“Five of us sat in a circle doing our best to emulate the girls in The Craft, hoping to unleash some power to take us all away from our home to the place of our dreams. But we weren’t witches. We were five Chicanas living in San Antonio, Texas, one year out of high school.” One hot summer night, best friends Lourdes, Fernanda, Ana, Perla, and Pauline hold a séance. It’s all fun and games at first, but their tipsy laughter turns to terror when the flames burn straight through their prayer candles and Fernanda starts crawling toward her friends and chanting in Nahuatl, the language of their Aztec ancestors. Over the next few weeks, shy, modest Fernanda starts acting strangely—smearing herself in black makeup, shredding her hands on rose thorns, sucking sin out of the mouths of the guilty. The local priest is convinced it's a demon, but Lourdes begins to suspect it’s something else—something far more ancient and powerful. As Father Moreno's obsession with Fernanda grows, Lourdes enlists the help of her “bruja Craft crew” and a professor, Dr. Camacho, to understand what is happening to her friend in this unholy tale of possession-gone-right.

Nomoto-san and Kasuga-san have decided to live together, but apartment hunting as a same-sex couple has been quite the stormy voyage. Luckily, Yako-san connects them with a realtor that may be able to help—and slowly but surely, the pair move toward their new life together. Meanwhile, Nagumo-san has taken a good look at herself, and she decides to pay a visit to the hospital… 

Nomoto-san and Kasuga-san have decided to live together, but apartment hunting as a same-sex couple has been quite the stormy voyage. Luckily, Yako-san connects them with a realtor that may be able to help—and slowly but surely, the pair move toward their new life together. Meanwhile, Nagumo-san has taken a good look at herself, and she decides to pay a visit to the hospital… 

After a career-ending injury, a military pilot plans her revenge against an empire that made her a soldier in the first place. Now, she will lie, cheat, and seduce her way to the very top, to destroy the fleet she was once a part of.

In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction Grace Dillon collects some of the finest examples of the craft with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors. The collection includes seminal authors such as Gerald Vizenor, historically important contributions often categorized as "magical realism" by authors like Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, and authors more recognizable to science fiction fans like William Sanders and Stephen Graham Jones. Dillon's engaging introduction situates the pieces in the larger context of science fiction and its conventions. Organized by sub-genre, the book starts with Native slipstream, stories infused with time travel, alternate realities and alternative history like Vizenor's "Custer on the Slipstream." Next up are stories about contact with other beings featuring, among others, an excerpt from Gerry William's The Black Ship. Dillon includes stories that highlight Indigenous science like a piece from Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Clouds, asserting that one of the roles of Native science fiction is to disentangle that science from notions of "primitive" knowledge and myth. The fourth section calls out stories of apocalypse like William Sanders' "When This World Is All on Fire" and a piece from Zainab Amadahy's The Moons of Palmares. The anthology closes with examples of biskaabiiyang, or "returning to ourselves," bringing together stories like Eden Robinson's "Terminal Avenue" and a piece from Robert Sullivan's Star Waka. An essential book for readers and students of both Native literature and science fiction, Walking the Clouds is an invaluable collection. It brings together not only great examples of Native science fiction from an internationally-known cast of authors, but Dillon's insightful scholarship sheds new light on the traditions of imagining an Indigenous future.

After a career-ending injury, a military pilot plans her revenge against an empire that made her a soldier in the first place. Now, she will lie, cheat, and seduce her way to the very top, to destroy the fleet she was once a part of.

From the award-winning author of Flux comes a dazzling novel about love, family, and the art of sushi that asks: What if you could return to the point of a fateful choice, wiser than before, and find the courage to forge a new path?A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been ten years since he last saw his family. Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. As he steps back into the life he abandoned—learning his Appa’s life lessons over crates of tuna on bleary-eyed 4 AM fish runs, doling out amberjack behind the omakase counter while his Umma tallies the night's pitiful number of customers, and sparring with his recovering alcoholic brother, James—he embraces new roles, That of romantic interest to the male nurse who took care of him throughout, and that of sage (but underqualified) uncle to his gangly teenage nephew.There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might, once again, prove too hard to resist.Why do we run from those we love, and why do we still love those who run from us? A highly entertaining and poignant story about second chances and self-discovery, I Leave It Up to You pilots through the loss, love, and absurdity of finding one’s footing after the ground gives way.

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was born in 1623 in Colchester, Essex into a family of comfortable means.From an early age Margaret was already assembling her thoughts for future works despite the then conditions of society that women did not partake in public authorship. For England it was also a time of Civil War.Despite these obvious dangers, Margaret asked her mother for permission to become one of her Ladies-in-waiting. She was accepted and, in 1644, accompanied the Queen into exile in France. This took her away from her family for the first time.Despite living at the Court of the young King Louis XIV, life for the young Margaret was not what she expected. She was far from her home and her confidence had been replaced by shyness and difficulties fitting in to the grandeur of her surroundings and the eminence of her company.Margaret told her mother she wanted to leave the Court. Her mother was adamant that she should stay. She provided additional funds for her to make life easier. It was now also that she met and married William Cavendish who, at the time, was the Marquis of Newcastle. He was also 30 years her senior and previously married with two children.As Royalists, a return to life in England was not yet possible. They would remain in exile in Paris, Rotterdam and Antwerp until the restoration of the crown in 1660 although Margaret was able to return for attention to some estate matters.Along with her husband's brother, she travelled to England after having been told that her husband's estate was to be sold and that she, as his wife, would receive some benefit of the sale. She received nothing. She left England to be with her husband again.The couple were devoted to each other. Margaret wrote that he was the only man she was ever in love with, loving him not for title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty, and fidelity. She also relied upon him for support in her career. The marriage provided no children despite efforts made by her physician to overcome her inability to conceive.Margaret’s first book, ‘Poems and Fancies’, was published in 1653; it was a collection of poems, epistles and prose pieces which explores her philosophical, scientific and aesthetic ideas.For a woman at this time writing and publishing were avenues they had great difficulty in pursuing. She wrote across a number of issues including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy.She always claimed she had too much time on her hands and was therefore able to indulge her love of writing. As a playwright she produced many works although most are as closet dramas. (This is a play not intended to be performed onstage, but instead read by a solitary reader). For Margaret the rigours of exile, her gender and Cromwell’s closing of the theatres mean this was her early vehicle of choice and, despite these handicaps, she became one of the most well-known playwrights in England)Her utopian romance, ‘The Blazing World’, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Margaret also published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science; at least a dozen books.She was the first woman to attend a meeting at Royal Society of London in 1667 and she criticized and engaged with members and philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle.Margaret was always defended against any criticism by her husband and he also contributed to some of her works. She also gives him credit as her writing tutor.Perhaps a little strangely she said her ambition despite her shyness, was to have everlasting fame. During her career, from the mid 1650’s until her death, she was prolific.

A deluxe edition of new writing and neglected perspectives. Dystopia, apocalypse, gene-splicing, cloning and colonization are explored here by new authors and combined with proto-sci-fi and speculative writing of an older tradition (by W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin R. Delany, Sutton E. Griggs, Pauline Hopkins and Edward Johnson) whose first-hand experience of slavery and denial created their living dystopia. With a foreword by Alex Award-winning novelist Temi Oh, an introduction by Dr. Sandra M. Grayson, author of Visions of the Third Millennium: Black Science Fiction Novelists Write the Future (2003), and invaluable promotion and editorial support from Tia Ross and the Black Writers Collective and more, this latest offering in the Flame Tree Gothic fantasy series focuses on an area of science fiction which has not received the attention it deserves. Many of the themes in Sci-fi reveal the world as it is to others, show us how to improve it, and give voice to the many different expressions of a future for humankind. Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, as well as Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections, bring together the entire range of myth, folklore, epic literature and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories, the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure. Table of Contents: • An Empty, Hollow Interview by James Beamon • The Comet by W.E.B. Du Bois • Élan Vital by K. Tempest Bradford • The Orb by Tara Campbell • Blake, or The Huts of America by Martin R. Delany • The Floating City of Pengimbang by Michelle F. Goddard • The New Colossuses by Harambee K. Grey-Sun • Imperium in Imperio by Sutton E. Griggs • Seven Thieves by Emmalia Harrington • Of One Blood: Or, The Hidden Self by Pauline Hopkins • Space Traitors by Walidah Imarisha • The Line of Demarcation by Patty Nicole Johnson • Light Ahead for the Negro by Edward Johnson • e-race by Russell Nichols • Giant Steps by Russell Nichols • Almost Too Good to Be True by Temi Oh • You May Run On by Megan Pindling • Suffering Inside, But Still I Soar by Sylvie Soul • The Pox Party by Lyle Stiles • The Regression Test by Wole Talabi

Tade Thompson returns to his "bloody exploration of of identity and self in a changed world" (Publishers Weekly) in The Survival of Molly Southbourne. Who was Molly Southbourne? What did she leave behind? A burnt-out basement. A name stained in blood. Bodies that remember murder, one of them left alive. A set of rules that no longer apply. Molly Southbourne is alive. If she wants to survive, she'll need to run, hide, and be ready to fight. There are people who remember her, who know what she is and what she's done. Some want her alive, some want her dead, and all hold a piece to the puzzles in her head. Can Molly escape them, or will she confront the bloody history that made her?

Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was born in 1623 in Colchester, Essex into a family of comfortable means.From an early age Margaret was already assembling her thoughts for future works despite the then conditions of society that women did not partake in public authorship. For England it was also a time of Civil War.Despite these obvious dangers, Margaret asked her mother for permission to become one of her Ladies-in-waiting. She was accepted and, in 1644, accompanied the Queen into exile in France. This took her away from her family for the first time.Despite living at the Court of the young King Louis XIV, life for the young Margaret was not what she expected. She was far from her home and her confidence had been replaced by shyness and difficulties fitting in to the grandeur of her surroundings and the eminence of her company.Margaret told her mother she wanted to leave the Court. Her mother was adamant that she should stay. She provided additional funds for her to make life easier. It was now also that she met and married William Cavendish who, at the time, was the Marquis of Newcastle. He was also 30 years her senior and previously married with two children.As Royalists, a return to life in England was not yet possible. They would remain in exile in Paris, Rotterdam and Antwerp until the restoration of the crown in 1660 although Margaret was able to return for attention to some estate matters.Along with her husband's brother, she travelled to England after having been told that her husband's estate was to be sold and that she, as his wife, would receive some benefit of the sale. She received nothing. She left England to be with her husband again.The couple were devoted to each other. Margaret wrote that he was the only man she was ever in love with, loving him not for title, wealth or power, but for merit, justice, gratitude, duty, and fidelity. She also relied upon him for support in her career. The marriage provided no children despite efforts made by her physician to overcome her inability to conceive.Margaret’s first book, ‘Poems and Fancies’, was published in 1653; it was a collection of poems, epistles and prose pieces which explores her philosophical, scientific and aesthetic ideas.For a woman at this time writing and publishing were avenues they had great difficulty in pursuing. She wrote across a number of issues including gender, power, manners, scientific method, and philosophy.She always claimed she had too much time on her hands and was therefore able to indulge her love of writing. As a playwright she produced many works although most are as closet dramas. (This is a play not intended to be performed onstage, but instead read by a solitary reader). For Margaret the rigours of exile, her gender and Cromwell’s closing of the theatres mean this was her early vehicle of choice and, despite these handicaps, she became one of the most well-known playwrights in England)Her utopian romance, ‘The Blazing World’, is one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Margaret also published extensively in natural philosophy and early modern science; at least a dozen books.She was the first woman to attend a meeting at Royal Society of London in 1667 and she criticized and engaged with members and philosophers Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes, and Robert Boyle.Margaret was always defended against any criticism by her husband and he also contributed to some of her works. She also gives him credit as her writing tutor.Perhaps a little strangely she said her ambition despite her shyness, was to have everlasting fame. During her career, from the mid 1650’s until her death, she was prolific.

Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the 2019 Booker Prize and the first black woman to receive this highest literary honor in the English language. Girl, Woman, Other is a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity and a moving and hopeful story of an interconnected group of Black British women that paints a vivid portrait of the state of contemporary Britain and looks back to the legacy of Britain’s colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean. The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London’s funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley’s former students, is a successful investment banker; Carole’s mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter’s lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. From a nonbinary social media influencer to a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, these unforgettable characters also intersect in shared aspects of their identities, from age to race to sexuality to class. Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative fast-moving form that borrows technique from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that shows a side of Britain we rarely see, one that reminds us of all that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.

Polari is a language that was used chiefly by gay men in the first half of the twentieth century. It offered its speakers a degree of public camouflage and a means of identification. Its colorful roots are varied—from Cant to Lingua Franca to dancers’ slang—and in the mid-1960s it was thrust into the limelight by the characters Julian and Sandy, voiced by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, on the BBC radio show Round the Horne (“Oh hello Mr Horne, how bona to vada your dolly old eek!”). Paul Baker recounts the story of Polari with skill, humor, and tenderness. He traces its historical origins and describes its linguistic nuts and bolts, explores the ways and the environments in which it was spoken, explains the reasons for its decline, and tells of its unlikely reemergence in the twenty-first century. 

Ghostways brings two of best-selling author Robert Macfarlane’s eeriest works of impressionistic nature writing to American readers for the first time. In Holloway, Macfarlane and his collaborators explore the famed holloways of South Dorset, a landscape of shadows and spectres in the southwestern corner of England. In Ness, they create a modern myth about Orford Ness, the shingle desert of southeast England, for decades the United Kingdom’s secret atomic weapons testing site. Featuring Stanley Donwood’s spectacular etchings of woodland scenes throughout, Ghostways is a beautiful and haunted work of art unlike any other.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a sweeping romance with a dash of magic. They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip. When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him. But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina—and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins. The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.