Here are five stories of fierce females that will surprise you, frighten you, and encourage you to think. A young woman fights for her life against an invisible enemy. The Devil infiltrates a convent school. A deep space pilot must rescue her ex-husband from an artificial intelligence nightmare. A woman finds love in an unlikely encounter. These tales are anchored by the novella Duet des Fleurs, the story of Athes, a human/amphibian hybrid in a postapocalyptic conundrum. Athes searches for a way to reproduce a human mutation required for underwater survival on a dying Earth. When she discovers that everything she has ever believed in was a lie, she faces a future she didn't choose, to escape repeating the mistakes of the past. She must follow the truth, even if it results in human extinction.