Explores further the magical world of Earthsea through five tales of events which occur before or after the time of the original novels, as well as an essay on the people, languages, history and magic of the place.

The misery of waiting for a connecting flight at an airport (sitting for hours “on a blue plastic chair with metal tubes for legs bolted to the floor”) leads to the discovery of a way to visit other planes. Note: we are changing not airplanes here but planes of existence. Le Guin’s humorous premise frames a series of travel accounts by the tourist-narrator who has mastered Sitka Dulip's Method. The fanciful descriptions of bizarre societies...

At seventeen, Parvin Blackwater only has one year left to live. She has a clock that counts down to the second the time she has left alive. But she is illegally sharing the clock with her twin brother, so when the clock zeroes out, which one will die? When the authorities find out about sharing the clock, they cast Parvin through the Wall, which is her people's death sentence. What she finds on the other side about the world, about God, and about...

The epic sequel to RJ Barker's fantasy debut Age of Assassins, set in a world ravaged by magic, featuring a cast of assassins, knights, and ambitious noblemen. In a desperate bid to escape the bounty on his head, assassin Girton Club-Foot has returned to Maniyadoc, but the kingdom he knew no longer exists. Three kings battle for supremacy in a land ravaged by war-and one of them is his old friend Rufra. With threats inside and outside the war encampment,...

In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system. Young Fift is an only child of the Staid gender, struggling to maintain zir position in the system while developing a friendship with the acclaimed bioengineer Shria--a controversial...

A collection of twenty classic short stories by Isaac Asimov, author of the Foundation series, featuring the definitive version of "Nightfall". From one of history's most influential writers of science fiction comes this collection of twenty short works of fiction, arranged in order of publication from 1941 to 1967. Compiled by Asimov himself, who prefaced each story with an introduction.