Michael Warren Lucas

THE END OF YOUR WORLD? These eleven tales from critically-acclaimed author Michael Warren Lucas remind us that doom is always personal. Genes gone wild, or not wild enough. Cosmic heroes demanding you show them to a bank robbery, or else. Learning after a lifetime that your love is named chocolate, and chasing it no matter the cost. Discovering that your cozy desk job might get you killed, that one of your coworkers is a murderer, or the Faerie Queen wants your pelt. Apocalypse is loathed liberation, shredded innocence, or blowing up your own life to clasp a gaunt hope of joy. Eleven different dooms await you. Some of them are delicious.

THE END OF YOUR WORLD? These eleven tales from critically-acclaimed author Michael Warren Lucas remind us that doom is always personal. Genes gone wild, or not wild enough. Cosmic heroes demanding you show them to a bank robbery, or else. Learning after a lifetime that your love is named chocolate, and chasing it no matter the cost. Discovering that your cozy desk job might get you killed, that one of your coworkers is a murderer, or the Faerie Queen wants your pelt. Apocalypse is loathed liberation, shredded innocence, or blowing up your own life to clasp a gaunt hope of joy. Eleven different dooms await you. Some of them are delicious.

High Speed Madness, with Love at the WheelLove. The most overloaded word in our language. Love of your mate, love of pets, of parents and children and friends, all different things. We spend our last breath sharing our love. For love, we break not just the law but ourselves. Love is pure devotion, and pure corrosion. Love propels these stories. Thrillers and fantasies, science fiction and historicals. Love chained by brain implants and little old ladies who should have been left undisturbed. Love strong enough to unravel the universe, with the knowledge to do it. Minuscule love wiggling its whiskers against your cheek. Trapped children freeing themselves through love of the incomprehensible. Love of art and family and another person, the kind of love that violates museums and gnaws Semtex. Selected from a decade of the author's work, these eleven tales affirm the power of love-at knifepoint." Each story is Hieronymus Bosch writing a love letter to Charlie Brown's little red-haired girl now grown and so weary she aches." - ZZ Claybourne

High Speed Madness, with Love at the WheelLove. The most overloaded word in our language. Love of your mate, love of pets, of parents and children and friends, all different things. We spend our last breath sharing our love. For love, we break not just the law but ourselves. Love is pure devotion, and pure corrosion. Love propels these stories. Thrillers and fantasies, science fiction and historicals. Love chained by brain implants and little old ladies who should have been left undisturbed. Love strong enough to unravel the universe, with the knowledge to do it. Minuscule love wiggling its whiskers against your cheek. Trapped children freeing themselves through love of the incomprehensible. Love of art and family and another person, the kind of love that violates museums and gnaws Semtex. Selected from a decade of the author's work, these eleven tales affirm the power of love-at knifepoint." Each story is Hieronymus Bosch writing a love letter to Charlie Brown's little red-haired girl now grown and so weary she aches." - ZZ Claybourne

"I love these stories"Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author of The FeyELVES WENT INTO THE WEST-TO AMERICA. GENERATIONS LATER, ORCS FOLLOWED.1927 Detroit. Orcs fight Prohibition, avoid police, and labor hard for their children. All while doing their best to navigate the narrow human world. Men drive fancy Dodges and Cadillacs; orcs squeeze into fourth-hand Model Ts. Dwarves dominate the skilled trades; orcs push brooms. And behind everything, elves make it their life's work to deny orcs have worth. To be an orc is to endure, but when the world tries to deny even that, an orc must act. And Uruk-Tai will do anything for his family. This long-demanded collection includes all the Prohibition Orcs tales-Spilled Mirovar, Final Gift, Drowned Mirovar, Witness November, Degreased Hopes, Woolen Torment, and the never before published A Debt of Meat. With an introduction by Robert Jeschonek, author of My Favorite Band Does Not Exist

" A tale so outlandish it feels real. Prohibition. Grosse Pointe elves. Automotive lords. And the orcs doing their best to make America make sense. A riotous fantasy within a fantasy. Terry Pratchett via Detroit "--Zig Zag Claybourne, author of Afro Puffs are the Antennae of the UniverseHOPE EXISTS TO BE CRUSHEDThe tenuous bootlegging alliance between the Tai clan and the human Sanford brought wealth to Uruk-Tai's family. But a treacherous shadow has poisoned booze in the clan's name. Humans have died and other humans blame Uruk, the way small men always blame orcs. But when an orcish child dies from poison draught and war erupts between clans, Uruk finds himself forced into a magic-bound partnership with a clan rival who wants him dead. As the Sun surrenders to the Longest Night, Uruk charges through the belly of 1927 Detroit to find a cowardly killer before his own family is destroyed. Is it a lone poisoner? Or have the arrogant elves decided to end their slow feud and destroy Uruk's family? An orc endures, but endurance is not enough. By dawn, bodies frozen to the street. Perhaps Uruk's children among them.

Trapped on a reef with a walking dead man. A need that cannot be sated or survived. Nobody else hears the dead dog's murderous ghost. Whiskey means silence. So do claws. Mental scars drag the world behind them. SOME SALVATIONS COST TOO MUCH." The five stories in this collection are a real treat for fans of fantasy and horror. Join writer Michael Warren Lucas as he takes you on a trip through perilous supernatural landscapes and explores the darkness and strength of the human heart." - Lucy Snyder, multiple Stoker-award-winning author of While The Black Stars Burn and Soft Apocalypses Contains: Wednesday's Seagulls, Pax Canina, Opening the Eye, Breaking the Circle, and Sticky Notes.

Murder on the Sysadmin Express After accidentally solving two murders, Dale Whitehead hungers to stay in his apartment, hack virtual memory stacks, and forget the whole thing. Instead, his boss sends him to a technology/sci-fi convention in Detroit. He plans to endure his stint at the vendor table, stumble through his presentation, and escape anonymously. A dead body ruins everything. Dale finds himself battling liquid nitrogen ice cream, balky network addressing schemes, the Chaos Machine, and his own reputation, while the corpses pile up. "Wait to see if it happens again: " Great for troubleshooting IPv6 multicast over wireless. Not so much for murder.

Murder on the Sysadmin Express After accidentally solving two murders, Dale Whitehead hungers to stay in his apartment, hack virtual memory stacks, and forget the whole thing. Instead, his boss sends him to a technology/sci-fi convention in Detroit. He plans to endure his stint at the vendor table, stumble through his presentation, and escape anonymously. A dead body ruins everything. Dale finds himself battling liquid nitrogen ice cream, balky network addressing schemes, the Chaos Machine, and his own reputation, while the corpses pile up. "Wait to see if it happens again: " Great for troubleshooting IPv6 multicast over wireless. Not so much for murder.

Physics inconvenient? Change it. Then watch it try to kill you. Solve a murder in a universe without ground to stand on. Investigate inexplicable deaths a few million years after the Big Bang. Take too many breaths and never go home again. Let the antimatter trickle between your fingers, and visit five alien universes in this first Montague Portal omnibus. Contains: Forever FallsHydrogen SleetsDrinking Heavy WaterSticky SupersaturationNo More Lonesome Blue Rings

Physics inconvenient? Change it. Then watch it try to kill you. Solve a murder in a universe without ground to stand on. Investigate inexplicable deaths a few million years after the Big Bang. Take too many breaths and never go home again. Let the antimatter trickle between your fingers, and visit five alien universes in this first Montague Portal omnibus. Contains: Forever FallsHydrogen SleetsDrinking Heavy WaterSticky SupersaturationNo More Lonesome Blue Rings

One Orcess Against The WorldMha fought in the Spanish-American War and earned all the respect an orcess could dream of. But not even a life of constant struggle prepared her to endure her final days in a rural Michigan barn, so age-decrepit she can't even pick up a cow. Her husband's death abandons her to face that end alone. Mha holds one thing beneath even solitude and weakness: dealing with senseless humans. But only humans can save her from sacrificing all her warrior left her...

Liza Bradley knows the proper mercies for her career. A painless bullet through the head. An instantly broken neck. Don't want either? Drop your gun and run away. Quickly. Ex-Marine Matt Harrison? Green as lettuce and half as tough. But as Liza's team strikes in earthquake-ravaged Ecuador, Harrison strikes Liza in the only way she doesn't know how to fight. Bullets and broken bones? Useless against her own heart.

Liza Bradley knows the proper mercies for her career. A painless bullet through the head. An instantly broken neck. Don't want either? Drop your gun and run away. Quickly. Ex-Marine Matt Harrison? Green as lettuce and half as tough. But as Liza's team strikes in earthquake-ravaged Ecuador, Harrison strikes Liza in the only way she doesn't know how to fight. Bullets and broken bones? Useless against her own heart.