Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Fantasy Novellas and Short Stories

Haven’t done a Top Ten Tuesday list in a while, but I’m actually really excited by this one.  It’s now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

In no particular order:

The Jonathan Healy and Francis Brown stories by Seanan McGuire

Image: Seanan McGuire

Genre: Urban Fantasy/Historical Fantasy

Length: vary in length from 15-60 pages each

Available: Here (most are available for free, but some are collected into anthologies)

I could have filled the entire list with this series of short stories–there are over a dozen of them. In a world where cryptids (folkloric animals) are real and in hiding from the rest of the world, the Healys are a family of battle cryptozoologists who both protect humans from dangerous cryptids and cryptids from extremist humans.

Advertisements

Down Among the Sticks and Bones: The Broken Bond Between Two Sisters

Image: Tor

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy/ YA Fantasy

Synopsis: Jack and Jill are twins, two young girls suffocating under the strain of living their parents’ expectations. Then they walk through a portal into a world of monsters and mad science, a dark, dangerous place–where they somehow belong. But their upbringing has shaped them, and they carry the consequences of that with them, even as they start to build new lives. Separate lives, nonetheless entwined together, for better or for worse.

Edgedancer, and the Antics of an Irreverent Urchin as She Takes on a Demigod

Image: Tor via Amazon

Genre: Epic fantasy

Synopsis: Lift is a kid with Surgebinder powers, a companion spren who’d really rather be gardening, and a talent for utter wackiness. She’d prefer getting on with her urchin lifestyle, but the demigod wandering around killing people like her has other ideas–and she’s already on his radar. So she could either wait for him to kill again, eventually getting around to her, or she could–do what, exactly? Against a demigod? But either way, a confrontation is coming, with the lives of people like her at stake.

Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day, A Ghost Story About Longing and Choices

Image: Tor via Goodreads

Genre: Urban fantasy/ghost story

Synopsis: Following her sister’s suicide, Jenna dies in an accident before her time. She’ll remain as a ghost until she bleeds her remaining time from others–making them younger while making herself older, until she reaches her dying day, finally able to move on. Approaching that moment slowly, she’s adamant that she earn the time she takes. But she may never get the chance to move on, to find out if her sister is waiting for her. Because there are dangers in this world for ghosts who linger, and one of those dangers has come for the ghosts in Manhattan.

Every Heart a Doorway: The Painful Clarity of Not Fitting Into Your World

Image: Tor via Goodreads

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy/ YA Fantasy

Synopsis: Sometimes children stumble through a hidden entrance in their world into another one, and often that world is right for them in a way their own never could be. The lucky ones stay, but others come back. They could spend their lives looking for a way back to their true home, the one they’d found once by luck, trapped somewhere they know they don’t belong.

A long time ago, Miss West was one of the children who came back. Locked out of that world, she’s created a school for teenagers like she used to be, somewhere they can be with others who understand their experiences. Who understand how badly they want to go back to a place that fits them. But with longing and desperation come dangers, and not long after new student Nancy arrives, her classmates begin turning up dead…

Roundup: Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell and Critical Role x Kinda Funny: Dungeons & Dragons

Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

Image: Brandon Sanderson, Artist: Miranda Meeks

Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis: Innkeeper Silence maintains her business in the Forests, where shades and lawbreakers roam. So far, she’d managed to retain independence for herself and her daughters by supplementing her income through more dangerous means. Maintaining an appearance of a surly but harmless hostess, she has managed to remain above suspicion. And alive, and free, along with her two girls. For now.