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"The First Kill" is a bit of backstory for the universe of The Shadow Campaigns. The Shadow Throne implies a connection between Andreas, Duke Orlanko's brutally efficient go-to killer, and Sothe, the Gray Rose, his best agent turned bitter enemy. In this story, we get to see these two at an earlier point in their careers, and take a look at how that relationship got started.

"The Secret" is set in the world where the Broken Empire and Red Queen's War trilogies take place. I've been writing short stories based on the various members of Jorg Ancrath's brotherhood of the road, exploring their origins. When I saw that the Blackguards anthology was seeking tales of assassins, I thought it was time to write about Brother Sim.

"Mainon" was published in the anthology Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries, and Rogues. Author Jean Rabe has written 30 fantasy and adventure novels and more than 60 short stories. When she's not writing, which isn't often, she edits: two dozen anthologies and more than 100 magazine issues.

Psychometrist/paranormal detective Simon Canderous wasn't always a goody-two-shoes. Before the events of Dead To Me, Simon had to learn that "with great power comes great responsibility". But in Simon's case it also came with added financial perks from thievery, too.

Working as a barmaid in the rough-and-tumble city of Half Town, Jancy the Quick keeps her true profession a secret but is poised to respond whenever injustice is found. In this instance injustice has found her. But this time Jancy may have bitten off more than she can chew.

"Sun and Steel" illuminates the origin of Jirom, one of the main characters of the Book of the Black Earth epic fantasy series. This story explores the brutal nature of this world as well as the honor and duty that bind its characters together.

Trapped in hostile territory just after the resolution of the Avan-Thrak war, Gryl lives off the land and the spoils of his once-ally, the chaotic Thrak berserkers. When a chance encounter with a group of renegade Shytan knights offers him a chance at a warm meal and a few nights of relative peace, and the possibility of coin in his pouch, Gryl finds himself unable to refuse. He soon learns, however, that no matter how far removed from the war he might be, the past is never far behind.

About this story, author S. R. Cambridge says, "When writing, I often take inspiration from real history, especially the history that often isn't read about that often. 'The Betyár and the Magus' and the characters in it came to be because I started to read a lot about the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, a war for independence by Hungary against the Austrian Empire."

The gray-skinned Sa'ba Taalor from the distant realm have come to Fellein. Since that moment, a war has been building. Swech is one of the Sa'ba Taalor, chosen by her gods to hide among the humans and do the will of her deities.

About this story, author Cat Rambo says, "This is the second time I've written about Serendib (the first story featured the antagonist from this one), but the world's been floating around in my head for a couple of decades now, originally as a game setting, and I can tell more stories and a possible novel are lurking within it as well. I chose a middle-aged married couple as my protagonists because I don't see much heroic fantasy with characters like that, and it seems like a definite lack to me."

About this story, author James Enge says, "The principal thief in this story is me. I stole the world and characters for 'Thieves at the Gate' from Homer. It's always been interesting to me how people like Odysseus (or Gunnarr Hamundarson or whoever) could be decent, respectable guys at home and murderous pirates abroad. This isn't really the answer, but it's an answer."

"The Long Kiss" is fundamentally a story about choices and consequences. Scoundrels by nature are well versed in that equation. Staying ahead in that calculation is how they pay the bills, after all. But sometimes ambition and deceit muddies the waters. Desire and desperation become perfect poisons. Duty and honor turn to guilt and wrath.

Selden, a former mercenary, gave up war to settle in Balathex, the City of Fountains, and set up shop as a fencing master. But old habits die hard, and a man can use a secondary source of income when he has a habit of picking losing horses at the hippodrome. So he still hires out his sword on occasion and generally finds himself enmeshed in supernatural mysteries and fighting sorcerers, demons, and the like. This is an origin of sorts. It relates how he first got himself established in Balathex

"A Kingdom and a Horse" is set in the universe of the Valhalla Saga. It contains the story of legendary Viking captain Sigurd and his trusty right-hand man Sven's youthful escapades in England. If your trade is to be looting and pillaging, you have to learn somewhere...right?

The Banished Lands has a violent past, where men and giants clashed in a war for supremacy and near-extinction for the vanquished. Now men rule the land, giants little more than a memory, lurking in the wilds and dark places. This tale takes place ten years before the events of Malice, book one of The Faithful and the Fallen, within the Darkwood, a great forest that splits the western realms of Ardan and Narvon.

Thousands of years after mankind has become extinct, a party of alien archaeologists try to learn the mysteries of mankind as they excavate in a gorge on Earth. This Hugo and Nebula Award winning novella by Mike Resnick is a gripping exploration of human origins and motivations.

Nine brilliantly told and connected stories take place in a post-apocalyptic world sometime in the near future and follow the narrator at different stages of his life, trying to survive in a savage landscape of climate change, plague, larceny, and a new sexual order.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Neil Clarke has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

Readers and listeners can't get enough of Honor Harrington and her world, and here David Weber is again, accompanied by some of the top science fiction writers in the field - including John Ringo, Eric Flint, Timothy Zahn and Weber himself - with new adventures of the best starship commander in the galaxy, and explorations of previously uncharted corners of her universe. It's a party - and you're invited!

First published in the US in 1988 and in the UK in 1990, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight unsettling stories that explore protagonists' fears and desires, at once illogical and terrifying, and culminate in a disturbing and enigmatic ending. Aickman's "strange stories" (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia; his characters ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds. For fans of the horror genre, Robert Aickman is a must read.