Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best of the Year

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we’d do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Praise for Maureen F. McHugh:

“Gorgeously crafted stories.”

—Nancy Pearl, NPR

“Hauntingly beautiful.”

—Booklist

“Unpredictable and poetic work.”

—The Plain Dealer

Leon Tsarev is a high school student set on getting into a great college program, until his uncle, a member of the Russian mob, coerces him into developing a new computer virus for the mob’s botnet — the slave army of computers they used to commit digital crimes.

The evolutionary virus Leon creates, based on biological principles, is successful ― too successful. All the world’s computers are infected. Everything from cars to payment systems and, of course, computers and smart phones stop functioning, and with them go essential functions including emergency services, transportation, and the food supply. Billions may die.

But evolution never stops. The virus continues to evolve, developing intelligence, communication, and finally an entire civilization. Some may be friendly to humans, but others are not.

Leon and his companions must race against time and the military to find a way to either befriend or eliminate the virus race and restore the world’s computer infrastructure.

In the year 2030, the meteor Ragnarok impacted Earth, rending the world a wasteland. Billions died, the sky went crimson, and the world entered an ice age from which it will not emerge for centuries.

By 2060, what is left of the United States exists underground in the Bunkers. Where once there were 144, now only four are left – fallen for reasons of starvation, rebellion, or worse. For in the wake of Ragnarok are new and sinister threats, threats which do not yet have a name…

Born into this post-apocalyptic world is sixteen-year-old Alex Keener, who has lived his entire life underground in U.S. Bunker 108. But when a stranger is let into the Bunker from the wastes, in defiance of protocol, all hell breaks loose… and Alex's life will never be same again.

In the notorious Bermuda Triangle a private jet vanishes without trace, taking with it scientists working for world-famous philanthropist Joaquin Abell.

In Miami, Captain Kyle Sears is called to a murder scene. A woman and her daughter have both been shot through the head. But within moments of arriving, Sears receives aphone call from the woman's husband, physicist Charles Purcell.

"I did not kill my wife and daughter. In less than twenty-four hours I too will be murdered and I know the man who will kill me. My murderer does not yet know that he will commit the act."

With uncanny accuracy, Charles goes on to predict the immediate future just as it unfolds around Sears, and leaves clues for a man he's never met before: Ethan Warner

The hunt is on to find Purcell, and Ethan Warner is summoned by the Defence Intelligence Agency to head up the search. But this is no ordinary case, as Warner and his partner Nicola Lopez are about to discover, and time is literally everything.

Brody never forgot his first love, the one his pride made him lose. When the world dies almost overnight, he finds himself drawn back to his hometown and the love he left behind.

Hannah never thought the expression, ‘Not if you were the last man on earth’ would ever come back to haunt her, but when the world’s population is decimated by a deadly virus, she regrets her words, especially when Brody comes riding back into her life.

Against all odds they survived the plague, but will the mistakes of the past continue to tear them apart?

В мире произошел удивительный подъем национального самосознания, в результате чего политическая карта мира совершенно изменилась. На территории России возникло великое государство финнов, Крым снова стал греческой колонией, мавры вновь захватили Испанию, а англичане попали под иго ирландских оккупантов. И обо всех этих событиях миру поведали летописцы, путешественники и авторы саг.

Fire! It's all around me, fierce, intense, out of control. I feel the hair on my arms singe and know I have only seconds before I burst into flames. Total panic. There's a horrible shrieking sound, piercing and destructive. My eardrums and eyeballs should burst. "It's hell!" I moan.

One boy's life ripped to shreds before his eyes…

One wrathful demon master hell-bent on revenge…

An army of grisly Demonata on the rampage…

It's the end of the world as we know it.

Kyle Vauss wanders alone across the ruins of England trying to block out his past. If he can't, he'll never be able to shut out the memory of his wife getting torn to shreds by the infected. Fifteen years ago the world fell apart. By day the zombie infected swarm the streets, and at night the stalkers come out of their nests to kill. Mankind is on the brink of extinction. When a teenager called Justin tricks Kyle into taking him along, Kyle has to learn to trust others, and himself, again. He doesn't want to face his past, but there are some things that you can't turn away from. A gripping story of survival that zombie apocalypse fans will love.

Mortimer Tate was a recently divorced insurance salesman when he holed up in a cave on top of a mountain in Tennessee and rode out the end of the world. Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse begins nine years later, when he emerges into a bizarre landscape filled with hollow reminders of an America that no longer exists. The highways are lined with abandoned automobiles; electricity is generated by indentured servants pedaling stationary bicycles. What little civilization remains revolves around Joey Armageddon's Sassy A-Go-Go strip clubs, where the beer is cold, the lap dancers are hot, and the bouncers are armed with M16s.

Accompanied by his cowboy sidekick Buffalo Bill, the gorgeous stripper Sheila, and the mountain man Ted, Mortimer journeys to the lost city of Atlanta – and a showdown that might determine the fate of humanity.

This story is entirely fictitious, and any resemblance to real cultures or events is purely…

The objective of advertising is to change the behaviour of the consumer so they purchase more of the product. That, at any rate, is the theory. But Jimmy Lyle may have taken things a bit too far with his controversial strategy for the UK launch of Kwench! When the new orange soft-drink hits the streets, it triggers a series of events he could not have anticipated. Certainly he never dreamed it would plunge him into the twilight world of synchronised swimming. Nor did he think it would end in murder…

Коллективная монография представляет собой первое планомерное академическое исследование феномена Soft Power, интерес к которому вспыхнул с особой силой в последнее пятилетие. Авторы – специалисты в области политологии и международных отношений, семиотики и языкознания – излагают собственные взгляды на проблему «мягкой силы» и знакомят с представлениями, сложившимися по этому поводу в своих областях. Ряд работ содержит попытки применения нового понятия к описанию политических процессов в ряде стран.

Книга представляет интерес не только для исследователей, преподавателей и студентов целого ряда общественных дисциплин, но и для практиков-политконсультантов, специалистов по PR, журналистов, сотрудников госструктур.

2-е издание, стереотипное.

Will Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable give magic to the masses? Will the Creeping Sword find out who he really is? Will the warring factions of the gods come to their senses before all is lost?

Mayer Alan Brenner masterfully pulls all the loose ends together in this fireworks-loaded finale, fourth in The Dance of Gods series.

$1.00 from every copy sold benefits Pets for Vets (http://www.petsforvets.com)

Nobility. Self-Sacrifice. Unconditional Love. These are the qualities of the heroic animals in this collection.

The Walking Dead meets The Incredible Journey in 14 amazing tales by today’s most talented independent authors. Seven stories set in all-new dystopian landscapes. Seven stories set in the bestselling post-apocalyptic worlds of David Adams’s Symphony of War, Michael Bunker’s Pennsylvania, Nick Cole’s Wasteland Saga, Hank Garner’s Weston Files, E.E. Giorgi’s Mayake Chronicles, Deirdre Gould’s After the Cure, and Edward W. Robertson’s Breakers.

When the world ends, the humans who survive will learn an old lesson anew—that friendship with animals can make the difference between a lonely death among the debris and a life well lived, with hope for the future.

The time is now, the place is just around the corner from reality and Magic is the new Rock 'n' Roll: 21st century high-tech designer magic. It's finely tuned, personalised and very exclusive. It will cost you an arm and a leg and possibly even your soul, but it's real and it works. Robert Rankin is Britain's second most popular writer of humorous fantasy after Terry Pratchett; BIG MAGIC is the first in a trilogy written in his unique and very funny style.

An injured man awakens in an abandoned island resort. The phones are dead. The clocks are frozen. Piles of food sit untouched… Worse still, strange visions tell him his time may be running out. With no seeming hope of rescue he desperately searches for clues. But he soon realises he’s in a terrifying race against time just to survive…

The new post-apocalyptic collection by master anthologist John Joseph Adams, featuring never-before-published stories and curated reprints by some of the genre’s most popular and critically-acclaimed authors.

In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

Featuring never-before-published tales by: Veronica Roth, Hugh Howey, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Scott Sigler, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias S. Buckell, Meg Elison, Greg van Eekhout, Wendy N. Wagner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Violet Allen—plus, recent reprints by: Carmen Maria Machado, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kami Garcia, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Jack Skillingstead, Sofia Samatar, Maureen F. McHugh, Nisi Shawl, Adam-Troy Castro, Dale Bailey, Susan Jane Bigelow, Corinne Duyvis, Shaenon K. Garrity, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Darcie Little Badger, Timothy Mudie, and Emma Osborne.

Have you ever wondered how it will all end? When the time comes and a shadow falls across our busy earth, where will you be and what will you be doing? When Armageddon interrupts your weekend shopping, and hell freezes all over your dinner party, who will you be with and will you be doing what matters most?

This book isn’t about the monsters that lurk in the night or that fatal dust cloud, or even what strikes from the skies above. You’ll hear about many horrors but no one knows for sure; only what’s whispered throughout the masses that some might call the unprepared. As countries across the globe start to go dark, join those who are in the midst of their routine living, as their individual hopes and dreams suddenly mean very little, or perhaps they now mean everything.

As our modern world reaches the brink of collapse, experience ten different stories about bold escape, sinister survival, unspoken love and much more, as each of us get there differently but all find one inevitable end.

Welcome to the Apocalypse. What are you doing tonight?

Одной холодной ночью в самом неожиданном уголке Чикаго вот-вот должны встретиться два подростка. Обоих зовут Уилл Грейсон, и это судьбоносное столкновение изменит их жизнь и поведет по новому и удивительному пути к романтическим порывам и созданию самого потрясного школьного мюзикла на свете. Веселая, трогательная и поучительная история Джона Грина и Дэвида Левитана пронизана душевностью и юмором, благодаря которым оба писателя завоевали любовь многочисленных поклонников.