Search results for ""Small Beer Press""

By water logic, a cow doctor becomes a politician. A soldier becomes a flower farmer. A lost book contains a lost future. The patterns of history are made and unmade. Amid assassinations, rebellions, and the pyres of too many dead, a new government forms in the land of Shaftal-a government of soldiers and farmers, scholars and elemental talents, all weary of war and longing for peace. But some cannot forget their losses, and some cannot imagine a place for themselves in an enemy land. Before memory, before recorded history, something happened that now must be remembered. Zanja na'Tarwein, the crosser of boundaries, born in fire and wedded to earth, has fallen under the ice. Now, by water logic, the logic of patterns repeated, of laughter and music, the lost must be found-or the found may forever be lost. Laurie J. Marks teaches at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of five previous novels, and her first two Elemental Logic novels (Fire Logic and Earth Logic) won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award and received multiple starred reviews. She is a recipient of the Fairy Godmother Award (James D. Tiptree, Jr. Award) and a founding member of Broad Universe.

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Philip K. Dick Award finalist Washington Post Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2018 Abbey Mei Otis’s short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, putting kids from the moon into a small beach town and then the putting the rest of the town under the microscope as they react in ways we ope they would, and then, of course, in ways we’d hope they don’t. Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the twelve stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future. “After I read this book, I woke up with bumpy, reddish growths along my spine. They burst, releasing marvels: aliens, robots, prefab houses, vinyl, chainlink, styrofoam, star stuff, tales from the edge of eviction, so many new worlds. Alien Virus Love Disaster is a super-intelligent infection. Let Abbey Mei Otis give you some lumps.” — Sofia Samatar, author of Tender

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A fabulous debut of folk tales and fantasies by an award winning author and illustrator. Small fires start in the hearts of Kathleen Jennings’s characters and irresistibly spread to those around them. Journeys are taken, debts repaid, disguises put on, and lessons offered — although not often learned — in these fantastic tales. Jennings''s confident voice lulls readers into stepping off the known paths to find "Undine Love,” “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” and further unexpected places and people.

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The final novel in the acclaimed Elemental Logic series finds Karis G’deon and her sprawling family once more imperiled, this time by the legacy of violence that threatens to unravel the fragile peace they have woven across their land. Laurie Marks’ Elemental Logic series introduced readers in Fire Logic to the realm of Shaftal, an intricately imagined land whose people operate within the boundaries of their basic natures—here defined as logics—which sometimes bequeath them with access to magical, elemental powers and sometimes embroil them in unsolvable internal conflicts. In Air Logic, Karis and those who love her must figure out, in the aftermath of war and an assassination attempt, how to bring together Sainnites and Shaftali in a country where old wounds and enmities fester and Air magic conceals the treason hidden in the heart of the G’deon’s household. When Medric is taken hostage to force Karis’s hand, a strange boy will guide Zanja to the place where she may yet save him. A mother must remember the son she has been made to forget, and Air children will find what their place in the world may yet be.

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Winner of the Tiptree Award and a Mythopoeic Award finalist, Cloud & Ashes is a slow whirlwind of language, a button box of words, a mythic fable that invites revisitation. Praise for Cloud & Ashes: "A rich poetic prose laden with fetching archaisms that's unlike anything else being written today. Brilliant and truly innovative fiction, not to be missed."--The Washington Times Greer Gilman is the author of Moonwise. A graduate of Wellesley and the University of Cambridge, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She likes to quip that she does everything James Joyce ever did, only backward and in high heels.

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The second book in the Elemental Logic series, Earth Logic continues the story from the perspective of Karis, a complex character born of magic and now ruler for the country of Shaftal. Karis is a woman who can heal the war-torn land and expel the invaders, but she lives in obscurity with her fractious found family. With war and disease spreading, Karis must act quickly. And when Karis acts, the very stones of the earth sit up and take notice. “Another stunner of a book. The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence.” —Booklist

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At once a love story and a lush comic masterpiece, Martha Moody is a speculative western which embraces the ordinary and gritty details — as well as the magic — of women's lives in the old west.

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Four women, soldier, scholar, poet, and socialite are caught up on different sides of a violent rebellion. As war erupts and their families are torn apart, they fear they may disappear into the unwritten pages of history. Using the sword and the pen, the body and the voice, they struggle not just to survive, but to make history. Praise for The Winged Histories: "Like an alchemist, Sofia Samatar spins golden landscapes and dazzling sentences...a fantasy novel for those who take their sentences with the same slow, unfolding beauty as a cup of jasmine tea, and for adventurers like Tav, who are willing to charge ahead into the unknown."--Shelf Awareness (starred review) "A highly recommended indulgence." --N.K. Jemisin, New York Times Book Review "Above all, it's a story about love--the terrible love that tears lives apart. Doomed love; impossible love; love that requires a rewriting of the rules, be it for a country, a person, or a story."--Jenn Northington, Tor.com "An imaginative, poetic, and dark meditation on how history gets made." --Hello Beautiful Sofia Samatar is the author of the novels A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories and a collection, Tender: Stories. She has written for the Guardian, Strange Horizons, New Inquiry, Believer, and Clarkesworld, among others, and has won the John W. Campbell Award, the Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She lives in Virginia and her website is sofiasamatar.com.

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World Fantasy Award Winner Shirley Jackson Awards shortlist Locus Award shortlist Story Prize Notable Books Frank O'Connor Award longlist "Beautifully written and subtly discomforting stories."--Nancy Pearl "An exceptionally versatile author."--St. Louis Post-Dispatch In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth's younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can. The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in "Halfway People"; for Edwin Booth in "Booth's Ghost," haunted by his fame as "America's Hamlet" and his brother's terrible actions; for Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in the World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award winner "The Pelican Bar" as she confronts Mama Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator recounting her descent in "What I Didn't See." With clear and insightful prose, Fowler's stories measure the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners and stories which have been significantly rewritten since first publication, is sure to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath their feet.

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A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories. The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as two never-before published works.

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In the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken—not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired "Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull" (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner "The Pottawatomie Giant" (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner "Close Encounters" to Flannery O’Connor’s childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" (first published in Eclipse) Duncan’s historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, "Joe Diabo's Farewell" — in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show — and the title story, "An Agent of Utopia" — where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More’s head.

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In Reconstruction, award-winning writer and musician Johnson delineates the lives of those trodden underfoot by the powerful, and how they rise up. Meet the humans who serve a coterie of vampires in Hawai’i, explore the taxonomy of anger with Black Union soldiers and the woman who travels with them during the American Civil War. Consider what you would give up for a better life in a place that you have never been. Johnson maps the people in these and other, stranger landscapes.

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Praise for Vandana Singh: “A most promising and original young writer.”—Ursula K. Le Guin “Lovely! What a pleasure this book is . . . full of warmth, compassion, affection, high comedy and low.”—Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses “Vandana Singh’s radiant protagonist is a planet unto herself.”—Village Voice “Sweeping starscapes and daring cosmology that make Singh a worthy heir to Cordwainer Smith and Arthur C. Clarke.”—Chris Moriarty, Fantasy & Science Fiction “I’m looking forward to the collection . . . everything I’ve read has impressed me—the past and future visions in `Delhi’, the intensity of `Thirst’, the feeling of escape at the end of `The Tetrahedron’…” —Niall Harrison, Vector (British Science Fiction Association) “…the first writer of Indian origin to make a serious mark in the SF world … she writes with such a beguiling touch of the strange.” —Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard In her first North American collection, Vandana Singh’s deep humanism interplays with her scientific background in stories that explore and celebrate this world and others and characters who are trying to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past. In "Requiem," a major new novella, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. Singh's stories have been performed on BBC radio, been finalists for the British SF Association award, selected for the Tiptree award honor list, and oft reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within and with her unblinking clear vision she explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.

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A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories. The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as two never-before published works.

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Georgia Peach Award Nominee • Florida Teens Read Award Nominee • ABC Best Books for Young Readers • Bank Street College Best Children’s Books of the Year • A Junior Library Guild Selection • Hugo & Locus award finalistIn Other Lands is an exhilarating novel from bestselling author Sarah Rees Brennan about surviving four years in the most unusual of schools - friendship, falling in love, diplomacy, and finding your own place in the world — even if it means giving up your phone.Excerpt:The Borderlands aren’t like anywhere else. Don’t try to smuggle a phone or any other piece of technology over the wall that marks the Border — unless you enjoy a fireworks display in your backpack. (Ballpoint pens are okay.) There are elves, harpies, and — best of all as far as Elliot is concerned — mermaids."What’s your name?""Serene.""Serena?" Elliot asked."Serene," said Serene. "My full name is Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle."Elliot’s mouth fell open. "That is badass."Elliot? Who’s Elliot? Elliot is thirteen years old. He’s smart and just a tiny bit obnoxious. Sometimes more than a tiny bit. When his class goes on a field trip and he can see a wall that no one else can see, he is given the chance to go to school in the Borderlands.It turns out that on the other side of the wall, classes involve a lot more weaponry and fitness training and fewer mermaids than he expected. On the other hand, there’s Serene-Heart-in-the-Chaos-of-Battle, an elven warrior who is more beautiful than anyone Elliot has ever seen, and then there’s her human friend Luke: sunny, blond, and annoyingly likeable. There are lots of interesting books. There’s even the chance Elliot might be able to change the world.

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A fabulous debut of folk tales and fantasies by an award winning author and illustrator. Small fires start in the hearts of Kathleen Jennings’s characters and irresistibly spread to those around them. Journeys are taken, debts repaid, disguises put on, and lessons offered — although not often learned — in these fantastic tales. Jennings''s confident voice lulls readers into stepping off the known paths to find "Undine Love,” “The Heart of Owl Abbas,” and further unexpected places and people.

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★ “DeNiro’s novel is a lyrical, emotionally powerful story . . . of queer parenthood, of the reality of the sharp fear of trans lives, and of complicated self-discovery.” — Booklist (starred review) In this playful and aching short novel, an unnamed trans woman is on an epic journey to find the place where she belongs. As she navigates her many realities, she must wrestle with anxieties and fears about the world. Her son and her ex live in another state. Environmental disasters are being outsourced to the Midwest. She can’t decide whether or not to unbox the companion automaton under her bed. And some of her friends may not just be ghosting her, they might not even be real.OKPsyche is a fever-pitched odyssey through the joys, fears, and weirdness of trans adulthood, parenthood, and selfhood in the contemporary world.

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"Stinson reads the natural world as well as Scripture, searching for meaning. But instead of the portents of an angry god, what she finds there is something numinous, complicated, and radiantly human."--Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home "Through an ardent faith in the written word Susan Stinson is a novelist who translates a mundane world into the most poetic of possibilities."--Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones "Wonderfully fuses the historic and the imaginative."--Kenneth Minkema, executive director, Jonathan Edwards Center Jonathan Edwards is considered America's most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts. In his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all others: Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards's young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards's wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale. Susan Stinson is the author of three novels and a collection of poetry and lyric essays and was awarded the Lambda Literary Foundation's Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, she is also an editor and writing coach.

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Set in a fantasy world of hungry goblins, powerful witches and human criminals, Half-Witch follows the unlikely friendship between Lizbet and the unpleasant sarcastic witch girl Strix on a twisted journey to rescue her father from prison. In the world in which Lizbet Lenz lives, the sun still goes around the earth, God speaks directly to his worshippers, goblins haunt every cellar and witches lurk in the forests. Disaster strikes when Lizbet’s father Gerhard, a charming scoundrel, is thrown into a dungeon by the tyrant Hengest Wolftrow. To free him, Lizbet must cross the Montagnes du Monde, globe-girdling mountains that reach to the sky, a journey no one has ever survived, and retrieve a mysterious book. Lizbet is desperate, and the only one who can help her is the unbearable witch girl Strix. As the two girls journey through the mountains and into the lands of wonder beyond, Lizbet discovers—to her horror—that Strix’s magic is turning Lizbet into a witch, too. All while, a revolution in Heaven is brewing!

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