cover: @JELyrica / One week after Margaret pulls the plug on her relationship with Vincent, a decade-old video of their performance as a musical duo called Citizen Samurai goes viral, and they're hired as an opening act for an aging British boy band's reunion tour. Their romantic collaboration is kaput, but Vincent and Margaret seize the chance to achieve creative dreams by portraying themselves as a dedicated couple, singing intimate songs onstage while finding separate ways forward during a chaotic European summer tour.

Okie's fifteen. She lives in New York. She's got a few problems: she's failing geography, her dad's a wimp, and her mother, Sumatra, is a stone cold bitch. But things get a lot worse when Sumatra turns into a zombie and eats Okie's dad. Clio, Okie's grandmother, lives in Toronto; but since the zombie apocalypse, Toronto's a lot further away than it used to be. Clio suggests that Okie transport Sumatra across the border, because family is family. But coaching Okie by cellphone isn't easy, and Clio has some zombies of her own to contend with. Luckily she has some garden tools. Naomi Alderman and Margaret Atwood team up for this unusual two-hander. Encompassing love, death, sex, and the meaning of family, The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home will surprise, delight, and convince you of the vital importance of keeping ready supplies of rhubarb and mini-wieners in your freezer at all times. The story unfolds beginning October 24.

Stan and Charmaine are a married couple trying to stay afloat in the midst of an economic and social collapse. Job loss has forced them to live in their car, leaving them vulnerable to roving gangs. They desperately need to turn their situation around—and fast. The Positron Project in the town of Consilience seems to be the answer to their prayers. No one is unemployed and everyone gets a comfortable, clean house to live in . . . for six months out of the year. On alternating months, residents of Consilience must leave their homes and function as inmates in the Positron prison system. Once their month of service in the prison is completed, they can return to their "civilian" homes. At first, this doesn't seem like too much of a sacrifice to make in order to have a roof over one's head and food to eat. But when Charmaine becomes romantically involved with the man who lives in their house during the months when she and Stan are in the prison, a series of troubling events unfolds, putting Stan's life in danger. With each passing day, Positron looks less like a prayer answered and more like a chilling prophecy fulfilled. Keep reading and be sure to enter The Heart Goes Last Fiction contest!