Zendegi by Greg Egan

In the near future, journalist Martin Seymour travels to Iran to cover the parliamentary elections. Most would-be opposition candidates are disqualified and the election becomes the non-event the world expects. But shortly afterward a compromising image of a government official captured on a mobile phone triggers a revolutionary movement that overthrows the old theocracy.

Nasim Golestani, a young Iranian scientist living in exile in the United States, is hoping to work on the Human Connectome Project–which aims to construct a detailed map of the wiring of the human brain–but when government funding for the project is canceled and a chance comes to return to her homeland, she chooses to head back to Iran.

Fifteen years after the revolution, Martin is living in Iran with his wife and young son, while Nasim is in charge of the virtual world known as Zendegi, used by millions of people for entertainment and business. When Zendegi comes under threat from powerful competitors, Nasim draws on her old skills, and data from the now-completed Human Connectome Project, to embark on a program to create more lifelike virtual characters and give the company an unbeatable edge.

As controversy grows over the nature and rights of these software characters, tragedy strikes Martin’s family. Martin turns to Nasim, seeking a solution that no one else can offer… but Zendegi is about to become a battlefield.

Electric Velocipede Issue #20 edited by John Klima

Now shipping! The Hugo-winning, World Fantasy Award-nominated magazine Electric Velocipede returns with Issue #20. Featuring poetry by Shira Lipkin and Amy Mackiewicz, and fiction by Alex Jennings, Cyrl Simsa, Lyn Battersby, Dan Braum, Shira Lipkin, sean Melican, and Ian Shoebridge, Electric Velocipede Issue #20 also includes a Blindfold Taste Test with Laura Anne Gilman and an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi, author of the Nebula, Locus, and Comption Crook award-winning, Hugo-nominated novel The Windup Girl.

Order or subscribe today!

The Living Dead 2 edited by John Joseph Adams

Two years ago, readers eagerly devoured The Living Dead. Publishers Weekly named it one of the Best Books of the Year, and Barnes & Noble.com called it “The best collection of zombie fiction ever.” Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams is back for another bite at the apple — the Adam’s apple, that is — with 44 more of the best, most chilling, most thrilling zombie stories anywhere, including virtuoso performances by zombie fiction legends Max Brooks (World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide), Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), and David Wellington (Monster Island). The Living Dead 2 has more of what zombie fans hunger for — more scares, more action, more… brains. Experience the indispensable series that defines the very best in zombie literature.

The Zombies of Lake Woebegotten by Harrison Geillor

The town of Lake Woebegotten, MN is a small town, filled with ordinary (yet above average) people, leading ordinary lives.

Ordinary, that is, until the dead start coming back to life, with the intent to feast upon the living. Now this small town of above average citizens must overcome their petty rivalries and hidden secrets, in order to survive the onslaught of the dead.

Sympathy for the Devil edited by Tim Pratt

The Devil is known by many names: Serpent, Tempter, Beast, Adversary, Wanderer, Dragon, Rebel. His traps and machinations are the stuff of legends. His faces are legion. No matter what face the devil wears, Sympathy for the Devil has them all.

Edited by Tim Pratt (Hart & Boot & Other Stories, The Strange Adventures Of Rangergirl, Blood Engines), Sympathy for the Devil collects the best Satanic short stories by Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, Stephen King, Kage Baker, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Kelly Link, China Mieville, Michael Chabon, and many others, revealing His Grand Infernal Majesty, in all his forms.

Thirty-five stories, from classics to the cutting edge, exploring the many sides of Satan, Lucifer, the Lord of the Flies, the Father of Lies, the Prince of the Powers of the Air and Darkness, the First of the Fallen… and a Man of Wealth and Taste. Sit down and spend a little time with the Devil.

House of Windows by John Langan

Now available in Trade Paperback, John Langan’s debut novel, House of Windows, which Strange Horizons called, “a haunted house story of the highest order.”

When a young writer finds himself cornered by a beautiful widow in the waning hours of a late-night cocktail party, he seeks at first to escape, to return to his wife and infant son. But the tale she weaves, of her missing husband, a renowned English professor, and her lost stepson, a soldier killed on a battlefield on the other side of the world, and of phantasmal visions, a family curse, and a house… the Belvedere House, a striking mansion whose features suggest a face hidden just out of view, draws him in, capturing him.

What follows is a deeply psychological ghost story of memory and malediction, loss and remorse. This unnerving tour de force, exploring the literary haunted house, from Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft to today, incorporates family trauma, abstract art, literary criticism, the occult Dickens, and the war in Afghanistan. From John Langan (Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters) comes House of Windows, a chilling novel in the tradition of Peter Straub, Joe Hill, and Laird Barron.