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World Fantasy Award winning, and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story.

Aimee has bought a travelling monkey show, wherein 26 monkeys do a variety of tricks and then vanish. She tries to figure out how the vanishing happens.

This story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan
• Year's Best Fantasy 9 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer
• The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009 (2009), edited by Rich Horton
• The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume (2009), edited by Mary Robinette Kowal
• The Secret History of Fantasy (2010), edited by Peter S. Beagle
• Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (2012), edited by Ekaterina Sedia

It is included At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2012).

Read the full story for free on the author's website.

A sparkling debut collection from one of the hottest writers in science fiction: her stories have received the Nebula Award the last two years running. These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy.

• At the Mouth of the River of Bees
• 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss
• The Horse Raiders
• Spar
• Fox Magic
• Names for Water
• Schrodinger's Cathouse
• My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire
• Chenting, in the Land of the Dead
• The Bitey Cat
• The Empress Jingu Fishes
• Wolf Trapping
• The Man Who Bridged the Mist
• Ponies
• The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles
• The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change

Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.

Sturgeon Award winning novelette. The story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, December 1993. The story is included in the collections Tales for the Long Rains (2001) and At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2012).

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Enter the world of Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen--who may or may not be a figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing on the paths that lead her to death.

For she is a being who started her journey on the kami, the spirit road, as a humble tortoiseshell feline. Her family was destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city, and this loss renders her taleless, the only one left alive to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell, The Cat with a Litter of Ten, and The Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki--self and soul and home and shrine--she alone cannot keep the power of her clan together. And she cannot join another fudoki, because although she might be able to win a place within another clan, to do so would mean that she would cease to be herself.

So a small cat begins an extraordinary journey. Along the way she will attract the attention of old and ancient powers. Gods who are curious about this creature newly come to Japan's shores, and who choose to give the tortoiseshell a human shape.

This very short story is a kind of kama sutra for mantises.

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2010. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2012).

If you want to be friends with The OtherGirls, you're going to have to give something up; this is the way it's always been, as long as there have been Ponies.

This short story can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Awards Showcase 2012, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo. It is included in the collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2012).

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

A lone survivor of a space shipwreck is trapped in a raft with an alien, and is pitted against it in a sexual competition for survival and dominance.

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld.

Collecting some of her favorites, Kij Johnson, author of The Fox Woman, shows you a fox-girl's fantasy, a wolf behaviorist's nightmare, and what dogs hunt when they dream; a nightclub in hell, and another where the gin is cold and the entertainment is, well, flexible; a world where the sun never sets -- if you keep moving; and a vampire with the best of intentions -- fifteen stories in all, including three that have never before been published.

This story originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 100, January 2015. It can also in the anthologies The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016, edited by Karen Joy Fowler and John Joseph Adams, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

When a fire destroys her home and scatters her colony, Small Cat sets out to find the home of her ancestor, the Cat From the North, and to make her own name along the way.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

World Fantasy Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated novella

Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women's College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her.

Kij Johnson's haunting novella The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe is both a commentary on a classic H.P. Lovecraft tale and a profound reflection on a woman's life. Vellitt's quest to find a former student who may be the only person who can save her community takes her through a world governed by a seemingly arbitrary dream logic in which she occasionally glimpses an underlying but mysterious order, a world ruled by capricious gods and populated by the creatures of dreams and nightmares. Those familiar with Lovecraft's work will travel through a fantasy landscape infused with Lovecraftian images viewed from another perspective, but even readers unfamiliar with his work will be enthralled by Vellitt's quest.

WFA, Sturgeon and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (2007), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gavin J. Grant, Kelly Link and Ellen Datlow, Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, edited by Ellen Datlow and Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology (2013), edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collection At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2012).

Read the full story for free at the author's website.

Kij Johnson has created an achingly beautiful love story, a fable wrapped in smoke and magic set against the fabric of ancient Japan. Johnson brings the setting lovingly to life, describing a world of formalities and customs, where the exchange of poetry is a form of conversation and everything has meaning, from the color of the silks on wears to how one may address others.

Yoshifuji is a man fascinated by foxes, a man discontented and troubled by the meaning of life. A misstep at court forces him to retire to his long-deserted country estate, to rethink his plans and contemplate the next move that might return him to favor and guarantee his family's prosperity.

Kitsune is a young fox who is fascinated by the large creatures that have suddenly invaded her world. She is drawn to them and to Yoshifuji. She comes to love him and will do anything to become a human woman to be with him.

Shikujo is Yoshifuji's wife, ashamed of her husband, yet in love with him and uncertain of her role in his world. She is confused by his fascination with the creatures of the wood, and especially the foxes that she knows in her heart are harbingers of danger. She sees him slipping away and is determined to win him back from the wild...for all that she has her own fox-related secret.

Magic binds them all. And in the making (and breaking) of oaths and honors, the patterns of their lives will be changed forever.

The Fox Woman is a powerful first novel, singing with lyrical prose and touching the deepest emotions. A historically accurate fantasy, it gives us a glimpse into, and an understanding of, the history that shaped the people of one of our world's greatest nations. But it is also a story about people trying to understand each other and the times they live in, people trying to see through illusions to confront the truth of who they are.

Hugo- and Nebula-winning Novella

The river of Mist, an almost living organism, divides the Empire in two. A few Ferries make dangerous and treacherous journeys across the Mist when they can, trusting in good fortune and the uncanny skills of those plying the trade.

A bridge across the Mist will greatly ease the suffering of those who risk crossing the river - but the last bridge builder sent by the Empire died while building it.

Kit now comes to the town of Nearside to complete the task left unfinished by the dead bridge builder. Will he be the man who finally bridges the Mist?

Read this story online for free at the author's website (doc).

A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson's speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works.

The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning "The Privilege of the Happy Ending" and "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe," as well as two never-before published works.

The latest volume of the prestigious anthology series, published annually across six decades!

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. The editor selected by SFWA's anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) is American fantasy writer Kij Johnson, author of three novels and associate director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas.

This year's Nebula winners, and expected contributors, are Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Kress, Andy Duncan, and Aliette de Bodard, with E.C. Myers winning the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Kij Johnson
• Immersion - (2012) - shortstory by Aliette de Bodard
• Close Encounters - (2012) - novelette by Andy Duncan
• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall - (2012) - novella by Nancy Kress
• Excerpt from 2312 - shortfiction by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species - (2012) - shortstory by Ken Liu
• Excerpt from Fair Coin - shortfiction by E. C. Myers
• Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain - (2012) - shortstory by Cat Rambo
• Gene Wolfe - essay by Michael Dirda
• How to Read Gene Wolfe - (2002) - essay by Neil Gaiman
• Christmas Inn - (2005) - novelette by Gene Wolfe
• The Library, After - (2011) - poem by Shira Lipkin
• The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages - (2011) - poem by Megan Arkenberg
• Blue Rose Buddha - (2011) - poem by Marge Simon

Isolated for centuries, the exotic Dragon Empire is finally ready to join the United Federation of Planets. But first the emperor's eldest son must marry the only daughter of his oldest enemy, bringing to an end decades of civil war. Without the wedding, there can be no peace -- and no treaty with the Federation. As honored guests of the Dragon Empire, Captain Picard and the crew of the "Starship Enterprise" TM must ensure that the royal wedding occurs on schedule, despite the Empire's complicated and difficult codes of honor. And Dr. Beverly Crusher finds her loyalties torn when she wins the confidence of the unusually reluctant bride-to-be. More than just a treaty is at stake, for a vicious race of alien conquerors will stop at nothing, from assassination to invasion, to keep the Empire out of the Federation. Picard must use all his skills to save the Empire, and preserve the Dragon's Honor.

In this delightful dive into the bygone world of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows staunch Mole, sociable Water Rat, severe Badger, and troublesome and ebullient Toad of Toad Hall are joined by a young mole lady, Beryl, and her dear friend, Rabbit. There are adventures, kidnappings, lost letters, and family secrets--lavishly illustrated throughout by award-winning artist Kathleen Jennings.