What does it take to rebuild the world after a zombie apocalypse?

Best-selling authors show you how.

It’s been two years since the “zombie flu” decimated the vast majority of humanity and ended civilization across the globe. After overcoming seemingly overwhelming odds, the remaining groups of survivors are now facing a new challenge: as the remaining infrastructure begins to fail, can they forge a brand new world or will they succumb to the harsh realities of a post-apocalyptic dystopia?

Stories by: Brian Trent, Dave Freer, Jason Cordova, Jody Lynn Nye, John Birmingham, Sarah A. Hoyt, Mel Todd, Shane Gries, Brent Roeder, and Lydia Sherrer.

Secrets Cast Long Shadows

A lost soul. A box of mysteries.

While visiting the city of Lioll, Peg and Vereez hear a song composed by Peg and her true love, Jackal, in 1960s San Francisco—a song they shared with no one. Jackal died young, and now Peg is haunted by the desperate hope that his soul reincarnated Over Where. With time running seven to one, centuries may have passed, and he may have lived many lives since. Even if she finds him, will he know her?

After the crew returns to the Library of the Sapphire Wind, they learn that Xerak’s mother, Fardowsi, has brought them a box with a secret compartment. Within the compartment is a curious assortment of items. Knowing that Xerak and his associates are regularly traveling to Lioll and impressed with their knack for unraveling mysteries long believed unsolvable, Fardowsi hires them to establish the provenance of her purchase.

But secrets can be dangerous. Magic plays by its own rules—and may even kill. And a storm of emotions threatens to tear the House of Rough Diamonds apart from within.”

NEW ENTRY IN THE CHRONICLES OF HANUVAR SERIES. DESTINED TO BE A CLASSIC OF THE GENRE. CONAN THE BARBARIAN MEETS HANNIBAL OF CARTHAGE.

He had crossed half a continent, venturing into the heartland of his enemies to wage a secret war of liberation!

It almost seemed that the worst lay behind them. Hanuvar and his small band of allies had faced down warriors and horrors and sinister magics to free hundreds of their people from slavery. The emperor was dead and his successor had so little interest in finding Hanuvar he’d ordered his sorcerous revenants to cease their search and turn their sinister talents to other targets.

But as Hanuvar shifted his efforts south, where hundreds of his people still labored under the Dervan yoke, other forces were advancing agendas of their own. Determined to prove Hanuvar still lived, the revenant legate secretly sought him with dark sorceries. A band of gladiators had rebelled and now wandered free, threatening the innocent and calling down the wrath of the legions. And upon the slopes of an ancient volcano, an ageless warrior mage worked to unleash a spell that would doom them all . . .

Beauty Meets Beast in San Francisco

Accepting employment as a governess after hard times hit her family, medieval scholar Rosalind Hawkins is surprised when she learns that her mysterious employer has no children, no wife, and she is not to meet with him face to face. Instead, her duties are to read to him, through a speaking tube, from ancient manuscripts in obscure, nearly-forgotten dialects.

A requirement for the job was skill in translating medieval French, and she now understands the reason for that requirement, and assumes her unseen employer’s interest in the descriptions of medieval spells and sorcery is that of an eccentric antiquary. What she does not realize is that his interest is anything but academic. He has a terrible secret and is desperately searching for something that can reverse the effects of the misfired spell which created his predicament.

PREQUEL TO THE BEST-SELLING PENDRAGON CYCLE

Aurelia:

Last witness of an elder time, handmaid of the age to come.

It was a time of the end of empire. The world was in turmoil. The Romans were abandoning Britain, leaving the remaining servants of empire to try to stem the tide of chaos. Aurelia was one such, the child of a Magistrate, and wife of a Legate. The entire world was changing around her. How could she raise her sons to thrive in such a world?

Everywhere, it seemed, the old, well-ordered realm she had been born into was passing away to be replaced by . . . what?

It was that question her sons, Aurelius and Uthur—with the help of Merlin—were born to answer.