Swords and Spaceships for December 11: A Celebration of Standalones

In a world of magic where those who can bear children are barred from practicing, Beatrice longs to become a full-fledged magus while all her family wants is for her to marry well and save them from financial ruin.

Women fighting for access to the ballot box in 1893 turn to old magics–but there are those who still will not suffer a witch to live, let alone vote.

People can travel to parallel universes, but only the ones their doppelganger has already died in. Luckily for Cara, she’s dead in all but 8 of the worlds hers can reach.

A history of the near future about the ways humanity will have to learn to survive climate change–and hopefully thrive.

An exploration of memory, knowledge, and communicaton built by a labyrinthine, endless house in which dwells Piranesi, who is beginning to realize that he’s not alone, and nothing is as it seems.

Noemí heads to an isolated village overseen by a rotting manor house to try to save her cousin from an outwardly charming but extremely sinister husband and his even creepier family. It’s classic gothic tropes examined with very new twists.

A young woman with psychic powers must decide what to do with her abilities as she watches her brother be incarcerated and suffer through it.

Three strangers build themselves a place of belonging and the family they lack across space and time–but all of them are pursued by pasts they cannot escape.

When Ellie’s cousin is murdered, she has to use all of her knowledge of the paranormal and her ability to summon the ghosts of animals to save the rest of her family–and break open a nasty secret festering in the heart of Texas.

An all-female mission is heading out to explore a planet in the Goldilocks zone of another solar system–but then things begin going wrong on the ship and it might well be sabotage.

In a city that partially exists in virtual spaces, a repo-man and sometimes thief is hired to steal an object from a tech billionare. When that object turns out to be the first sentient AI, he realizes he’s got trouble coming bigger than any possible paycheck.

What if Red Riding Hood and Hou Yi the archer were old, retired, and lesbians? What if they were trying to forget the mistakes and traumas of their pasts? What if those pasts caught up with them?

In a future American Southwest where bandits and queer librarians fight against fascists, a girl stows away on a Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape an arranged marriage.

A scholar finds an unlikely ally in a younger prince in her quest to overthrow the utterly corrupt and cruel king.

Immanuelle is an outcast in the very puritanical (and cult-like) lands of Bethel–and those lands are about to be visited by the vengeance of witches murdered long ago, apparently called up by the rage of Immanuelle’s dead mother.

Two girls go out looking for monsters; one falls through a crack between parallel worlds. And that’s only the beginning–because the cracks are getting wider, and soon much larger, more extraordinary things will start falling through into our world.

An exiled old wizard has to hope again, even as the world falls apart around him and poisoned deserts spread.

A temp administrative assistant to super villains gets badly injured in a superhero attack. She gains her vengeance by collating the data on who else these so-called heroes have hurt and using it on social media.