Adult

The science fiction and fantasy fiction fields continue to evolve, setting new marks with each passing year. For the sixth year in a row, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan has collected stories that captivate, entertain, and showcase the very best the genre has to offer. This is the only major "best of" anthology to collect both fantasy and science fiction under one cover.

Egert is a brash, confident member of the elite guards and an egotistical philanderer who goes too far. Unable to end his suffering by his own hand, Egert embarks on an odyssey to undo the curse and the horrible damage he has caused, which can only be repaired by a painful journey down a long and harrowing path.

On a summer afternoon in 1998, six-year-old Iris Neff walked away from a barbecue in her small suburban town...and vanished. Brenna Spector, an investigator with a remarkable memory, is on the case, but she can’t seem to figure it out. When a local woman disappears 11 years later, Brenna uncovers bizarre connections between the missing woman, the long-gone little girl...and herself.

When journalist Beth M. Howard's young husband dies suddenly, she is forced to make some changes. She uses pie as a way to find purpose, when on the road and at home in Iowa. She creates the perfect synergy between two of America's greatest icons --- pie and the American Gothic House, the little farmhouse immortalized in Grant Wood's famous painting, where she now lives and runs the Pitchfork Pie Stand.

Expected to marry an up-and-coming banker from a respected family, Lucy Banning fears she will be forced to abandon her charity work --- and the classes she is secretly taking at the newly opened University of Chicago. When she meets an unconventional young architect who is working on plans for the upcoming 1893 World's Fair, Lucy imagines a life lived on her own terms.

Distraughtby the kidnapping and presumed death of her son, and believing Morpheus to be responsible, Lyta Hall calls the ancient wrath of the Furies down upon him.

As Mumbai empties under the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation, Sarita, a thirty-three-year-old statistician, can only think of one thing: being reunited with Karun, her physicist husband. Why has he vanished? Who is he running from? How will they form the family of three he's always wanted? To find him, Sarita must journey across the surreal landscape of a near-abandoned city, braving gangs of competing Hindu and Muslim hoodlums.

Leela has been in self-imposed exile from India and her family for decades. 22 years earlier, her sister was seduced by the egotistical Vyasa, and the fallout from their relationship drove Leela away.  Vyasa is preparing for his son's marriage, but when Leela arrives for the wedding, she disrupts the careful choreography of the weekend, with its myriad attendees and their conflicting desires.

Archaeologist Donald Gladstone knows there is no solid evidence that King Arthur ever existed. And yet medieval tales of this legendary warrior must have found their inspiration somewhere, and Donald is determined to discover their true source.

Henry Lang is a smart but unassuming young man with a degree from Harvard and limited social skills. After his parents are killed in a freak sailing accident, leaving him a substantial inheritance, he moves to Brooklyn to see if he can make it in publishing, perhaps fall in love, and attend the sorts of parties and events that he imagines 20-somethings in Brooklyn most likely frequent.