THE NAMESAKE STORY FOR THIS ANTHOLOGY was originally a popular standalone, but later became the inspiration for an trilogy of its own, then a crossover to another trilogy, and (finally) this anthology. Good...

Caught by a fast-moving storm, the young woman was on her own against the elements. No search party would find her in time to save her life if she stayed out in this weather.She needed shelter. Now.Trusting...

A farmer out checking his cattle finds a newborn calf of many colors.Deep in fresh snow with no momma cow in sight. It is supposed to get well below freezing tonight and the sun is going down quickly. What...

A minimalist tale of an Emperor who sought Truth that one of his student-scribes found - but then disappeared...Excerpt:One day, as court was held, the teacher was in a particularly foul mood. The weather...

Sue had been though a world of pain already.Surviving re-entry to this planet in a powerless escape pod. Learning to speak with telepathic canines that had become the dominant sentient beings on Earth....

The world has changed. Humans almost extinct, other sentient species now rule this planet and work to keep it in balance.Without the polluting, noisy, conflicted centers of human populations called cities....

The last, final Middle East war was over. Fast. Brutal. Final.Jerusalem experienced the final solution as all their combined defenses couldn't save it from sinking beneath a new sea of irradiated water.General...

A first collection of short stories from C. C. BrowerIn addition to her longer novellas and novels, Brower started out with short stories.Contemporary, Fantasy, Science Fiction - 13 wonderful worlds from...

How Can You Save Your Own World When You're Stuck In Someone Else's Dream?The sentient wolf-pack that had saved her when she crash-landed back on Earth was being torn apart by internal power-struggle,...

The surest sign of civilization returning to an area is in the trading and stories.Festivals had long been attended between the villages, using horse and oxen-pulled wagons along the old cracked and buckled...

Light, Seasonal Reading by New Author C. C. BrowerContains three short stories to fill your holidays with cheer: Long Overdue Santa -  The house seemed so empty now with the children all grown up and...

What did you do after the cities died?A couple of days after the cities left, I was there.Dancing.Whether it was appropriate or not, there was no one there to care.I had things to celebrate and this was...

TO DREAM OF TALKING WOLVES AND CROWS might be strange to some.To act on what they tell you to save some wild pups in an abandoned building with an unknown menace threatening your life - well, that might...

Some vacation. Not like I'd planned - or the brochures.Now I'm in a space suit after some sort of freak accident. Lucky I knew how to get in one, and one was nearby. First time for everything.But now,...

A Writer Recluse Places an Ad for a Caretaker and Gets More Than He Asked ForThis quiet contemporary fiction has a calm romance beneath the seeming gruff exterior of a reclusive writer who wants his solitude...

Why was that meteor screaming in his mind? Someone inside it terrified of landing?All he wanted to do was to make sure his wolf pack was safe against the fire from the sky. But the meteor had called him,...

The meteor talked to Tig as he watched it land. Meteors came now and then. But never one that screamed like it was afraid of landing. All he wanted to do was to make sure his pack was safe against the...

When Sue crash-lands back on Earth, she didn't know what to expect.What she found was a telepathic wolf pack, capable of reasoning and the dominant life form on the planet. The were in a fight for survival...

When there are no more governments, other than on paper, one Corporation will rule and solve all povertey and warfare. The solution enabled people to stay "jacked in" and code 24/7, loving the opportunity.***If...

Sue returned to earth in what looked like a meteor to those watching. But it was an escape pod from the Moon colony. Where the cities had gone to escape Earth and its governments' leaving the rest of...

Executives running the last outposts of humanity are going missing.Decades ago, certain cities lifted off from the surface of Earth, protected by fusion-powered shields. Their destination was the moon,...

At the beginning was The Games. Because they were running out of people.The gangs were killing each other off too fast. And the city was running out of money to keep them all on free food and free medical.The...

Why I was brought in to solve a mystery of people getting and staying healthy was a bit curious on its own. They were all terminally ill. And in quarantine. Yet one nurse and her student "angels of death"...

Sue had been though a world of pain already.Surviving re-entry to this planet in a powerless escape pod. Learning to speak with telepathic canines that had become the dominant sentient beings on Earth....

When the unknown "X" lost her job and any way to make a living, she only wanted her life back.But she settled for revenge.In a way she wouldn't expect – cleaning up the elitist government messes.Because...

When A.I. goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.In order to make massive changes to any computer program, you have to have admininstrator access: "root".Integrating chips into humans had become almost a...

Our Second Civil War was over in minutes - while the conflict took decades. As in all wars, both sides lost heavily and then proclaimed victory. I knew this all too well, serving as a paramedic to patch...

Finding out you're immortal as a teenager can set your world on fire.But finding out at the same time that just getting angry could kill everyone around you can dampen that pretty quickly.Who wants to...

I was Queen of the World. Until I wasn't. One moment I was in chains and bleeding, the next I was fine - but dressed in red.Someone had played a dirty trick on me. They'd dressed me in a red cartoon outfit...

The third time she was beaten up by a different roving city gang and this time left for dead. The guy who saved her life wanted to help solve how she ended up that way.What wasn't working was to be anything...