What if a society banished its worst nightmare to the far edge of the solar system, destined to sip dregs of light and struggle for the barest living? What if that life thrived, grew, learned, and became far more than anyone ever expected, yearning to return to the sun? What if it didn't share your moral compass in any way? The Glittering Edge duology describes the clash of forces when an advanced society that has filled a solar system with flesh-and-blood life meets the near-AIs it banished long ago.

Too long to be a short story, too short to be a novel - welcome to the surprisingly potent world of the novelette. The award-winning magazine Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show has been an online haven for this powerful form of storytelling since 2005. Now its editors have selected their all-time favorite science fiction novelettes from the magazine's eight-year history and reprinted them together in one big book of listening pleasure.

What's your life worth on the open market? In this sexy, gritty future-noir, debt collectors take your life energy and give it to someone more "worthy"...all while paying the price with black marks on their souls. Lirium plays the part of the grim reaper well, with his dark trenchcoat and jackboots - he's just in it for his cut, 10 percent of the life energy he collects before he transfers it on to the high potentials, people who will make the world a better place with their work and their lives.

The End. Those two little words can mean so much. But how will things end...and will it hurt? That's what we really want to know. Delve into the darkness and join us at the end of the world. From a blighted sky to an invasion from beyond, from untethered time to one person driven beyond the edge of sanity, from a child's game to an unseen apocalypse...it's all imagined here, and imagined darkly.

Like all citizens since the ruining, Carrington Hale knows the importance of this day. But she never expected the moment she'd spent a lifetime preparing for - her choosing ceremony - to end in disaster. Ripped from her family, she'll spend her days serving as a lint, the lowest level of society. She knows it's her duty to follow the true way of the authority. But as Carrington begins this nightmare, rumors of rebellion rattle her beliefs.

The Long List Anthology is designed to recognize the short works that were nominated for the 2015 Hugo Awards but did not make it into the top five short list for the final ballot. Thus, voted into the Hugo Award's long list of works - the top 15 works nominated for each category - were these nine short stories and three novelettes, now made available to a wider audience by award-winning narrators.

Neek makes a living piloting the dilapidated tramp transport Mercy’s Pledge and smuggling questionable goods across systems blessed with peace and prosperity. She gets by - but only just. In her dreams, she is still haunted by thoughts of Ardulum, the traveling planet that long ago visited her homeworld. The Ardulans brought with them agriculture, art, interstellar technology...and then disappeared without a trace, leaving Neek’s people to worship them as gods. 

The Empyrean is the only home 15-year-old Waverly has ever known. Part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space, she and her boyfriend, Kieran, will be pioneers of New Earth. Waverly knows she must marry young in order to have children who can carry on the mission, and Kieran, the handsome captain-to-be, has everything Waverly could want in a husband. Everyone is sure he’s the best choice. Still, there’s a part of Waverly that wants more from life than marriage.

The world has changed, but Jerusalem endures. Overlooked by new superpowers, the Holy City of the future is a haven of spies and smugglers, exiles and extremists. A refugee with strange technological abilities searches for a place to disappear. An ambitious young criminal plots the heist that could make or destroy him. A corrupt minister harnesses the power of the past in a ruthless play for complete control. And the wheels of another plan - as old and intricate as the city itself - begin to turn.... 

Short novels are movie length novels that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged audio collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2011, by current and emerging masters of this form. In "The Ice Owl", by Carolyn Ives Gilman, an adolescent, female, Waster, in the iron city of Glory to God finds an enigmatic tutor who provides her with much more than academic instruction while a fundamentalist revolt is underway.

An epic space opera follows a comfort woman as she claims her agency, a soldier questioning his allegiances and a non-binary hero out to save the solar system. First Sister has no name and no voice. She's a priestess of the Sisterhood, travelling the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister's hopes for freedom are dashed and she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no status and a new captain she knows nothing about. 

The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come? Multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us another incredible volume in his much praised science-fiction anthology series.

Defying their Black King in order to rally an attack on the peaceful Blue Isle, warrior-prince Rugar and his fearless daughter, Jewel, do not suspect that the islanders, under young prince Nicholas, have prepared to defend themselves.

In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity's genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend.

Wynne’s entire life is dictated by the Union: the clothes she wears, the books she reads, even the genes she inherited. And like every other girl in the Union, Wynne dreams of being chosen as a Carrier on her 16th birthday - one of the elite selected to carry the future generation within her womb. Wynne and her best friend Odessa are certain they will both make the cut, but when Odessa is chosen and whisked off to a life of privilege, Wynne is left behind to work as an assistant, delivering perfectly planned babies for the Union.