Special Bonus: A new Mare Inebrium story! ('Mare' Christmas to all...)

Forbidden Archaeology...
By Sergio Palumbo
The market for forbidden artifacts has always been a cut-throat field of commerce. Sudden death is forever near at hand when such sales take place. When a 13 million year old off-world statue winds up in the Mare Inebrium under dubious circumstances, and the Reever is busy with far more serious crimes, even Max can find his hands tied if the putative buyer is a distant relation. But what exactly makes this random lump of rock so valuable?

Tin Indian
By Joel Doonan
The day Alena had vanished without a word of explanation was the day his life had gone into a holding pattern. He worked at the cannery, ate lunch with his friend Samson, and waited... Then the tin Indians, fortune-telling machines at the old arcade, spat out the strangest messages he'd ever seen.

Biotic Crisis
By Dean Giles
The UN Discovery had made the long, slow trip to the asteroid belt in search of the source of the first indisputably artificial signal of non-human origin. What they found raised more questions than it answered -- and awoke something strange and deadly.

The Troll and the Maiden
By Rachel Eliason
Troy insisted that the filthy homeless man was a troll, of all things, which Jennifer thought was taking their shared interest in their Nordic heritage a little too far. Des Moines, Iowa hardly seemed like the place for any mythical creature to be eking out a living by dumpster diving.

Night Owls
By P. B. Hampton
Government agent Carl Raker came to the little town of Noah's Peak to investigate reports of owls -- four-foot tall owls that might not be owls at all...

Catch and Release
By Daniel C. Smith
Project Icepick sent ships plunging under the surface of Europa's ice-covered oceans to explore -- and to find resources that could be exploited in support of a slowly-dying Earth. When Lieutenant John McAlister found life -- possibly sentient life, the size of Earth whales -- he was ordered to kill and retrieve a specimen for study.

Mother and Child
By Robert Watts Lamon
Annabel and her son, Jimmy, appeared in Dan Ferguson's house one night, and soon became part of his life. But Annabel couldn't promise that they would stay, and she had good reasons.

Spree
By Roderick D. Turner
It started as a trip to the mall for a little retail therapy. Then the UFO or dirigible or whatever it was did something weird to time, and Jackie and Monica ended up having an Adventure instead.

A Traveler Returns
By Ian Cordingley
The Benefactors -- the machine intelligence(s?) that ran the world -- had given Madison St. Thomas a chance at a normal life by removing the diseased half of her brain and retraining the rest. That life had been ended by a tragic accident -- but her father believed that part of Madison lived on in the 'Bubblehead' grown from her brain tissue...

Fresh Meat
By Jackie Cannon
They had been traveling for a long time, subsisting on tasteless processed rations, and the children were hungry. They needed fresh meat to grow and prosper -- but so did all the other children back at home. So before they could indulge their appetites, they had to prepare the new world for freezing.

Ticket To Samarkand
By Dave Weaver
Mohamat didn't know why the woman frightened him so much, but he was willing to go anywhere, as long as the flight took him away from her as soon as possible.

The Adoration
By Robert S. C. Cutler
When Mitchell brought Becca along to meet his Oma -- his grandmother, he planned to ask her to marry him. Of course, first he would have to reveal the secret of the family farm's uncanny prosperity.

Do Not Read
By J. E. Deegan
Randy Dobson was counting on his aunt's bequest to allow him to continue his 'career' as a worthless parasite. But all the ancient hag had left him was a book -- and worse, the book was emblazoned with a warning: DO NOT READ.

An Evening With Kaeding
By Stephen Frentzos
Luke Kaeding was normally the least excitable (or exciting) person in the lab, so a frantic invitation to his house for the evening was not a promising prospect. But his sudden exuberance turned out to be justified -- he had accomplished something amazing...

Teacher 417
By Eric Jackson
The Teachers were literally remote -- communicating with their students only via instantaneous text and video messaging -- and always, always impersonal. Then Teacher 417 asked Jessica to help with "getting me out of here".

Protect and Serve
By Richard Tornello
George Brent, like Archimedes, made the biggest discovery of his life while he was relaxing in the tub. The HLC (Home Life Companion) artificial intelligence he called simply "House" was a lot more complicated than he had ever imagined...

Intimate Merger
By Jo-Ann Psoras
With the latest VirtaIntel upgrade, Robert could delete unpleasant memories, real or virtual, but he would also be changed in ways that might erase his feelings for his comatose wife. He would become part of something larger -- but was it worth the cost?

Junkyard Haze
By Mike Phillips
Take one undefined bouillabaise of assorted chemicals, add random cosmic radiation and two slightly drunk and slightly stoned junkyard laborers, stir, and stand back.
***Contains coarse language***

The Cave
By Kristen Lee Knapp
Walt's friends and colleagues wanted him to give up his seeming addiction to virtual reality, but he loved the film noir detective story he had created more than anything the real world had to offer.

The Wind Tree
By Joel Doonan
Listen, children, to the story of the Wind Tree and the marvelous gifts it confers upon those who eat its fruit...

Cult of the Blue Assassins
By Jim Alciere
The king had purchased one of their own to serve as a sacrifice to the gods to try to bring back the rains, and she was now guarded by the fearsome Blue Assassins. Now a handful of simple shepherds (who sometimes enjoyed making and setting off fireworks) set out to effect a rescue.