Take a peek inside this limited-time collection of YA Sci-Fi and Fantasy stories, featuring libraries and books!

Excerpts from three stories:

• Ruthless Hearts 

• Sentinel of Braidward Library

• A Tomb of Roses

Enora had never been more bored in her life.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She had been precisely this bored every Saturday since her eleventh birthday—the age when her mother had begun to demand her attendance at society events.

Today, they were attending a private luncheon at the estate of Lady Sylvia Rockwell. The three of them sat around an elegantly dressed table with a full tea service.

Enora’s mother beamed across the table at the other woman. Her hair was coiffed, not a strand out of place. “Enora has the highest grades in her class. She’s doing especially well in finance and literature,” she bragged.

Enora fought the urge to roll her eyes. Such kind words were rare when she and her mother were alone. No, that time was reserved for lectures on Enora’s duty to her family and society at large. Often, the lectures were followed by list-making and goal setting to ensure Enora would excel above her peers.

It didn’t matter how high her grades were or how many leaderships positions she earned. Nothing she did was ever good enough.

Lady Rockwell returned a smile. “Oh, how lovely. My Peter also enjoys reading though I must admit it’s often military strategy. I suppose he takes after his father.” She laughed into her lace-gloved hand.

“An excellent role model,” Enora’s mother bolstered.

It was painfully clear why they were all here. Lady Rockwell’s son, Peter, was twenty-years-old. Enora would be eighteen in two months. This was political matchmaking. She wondered when the military strategy reading Peter would arrive. Perhaps not until a second meeting but one could never be sure.

It had been two dreadfully dull hours of vapid conversation, and she’d do almost anything for a respite. Peter be damned. She sighed over her teacup.

Her mother shot her a glance that said quite clearly, No sighing at the table. Sit up straight and be pleasant, young lady!

So, she slouched further in her chair and gave a dramatic sigh.

This time, her movements attracted Lady Rockwell’s attention too. “Enora, my dear. Are you feeling well?”

Enora almost smirked, but she held back. Instead, in a stroke of brilliance, she pulled her face into a pained expression. “I have a terrible headache, and I fear I may be coming down with something.”

“Oh, my dear, you must go and rest then.”

While the woman was addressing Enora, her mother was shooting her a look that could kill.

Enora ignored it. “You’re quite right, Lady Rockwell. I should adjourn, but please give my best to Potter.”

The woman’s smile faltered for just a moment, but she recovered quickly. “When you’re feeling better, I look forward to introducing you to Peter.”

It was a subtle correction, but neither Enora nor her mother missed it. Of course, Enora already knew his name. She had an exceptional memory. What she didn’t have was any interest in this arranged marriage or any other.

She stood and dipped a small curtsy.

Her mother’s eyes narrowed. There would be words later.

But for now, she was free.

From "The Sentinel of Braidward Library" by Ben Green

You are a library,

You didn’t mean for this to happen, but it did. And the thing that bothers you sometimes, the thing that gets under your skin—not that you’re truly alive anymore—is that you kill to survive. It’s a defense mechanism, you know that, but still… not very nice.

Oh, but you wish you could still let people in the doors. The towering shelves, sturdy and weighed down with wonder. All the little magic things set out on a thousand counters, hovering in fields of energy. The sprawling trees and hanging garden. Things that once played in neon holograms long ago triggered by little footsteps. And you love the smell of silver and gold, of paper and ancient glues, of magical craft.

What you don’t love are the traps. The murderous vines, terrifying machines hidden behind your happy doors, fire, smoke, and burning lights. Those would break your heart, if you had one left. Because the thing is, you adore stories—the faker the better. Human stories are the most transcendent. Maybe that’s because you’re not human. You never were.

You were Loamin. And to be Loamin means a life of underground cities bristling with light. It means a metal magic called craft. To humans, your world would seem like fiction. To you, craft and underground suns are as bland as a “drive to work”—something you’ve read about in human books.

That’s why the council cursed you. Loamin do not make up stories. Their world is full of true and living legends, champions of power, and dungeons filled with danger and puzzle work. And neon light. There’s always neon light.

And the council…

Wraithspit, you hate them.

When they learned that you had been traveling around carrying fiction—both Loamin and Human—they had sent the best of the best to hunt you down and destroy your library. And they got close once. So close, you opened the large purse that was your library—bigger on the inside—and snuck down to safety. You felt their ignorant hands trying to destroy the purse.

You barred the door with the only relic you could think of—your braidward. You untied the knot of tungsten and gold magic from your hair and bent it around the latch. It took any craft they used against you and turned it against them. They tried to burn you with light; you now have a ring of white fire at your core defending the purse. They tried to use silvercraft to weaken your mind; you turned it into a magical distraction that forces people away from you. They buried you for a century with goldcraft to sap your youth; you forged it into an eternal fountain of years.

When they had locked the purse—you included—in a prison of ironcraft, you grew stone appendages and broke free from the grave. Now, a monstrosity, you wander under the mountains. Three hundred years? No, a breath more maybe.

You want to share your library with the fiction-starved Loamin. Maybe some of them would even love the human books you’d stolen from the surface years ago. Maybe they would even read your story. No. Or maybe. Don’t think about that.

You pull your monstrous self through another tunnel, dig deeper through granite and shale. And then—

Someone’s approaching! All your traps buzz to life. Trollbrick!

Don’t get close, you think. This library will kill you.