Courtesans of the Apocalypse — Ann Vremont

In the future, the rarest commodity isn't food, water or even oil -- it's love. Made-to-order brides, lab accidents, illegal nanoshifters and revolutionaries, these are the Courtesans of the Apocalypse.



Perfect Bride

A century into the future and not much has changed. Sure, the atmosphere has gotten worse and half the world is now beach property. But money still talks and, if you're rich enough, there's never been a better time to be alive. Custom-made bodies, designer drugs, pleasure is as close as the length of a physician's needle.



Executive Zhao Wah spent a small fortune for a genetically made-to-order bride. Yet, months into their marriage, he still can't make her climax. So it's off to what he thinks is an exclusive clinic specializing in sexually reticent women.



That is until he finds himself locked against his will in a room with a naked woman strapped down in a chair!



Toxic Angel

A genetic accident kept hidden in the bowels of Naraku Laboratories, Briar Rose has lived her entire life as a caged specimen.



Deadly to the touch, she yearns not to be alone. Her only companionship is the dancing of lights in her pit at night and The One Above who controls them.



Minoru Adams, night security for Naraku's Special Projects Unit uses the lights to touch Rose in ways that would make his life forfeit if flesh met flesh.



But for how long will it be enough to merely watch?



Wendigo

A nanopath contracted to the Ministry of Technology's Illicit Use Department, Shariya Markesh is sent to a remote North Woods location. Her assignment -- investigate and eliminate the source of three deadly maulings the locals claim were done by the legendary Wendigo. But the carnivorous, snow white beast that walks on two legs isn't an ancient folktale; he's a modern monster infected with nanoshifting technology.



And he's on the hunt for Shariya.



Wildhearts

Shaped by his creator in the form of the ancient god Cernunnos, Herne knew only the cold metal of a cage and the sharp blades of his master until he escaped into Tahoma's forest. Now, as the first winter storm of the season gathers, a hunter has entered his woods, bringing a bound and blindfolded woman as game.



Until tonight, Neva had survived as a healer in a gospel town where the monsters walk on two legs and the women do as they are told. “The Girl Who Said No,” she finds herself at the mercy of a jilted suitor and his brutish friends, with the woods her only chance of escape.



Welcome to the future. Seattle lies in fog-shrouded ruins. Fantasy has become reality and science is the new magic. The year is 2270, and it's time to meet the real beauty and the beast.



Tokyo Ink

Shimizu - the once-glittering glass pyramid in the middle of Tokyo Bay that housed a million people - is now a crumbling super-prison owned by Iyashii Corporation. Tetsu Hogosha's mother was caught in the city's conversion. In a criminal system where the care and feeding of a child adds time to the mother's crime, she signed him away to be an Iyashii bond employee as her only chance at freedom.



Now Tetsu is a free man and head of Iyashii's security forces for the country. But he has a secret sideline that might one day break Iyashii's hold on Shimizu. For months, he has watched the male dancer serving Iyashii's executive tea room. Tetsu knows every flawless movement the male geisha will make, from tea ceremony, to fan dance, to the slow revelation of his naked, tattooed flesh before he takes the executives, alone or in pairs, into the bedroom suite adjoining the tea room to satisfy their every desire.



For just as long, Tetsu has tried to convince himself he watches his unwitting accomplice only to record the secret messages embedded in the tattoos. But when Iyashii sends its top assassin after the male geisha, Tetsu is faced with the cold hard choice of protecting the message and its secret language at all costs or rescuing the one man capable of challenging his loyalties.