In the time of the ancients the universe was united—but that was far in the past. Now only broken artifacts remain. A few humans known as Makers can reshape these into their original uses. But chaos rules. In the gaps between mankind’s settlements are things which are hostile to all life, things which will raven and kill until they are stopped. In these later days, a Leader appears to confront the monsters. He welds the scattered human settlements together. In his capital, Dun Add, the Leader provides law and justice. With an iron fist.

Now Pal, a youth from the sticks, has come to Dun Add to become a Champion. Pal is a Maker, and in his rural home he's been able to think of himself as a warrior because he can wield the weapons of the ancients. He’s about to learn how far he has to go, and what he must sacrifice to become a true Champion.

A complete palette of story-telling colors from Powers, including acclaimed tale “The Bible Repairman,” where a psychic handyman supernaturally eliminates troublesome passages of the Bible for paying clients. Time travel takes a savage twist in “Salvage and Demolition,” where the chance discovery of a long-lost manuscript throws a down-and-out book collector back in time to 1950s San Francisco. And obsession and vengeance survive on the other side of death in “Down and Out in Purgatory,” where the soul of a man lusting for revenge attempts to eternally eliminate the killer who murdered the love of his life.

Wide-ranging, wonder-inducing, mind-bending—these and other tales make up the complete shorter works of a modern-day master of science fiction and fantasy.

In this month’s free short story “Sufficient Unto the Day” Tim Powers treats us to a Thanksgiving meal unlike any other. Which got us thinking: What famous family from science fiction or fantasy would you like to join for a traditional holiday meal and why? Let us know in a short paragraph (100 words of fewer) for a chance to win a signed copy of Powers’ short story collection Down and Out in Purgatory.

Find out more here.

To celebrate the release of the all new anthology The Monster Hunter Files we asked you to tell us your favorite secondary or tertiary character in the Monster Hunter series. Congrats to Jason Snell, whose entry was randomly selected from all those that qualified.

Jason chose character Milo Ivan Anderson as his favorite. Says Jason: “Not only does Milo have a passion and enthusiasm for what he does, he gets to work with some pretty awesome weapons. The custom-built Abomination that he built for Owen rocked early on in the series and his inventions only get more creative.”

Jason wins a copy of the anthology, signed by editors Larry Correia and Bryan Thomas Schmidt.

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