Search Worlds Without End

This collection of 14 stories from a Nebula, Hugo, Tiptree, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy Award finalist takes the reader on a wonderful and nightmarish journey. Beginning with a midnight odyssey to a shadowland where vehicles feast on vagrants, this compilation includes stories in which Poe's final days are revealed, factory workers are exploited by an apparition of the Virgin Mary, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart pinwheels through the corridors of time. Also included is a tale of an apocalyptic entity that hides in a Ukranian village, a contemplation on the horror that dwells in Jack the Ripper's pocket watch, and a brand-new novella that combines an interplanetary road story with more than a dash of Flash Gordon.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1998. The story is included in the collection Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories (2005).

Lovelorn Lyrec and wise-cracking Borregad have been companions through world after world, adventure after adventure. They seek Lyrec's lost lady, and vengeance for the obliteration of their home world. But the evil Miradomon is always one step ahead, leaving a dark of destruction behind him. Crossing a chain of parallel universes, our heroes must take on new identities in each new world. In his latest incarnation, Lyrec has done quite will for himself: He is young, strong, handsome, skilled in the arts of war and song. Poor Borregad blew it: He is stuck in the body of a cat. And Miradorn? This time, he's a god.

Tiptree, Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. Originally published in Asimov's May 2002, later collected in Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories (2005).

The satiric Nebula Award nominated novel of an alternate Philadelphia--where the indigent are disappearing into another dimension courtesy of a drug called Orbitol, public school teachers lead classes while armed and masked, and an investigative journalist named Thomasina Lyle is about to bring down a government headed by a dimwitted president with his own late night talk show.

Thomas the Rhymer, legendary twelfth-century figure of traditional Scottish balladry, as you've never seen him before.

He's known by many names over time--Tam Lin, Robin Hood, and numerous other incarnations reaching into the present--but at his heart he is still True Thomas, one man doing all he can to save us all from a powerful foe.

When his brother is snatched right before his eyes, Thomas hunts for justice and discovers that not only do these "elves" steal people, but they also are skinwalkers who occupy humans in positions of power. Their goal: to obliterate humanity and take over our world. When Thomas is dragged into their alien realm, he's imprisoned and barely escapes alive, but in the process he gains near-immortality and the ability to transform himself. Will it be enough to protect his loved ones and defeat this powerful foe?

It's been nearly a century since Thomas last battled Yvag knights. In that time his wife and daughter have grown old and died, and he has discovered that he ages not at all. The elven world believes him long dead.

In his grief, he has retreated to the depths of Sherwood and Barnsdale Forests and become a hermit, lost in his memories, his grief. But when a dying outlaw arrives on his doorstep with items stolen from an Yvag skinwalker, it sets in motion events that thrust Thomas back into the world and force him into combat with Queen Nicnevin's soldiers once again, including this time his late sister's changeling daughter and the Queen's own grotesque offspring, Bragrender.

As Thomas takes on two sheriffs of Nottingham and a horde of Yvag raiders, he enlists the aid of outlaws Little John and Will Scathelocke, and the Keeper of Sherwood Forest herself, Isabella Birkin, who sets him on a path back to humanity. To keep his true identity hidden from the Yvags, he creates an alter-ego named Robyn Hoode, whose exploits, unbeknown to Thomas, are about to become the stuff of legend.

Sprung from a timeless dream, Shadowbridge is a world of linked spans arching high above glittering seas. It is a world of parading ghosts, inscrutable gods, and dangerous magic. Most of all, it is a world of stories.

No one knows those stories better than Leodora, a young shadow-puppeteer who travels Shadowbridge collecting the intertwining tales and myths of each place she passes through, then retells them in performances whose genius has begun to attract fame... and less welcome attention.

For Leodora is fleeing a violent past, as are her two companions: her manager, Soter, an elderly drunkard who also served Ledora's father, the legendary puppeteer Bardsham; and Diverus, her musical accompanist, a young man who has been blessed, and perhaps cursed, by the touch of a nameless god.

Now, as the strands of a destiny she did not choose begin to tighten around her, Leodora is about to cross the most perilous bridge of all-the one leading from the past to the future.

Shadowbridge is the first novel in a two-book adventure.

Daughter of the legendary shadow-puppeteer Bardsham, Leodora has inherited her father's skills... and his enemies. Together with her manager-Soter, keeper of her father's darkest secrets, and a gifted young musician named Diverus, Leodora has traveled from span to span, her masked performances given under the stage name Jax, winning fame and fortune.

But Jax's success may be Leodora's undoing. Years ago, following a performance by Bardsham, the vengeful god known as Lord Tophet visited a horrific punishment upon the span of Colemaigne and its citizens, a reprisal inflicted without warning or explanation. And as the genius of Jax gives rise to rumors that Bardsham has returned, Lord Tophet takes notice and dispatches a quintet of deadly killers to learn the truth behind the mask.

Now, upon the cursed span of Colemaigne, where her father achieved his greatest triumph and suffered his bitterest tragedy, Leodora is about to perform the most shocking story of all.

The tale of Bluebeard, reenvisioned as a dark fable of faith and truth.

1843 is the last year of the world, according the Elias Fitcher, a charismatic preacher in the Finger Lakes district of New York State. He's established a utopian community on an estate outside the town of Jeckyll's Glen, where the faithful wait, work, and pray for the world to end.

Vernelia, Amy, and Catherine Charter are the three young townswomen whose father falls under the Reverend Fitchers hypnotic sway. In their old house, where ghostly voices whisper from the walls, the girls are ruled by their stepmother, who is ruled in turn by the fiery preacher. Determined to spend Eternity as a married man, Fitcher casts his eye on Vernelia, and before much longer the two are wed. But living on the man's estate, separated from her family, Vern soon learns the extent of her husbands dark side. It's rumored that he's been married before, though what became of those wives she does not know. Perhaps the secret lies in the locked room at the very top of the housethe sin-gle room that the Reverend Fitcher has forbidden to her.

Inspired by the classic fairy tales "Bluebeard" and "The Fitcher Bird," this dark fantasy is set in New York States Burned-Over District, at its time of historic religious ferment. All three Charter sisters will play their part in the story of Fitcher's Utopia: a story of faith gone wrong, and evil coun-tered by one brave, true soul.