, a lake, and a Celtic tribe who name themselves Pendragon. Greg L. Johnson

Aspect published the previous novel in the series, The Skrayling Tree, in hardcover (0-446-53104-9) in 2003 and in mass market (0-446-61340-1) in 7/04. The prior novel. The Dreamthief's Daughter (Aspect hardcover, 2001, 0-446-52618-5; mass market, 2002, 0-446-61120-4) received praise from the Washington Post, Denver Post, and Locus, where it was featured on the 2001 Recommended Reading list. - Aspect reissued Moorcock's classic Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen in trade paperback in 8/04. Gloriana won Moorcock the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and the British Fantasy Award. - Moorcock's Elric the Eternal Champion saga has been optioned by Universal Pictures, with Chris and Paul Weitz (American Pie) producing. - Michael Moorcock is a vanguard author, editor, journalist, critic, and rock musician, who is editor of the controversial magazine New Worlds. A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Moorcock has won the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the British Fantasy Award, among others.

Tom, like the medieval Tom O'Bedlam, can't decipher the meaning of the images plaguing his mind. Much like the wondering and mad Tom of the medieval ballad, the Tom O'Bedlam of 2103 doesn't know what to make of the images that keep cluttering his mind. To preserve the last shred of his sanity and keep these never-ending wonders a secret, he feigns insanity. But then a probe that has traveled over four light years away transmits the very pictures that have been haunting Tom's dreams. In this post-industrial world on the verge of a total collapse, Tom has become humanity's spokesperson to the distant planet that may be his world's salvation.

I dare say there are several questions you would like to ask at the very beginning of this history. First: Who is the Monarch of Mo? And why is he called the Magical Monarch? And where is Mo, anyhow? And why have you never heard of it before? And can it be reached by a railroad or a trolley-car, or must one walk all the way? These questions I realize should be answered before we (that "we" means you and the book) can settle down for a comfortable reading of all the wonders and astonishing adven-tures I shall endeavor faithfully to relate.

Each in turn may call this a fairy story, a dog story, an allegory or a satire, but all will be moved by the beauty and the meaning--a beauty and a meaning that seems to live within the realm of those books that go on and on making friends and spreading enchantment. Gissing, its hero, is a dog who searches the world for an ideal, and then finds in the smoke of his own furnace fire a hint of the heavenly blue that he had been seeking.

If you live LONG enough... love (and danger) will find you.Meet Charity and Link...Charity (aka Emily) is struggling with the reality that her two lives are coming closer to each other with each passing day.Link will soon find himself wrapped in a supernatural world that he never knew existed – and discover that mortals are not the only beings that walk this earth.A new family has just arrived in the isolated mountain town of Telluride, Colorado. Welcome the Johnstons – Jason (a doctor), Rachel (a designer), and their niece Emily (a current High School Senior).Emily has lived the life of a quiet loner in the past, trying to go unnoticed. But with Telluride being such a small and welcoming town, she finds a group of friends at school almost immediately. When Emily meets Link (another new transplant in town) her world turns upside down. She doesn’t understand why she feels a magnetic pull toward him, or why she unknowingly lets her guard down around him. Link is just as confused by his own need to be with her.Emily knows she is playing with fire. She should be doing whatever she can to keep herself isolated, to keep Link from getting too close. Danger has a way of finding Emily’s family – that is what keeps them on the move. They arrive in a new town every few years – it is safer that way.Because… Emily isn’t really Emily… her real name is Charity – and Charity has an even bigger secret. Charity and her family are not like other people, they have “skills” that mere mortals cannot begin to comprehend.Before long, Charity is struggling with the reality that her two lives are coming closer to each other with each passing day. Soon Link will find himself wrapped in a supernatural world that he never knew existed – and discover that mortals are not the only beings that walk this earth.