A utopia where the most privileged get to do whatever they want to do with their lives, indulging their slightest whims via the bodies whose wombs they occupy; a soldier's wife tries to love a husband who is little more than backup memory; a society in which the citizens all make merry for nine remarkable days, and on the tenth get a taste of hell; the last ragged survivors of an expedition to a savage backwater world hunt down an infamous war criminal; a divorcing couple confront their myriad troubles to gain resolution, reason, respect -- but not without sacrifice. Introducing these stories (and more) from Adam-Troy Castro, whose short fiction has been nominated for two Hugos, three Stokers, and eight Nebulas.

Noveller.

I first met Césarine Vivian in the stalls at the Ambiguities Theatre. I had promised to take Mrs. Latham and Irene to see the French plays which were then being acted by Marie Leroux's celebrated Palais Royal company. I wasn't at the time exactly engaged to poor Irene: it has always been a comfort to me that I wasn't engaged to her, though I knew Irene herself considered it practically equivalent to an understood engagement. We had known one another intimately from childhood upward, for the Lathams were a sort of second cousins of ours, three times removed: and we had always called one another by our Christian names, and been very fond of one another in a simple girlish and boyish fashion as long as we could either of us remember. Still, I maintain, there was no definite understanding between us; and if Mrs. Latham thought I had been paying Irene attentions, she must have known that a young man of two and twenty, with a decent fortune and a nice estate down in Devonshire, was likely to look about him for a while before he thought of settling down and marrying quietly.

VIGILANTE? VICTIM? VILLAIN? Where is your breaking point? Would you defy the law in pursuit of justice? How far would you have to be pushed before you got…blood on your hands? Nineteen gripping crime and mystery stories reveal the transgressions ordinary people commit when they feel they have no other choice. What should be a marriage of wealth and privilege contains only dark secrets of the heart. A long-ago crime of passion on the lake returns to haunt everyone involved. A widow plots a unique revenge against the man who indirectly killed her husband. And an amateur detective tries to solve the murder of two exotic dancers…and finds a killer hiding in plain sight. Edited and with a new foreword by New York Times-bestselling author and Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Lawrence Block, Blood on Their Hands features these and other tales of men and women who have crossed that line between law and lawlessness. Read on to find out who gets away with it…and who doesn’t…

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction “[These stories] vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange.”—Roxane Gay “In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women’s memories and hunger and desire. I couldn’t put it down.”—Karen Russell In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naïvely assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes. Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Three friends join forces to out-wit Bear in this rollicking fun book about teamwork, brought to you by award-winning husband and wife team Tim Warnes (I Don't Want to Go to Bed!) and Jane Chapman (Little White Owl). Bear has a big jar of yummy honey, and he won't share it! But Mouse, Mole and the Rabbit Brothers are hungry. With a dodge, a jump, a leap and a roll they set out across the forest... Can they get to the honey without that scary bear seeing them? For more growly bears from Tim and Jane, check out The Slurpy Burpy Bearand I Love You as Big as the World.

This triumphant picture book recasts a charged phrase as part of a black girl's everyday life--hands up for a hug, hands up in class, hands up for a high five--before culminating in a moment of resistance at a protest march. A young black girl lifts her baby hands up to greet the sun, reaches her hands up for a book on a high shelf, and raises her hands up in praise at a church service. She stretches her hands up high like a plane's wings and whizzes down a hill so fast on her bike with her hands way up. As she grows, she lives through everyday moments of joy, love, and sadness. And when she gets a little older, she joins together with her family and her community in a protest march, where they lift their hands up together in resistance and strength.