Fantastic erotica The best of Circlet Press 2008-2012

This brilliantly imaginative compilation of short, steamy tales of contemporary and period fantasy, fairytale, future dystopia, and space opera, chosen from Circlet's e-book anthologies by a popular vote of readers, succeeds both as speculative fiction and as erotica. Humans encounter satyrs in Frances Selkirk's "The Beauty of Broken Glass," succubae in Michael M. Jones's "Devil's Masquerade," and shapeshifters in Vinnie Tesla's "Ota Discovers Fire." Standout stories include Bernie Mojzes's "Ink," a strangely sweet tale of Cthulian tentacle love; Elizabeth Reeve's hilarious "A Woman of Uncommon Accomplishment," in which the plainest of five sisters inadvertently summons an incubus; and "Ota Discovers Fire," a traveler's tale that blends anthropological satire with a compelling setting and delightfully hot human-werewolf sex scenes that flow seamlessly from the plot. Plenty of same-sex pairings make this volume friendly to readers of all orientations. Exploring an underlying theme of the energy that arises when someone from the everyday world encounters true strangeness, these stories exhibit powerful world-building that slams the reader into delicious deviation from the mundane. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Fences, by David HubbardEveryone expected the world to end with a bang: nuclear war, alien invaders, even zombies would've been fun. Instead, it was with a whimper; the smallest of sounds, really, a virus of all things. Dubbed the X1N1 virus, X for short, it was the most virulent strain of swine flu ever seen, and no one knew where it had come from or how it had become so lethal. I like to think it was just Darwinism at its finest. Survival of the fittest, and this time around humanity wasn't all that fit. Almost the entire population had already become infected before the virus had even been identified and named. But X was a clever little bug; it didn't always kill its host immediately. Sometimes it would just lay dormant: weeks, months, sometimes even longer. Like years, in my case.The body count skyrocketed into the millions in the first few weeks after the initial discovery and diagnosis of the X virus. This of course brought on all sorts of responses: transportation was severely restricted in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease; the global economy crashed and burned; people panicked, and riots broke out at every grocery store and Walmart nationwide. News coverage attempted to continue where it could, though as time went on, it became more and more sporadic. Eventually only one network continued to broadcast, and all those fancy TVs were showing nothing but white snow or colored bars, in 1080p HD, of course. Martial law was inevitably declared, but unlike in most apocalypse-themed movies, it actually helped the situation.Things finally settled into a kind of stunned calm. When the inevitability of the disease finally hit home, we all just learned to deal with it. There were several mass suicides among the scattered "End World" religious cults that sprang up almost as fast as the infection, but once they were gone, everyone else returned to their lives as best they could.Even me. Excerpted from Fantastic Erotica: The Best of Circlet Press 2008-2012 All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.