Search Worlds Without End

"Baal, god of day, brother of Ishtar, come swiftly to the Bowl! Save Istara, thy goddess priestess, from the oppression of the dark Tigra, priestess of thy enemy, the evil Dweller in Irem!"

This is the message, attached to a wind-swept falcon, which Larry O'Brien intercepts while photographing the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Curious and adventure-hungry, he goes in search of the prayer's source and finds an entire forgotten civilization hidden in a secluded canyon. It is there that O'Brien meets the note's author, the shy but kind Istara. There, too he meets the fierce Tigra, priestess to the Dweller, an ancient reptile that feeds on human flesh. O'Brien becomes entangled in the valley's religious and political rivalries, leads a war against a tribe of savage ape-men, eludes prehistoric sharks, and must go head to head against the ancient Dweller itself.

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (1890) is a short story by the American writer and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce. Described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", it was originally published by The San Francisco Examiner on July 13, 1890, and was first collected in Bierce's book Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891). The story, which is set during the American Civil War, is known for its irregular time sequence and twist ending. Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is an early example of the stream of consciousness narrative mode.

The condemned man stands on a bridge, his hands bound behind his back. A noose is tied around his neck. In a moment he will meet his fate: DEATH BY HANGING. There is no escape. Or is there? Find out in... An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

This short story originally appeared in The San Francisco Examiner, July 13, 1890. It has been anthologized numerous times, and can also be found in several collections, including The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce (1970) and Terror By Night: Classic Ghost and Horror Stories (2011).

It was the basis for the 1962 French short film La Rivière du hibou, later screened in 1964 as episode 142 of The Twilight Zone.

Short story originally pulished in Norwegian under the title Ugle på Bjørnøya in 1986. It was first published in English in the anthology Tales from the Planet Earth (1986), edited by Frederik Pohl and Elizabeth Anne Hull. The story can also be found in the anthology The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer.

This volume brings together the uncollected short fiction of the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley. Crowley was a successful critic, editor and author of fiction from 1908 to 1922, and his short stories are long overdue for discovery. Of the forty-nine stories in the present volume, only thirty were published in his lifetime. Most of the rest appear here for the first time. Like their author, Crowley's stories are fun, smart, witty, thought-provoking and sometimes unsettling. They are set in places he had lived and knew well: Belle Epoque Paris, Edwardian London, pre-revolutionary Russia and America during the first World War.

The title story 'The Drug' stands as one of the first - if not the first - accounts of a psychedelic experience. His 'Black and Silver' is a knowing early noir discovery that anticipates an entire genre. 'Atlantis' is a masterpiece of occult fantasy, a dark satire that can stand with Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Frank Harris considered 'The Testament of Magdalen Blair' the most terrifying tale ever written. Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.

Other Stories include:

• The Three Characteristics
• The Wake World
• T'ien Tao
• The Stone of the Philosophers
• Cancer
• At the Fork of the Roads
• The Dream Circean
• Illusion d'Amoureux
• The Soul-Hunter
• The Daughter of the Horseleech
• The Violinist
• The Vixen
• The Ordeal of Ida Pendragon
• Apollo Bestows the Violin
• Across the Gulf
• His Secret Sin
• The Woodcutter
• Proffessor Zircon
• The Vitriol-Thrower
• The Testament of Magdalen Blair
• Ercildoune
• The Stratagem
• Lieutnant Finn's Promotion
• The Chute
• A Death of the Impasse de l'Enfant Jésus
• Atlantis
• The Mysterious Malady
• The Bald Man
• Black and Silver
• The Humour of Pauline Pepper
• A Nativity
• Every Precaution
• God's Journey
• The Colour of My Eyes
• Dedit!
• Colonel Pacton's Brother
• The Vampire of Vespuccia
• As You Were!
• Only a Dog
• The Virgin
• A Masque
• The Es

This volume brings together two series of short fiction by the poet, writer and religious philosopher Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). It includes the first complete publication of Simple Simon, the detective series featuring Crowley's most memorable fictional creation, the mystic-magician-philosopher-psychoanalyst-detective Simon Iff. The idealised Crowley in old age, Simon Iff is wise, knowing and unfailingly humorous as he applied psychoanalysis, Taoism and his own religious philosophy of Thelema to divine the depths of human nature and solve a wide array of crimes and mysteries. The six Scrutinies of Simon Iff stories are set in France and England, anchored by Iff's beloved Hemlock Club. The twelve Simon Iff in America stories afford Crowley's penetrating insights into America as he found it during his residence from 1914 to 1919. His three Simon Iff Abroad stories take the reader to tribal North Africa, inaccessible Central Africa and to the high seas. The two Simon Iff Psychoanalyst stories were among the earliest tales to use the new science of psychoanalysis to solve mysteries. Also included is Crowley's other major short fiction series, the eight stories of his legendary Golden Twigs, which were inspired by Sir J.G. Frazer's encyclopedic study of myth and religion in history, The Golden Bough.

This collection is a companion volume to Crowley's previously uncollected short stories, The Drug and Other Stories, also published by Wordsworth. Extensive editorial end-notes give full details about the stories.

Simon Iff Stories:

• The Big Game
• The Artistic Temperament
• Outside the Bank's Routine
• The Conduct of John Briggs
• Not Good Enough
• Ineligible
• What's in a Name?
• A Sense of Incongruity
• The Ox and the Wheel
• An Old Head on Young Shoulders
• The Pasquaney Puzzle
• The Monkey and the Buzz-Saw
• A Dangerous Safe Trick
• The Bitter Bit
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Suffer the Little Children
• Who Gets the Diamonds?
• The Natural Thing to Do
• Desert Justice
• In the Swamp
• The Haunted Sea-Captain
• Psychic Compensation
• Sterilised Stephen

Golden Twigs

• The King of the Wood
• The Stone of Cybele
• The Oracle of the Corycian Cave
• The Burning of Melcarth
• The Hearth
• The Old of the Peepul-Tree
• The Mass of Saint Sécaire
• The God of Ibreez

Original short story published for Crowley's Guest of Honor appearance at the World Fantasy Convention. Cover art and interior illustration by Charles Vess.

Thirteen stories from a master of all trades.

Reading John Crowley's stories is to see almost-familiar lives running parallel to our own, secret histories that never quite happened, memories that might be real or might be invented. In the thirteen stories collected here, Crowley sets his imagination free to roam from a 20th century Shakespeare festival to spring break at a future Yale in his Edgar Award winning story "Spring Break". And in the previously unpublished "Anosognosia" the world brought about by one John C.'s high-school accident may or may not exist

Table of Contents:

• To the Prospective Reader
• The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines
• In the Tom Mix Museum
• And Go Like This
• Spring Break
• The Million Monkeys of M. Borel
• This Is Our Town
• Mount Auburn Street:
  1. Little Yeses, Little Nos
  2. Glow Little Glow-Worm
  3. Mount Auburn Street
• Conversation Hearts
• Flint and Mirror
• Anosognosia

Table of Contents:

• The Green Child - (1981) - short story
• Missolonghi 1824 - (1990) - short story
• Antiquities - (1977) - short story
• The Reason for the Visit - (1980) - short story
• Her Bounty to the Dead - (1978) - short story
• Snow - (1985) - short story
• Exogamy - (1993) - short story

Painter is a leo - part man, part lion - the result of one of man's genetic experiments, a powerful, beautiful, enigmatic creature deemed a 'failure' to be be hunted down. But Painter has two advantages in this world of small bickering nation states and political accommodation and compromise: his own strength and integrity, and the guile of Reynard, another of man's experiments, a subtle and potent intriguer, a king-maker...

In an underpopulated future world of isolated and highly varied cultures, a young man sets out to intentionally become a saint...and finds that sainthood is nothing like what he had imagined!

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Omni Best Science Fiction Three (1993), edited by Ellen Datlow, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies Omni Best Science Fiction Three (1993), edited by Ellen Datlow, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventh Annual Collection (1994), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. The story is included in the collections Antiquities (1993) and Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction (2004).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

As ancient Irish clans fought to preserve their lands and their way of life, the Queen and her generals fought to tame the wild land and make it English.

Hugh O'Neill, lord of the North, dubbed Earl of Tyrone by the Queen, is a divided man: the Queen gives to Hugh her love, and her commandments, through a little mirror of obsidian which he can never discard; and the ancient peoples of Ireland arise from their underworld to make Hugh their champion, the token of their vow a chip of flint.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1996. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology (2000), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Gordon Van Gelder, and The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004) edited by Charles N. Brown and Jonathan Strahan. It is included in the collection Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction (2004).

World Fantasy Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella.

His name is Caspar Last, and this is the unique chronicle of the vacation he took from the twentieth century. It begins - or does it? - when Caspar, a genius, poor of course, and resentful at that, decides to use his "time machine" to bring back a modest fortune. It begins - or maybe it doesn't - with a mysterious bequest to a secret Otherhood charged with preserving and extending the British Empire at any cost. From the bold colonial days of empire-builder Cecil Rhodes through the wide-eyed and wondrous possibilities of the present to a strange and haunting future of magi and angels, of men and many races other than our own, John Crowley's time-travel masterpiece surfs bravely along "the infinite, infinitely broken coastline of Time" to tell a story that takes place neither here nor there, but everywhen.

The story originally appaered in the collection Novelty (1989) and was published as a seperate novella in 1991. It is also inlcuded in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Science Fiction Century (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell and A Science Fiction Omnibus (2007) edited by Brian W. Aldiss. It was reprinted in Lightpeed, May 2018.

From award-winning author John Crowley comes an exquisite fantasy novel about a man who tells the story of a crow named Dar Oakley and his impossible lives and deaths in the land of Ka.

A Crow alone is no Crow.

Dar Oakley--the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own--was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned. Through his adventures in Ka, the realm of Crows, and around the world, he found secrets that could change the humans' entire way of life--and now may be the time to finally reveal them.

Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable -- an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in -- and how it is to end.

Table of Contents:

• The Nightingale Sings at Night - (1989)
• Great Work of Time - (1989)
• In Blue - (1989)
• Novelty - (1983)

Reading Backwards is John Crowley's first collection of non-fiction since In Other Words was published in 2007. Like its predecessor, this new book reflects an astonishing range of interests, both literary and otherwise. Like its predecessor, it is a book that no John Crowley fan can afford to miss.

The volume opens with the autobiographical "My Life in the Theater," a memoir of the younger Crowley's earliest ambitions, and closes with the moving and memorable "Practicing the Arts of Peace." In between, the author offers us more than thirty carefully crafted essays, each one notable for its insight, intelligence and typically graceful prose.

The opening section, A Voice from the Easy Chair, reflects Crowley's tenure as Easy Chair columnist for Harper's Magazine. Subjects include life under the once omni-present threat of the Selective Service Board, the enduring personal importance of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and thoughts on what it means to be truly well read. The second section, Fictional Voices, is filled with acute commentary on a wide range of books and writers, among them SF masters such as Paul Park, Ursula K. le Guin and Thomas Disch; the important, if neglected, historical novelist David Stacton (a model for the fictional Ffellowes Kraft of the Ægypt novels); classic science fiction novels of the 1950s, and much, much more. The final section, Looking Outward, Looking In, ranges freely across a wide variety of subjects and ideas, such as UFO literature, the utopian architecture of Norman Bel Geddes, the life and career of renowned theosophist Helen Blavatsky, and the nature of time.

Reading Backwards is a book that can be read from beginning to end with enormous pleasure. It can also be read and enjoyed in whatever order the reader prefers. However it's read, it's a multifarious source of entertainment, illumination, and thought, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the intellectual life of one of the finest novelists of our time.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, November 1985. The story has been reprinted many times. It is, among others, included in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Seventh Omni Book of Science Fiction (1989), edited by Ellen Datlow
• The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery
• American Gothic Tales (1996), edited by Joyce Carol Oates
• Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card
• Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, (2005) edited by Gardner Dozois.
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

It can also be found in the collection Antiquities (1993) and Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction (2004).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

For many generations the Just have been at war with the Protectors. In their strange world, supported by a huge pillar poised in the vast and mysterious Deep, ritual bloodshed and sorcery have obsessed the inhabitants since the beginning of time. Half human, half machine, sexless and hairless, the Visitor from the skies enters the world on a mission unknown even to himself. Is he a peacemaker between the warrior clans, an observer, or, with his phenomenal qualities, a warrior himself, the likes of which this planet has never seen before? Only time can tell, and time is something that his makers have not allowed for...

A novel of tremendous scope and beauty, The Translator tells of the relationship between an exiled Russian poet and his American translator during the Cuban missile crisis, a time when a writer's words -- especially forbidden ones -- could be powerful enough to change the course of history.

Schneider Wrack was dead. Until he wasn't.

Convicted of a crime he's almost completely sure he didn't commit, executed, reanimated, then pressed into service aboard a vast trawler on the terrible world of Ocean, he was set to spend his afterlife working until his mindless corpse falls apart.

But now he's woken up, trapped in a rotting body, arm-deep in the stinking meat and blubber of a sea monster, and he's not happy. It's time for the dead to rise up.

From the stench and brine of Ocean to the fetid jungle of Grand Amazon, Schneider's career as a revolutionary won't be easy. But sometimes a zombie's gotta do what a zombie's gotta do...

Sybil, the enigmatic temptress, emerges from a snowstorm with her owl Orpheus, and Professor Stewart wants to use her--sexually and as a weapon against the reverend's condemnation of his evolutionary teachings.

Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.

Terry Dowling is one of the best kept secrets in modern science fiction, fantasy and horror, a storyteller that Grand Master Jack Vance in his introduction calls, "A very talented writer, one I admire and respect."

Locus saw Dowling's first book, Rynosseros, as placing him "among the masters of the field", while editor David G. Hartwell calls him "A master craftsman...one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy." In the words of Harlan Ellison, "Here is Jack Vance, Cordwainer Smith and Tiptree/Sheldon come again, reborn in one wonderful talent...you'll purr and growl with delight."

Such praise is certainly deserved. Winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, Dowling's stories have appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction, The Year's Best SF, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, in major anthologies like Songs of the Dying Earth, Inferno, The Dark, and Wizards, and such leading publications as SciFiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone.

Now, for the first time, Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder gives us the best of Terry's recent uncollected work in a single wonderful volume. From invasion by the truly alien in "The Lagan Fishers", "Truth Window" and "Flashmen" to the gut-wrenching horror of "Toother" and "The Suits at Auderlene", from the day-after-tomorrow, hardline SF of "He Tried to Catch the Light" to the epic sweep and swashbuckling adventure of "The Library", this is imaginative storytelling as it should be: provocative, unsettling, beautifully crafted, full of invention and genuine surprise and, yes, a definite touch of the dark side.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Jack Vance
• Preface
• Amberjack
• The Lagan Fishers
• Glencoe
• The Fooly
• Now, Then, Everywhen
• The Magikkers
• The Lure of Legendary Ladies
• He Tried to Catch the Light
• Bermudas
• Flashmen
• The Blue Marlin Whore
• Toother
• China in His Day
• The View in Nancy's Window
• Mr. Fate & Mr. Danger
• Jarkman at the Othergates
• Ithaca
• Some Roses for the Bonestell Man
• Gantry Jack
• The Suits at Auderlene
• At the Sign of the Moon
• Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose
• Down in the Limbo Gardens
• The Library
• Déjà-vu

The Wonder and the Terror.... When an author sits downto write the linking pieces for the stories in his new book, planning to do it by the hours of the night observed by medieval scholars, he is interrupted by phonecalls from his eccentric yet harmless friend, Raymond, a former mental patient with whom he shares some curious notions about the perceived world.

At first casual and interested, even helpful, these calls soon become increasingly tense and strange, until the author realizes that what started out as an innocent, fun idea - a shared all-night vigil on the autumn Equinox - is actually serving some other vital purpose, becoming by stages part therapy, part incantatory progress, part vindication of those very theories which will change forever the way he sees the world.

Terry Dowling's marvellous new book is about rapture, fear, the secret, darkest mysteries of the world and the human spirit.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1995) - essay
• The Bullet That Grows in the Gun - (1985) - shortstory
• The Maze Man - (1984) - shortstory
• The Daemon Street Ghost-Trap - (1993) - shortstory
• The Terrarium - (1984) - shortstory
• They Found The Angry Moon - (1992) - shortstory
• The Gully - (1985) - shortstory
• The Last Elephant - (1987) - shortstory
• The Echoes - (1995) - shortstory
• The Third Gift - (1993) - shortstory
• The Quiet Redemption of Andy the House - (1989) - novelette
• The Mars You Have in Me - (1992) - shortstory
• The Rediscovery of Tutankhamen's Tomb - (1993) - shortstory
• Scaring the Train - (1994) - novelette

This novelette originally appeared in in Oceans of the Mind, issue 10, Dec 2003. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy (Volume 1) (2005), edited by Bill Congreve and Michelle Marquardt. The story is included in the collection Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder (2010).

First appearing in the Aphelion Science Fiction Magazine, Summer 1986/1987, For as Long as You Burn won the 1988 Ditmar for Best Australian Long Fiction.

It was collected in Wormwood by Dowling.

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, April 11, 2001. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 7 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Karhryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder (2010).

Earth... After Wormwood.

Centuries from now, a world invaded by the all-powerful Nobodoi and their servant races, re-made as a strange and mighty patchwork of land-bridges and alien enclaves, where the remnants of a blasted Humanity are lucky just to survive.

The Human Heroes Aspen Dirk, Jamis Talby, Hollis Green, the mad poet Antellim... those who travel the patchwork, who meet the Hoproi warmasters, the gleaming Matta whose houses Kill, the Darzie mind-riders,the living spaceships, the Amazi, whose greatest longing is to couple with Human women...

All part of what the world has become... after Wormwood.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Harlan Ellison
• Dag Extracts - short fiction
• Nobody's Fool - novella
• The Man Who Walks Away Behind the Eyes - (1982) - short story
• A Deadly Edge Their Red Beaks Pass Along - novelette
• Housecall - (1986) - novelette
• In the Dark Rush - (1990) - short story
• The Honour of Them - short story
• For as Long as You Burn - (1987) - novelette
• Exchange of Letters - short fiction

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (2014), edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein. It later appeared in Strange Horizons on 26 January 2015. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

Table of Contents:

• The Man Who Loved Owls - (1985) - novelette
• Leanne - (1985) - novelette
• The Conversation - (1985) - novella
• Entertainment - (1981) - novella

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Visitants: Stories of Fallen Angels & Heavenly Hosts (2010), edited by Stephen Jones.

Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive... Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all feature in this classically styled horror.

Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio's peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror's House Of Horrors...

Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the 'Arkangel' races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:

What is in the casket that everyone is so afraid of?

What is the tragic secret of the veiled Red Countess who travels with them?

Why is their fellow passenger the army brigadier so feared by his own men?

And what exactly is the devilish secret of the Arkangel itself?

Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.

An original thriller from bestselling author Christopher Fowler that reinventing the haunted house story.

Newly-married architect Callie and her wealthy husband Mateo move to Hyperion House, a grand old home in southern Spain. It's an eccentric place built in front of a cliff: serene and beautiful, but eerily symmetrical, and cunningly styled so that half the house is flooded with light, and half - locked up and neglected - is shrouded in darkness. Unemployed and feeling isolated in a foreign country, Callie determines to research the history of the curious building.

But the past is sometimes best left alone. Uncovering the folklore of the house's strange history, Callie is drawn into darkness and delusion. As a teenager Callie was afraid of the dark, and now with her adolescent nyctophobia returning she becomes convinced there's someone in the darkened rooms. Somewhere in the darkness lies the truth about Hyperion House.

But some doors should never be opened.

Best-selling author Christopher Fowler returns with a brand new thriller set amongst the Ozlike world of Dubai's glittering skyscrapers and deadly sand dunes.

High-luxury resorts are growing from the ancient sands of Dubai; new playgrounds for the world's super-rich. Dream World, the latest and largest of these bubble towns of unreality to emerge, is ambitious, grandiose and in trouble. Roy Brook was a failing architect, now he's Dream World's latest hire and rising star, brought in to fix the failures that threaten the site's grand opening. But for his wife, Lea, life has been irrevocably changed; living in a gated community, she finds herself a virtual prisoner in a land where the wives appear happy to follow behind their husbands in the isolated shade of their luxury homes.

At least there are a few friendly outsiders who don't enjoy the conformity of the ex-pat community - until one night, when the most outspoken one, Milo, is killed in a suspicious hit-andrun. Milo's death is the first in a string of terrible accidents that divide the foreign workers, as they start to blame migrants, Arabs and even each other. Lea is convinced that deliberate acts of cruelty are being committed - but is there a real threat to her life, or is she becoming paranoid? And what role does her estranged 15 year-old daughter Cara play?

What happens in a world where only the rich are important? Welcome to a future that's five minutes away, where rebellion against conformity can lead to the unthinkable...

Deidi is a reporter writing about a string of brutal murders--and dreaming about them before they happen. Camisa is a housewife living a waking nightmare--and having the same dreams as Deidi. But the connection between them is more than just coincidence. It is, in fact, pure evil....

Rosalyn Vaughn hasn't been feeling well. Eerie colors, smells and sounds are making her feel dizzy and disoriented. It isn't something she ate. It isn't something she smoked. It's something she read.

Rosalyn loves horror novels, but the last volume she borrowed from the library shouldn't be read late at night or, for that matter, in broad daylight. It's called The Book of the Damned, and its readers don't simply thrill to the terrors revealed between its covers, they live them--shrieking, relentless nightmares of madness, suicide, and murder.

Now Rosalyn is about to join the other tortured innocents who checked out The Book of the Damned... and paid with their immortal souls...

FOR SEVENTY YEARS, HE HAS WAITED...

In Sharon Valley, at teen slumber parties and around campfires, the story is told. Seventy years ago, on Halloween night, Nathaniel and Myrantha Ober made a pact sealed by bloody human sacrifice...a pact with the devil himself.

THIS HALLOWEEN, EVIL WILL RETURN...

Nancy Snell is the most popular girl in high school. She is beautiful and wealthy, and she has discovered the key to unlimited power. The occult force that was summoned to this sleepy town decades ago. She has already chosen the perfect victim needed to perform the ritual: the new girl in town, Lana Bremmers.

THE DEVIL'S END

Once again the town of Sharon Valley will be the doorway to the legions of darkness. And the devil will have his payment in blood, on an even more terrifying Halloween night.

In an explosion of love's metaphors, Fowler's debut collection of stories, SUSPENDED HEART, takes on American fabulism with a cast of unexpected heroines in the narratives of life and loss: women whose hearts fall out at public malls, women whose bodies bloom with changing seasons, women who sprout blades or have multiple eyes, sleep as snakes, or birth saints like lapis lazuli babies. Where there is struggle and sadness, there is also humor: Fowler's fictive voice has been compared to both Franz Kafka and Donald Barthelme. There's a fearlessness to this prose, a melody of life and magic and loss.

Selected stories in this volume have been published online and in Australia.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2007 and can also be found in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, edited by Ellen Datlow.

Nebula Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2007. The story can also be found in the anthologies Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, Year's Best SF 13, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer and the Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collection What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010).

An extraordinary collection of short stories from the award-winning author of Sarah Canary; the revised edition of this anthology of 13 tales also features a new foreword by the author.

Table of Contents

• Foreword (1992) essay
• The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things (1985) short story
• The Poplar Street Study (1985) short story
• Face Value (1986) short story
• The Dragon's Head (1986) short story
• The War of the Roses (1985) novelette
• Contention (1986) short story
• Recalling Cinderella (1985) short story
• Other Planes (1986) short story
• The Gate of Ghosts (1986) novelette
• The Bog People (1986) short story
• Wild Boys: Variations on a Theme (1986) short story
• The View from Venus (1986) novelette
• Praxis (1985) short story

Carry Nation is on the loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, preaching clean living to men more intent on booze and babes. And what of Tonto, ever-faithful companion of the Lone Ranger, turning 40 without so much as a birthday call from the masked man? In these and 13 other short fictions, Fowler once again demonstrates the imaginative virtuosity that is fast winning her critical acclaim.

Table of Contents:

• Black Glass - (1991) - novelette
• Contention - (1986) - shortstory
• Shimabara - (1995) - shortstory
• The Elizabeth Complex - (1996) - shortstory
• Go Back - (1998) - shortstory
• The Travails - shortstory
• Lieserl - (1990) - shortstory
• Letters From Home - (1987) - shortstory
• Duplicity - (1989) - shortstory
• The Faithful Companion at Forty - (1987) - shortstory
• The Brew - (1995) - shortstory
• Lily Red - (1988) - shortstory
• The Black Fairy's Curse - (1997) - shortstory
• The View from Venus - (1986) - novelette
• Game Night at the Fox and Goose - (1989) - shortstory

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Full Spectrum 3 (1991), edited by Lou Aronica, Amy Stout and Betsy Mitchell. The sotry is included in the collection Black Glass (1998).

Shirley Jackson Award and World Fantasy Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in he collection What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010). The story can also be found in the anthology Ghosts: Recent Hauntings (2012), edited by Paula Guran.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1986 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989), edited by Edward L. Ferman
• Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card
• Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century (2001), edited by Orson Scott Card
• Alien Contact (2012), edited by Marty Halpern

The story is included in the collection Artificial Things (1986).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #29 May-June 1989, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires (1989), edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: SF by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. The story is included in the collection Black Glass (1998).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (2010), edited by Kate Bernheimer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2012. It can also be found in the anthology Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold (2016), edited by Paula Guram. The story is included in the collection What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at Lighstpeed.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally apperared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1990. It can aslo be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Nebula Awards 26 (1992), edited by James Morrow, and Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (2006) edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. The story is included in the collection Black Glass (1998).

This short story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1988 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2013. It is included in the collections Peripheral Vision (1990) and Black Glass (1998).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May-June 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

The Washington Territory, 1873. The woman who appeared without warning in the forest clearing was small, dressed all in black, and of indeterminate age. Her hair was cropped and she was babbling in some incomprehensible tongue. Chin Ah Kin thought she might be a ghost-lover--an immortal sent by the gods to enchant him. His more practical uncle thought otherwise: a white woman in a Chinese railway workers' camp could only be trouble. He ordered Chin to return her to her white world.

Thus begins Sarah Canary, Karen Joy Fowler's bewitching odyssey of the Old West that speaks across a hundred years of American experience. As Sarah Canary and her raging entourage move across the green landscape of the Pacific Northwest, each new encounter with America's boisterous frontier offers intriguing insights into the extravagant myths and legends of the past which have evolved into the pillars of our national heritage. Part adventure story, part history lesson, part flight of marvelous fantasy, Sarah Canary achieves that true rarity of excellence: a novel of ideas and wit that can raise tears as well as laughter.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1997. The story can also be found in the anthology The Secret History of Science Fiction (2009), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel and the collection What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at the author's SFWA page.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Black Swan, White Raven (1997), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Collection (1998), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Happily Ever After (2011), edited by John Klima. The story is included in the collection Black Glass (1998).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Nebula nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1991. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 27 (1993), edited by James Morrow, The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 45th Anniversary Anthology (1994), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Edward L. Ferman, and The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2012), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer. It is collected in What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2012).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It first appeared in Crank! #6, Winter 1996. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 33, edited by Connie Willis (1999) and the collection Black Glass (1998).

Read the full story for free at the author's SFWA page.

Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1987. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozois and the collection Black Glass (1998).

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Artificial Things (1986). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987).

This short story originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1985. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990, edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery, and The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. The story is included in the collection Artificial Things (1986).

This short story originally appeared in Lady Churchill's Robot* Wristlet, #20, June 2007, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 109, June 2019. It can also be found in the anthologies Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2008), edited by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow. The story is included in the collection What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

World Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Eclipse Three: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collections What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010) and The Science of Herself (2013).

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, December 1985. The story is included in the collection Artificial Things (1986). A chapbook edition appeared in 1991.

Meet the Cooke family: Mother and Dad, brother Lowell, sister Fern, and Rosemary, who begins her story in the middle. She has her reasons. "I was raised with a chimpanzee," she explains. "I tell you Fern was a chimp and already you aren't thinking of her as my sister. But until Fern's expulsion... she was my twin, my funhouse mirror, my whirlwind other half and I loved her as a sister." As a child, Rosemary never stopped talking. Then, something happened, and Rosemary wrapped herself in silence.

In We Are All Completely beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler weaves her most accomplished work to date-a tale of loving but fallible people whose well-intentioned actions lead to heartbreaking consequences.

Nebula Award winning and Tipree nominated short story. Originally published by Sci Fiction. Later collected in What I Didn't See and Other Stories (2010) and anthologized in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Sixteenth Annual Collection (2003), in The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 (2005), and Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century (2006).

Read this story online for free at the Sci Fiction archive.

In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth's younger brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and incisive way only she can.

The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in "Halfway People"; for Edwin Booth in "Edwin's Ghost," haunted by his fame as "America's Hamlet" and his brother's terrible actions; for Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in "The Pelican Bar" as she confronts Mama Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator recounting her descent in "What I Didn't See."

With clear and insightful prose, Fowler's stories measure the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners, is sure to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath them.

Table of Contents:

• The Pelican Bar - (2009) - short story
• Booth's Ghost - short story
• The Last Worders - (2007) - short story
• The Dark - (1991) - short story
• Always - (2007) - short story
• Familiar Birds - (2006) - shortfiction
• Private Grave 9 - (2003) - short story
• The Marianas Islands - (1996) - short story
• Halfway People - (2010) - short story
• Standing Room Only - (1997) - short story
• What I Didn't See - (2002) - short story
• King Rat - (2003) - short story

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in Subterranean Online, Summer 2011. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six (2012), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean.

The quaint Florida town of St. Augustine is a magnet for tourists. But one site is off-limits even for the locals.

Built on the site of an ancient Indian village, Tolomato Cemetery has been closed for years. But now a slaughtered Wiccan priestess has been discovered on the grounds. Human remains have been found in a nearby Dumpster. And a cryptic message is haunting a woman's sleepless nights--a warning that the doors between two worlds have been opened.

Whatever's buried in Tolomato Cemetery is more than legend.

It's alive.

Bram Stoker Award-Winning author Owl Goingback makes a triumphant return to horror and fantasy in this gripping new novel.

Coyote is on a murderous hunt, leaving behind a trail of carnage. The shape-shifter is determined to kill the human representatives to the Great Council in Galun'lati, eliminating the rule of mankind in the New World. But Raven has overheard the Trickster's evil plan, and will do anything to protect Luther Watie and his daughter, Sarah Reynolds, even if it means turning his skin inside out.

The forces of evil are aligning in two very different worlds. Can mankind be saved, or will creatures of fur and fangs once again reign supreme?

Cover art by Ben Baldwin

When the police of Hobbs County, Missouri find a mutilated man's body on the side of the road, they figure a bear attacked him, except that bears aren't indigenous to their area. The local Indian tribe offers another explanation: Crota, a great beast of legend, has reawakened. As the body count increases, a hand-picked group of hunters stalk the mythical creature through an underground labyrinth where they will discover a horror beyond all imagining...but all too real!

Robert and Janet Patterson and their young daughter, Krissy, went looking for the perfect getaway vacation spot. They found it in a backwoods Florida town. Far away from civilization. Quiet and peaceful. And terribly isolated.

Robert and Janet should have listened to the local legends. They should have heeded the warnings about the black water lagoons. And they should have listened to their daughter when she told them about the whispers in the woods. Because now, it's too late. Krissy's disappeared, and whatever took their little girl is coming back for more....

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Excalibur (1995), edited by Edward E. Kramer, Richard Gilliam and Martin H. Greenberg.

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

Considered the most important work of modern Iranian literature, The Blind Owl is a haunting tale of loss and spiritual degradation. Replete with potent symbolism and terrifying surrealistic imagery, Sadegh Hedayat's masterpice details a young man's despair after losing a mysterious lover. And as the author gradually drifts into frenzy and madness, the reader becomes caught in the sandstorm of Hedayat's bleak vision of the human condition. The Blind Owl, which has been translated into many foreign languages, has often been compared to the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.

In "Playing Nice with God's Bowling Ball," a police detective tries to understand how a children's dispute over a playing card could have led to a mysterious disappearance.

The story was originally published in Jim Baen's Universe, August 2008.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

A composer in an unstable city-state accidentally discovers the perfect singer for his work--a clockwork man--and sows the seeds of revolution, in Kathleen Jennings's The Heart of Owl Abbas.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher. I found out where he lives and every night I perch on a tree branch outside his bedroom window and watch him sleep. He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Loom, size 34.

Owl Tycho, the shape-shifting daughter of "simple witches", is a high school student by day and owl by night. When her nightly vigil over her science teacher is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious, starving, wild-eyed boy and the inept behavior of a new owl, she soon finds her affections beginning to shift.

In 1888 Henry James wrote 'There was the customary novel by Mr Le Fanu for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight'. Madam Crowl's Ghost & Other Stories are tales selected from Le Fanu's stories which mostly appeared in The Dublin University Magazine and other periodicals, and their haunting, sinister qualities still have an enormous appeal for the modern reader. The great M.R. James, who collected and introduces the stories in this book, considered that Le Fanu 'stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories.'

• Epilogue, Biographical and Critical (Madam Crowl's Ghost ) essay by M. R. James
• Madam Crowl's Ghost short story
• Squire Toby's Will novelette
• Dickon the Devil short story
• The Child That Went with the Fairies short story
• The White Cat of Drumgunniol short story
• An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street short story
• Introduction (Ghost Stories of Chapelizod) essay
• The Village Bully short story
• The Sexton's Adventure short story
• The Spectre Lovers short story
• Wicked Captain Walshawe, of Wauling short story
• Sir Dominick's Bargain short story
• Ultor de Lacy novelette (variant of Ultor de Lacy: A Legend of Cappercullen 1861)
• The Vision of Tom Chuff short story
• Stories of Lough Guir short story

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Cheek by Jowl, a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these essays, Le Guin argues passionately that the homogenization of our world makes the work of fantasy essential for helping us break through what she calls "the reality trap." Le Guin writes not only of the pleasures of her own childhood reading, but also about what fantasy means for all of us living in the global twenty-first century.

The Magic That Doesn't Go Away

Cutbacks have forced Sarah out of the asylum in which she was raised--and into a strange new place where the Head Wolf rules the beautiful and the doomed.

But Sarah can never truly assimilate, for she possesses wild talents. Walls tell her their secrets. Safes tell her their combinations. And a favorite toy dragon whispers dire warnings about those who would exploit her for their own malevolent purposes. There's no place Sarah can hide, from her pursuers or from her past...

As we follow Rex Sackett ("The Metaphor Kid") on his way to the top in that great spectator sport of the future, hack-writing, we realize that this a fast-moving, ribald parody of the writing profession. From the moment the Head Editor waves his red flag to the second the typewriting stops and a victor is chosen, every reader will be cheering at the sidelines of Prose Bowl.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 10, May-June 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Based on the novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle gave the internationally renowned director Hayao Miyazaki an opportunity to bring to life a fantastical time in 19th century Europe when science and magic defined the popular zeitgeist.

Veering slightly from its source material, the new Miyazaki movie nonetheless retains all the novel's principal characters. There's a foppish wizard named Howl, a vain witch from the wastelands, an anthropomorphic chimney fire and a young girl who carries a most unusual curse. And, of course, there's the moving castle... a towering, omnipresent structure that dominates the landscape.

Along with a generous collection of concept sketches, fully rendered character and background drawings, paintings and cell images, The Art of Howl's Moving Castle also presents interviews and comments with the production staff, including key points directly from the director.

Bobby loves his dog King, a playful German shepherd... until the day King turns and attacks him, snarling and vicious. The dog is put to sleep, but Bobby still sees him everywhere--in the garden, on the stairs, crouching, waiting.

Then the horrific deaths begin--brutal, savage maulings. Terror grips the sleepy town of Fallsburg, and doors are nervously locked at night. For through the woods runs a dark shadow with dripping jaws, eluding pursuit with uncanny skill.

Now, more than ever, the scientist down the road must guard the deadly secret of the monster they've unleashed.

This short story originally appeared in Rogue, November 1959. It has been collected and anthologized numerous times.

It was the basis for episode 41 (1960) of The Twilight Zone.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 21, March-April 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

A dog detective is hired by a female human to investigate a murder that she committed. But of course, all is not as it seems in this strange, mysterious world rendered wonderfully by speculative fiction author Christopher Rowe

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

One false coin could topple an empire.

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, has no intention of wrestling for imperial control with his sister, the queen. Yet he remains at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court -- the father of the queen's new child. Then a hunting party goes terribly awry, and Kadou finds himself under suspicion of attempted murder.

To prove his loyalty to his sister and salvage his reputation, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds. He enlists the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. But what appears to be a straightforward crime spirals into a complex counterfeiting operation, with a powerful enemy at its heart.

In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy. The conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom's financial standing -- and bring about its ruin.

From J.K. Rowling, a warm, fast-paced, funny fairy tale of a fearsome monster, thrilling adventure, and hope against all odds.

Once upon a time there was a tiny kingdom called Cornucopia, as rich in happiness as it was in gold, and famous for its food. From the delicate cream cheeses of Kurdsburg to the Hopes-of-Heaven pastries of Chouxville, each was so delicious that people wept with joy as they ate them.

But even in this happy kingdom, a monster lurks. Legend tells of a fearsome creature living far to the north in the Marshlands... the Ickabog. Some say it breathes fire, spits poison, and roars through the mist as it carries off wayward sheep and children alike. Some say it's just a myth...

And when that myth takes on a life of its own, casting a shadow over the kingdom, two children -- best friends Bert and Daisy -- embark on a great adventure to untangle the truth and find out where the real monster lies, bringing hope and happiness to Cornucopia once more.

Featuring full color illustrations by children from across the United States and Canada, this original fairy tale from one of the world's most celebrated storytellers will captivate readers of all ages.

As familiar to many Hogwarts students as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are to Muggle children, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of popular stories written for young wizards and witches.

Translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger, they include fascinating additional notes from Professor Albus Dumbledore, with intriguing glimpses into his life at Hogwarts, as well as illustrations from J.K. Rowling herself.

For wizarding and Muggle readers alike, this is a must-have edition, featuring fate-seeking witches, a hairy-hearted warlock and the tale of the three brothers who tried to cheat Death...

By buying this unique and special book, you are helping Lumos to make sure that, by 2050, no more children live in institutions or orphanages around the world, and that every child is able to enjoy their right to grow up in a family.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by J. K. Rowling
• The Wizard and the Hopping Pot
• The Fountain of Fair Fortune
• The Warlock's Hairy Heart
• Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump
• The Tale of the Three Brothers

WFA winning novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2004. The story can also be found in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16 (2005), edited by Stephen Jones. It is included in the collection The Autopsy and Other Tales (2008).

Vern - seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised - flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.

But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.

IF YOUR SHADOW DOESN'T MOVE WHEN YOU DO, THEN YOU'RE IN SHADOWLAND.

In a private school in New England, a friendship is forged between two boys that will change their lives for ever. As Del Nightingale and Tom Flanagan battle to survive the oppressive regime of bullying and terror overseen by the sadistic headmaster, Del introduces Tom to his world of magic tricks. But when they escape to spend the summer holiday together at Shadowland - the lakeside estate of Del's uncle - their hobby suddenly takes on much more sinister tones. After a summer exploring the mysteries and terrors of Shadowland nothing will be the same.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, October 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 14 (1974), edited by Damon Knight. The story is included in the collection Children of the Wind (1989).

It's thirty years in the future. In the Boston Minutemen locker room, Street Football League quarterback T.K. Mann prepares himself for the biggest, riskiest, most dangerous game of his life. At the age of thirty-four, T.K. is the oldest player in the ultraviolent sport of Professional Street Football, a phenomenally popular twenty-four-hour-long athletic event combining pro football with mixed martial arts and armed combat.

From its outlaw beginnings as a gang game played on urban streets, the SFL has rapidly risen to become the nation's most popular spectator sport. On every Sunday, armed and deadly players on SFL teams main and murder one another in front of huge television audiences. The International Broadcasting Company, the network that owns exclusive telecasting rights to SFL games, is not satisfied. The network wants more viewers, more team merchandise sales, more advertisers, more profits. To get that, they need to give the fans what they want, -- more violence and more death.

Two women captured by the ruler of a lost race in the Sahara Desert find themselves faced with a fate worse than death! Only an intrepid British soldier can save the lovely ladies.

Devereux and Juanita travel deep into the Amazon jungle looking for Incan gold. What they find is an ancient city forgotten by time, located on the shores of The Screaming Lake, where huge, toad-like monsters feast on unwary travelers. Can they survive their encounter with the Living God?

In the far future, the Heliothane Dominion is triumphant in the solar system, after a bitter war with their Umbrathane progenitors. But some of the Umbrathane have escaped into the distant past, where they can position themselves to wreak havoc across time and undo their defeat. The most fanatical of them is the superhuman Cowl, more monstrous than any of the creatures outside his prehistoric redoubt.

Cowl sends his terrifying hyperdimensional pet, the torbeast, hunting through all the timelines for human specimens. It sheds its scales -- each one an organic time machine -- where its master orders. Anyone who picks one up is dragged back to the dawn of time, where Cowl awaits. Then the beast can feed, growing ever larger . . .

In our own near-future, Tack is one of U-gov's programmable killers. When a scale latches onto him, his doom seems inevitable, but the Heliothane have other ideas: they can use Tack against Cowl. Tack is no stranger to violence, but the Heliothane, hardened in their struggle for humanity's very existence, have much to teach him. He will need it all for his encounter with Cowl.

Once one of Tack's targets, Polly escaped with her life when a torbeast scale snatched her. Now, like Tack, she must learn fast as she is dragged back to Day Zero. To cheat death again, she will have to help him save the human race.

With Cowl, Neal Asher, acclaimed author of Gridlinked and The Skinner, has created his most powerful novel yet.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Peripheral Vision) - essay
• 3 - The Faithful Companion at Forty - (1987) - short story
• 17 - Lily Red - (1988) - short story
• 39 - Contention - (1986) - short story
• 45 - Lieserl - short story
• 57 - The View from Venus - (1986) - novelette

On a remote Greek Island, Nicholas Urfe finds himself embroiled in the deceptions of a master trickster. As reality and illusion intertwine, Urfe is caught up in the darkest of psychological games. John Fowles expertly unfolds a tale that is lush with over-powering imagery in a spellbinding exploration of human complexities. By turns disturbing, thrilling and seductive, "The Magus" is a feast for the mind and the senses.

After hearing scratches in the attic, Alison discovers a dinner service covered in an intriguing floral owl pattern, and a series of events are set in motion that will change her life forever. Alison, her step-brother Roger, and Welsh boy Gwyn are forced into a cyclical replay of the tragic Welsh legend of Blodeuwedd, in which a woman is turned into an owl as a punishment for betraying her husband.

The Owl Service is a fabulous, multi-layered book of mystery and suspense, but also a contemporary musing on love, class structure and power.

Horror novelist Michael Anthony is going home. Taking his family from New York City to the small Missouri town where he grew up with his eccentric grandmother. But when they move into her old house, they find that something already resides there. In the walls, under the floors, in the darkest corners...something is trying to break through into this world. And when it does, Michael and his family will be lucky to escape with their lives.

In 1321, the English town of Ulewic teeters between survival and destruction, faith and doubt, God and demons. Against this intense backdrop, a group of women have formed a beguinage, a self-sustaining community of women. Led by the strong-willed Servant Martha, these women are committed to a code of celibacy and prayer, hard work and charity that is unsanctioned by the all-powerful church. Still, the villagers have come to rely on this remarkable group of women for their very lives. And seeking shelter among them now is the youngest daughter of Ulewic’s lord, a man who holds power over them all.

But when a series of natural calamities strikes, the beguinage’s enemies make their move, stirring the superstitious villagers with dark rumors of unspeakable depravities and unleashing upon the defiant all-female community the full force of their vengeance in the terrifying form of the Owl Killers. Men cloaked in masks and secrecy, ruling with violence and intimidation—the Owl Killers draw battle lines. In this village ravaged by flood and disease, the women of the beguinage must draw upon their deepest strength if they are to overcome the raging storm of long-held secrets and shattering lies.

A cloistered monk desperately tries to close the Pandora's box opened by a mischievous weapons dealer who has recruited a powerful black magician to stir up trouble for humanity on the eve of Judgement Day.

Omnibus edition that includes Black Easter and The Day After Judgement.

Father Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man--a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics... until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief.

Confronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn between the teachings of his faith, the teachings of his science, and the inner promptings of his humanity. There is only one solution: He must accept an ancient and unforgivable heresy--and risk the futures of both worlds...

For aeons, the forces of darkness had tampered from afar with the earth and its inhabitants, until, in the ominously near future, Theron Ware, Doctor of Theology and Black Sorcerer of fiendish powers, conjures the fallen angels into the world of the flesh to deal more directly with those who would enlist the aid of the Evil One.

Retained by shadowy megalomaniac industrialist Baines to assassinate the Governor of California, Theron finds the means to unleash the demons of the underworld for one night of apocalyptic horror - to reign unopposed over heaven and earth, or to fall before the magic of the Monk of Monte Albano.

Baines is a bored businessman with a taste for the macabre -- a munitions dealer accustomed to fomenting war wherever and whenever he can. But nuclear proliferation has, ironically, been bad for business, and Baines needs something, anything to reverse that trend. His restless mind conceives a notion that satisfies his desire for profit and amusement both -- a scheme for letting lose all the demons of Hell for one night of unfettered destruction -- and he commissions Theron Ware, the great Black Magician, to carry out the plan.

Ware alone has the ability -- and the power -- to call up those chained to the darkness. Crimes of violence, chiefly murder, are his specialty. He will arrange for demons to kill almost anyone...for a price. As his scruples are invoked, the fee rises. But for Baines' commission, the payment can't be high enough. For Theron Ware has never before attempted to work his evil skill on such a monstrous scale. And if he cannot call the demons home again, their liberation will be permanent -- a catastrophe for the entire human race.

Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a millionaire, a genius--and, above all, a criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories; these fairies are armed and dangerous. Artemis thinks he has them right where he wants them... but then they stop playing by the rules.

Artemis Fowl receives an urgent e-mail from Russia. In it is a plea from a man who has been kidnapped by the Russian Mafiya: his father. As Artemis rushes to his rescue, he is stopped by a familiar nemesis, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. Now, instead of battling the fairies, Artemis must join forces with them if he wants to save one of the few people in the world he loves.

Artemis Fowl is going straight. As soon as he pulls off the most brilliant criminal feat of his career. At least, that's the plan when he attempts to sell his C Cube, a supercomputer built from stolen fairy technology. When his efforts to broker a deal for the Cube with a powerful businessman go terribly wrong, his loyal bodyguard and friend Butler is mortally injured. The only thing that will save him is fairy magic, so once again he must contact his old rival, Holly Short. It's going to take a miracle to save Butler, and Artemis's luck may have just run out.

The evil pixie Opal Koboi has spent the last year in a self-induced coma, plotting her revenge on all those who foiled her attempt to destroy the LEPrecon fairy police. And Artemis Fowl is at the top of her list. After his last run-in with the fairies, Artemis had his mind wiped of his memories of the world belowground. But they have not forgotten about him. Once again, he must stop the human and fairy worlds from colliding - only this time, Artemis faces an enemy who may have finally outsmarted him.

Demons are beginning to materialize without warning on Earth. If humans were to capture one, all fairies would be exposed. In order to protect themselves, the fairies must decipher complicated equations to determine where the next demon will appear. Not even the brilliant Foaly can make heads or tails of the formulas - but he knows someone who can: Artemis Fowl. When a very confused demon imp appears in a Sicilian theater, Artemis is there to meet him. But he is not alone. Someone else has unlocked the secrets of the fairy world... and she is only twelve years old. Now, in a race against time, a newly-reformed Artemis Fowl will have to dip into his bag of dirty tricks if he is to save his fairy friends from his latest nemesis, not to mention a power hungry demon warlord who is poised to invade our dimension with his savage army.

When Artemis Fowl's mother contracts a life-threatening illness, his world is turned upside down. The only hope for a cure lies in the brain fluid of the silky sifaka lemur. Unfortunately, the animal is extinct due to a heartless bargain Artemis himself made as a younger boy. Though the odds are stacked against him, Artemis is not willing to give up. With the help of his fairy friends, the young genius travels back in time to save the lemur and bring it back to the present. But to do so, Artemis will have to defeat a maniacal poacher, who has set his sights on new prey: Holly Short. The rules of time travel are far from simple, but to save his mother, Artemis will have to break them all... and outsmart his most cunning adversary yet: Artemis Fowl, age ten.

Artemis has committed his entire fortune to a project he believes will save the planet and its inhabitants, both human and fairy. Can it be true? Has goodness taken hold of the world's greatest teenage criminal mastermind? Captain Holly Short is unconvinced, and discovers that Artemis is suffering from Atlantis Complex, a psychosis common among guilt-ridden fairies - not humans - and most likely triggered by Artemis's dabbling with fairy magic. Symptoms include obsessive-compulsive behavior, paranoia, multiple personality disorder and, in extreme cases, embarrassing professions of love to a certain feisty LEPrecon fairy. Unfortunately, Atlantis Complex has struck at the worst possible time. A deadly foe from Holly's past is intent on destroying the actual city of Atlantis. Can Artemis escape the confines of his mind - and the grips of a giant squid - in time to save the underwater metropolis and its fairy inhabitants?

Seemingly nothing in this world daunts the young criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl. In the fairy world, however, there is a small thing that has gotten under his skin on more than one occasion: Opal Koboi. In The Last Guardians, the evil pixie is wreaking havoc yet again. This time his arch rival has somehow reanimated dead fairy warriors who were buried in the grounds of Fowl Manor. Their spirits have possessed Artemis's little brothers, making his siblings even more annoying than usual. The warriors don't seem to realize that the battle they were fighting when they died-a battle against Artemis--is long over. Artemis has until sunrise to get the spirits to vacate his brothers and go back into the earth where they belong. Can he count on a certain LEPrecon fairy to join him in what could well be his last stand?

In this first collaboration by science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape), the limits of wonder are redrawn once again as a human expedition to another star system is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure half-englobing a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths...and it's on a direct path heading for the same system as the human ship.

A landing party is sent to investigate the Bowl, but when the explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--the mystery of the Bowl's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that will transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Science fiction masters Larry Niven (Ringworld) and Gregory Benford (Timescape) continue the thrilling adventure of a human expedition to another star system that is jeopardized by an encounter with an astonishingly immense artifact in interstellar space: a bowl-shaped structure cupping a star, with a habitable area equivalent to many millions of Earths. And which, tantalizingly, is on a direct path heading toward the same system the human ship is to colonize.

Investigating the Bowl, or Shipstar, the human explorers are separated--one group captured by the gigantic structure's alien inhabitants, the other pursued across its strange and dangerous landscape--while the mystery of the Shipstar's origins and purpose propel the human voyagers toward discoveries that transform their understanding of their place in the universe.

Audacious astronauts encounter bizarre, sometimes deadly life forms, and strange, exotic, cosmic phenomena, including miniature black holes, dense fields of interstellar plasma, powerful gravity-emitters, and spectacularly massive space-based, alien-built labyrinths. Tasked with exploring this brave, new, highly dangerous world, they must also deal with their own personal triumphs and conflicts.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit has solved many extraordinary cases over the years, but some were hushed up and hidden away. Until now.

Arthur Bryant remembers these lost cases as if they were yesterday. Here, then, is the truth about the Covent Garden opera diva and the 17th reindeer, the body that falls from the Tate Gallery, the ordinary London street corner where strange accidents keep occurring, the consul's son discovered buried in the unit's basement, the corpse pulled from a swamp of Chinese dinners, a Hallowe'en crime in the Post Office Tower and the impossible death that's the fault of a forgotten London legend.

Expect misunderstood clues, lost evidence, arguments about Dickens, churches, pubs and disorderly conduct from the investigative officers they laughingly call 'England's Finest'!

In every detective's life there are cases that can't be discussed, and throughout the Bryant & May novels there have been mentions of some of these such as the Deptford Demon or the Little Italy Whelk Smuggling Scandal.

Now Arthur Bryant has decided to open the files on eleven of these previously unseen investigations that required the collective genius and unique modus operandi of Arthur Bryant and John May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit - investigations that range from different times (London during the Great Smog) and a variety of places: a circus freak show, on board a London Tour Bus and even a yacht off the coast of Turkey.

And in addition to these eleven classic cases, readers are also given a privileged look inside the Peculiar Crimes Unit (literally, with a cut away drawing of their offices), a guide to the characters of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, and access to the contents of Arthur Bryant's highly individual library.

A bomb rips through present-day London, tragically ending the crime-fighting partnership of Arthur Bryant and John May begun more than a half-century ago during another infamous bombing: the Blitz of World War II. Desperately searching for clues to the saboteur's identity, May finds the notes his old friend kept of their very first case and a past that may have returned... with murderous vengeance. It was an investigation that began with the grisly murder of a pretty young dancer. In a city shaken by war, a faceless killer stalked London's theater row, creating his own sinister drama. And it would take Bryant's unorthodox techniques and May's dogged police work to catch a fiend whose ability to escape detection seemed almost supernatural-a murderer who decades later may have returned to kill one of them... and won't stop until he kills the other.

How can an elderly recluse drown in a chair in her otherwise dry basement? That's what John May and Arthur Bryant of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit set out to discover in a city rife with shady real estate developers, racist threats, dodgy academicians, and someone dangerously obsessed with Egyptian mythology. Linking them all is an evil lurking in London's vast and forgotten underground river system-a killer with the eerie ability to strike anywhere, anytime, without leaving a clue.

It's a subterranean case of secrets, lies, and multiple murder that defies not only the law, but reason itself. Can Bryant and May bring a killer to the surface and stop the dark tide of murder before it pulls them under, too?

A mysterious stranger in outlandish Edwardian garb defaces a Pre-Raphaelite painting in the National Gallery. Then a guest at the exclusive Savoy Hotel is fatally bitten by a marshland snake. Over the next several days, an outbreak of increasingly bizarre crimes will hit London-and, fittingly, come to the attention of the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Art vandalism, an exploding suspect, pornography, rat poison, Gilbert and Sullivan musicals, secret societies... and not a single suspect in sight. The killer they're chasing has a dark history, a habit of staying hidden, and time itself on his side. Detectives May and Bryant are racing the clock and this time the bell may be tolling for them.

It's a crime tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit: a controversial artist is murdered and displayed as part of her own outrageous installation. No suspects, no motive, no evidence-but this time they do have an eyewitness. A twelve-year-old claims the killer was a cape-clad highwayman atop a black stallion. Whoever the killer really is, he seems intent on killing off enough minor celebrities to become one himself. As "Highwayman Fever" grips London, Bryant and May, along with the newest member of the Unit, May's agoraphobic granddaughter, April, find themselves sorting out a case involving artistic rivalries, sleazy sex affairs, the Knights Templars, feuding street gangs, and a decades-old crime spree that split up their partnership once before-and threatens to end it again... with murder.

It's the classic locked-room mystery-a member of the Peculiar Crimes Unit killed inside a sealed morgue populated only by the dead and to which only four PCU members had a key. To make matters worse, the Unit has been shut down for a forced "vacation," and Bryant and May are stuck in a van in the Dartmoor countryside during a freak snowstorm. Now they'll have to crack the case by cell phone while trying to stop a second murder without freezing to death. For among the line of trapped vehicles, a killer is on the prowl, a beautiful woman is on the run, and an innocent child is caught in the middle....

It's a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England's most well-known pubs-including one torn down eighty years ago. What's more, Arthur Bryant happened to see one of the victims only moments before her death at the pub that doesn't exist. Indeed, this case is littered with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the habits of serial killers, the methodology of crime, and the odds of making an arrest. Now, with the public on the verge of panic and their superiors determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives Bryant and May must rise to the occasion in defense of two great English traditions-the pub and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

That's easier said than done. A lost funeral urn, the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the Knights Templars, the secret history of pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation letter. But with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and May encountering a brush with mortality, do the Peculiar Crimes Unit's two living legends have enough life left to stop a murderous conspiracy... and a deadly cupid targeting one of their own.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit is no more. After years of defying the odds and infuriating their embarrassed superiors, detectives Arthur Bryant and John May have at last crossed the line. This is the twenty-first century and not even their eccentric genius or phenomenal success rate solving London's most unusual crimes can save them. While Bryant takes to his bed, his bathrobe, and his esoteric books, the rest of the team take to the streets looking for new careers - leading one of them to stumble upon a gruesome murder.

It isn't so much the discovery of the headless corpse that's potentially so politically explosive as where it's found. Still it takes the bizarre sightings of a great horned creature - half man, half stag - carrying off young women to convince Bryant that this is a case worth getting dressed and leaving the house to solve. The Home Office has reluctantly authorized the PCU to reunite for one last encore performance - in a rented office with no computer network, no legal authority, and a broken toilet. They've got until the end of the week to solve a murder with unlikely links to gangland crime, Slavic mythology, the 2012 London Olympics, and the sort of corruption only obscene amounts of money and power can buy.

It's the kind of case that Bryant and May live to solve - and it could be just the case that kills them.

Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit novels have been hailed for their originality, suspense, and unforgettable characters. Now Arthur Bryant, John May, and their team of proud eccentrics have been given only one week to hunt down a murderer they've already caught once-and who is now luring them down into the darkest shadows of the London Underground.

The young man they seek is an enigma. His identity is false. His links to society are invisible. A search of his home yields no clues. The Peculiar Crimes Unit knows only this: Somehow Mr. Fox got out of a locked room and killed one of their best and brightest. Facing a shutdown, Bryant and May learn that their man, expertly disguised, has struck again in the world's oldest subway system. But as their search takes them into the vast labyrinth of tunnels that tie the city together, they discover a fresh mystery as bizarre as anything they have ever faced....

As the city blithely goes about its way, as tales of ghost stations and Underground legends emerge, Bryant and May, men of opposite methods, are each getting closer to what lies hidden at the heart of London's celebrated Tube-and to the madness that is driving their man to murder.

Sophisticated, fast-paced, and confounding until its final twist, Bryant & May off the Rails is Christopher Fowler dead on track and at the height of his power to beguile, bewitch, and entertain.

Christopher Fowler's acclaimed Peculiar Crimes Unit novels crackle with sly wit, lively suspense, and twists as chilling as London's fog. Now the indomitable duo of Arthur Bryant and John May, along with the rest of their quirky team, return to solve a confounding case with dark ties to the British theater and a killer who may mean curtains for all involved.

For the crew of the New Strand Theatre, the play The Two Murderers seems less performance than prophecy when a cast party ends in the shocking death of the theater owner's son. The crime scene is most unusual, even for Bryant and May. In a locked bedroom without any trace of fingerprints or blood, the only sign of disturbance is a gruesome life-size puppet of Mr. Punch laying on the floor. Everyone at the party is a suspect, including the corrupt producer, the rakish male lead, the dour set designer, and the assistant stage manager, who is the wild daughter of a prominent government official.

It's this last fact that threatens the Peculiar Crimes Unit's investigation, as the government's Home Office, wary of the team's eccentric methods, seeks to throw them off the case. But the nimble minds of Bryant and May are not so easily deterred. Delving into the history of the London theater and the disturbing origins of Punch and Judy, the detectives race to find the maniacal killer before he reaches his even deadlier final act.

Whip-smart and endlessly entertaining, The Memory of Blood is an ingeniously intricate mystery from the deliciously inventive Christopher Fowler.

London's craftiest and boldest detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, are back in this deviously twisting mystery of black magic, madness, and secrets hidden in plain sight.

When a young woman is found dead in the pews of St. Bride's Church—alone and showing no apparent signs of trauma—Arthur Bryant assumes this case will go to the Peculiar Crimes Unit, an eccentric team tasked with solving London's most puzzling murders. Yet the city police take over the investigation, and the PCU is given an even more baffling and bewitching assignment.

Called into headquarters by Oskar Kasavian, the head of Home Office security, Bryant and May are shocked to hear that their longtime adversary now desperately needs their help. Oskar's wife, Sabira, has been acting strangely for weeks—succumbing to violent mood swings, claiming an evil presence is bringing her harm—and Oskar wants the PCU to find out why. And if there's any duo that can deduce the method behind her madness, it's the indomitable Bryant and May.

When a second bizarre death reveals a surprising link between the two women's cases, Bryant and May set off on a trail of clues from the notorious Bedlam hospital to historic Bletchley Park. And as they are drawn into a world of encrypted codes and symbols, concealed rooms and high-society clubs, they must work quickly to catch a killer who lurks even closer than they think.

Witty, suspenseful, and ingeniously plotted,The Invisible Code is Christopher Fowler at the very top of his form.

London's wiliest detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, are back on the case in this fiendishly clever new mystery... and when a cemetery becomes the scene of a crime, neither secrets--nor bodies--stay buried.

Romain Curtis sneaks into St. George's Gardens one evening with his date, planning to show her the stars. A centuries-old burial ground, the small, quiet park is the perfect place to be alone. Yet the night takes a chilling turn when the two teenagers spy a strange figure rising from among the tombstones: a corpse emerging from the grave. Suffice it to say that wherever there's a dead man walking, Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit are never far behind.

As the PCU investigates the sighting, a second urgent matter requires their unusual brand of problem-solving. Seven ravens have gone missing from their historic home in the Tower of London, and legend has it that when the ravens disappear, England will fall. Bryant has been tasked with recovering the lost birds, but when Romain is suddenly found dead, the two seemingly separate mysteries start to intertwine and point to a plot more sinister than anyone could ever imagine.

Soon Bryant and May find themselves immersed in London's darkest lore, from Victorian-era body snatchers, to arcane black magic, to the grisly myth behind Bleeding Heart Yard, a courtyard long associated with murder. And as the body count spikes and more coffins are unearthed, they will have to dig deep to catch a killer and finally lay these cases to rest.

No case is too curious for Arthur Bryant and John May, London's most ingenious detectives. But with their beloved city engulfed in turmoil, they'll have to work fast to hold a sinister killer's feet to the fire.

In the week before Guy Fawkes Night, London's peaceful streets break out in sudden unrest. Enraged by a scandal involving a corrupt financier accused of insider trading, demonstrators are rioting outside the Findersbury Private Bank, chanting, marching, and growing violent. But when someone hurls a Molotov cocktail at the bank's front door, killing a homeless man on its steps, Bryant, May, and the rest of the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in. Is this an act of protest gone terribly wrong? Or a devious, premeditated murder?

Their investigation heats up when a second victim is reported dead in similar fiery circumstances. May discovers the latest victim has ties to the troubled bank, and Bryant refuses to believe this is mere coincidence. As the riots grow more intense and the body count climbs, Bryant and May hunt for a killer who's adopting incendiary methods of execution, on a snaking trail of clues with roots in London's history of rebellion, anarchy, and harsh justice. Now, they'll have to throw themselves in the line of fire before the entire investigation goes up in smoke.

Suspenseful, smart, and wickedly funny, Bryant & May and the Burning Man is a brilliantly crafted mystery from the beloved Christopher Fowler.

London's most brilliant but unconventional detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, must plumb the depths of a particularly murky mystery.

The Peculiar Crimes Unit faces its most baffling case yet--and if Bryant and May can't rise to the challenge, the entire unit may go under. Near the Tower of London, along the River Thames, the body of a woman has been discovered chained to a stone post and left to drown. Curiously, only one set of footprints leads to the tragic spot. "The Bride in the Tide," as the London press gleefully dubs her, has the PCU stumped. Why wouldn't the killer simply dump her body in the river--as so many do?

Arthur Bryant wonders if the answer lies in the mythology of the Thames itself. Unfortunately, the normally wobbly funhouse corridors of Bryant's mind have become, of late, even more labyrinthine. The venerable detective seems to be losing his grip on reality. May fears the worst, as Bryant rapidly descends from merely muddled to one stop short of Barking, hallucinating that he's traveled back in time to solve the case. There had better be a method to Bryant's madness--because, as more bodies are pulled from the river's depths, his partner and the rest of the PCU find themselves in over their heads.

Fiendishly fun and rich in London lore, Bryant and May: Strange Tide is Christopher Fowler at his best, delivering more twists and turns than the Thames itself.

Our story begins at the end of an investigation, as the members of London's Peculiar Crimes Unit race to catch a killer near London Bridge Station in the rain, not realising that they're about to cause a bizarre accident just yards away from the crime scene. And it will have repercussions for them all...

One year later, in an exclusive London crescent, a woman walks her dog--but she's being watched. When she's found dead, the Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. Why? Because the method of death is odd, the gardens are locked, the killer had no way in - or out - and the dog has disappeared.

So a typical case for Bryant & May. But the hows and whys of the murder are not the only mysteries surrounding the dead woman - there's a missing husband and a lost nanny to puzzle over too. And it seems very like that the killer is preparing to strike again.

As Arthur Bryant delves in to the history of London's 'wild chambers' - its extraordinary parks and gardens, John May and the rest of the team seem to have caused a national scandal. If no-one is safe then all of London's open spaces must be closed...

With the PCU placed under house arrest, only Arthur Bryant remains at liberty--but can a hallucinating old codger catch the criminal and save the unit before it's too late?

The year is 1969 and ten guests are about to enjoy a country house weekend at Tavistock Hall. But one amongst them is harbouring thoughts of murder...

The guests also include the young detectives Arthur Bryant and John May - undercover, in disguise and tasked with protecting Monty Hatton-Jones, a whistle-blower turning Queen's evidence in a massive bribery trial. Luckily, they've got a decent chap on the inside who can help them - the one-armed Brigadier, Nigel 'Fruity' Metcalf.

The scene is set for what could be the perfect country house murder mystery, except that this particular get-together is nothing like a Golden Age classic. For the good times are, it seems, coming to an end. The house's owner - a penniless, dope-smoking aristocrat - is intent on selling the estate (complete with its own hippy encampment) to a secretive millionaire but the weekend has only just started when the millionaire goes missing and murder is on the cards. But army manoeuvres have closed the only access road and without a forensic examiner, Bryant and May can't solve the case. It's when a falling gargoyle fells another guest that the two incognito detectives decide to place their future reputations on the line. And in the process discover that in Swinging Britain nothing is quite what it seems...

So gentle reader, you are cordially invited to a weekend in the country. Expect murder, madness and mayhem in the mansion!

In Which Mr May Makes A Mistake And Mr Bryant Goes Into The Dark

On a rainy winter night outside a run-down nightclub in the wrong part of London, four strangers meet for the first time at 4:00am. A few weeks later the body of an Indian textile worker is found hanging upside down inside a willow tree on Hampstead Heath. The Peculiar Crimes Unit is called in to investigate. The victim was found surrounded by the paraphernalia of black magic, and so Arthur Bryant and John May set off to question experts in the field. But the case is not what it appears. When another victim seemingly commits suicide, it becomes clear that in the London night is a killer who knows what people fear most. And he always strikes at 4:00am. In order to catch him, the PCU must switch to night shifts, but still the team draws a blank.

John May takes a technological approach, Arthur Bryant goes in search of academics and misfits for help, for this is becoming a case that reveals impossibilities at every turn, not least that there's no indication of what the victims might have done to attract the attentions of a murderer that doesn't seem to exist. But impossibilities are what the Peculiar Crimes Unit does best. As they explore a night city where all the normal rules are upended, they're drawn deeper into a case that involves murder, arson, kidnap, blackmail, bats and the psychological effects of loneliness on Londoners. It's a trail that takes them from the poorest part of the East End to the wealthiest homes in North London - an investigation that can only end in tragedy...

When a prominent politician is crushed by a fruit van making a delivery, the singular team of Arthur Bryant and John May overcome insurmountable odds to reunite the PCU and solve the case in this brainy new mystery.

On a spring morning in London's Strand, the Speaker of the House of Commons is nearly killed by a van unloading oranges and lemons for the annual St. Clement Danes celebration. It's an absurd near-death experience, but the government is more interested in investigating the Speaker's state of mind just prior to his accident.

The task is given to the Peculiar Crimes Unit--the only problem being that the unit no longer exists. Its chief, Raymond Land, is tending his daffodils on the Isle of Wight and senior detectives Arthur Bryant and John May are out of commission--May has just undergone surgery for a bullet wound and Bryant has been missing for a month. What's more, their old office in King's Cross is being turned into a vegetarian tapas bar.

Against impossible odds, the team is reassembled and once again what should be a simple case becomes a lunatic farrago involving arson, suicide, magicians, academics and a race to catch a killer with a master plan involving London churches. Joining their team this time is Sidney, a young woman with no previous experience, plenty of attitude--and a surprising secret.

It was the kind of story that barely made the news in London.

When 91 year-old Alice Hoffman dies of neglect in her top floor flat on a busy London road, the story is upheld as an example of what has gone wrong with modern society; she slipped through the cracks in a failing system.

But detectives Arthur Bryant and John May of the Peculiar Crimes Unit have their doubts. Mrs Hoffman was once a government security expert, even though no-one can quite remember her. When a link emerges between the old lady and a diplomat trying to flee the country, it seems that an impossible murder has been committed.

Mrs Hoffman wasn't alone. Bryant is convinced that other forgotten women with hidden talents are also in danger. And they all own models of London Bridge...

With the help of some of their more certifiable informants, the detectives follow the strangest of clues in an investigation that will lead them through forgotten alleyways to the city's oldest bridge in search of a desperate killer.

Just when the case appears to be solved and exasperated unit chief Raymond Land can retire and rest easy, the detectives discover that Mrs Hoffman was smarter than anyone imagined. There's a bigger game afoot that has more terrible consequences...

It's time to celebrate Bryant and May's twentieth anniversary as their most lunatic case brings death and rebirth to London's most peculiar crimes unit.

Elsewhere I have set down, for whatever interest they have in this, the 25th Century, my personal recollections of the 20th Century. Now it occurs to me that my memoirs of the 25th Century may have an equal interest 500 years from now - particularly in view of that unique perspective from which I have seen the 25th Century, entering it as I did, in one leap across a gap of 492 years. This statement requires elucidation. There are still many in the world who are not familiar with my unique experience. Five centuries from now there may be many more, especially if civilization is fated to endure any worse convulsions than those which have occurred between 1975 A.D. and the present time. I should state therefore, that I, Anthony Rogers, am, so far as I know, the only man alive whose normal span of eighty-one years of life has been spread over a period of 573 years. To be precise, I lived the first twenty-nine years of my life between 1898 and 1927; the other fifty-two since 2419. The gap between these two, a period of nearly five hundred years, I spent in a state of suspended animation, free from the ravages of katabolic processes, and without any apparent effect on my physical or mental faculties.

This novella version of Armageddon 2419 A.D. was the origin point for the character Buck Rogers in all its various formats - comic strips, comic books, radio shows, a film serial, TV shows, movies, a role-playing game, a board game, video games, and a raft of spin-off books.

Recovering from a gas that caused him to sleep for five hundred years, Anthony "Buck" Rogers helped an enslaved America strike its first blow for freedom against the alien Han. Now, he and beloved, warrior-woman Wilma Deering, must lead a desperate a battle to the finish against a superior foe - using futuristic weapons such as disintegrators, jumping belts, inertron, paralysis rays, and atomic torpedoes. The climatic conflict features a special effects battle of ships and rays that would challenge even today's greatest filmmakers to reproduce successfully on film.

The city of Isca is set like a dark jewel in the crown of the Duchy of Stonehold. In this sprawling landscape, the monsters one sees are nothing compared to what's living in the city's sewers.

Twenty-three-year-old Caliph Howl is Stonehold's reluctant High King. Thrust onto the throne, Caliph has inherited Stonehold's dirtiest court secrets. He also faces a brewing civil war that he is unprepared to fight. After months alone amid a swirl of gossip and political machinations, the sudden reappearance of his old lover, Sena, is a welcome bit of relief. But Sena has her own legacy to claim: she has been trained from birth by the Shradnae witchocracy--adept in espionage and the art of magical equations writ in blood--and she has been sent to spy on the High King.

Yet there are magics that demand a higher price than blood. Sena secretly plots to unlock the Cisrym Ta, an arcane text whose pages contain the power to destroy worlds. The key to opening the book lies in Caliph's veins, forcing Sena to decide if her obsession for power is greater than her love for Caliph.

Meanwhile, a fleet of airships creeps ever closer to Isca. As the final battle in a devastating civil war looms and the last page of the Cisrym Ta waits to be read, Caliph and Sena must face the deadly consequences of their decisions. And the blood of these conflicts will stain this and other worlds forever.

Tabloids sold in the Duchy of Stonehold claim that the High King, Caliph Howl, has been raised from the dead. His consort, Sena Iilool, both blamed and celebrated for this act, finds that a macabre cult has sprung up around her.

As the news spreads, Stonehold-long considered unimportant-comes to the attention of the emperors in the southern countries. They have learned that the seed of Sena's immense power lies in an occult book, and they are eager to claim it for their own.

Desperate to protect his people from the southern threat, Caliph is drawn into a summit of the world's leaders despite the knowledge that it is a trap. As Sena's bizarre actions threaten to unravel the summit, Caliph watches her slip through his fingers into madness.

But is it really madness? Sena is playing a dangerous game of strategy and deceit as she attempts to outwit a force that has spent millennia preparing for this day. Caliph is the only connection left to her former life, but it's his blood that Sena needs to see her plans through to their explosive finish.

Dark and rich, epic in scope, Anthony Huso has crafted a fantasy like no other, teeming with unthinkable horrors and stylish wonders.

A prequel to Swainston's Castle novels, this story of reader favorite character Jant Shira is perfect for fans of China Mieville, Hal Duncan, and Alan Campbell-the bright cutting edge of contemporary fantasy.

Here is the story of Jant Shira's life as a hunter in the mountains, before the drugs took over. Awian exiles are building a stronghold in the Darkling mountains, where the Rhydanne hunt. Their clash of interests soon leads to bloodshed and Shira Dellin, a Rhydanne huntress, appeals to the immortal Circle for justice. The Emperor sends Jant-half-Rhydanne, half-Awian, and all confidence-to mediate. As Jant is drawn into the spiraling violence he is shaken into coming to terms with his own heritage, and with his feelings for the alien, intoxicating Dellin. This story of Jant's early years in the Circle shows the Fourlands as readers have never seen them before.

Jeff Christopher is a shapeshifter and ally of Chicago's Cadogan House of vampires--he's also a tech whiz and mostly-legal hacker. And the only protective shields he's never been able to find a way around are those of the powerful Keene Family.

For a long time, Jeff has only had eyes for the beautiful Fallon Keene. Unfortunately, she is the only sister of the lethal North American Central Pack Apex Gabriel Keene. The intricate balances of power and politics make it all but impossible for Fallon to trust her feelings.

But fate takes a hand when the Pack's totem is stolen--threatening the Keene family's rule--and Fallon enlists Jeff's help to retrieve it before the Pack is thrown into chaos. Can she and Jeff find the totem, and restore order, before it's too late? And will Jeff finally be able to prove himself to the only person he truly loves?

In a bleak, far-northern land, a wandering storyteller is arrested on charges of witchcraft. Though Chant protests his innocence, he is condemned not only as a witch, but a spy. His only chance to save himself rests with the skills he has honed for decades - tell a good story, catch and hold their attention, or die.

But the attention he catches is that of the five elected rulers of the country, and Chant finds himself caught in a tangled, corrupt political game which began long before he ever arrived here. As he's snatched from one Queen's grasp to another's, he realizes that he could either be a pawn for one of them... or a player in his own right. After all, he knows better than anyone how powerful the right story can be: Powerful enough to save a life, certainly. Perhaps even powerful enough to bring a nation to its knees.

Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving--but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell.

That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. At Sterre's command, Ylfing begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms, Ylfing must face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: a man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or will he embrace the power of story to save ten thousand lives?

Table of Contents:

• Blackwater Days - interior artwork by Shaun Tan
• Downloading - (1998) - novelette
• Beckoning Nightframe - (1996) - shortstory
• First Interview: A Journey - shortstory
• Basic Black - novelette
• Second Interview: Psychosleuths - shortstory
• The Saltimbanques - (2000) - novelette
• Third Interview: A Forgetting - shortstory
• Jenny Come to Play - (1997) - novelette
• Light from the Deep Pavilion - shortstory
• Blackwater Days - novelette
• L'Envoi: A Homecoming - shortstory

Ditmar Award winning and WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Eidolon: The Journal of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Autumn 2000. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and Year's Best Fantasy (2001), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collections Blackwater Days (2000) and Basic Black: Tales of Appropriate Fear (2006).

First published in 1927, Deluge is one of the most famous of the English catastrophe novels.

Beautifully written and action packed--RKO Radio Pictures even filmed this story--the novel depicts a flood so severe that it destroys modern civilization, leaving the few survivors to adapt to the rigors of the natural world.

Like other English writers responding to the trauma of World War I, Sydney Fowler Wright expresses a loathing of the worst aspects of industrialization. The flood, in his view, becomes an opportunity for the remaking of society. The protagonists soon realize that civilization and technology have divorced them from the knowledge and skills necessary for survival. Released from their over-reliance on social regulation, they struggle to overcome their own brutality to develop a new sense of community. For over 75 years readers have praised this book for its style and wisdom, and debated the meaning of its controversial ending.

The waters are rising--everywhere--and most of England is inundated by the surge, leaving isolated pockets of mankind to fight for survival--and for civilization!

Join the Doctor on his travels and influence his adventures with your decisions. Will you explore the alien planet or get back in the T.A.R.D.I.S and travel to somewhere new? Choose a direction and let the adventure begin... Each page has two options for the reader to decide what happens next and each novel has several possible endings.

In the final volume of the "Dragon Star" trilogy, Sioned, the mother of High Prince Pol, leads a daring mission into the castle where her daughter-in-law is held captive.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1975. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #5 (1976), edited by Terry Carr, The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 22nd Series (1977), edited by Edward L. Ferman, Nebula Winners Twelve (1978), edited by Gordon R. Dickson, and The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980), edited by Robert Silveerberg and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections The Persistence of Vision (1978) and Good-Bye, Robinson Crusoe and Other Stories (2013).

J.K. Rowling's screenwriting debut is captured in this exciting hardcover edition of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay.

When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone...

At the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald was captured in New York with the help of Newt Scamander. But, making good on his threat, Grindelwald escapes custody and sets about gathering followers, most unsuspecting of his true agenda: to raise pure-blood wizards up to rule over all non-magical beings.

In an effort to thwart Grindelwald's plans, Albus Dumbledore enlists Newt, his former Hogwarts student, who agrees to help once again, unaware of the dangers that lie ahead. Lines are drawn as love and loyalty are tested, even among the truest friends and family, in an increasingly divided wizarding world.

This second original screenplay from J.K. Rowling, illustrated with stunning line art from MinaLima, expands on earlier events that helped shape the wizarding world, with some surprising nods to the Harry Potter stories that will delight fans of both the books and films.

The official complete screenplay of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore by J.K. Rowling & Steve Kloves, accompanied by illuminating behind-the-scenes content and commentary.

Professor Albus Dumbledore knows the powerful Dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald is moving to seize control of the wizarding world. Unable to stop him alone, he entrusts Magizoologist Newt Scamander to lead an intrepid team of wizards, witches, and one brave Muggle baker on a dangerous mission, where they encounter old and new beasts and clash with Grindelwald's growing legion of followers. But with the stakes so high, how long can Dumbledore remain on the sidelines?

Explore some of the most dangerous places in the Forgotten Realms -- The Dungeons!

An orphan mage returns to the only home she's ever known to find if transformed into a dungeon, her former master missing or trapped within. To make matters worse, the thieves that hold the dungeon won't let her leave --not for supplies, not for help. It will take all of her courage, skill, and magic to survive long enough to figure out what happened to her home.

Nature or nurture? Neither. Discover a bold new way to raise a child in this unsettling story of the near future by the New York Times bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow.

When Sam's wife first tells him about Vitek, a twenty-first-century fertility lab, he sees it as the natural next step in trying to help their future child get a "leg up" in a competitive world. But the more Sam considers the lives that his child could lead, the more he begins to question his own relationships and the choices he has made in his life.

Originally published in the UK as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

What did Harry Potter know about magic? He was stuck with the decidedly un-magical Dursleys, who hated him. He slept in a closet and ate their leftovers. But an owl messenger changes all that, with an invitation to attend the Hogwarts School for Wizards and Witches, where it turns out Harry is already famous....

The Dursleys were so mean and hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he's packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.

And strike is does. For in Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageous stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockheart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls' bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley's younger sister, Ginny.

But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone--or something--starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects... Harry Potter himself?

For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort

Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed: Harry Potter's defeat of You-Know-Who was Black's downfall as well. And the Azkban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, "He's at Hogwarts...he's at Hogwarts."

Harry Potter isn't safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

I say to you all, once again--in the light of Lord Voldemort's return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort's gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.

So spoke Albus Dumbledore at the end of Harry Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts. But as Harry enters his fifth year at wizard school, it seems those bonds have never been more sorely tested. Lord Voldemort's rise has opened a rift in the wizarding world between those who believe the truth about his return, and those who prefer to believe it's all madness and lies--just more trouble from Harry Potter.

Add to this a host of other worries for Harry...

• A Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with a personality like poisoned honey
• A venomous, disgruntled house-elf
• Ron as keeper of the Gryffindor Quidditch team
• And of course, what every student dreads: end-of-term Ordinary Wizarding Level exams

...and you'd know what Harry faces during the day. But at night it's even worse, because then he dreams of a single door in a silent corridor. And this door is somehow more terrifying than every other nightmare combined.

The war against Voldemort is not going well; even the Muggles have been affected. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses. And yet... As with all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Harry receives some extraordinary help in Potions from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince. And with Dumbledore's guidance, he seeks out the full, complex story of the boy who became Lord Voldemort -- and thus finds what may be his only vulnerability.

Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him.

In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectactular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven narrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again.

Based on an original new story by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play received its world premiere in London's West End on 30th July 2016.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn't much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl's castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there's far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.

Having long indulged himself in daydreams more exciting than his mundane life as a carpet merchant, Abdullah unexpectedly purchases a magic carpet and his life changes dramatically as his daydreams come true and dangerous adventures become daily fare.

Charmain Baker is in over her head. Looking after Great Uncle William's tiny cottage while he's ill should have been easy, but Great Uncle William is better known as the Royal Wizard Norland and his house bends space and time. Its single door leads to any number of places - the bedrooms, the kitchen, the caves under the mountains, the past, to name but a few. By opening that door, Charmain is now also looking after an extremely magical stray dog, a muddled young apprentice wizard and a box of the king's most treasured documents, as well as irritating a clan of small blue creatures. Caught up in an intense royal search, she encounters an intimidating sorceress named Sophie. And where Sophie is, can the Wizard Howl and fire demon Calcifer be far behind?

The newly discovered planet of Senisran was a veritable paradise--a sprawling world of vast oceans dotted with thousands of lush islands and copious deposits of rare-earths and minerals. First-contact specialist Pulickel Tomochelor's mission to Senisran was straightforward: Secure mining rights for the Humanx Commonwealth before the vicious AAnn Empire beat them to the chase. With Senisran's Parramat clan resisting entreaty, negotiations could be difficult, but Pulickel was more comfortable with aliens than with his own species, and looked forward to a triumphant return to Earth.

He hadn't counted on the incredible secret of Parramat, though: the strange, powerful green stones that the tribe used to manipulate the forces of nature. Within those stones lay an awesome technology the origin of which was lost in time--a technology that had to be kept from the AAnn at any cost...

Cop and conjurer of demons, she's a woman in danger of losing control--to a power that could kill....

Why me? Why now? That's what Beaulac, Louisiana, detective Kara Gillian was asking herself when an angelic creature named Rhyzkahl unexpectedly appeared during a routine summoning. Kara was hoping to use her occult skills to catch a serial killer, but never had she conjured anything like this unearthly beautiful and unspeakably powerful being whose very touch set off exquisite new dimensions of pleasure. But can she enlist his aid in helping her stop a killer who's already claimed the lives--and souls--of thirteen people? And should she? The Symbol Man is a nightmare that the city thought had ended three years ago. Now he's back for an encore and leaving every indication on the flesh of his victims that he, too, is well versed in demonic lore.

Kara may be the only cop on Beaulac's small force able to stop the killer, but it is her first homicide case. Yet with Rhyzkahl haunting her dreams, and a handsome yet disapproving FBI agent dogging her waking footsteps, she may be in way over her head...

BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL, MAN AND DEMON, SHE'S ABOUT TO FACE THE ONE THING SHE MAY NOT BE ABLE TO SURVIVE.

Welcome to the world of Kara Gillian, a cop with a gift. Not only does she have the power of "othersight" to see what most people can't even imagine, but she's become the exclusive summoner of a demon lord. Or maybe it's the other way around. The fact is, with two troublesome cases on her docket and a handsome FBI agent under her skin, Kara needs the help of sexy, insatiable Lord Rhyzkahl more than he needs her. Because these two victims, linked by suspicious coincidence, haven't just been murdered. Something has eaten their souls.

It's a case with roots in the arcane, but whose evil has flowered among the rich, powerful, and corrupt in Beaulac, Louisiana. And as the killings continue, Kara soon realizes how much there's still to learn about demons, men, and things that kill in the night--and how little time she has to learn it.

Homicide detective Kara Gillian has a special talent: she can sense the "arcane" in our world, and there's quite a bit of it, even in Beaulac, Louisiana. She's also a summoner of demons, and works on a task force that deals with supernatural crimes. Her partners are attractive and smart FBI agents, but they're not summoners, and they're not telling Kara why they are on this special force with her.

To complicate things even more, Kara has pledged herself to one of the most powerful of demons--Demon Lord Rhyzkahl--who helped save her partner's life, but now expects things in return. Meanwhile, she's trying to solve a string of murders that are somehow tied together by money, sex, rock music and...mud. But how can she concentrate on the case when she's not even sure who--or what--her partners are? Secrets of the Demon is the exciting third installment of the Kara Gillian series.

Louisiana homicide detective Kara Gillian is doing her best to cope with everything that's happened to her over the past year, all while s continuing to hone her skills as a demon summoner. But lately she's beginning to wonder if there's a little too much demon in her world. She has a demon for a roommate, the demonic lord Rhyzkahl is still interested in her for reasons she can't fathom, and now someone in the demon realm is trying to summon her. And there's no way that can end well.

Meanwhile, people who've hurt Kara in the past are dropping dead. Kara is desperate to find the reasons for the deaths to clear her own name, but when she realizes there's an arcane pattern to the deaths, she knows that both the human and the demon worlds may be at risk unless she finds out who's behind it all. She's in a race against the clock and in a battle for her life that just may take her to hell and back.Sins of the Demon is the exciting fourth installment of the Kara Gillian series.

Kara Gillian is in seriously deep trouble. She's used to summoning supernatural creatures from the demon realm to our world, but now she's the one who's been summoned. Kara is the prisoner of the demonic lord Mzatal, but quickly discovers that she's far more than a mere hostage. But waiting for rescue has never been her style, and Kara has no intention of being a pawn in someone else's game.

Yet intrigue and treachery are running rampant, and Kara is hard pressed to keep her wits about her. Her abilities as a homicide detective are put to the test as she seeks the truth about FBI Agent Ryan Kristoff; Rhyzkahl, the demon lord she is sworn to; and her own history in the demon realm. She's going to need all the strength and tenacity she's developed as a cop and a summoner, or the hell she endures may well last forever.

Touch of the Demon is the exciting fifth installment of the Kara Gillian series.

Demon summoner Kara Gillian bears the scars of Rhyzkahl's treachery, but she refuses to let them slow her down. She and the demonic lord Mzatal have not rested in their efforts to recover Idris--Mzatal's summoner protégé who was kidnapped by enemy lords--but now their search has brought them back to Earth.

With the help of FBI agents Ryan Kristoff and Zack Garner, they begin to track down summoners who are working with Rhyzkahl. However, Kara knows Ryan's true identity, and questions of loyalty threaten to tear apart this group of allies. When Kara intervenes to help a brilliant young computer expert and his bodyguard after an accidental shooting, she quickly learns that Rhyzkahl's machinations run deeper than she could have ever imagined. The search for Idris takes on a desperate edge as their enemies increase in number, and Kara realizes that an old homicide case may hold the key to their success--or their doom.

With the very fabric of the universe at stake, Kara must rely on her skills, wit, and luck to save her friends and her world, yet ancient vows will have to be broken if she is to have any hope.

But the price of breaking those vows may be her own blood.

Fury of the Demon is the exciting sixth installment of the Kara Gillian series.

Demon summoner Kara Gillian is on the wrong side of the law--and there's evidence to prove it. Too bad the courts don't accept "fighting demonic forces" as justification for murder and mayhem.

Yet Kara has problems that go way beyond her legal woes. When the enemy demonic lords spur their human accomplices into high gear, master summoner Katashi aggressively pursues their goal to establish a permanent gate between Earth and the demon realm. To hell with the consequences for humanity.

The line between ally and enemy blurs as Kara gathers the remnants of her posse to prevent a devastating demonic incursion, but a shattered trust may cost them the war and put Kara behind bars. With treachery rife, and her loved ones in danger, Kara must call upon the essence of who she truly is in order to rally back from a crushing loss.

And if she can't, the world is going straight to hell.

Sidelined demon summoner Kara Gillian has her hands full when dimensional rifts allow demons to cause widespread panic and destruction on Earth. These aren't the human-tolerant summonables she's known before, but demons from the far reaches of the demon realm.

Add three demonic lords with conflicting ambitions to the mix, and Kara has the perfect recipe for global disaster.

Kara's drastic ceasefire deal with the formidable demon Imperator Dekkak slowed the attacks on Earth to a trickle, but her troubles are far from over. The god-like demahnk are desperate to return to their own kind, but unless they can stabilize the demon realm, they'll be forever exiled--and they've subjugated Kara's beloved Mzatal to further their hellacious cause. One faction of demonic lords and demahnk has a plan to fix their world, yet their salvation would come at the expense of Earth.

Meanwhile, Kara is wrestling with government bureaucracy, backstabbing allies, enemy lords, as well as the powerful young demonic lord Ashava, who's packing the drama, angst, and rebellion of the terrible teen years into just a few months.

Kara's in a race to stop an apocalypse, but in order to prevail she'll have to make a terrible sacrifice or risk losing everything she holds dear.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1994. The story is included in the collections Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia (1998), A Safari of the Mind (1999) and Win Some, Lose Some: The Hugo Award Winning (and Nominated) Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Mike Resnick (2012).

Years ago, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser turned their backs on the city of Lankhmar and the painful memories it held. But now, a deadly plague, spawned from a sorcerer's curse, sweeps through the streets of Lankhmar, eating its victims from the inside and laying waste to the once-vibrant city. The two reluctant heroes are called forth once again to face Lankhmar's winding alleys - and the old ghosts who lurk in them!

Matt Rowley hasn't been human for years. A commando for the International Council on Augmented Phenomena, he hunts down superhuman monsters the military can't handle. But his abilities come with a price: bloodthirsty whispers that urge him to acts of terrible violence.

An encounter with a giant, angelic being with wings of smoke and shadow casts him into a world of inhuman brutality, demonic possession, and madness, where he must choose between his family and his soul.

Matt Rowley -- super human strength, unnaturally fast reflexes, enhanced senses -- augmentation is something that he will have to learn to live with, for the rest of his life.

As cults spring up in worship of the demonic beings freed by the last of the nephilim, the United States calls on Matt Rowley to meet the threat. His unnatural powers returning with every passing day, Matt becomes the only weapon able to withstand eldritch forces older than time and darker than the blackest sea.

When his wife and infant son are taken in a violent attack on his hometown, Matt falls into a vast conspiracy that could destroy his family and his very soul.

They want Matt Rowley's powers and will kill everyone to get them.

Widely respected in the so-called "mainstream" for her New York Times bestselling novels, Karen Joy Fowler is also a formidable, often controversial, and always exuberant presence in Science Fiction. Here she debuts a provocative new story written especially for this series. Set in the days of Darwin, "The Science of Herself" is a marvelous hybrid of SF and historical fiction: the almost-true story of England's first female paleontologist who took on the Victorian old-boy establishment armed with only her own fierce intelligence--and an arsenal of dino bones.

Plus... "The Pelican Bar," a homely tale of family ties that makes Guantánamo look like summer camp; "The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man," a droll tale of sports, shoplifting and teen sex; and "The Motherhood Statement," a quietly angry upending of easy assumptions that shows off Fowler's deep radicalism and impatience with conservative homilies and liberal pieties alike.

And Featuring: our Outspoken Interview in which Fowler prophesies California's fate, reveals the role of bad movies in good marriages, and intimates that girls just want to have fun (which means make trouble).

Table of Contents:

• The Science of Herself - (2013)
• The Motherhood Statement - (2013) - essay by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Pelican Bar - (2009)
• More Exuberant Than Is Stristly Tasteful - (2013) - interview of Karen Joy Fowler by Terry Bisson
• The Further Adventures of the Invisible Man - (2002)
• Bibliography
• About the Author

John Crowley's all-new essay "Totalitopia" is a wry how-to guide for building utopias out of the leftovers of modern science fiction. "This Is Our Town," written especially for this volume, is a warm, witty, and wonderfully moving story about angels, cousins, and natural disasters based on a parochial school third-grade reader. One of Crowley's hard-to-find masterpieces, "Gone" is a Kafkaesque science fiction adventure about an alien invasion that includes door-to-door leafleting and yard work. Perhaps the most entertaining of Crowley's "Easy Chair" columns in Harper's, "Everything That Rises" explores the fractal interface between Russian spiritualism and quantum singularities--with a nod to both Columbus and Flannery O'Connor. "And Go Like This" creeps in from Datlow's Year's Best, the Wild Turkey of horror anthologies.

Plus: There's a bibliography, an author bio, and of course our Outspoken Interview, the usual cage fight between candor and common sense.

Table of Contents:

• This Is Our Town - short story
• Totalitopia - (2011) - essay
• Everything That Rises - (2016) - essay
• Gone - (1996) - short story
• In the Tom Mix Museum - (2012) - short story
• And Go Like This - (2011) - short story
• Paul Park's Hidden Worlds - (2016) - essay
• "I Did Crash a Few Parties" - interview of John Crowley by Terry Bisson

The first in an exciting series featuring the unforgettable antiquities thief Owl--a modern-day "Indiana Jane" who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world--from the pen of rising urban fantasy star Kristi Charish. For fans of Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Jennifer Estep, Jenn Bennett, and the like. The series also includes Owl and the City of Angels and Owl and the Electric Samurai.

Ex-archaeology grad student turned international antiquities thief, Alix--better known now as Owl--has one rule. No supernatural jobs. Ever. Until she crosses paths with Mr. Kurosawa, a red dragon who owns and runs the Japanese Circus Casino in Las Vegas. He insists Owl retrieve an artifact stolen three thousand years ago, and makes her an offer she can't refuse: he'll get rid of a pack of vampires that want her dead. A dragon is about the only entity on the planet that can deliver on Owl's vampire problem--and let's face it, dragons are known to eat the odd thief.

Owl retraces the steps of Mr. Kurosawa's ancient thief from Japan to Bali with the help of her best friend, Nadya, and an attractive mercenary. As it turns out though, finding the scroll is the least of her worries. When she figures out one of Mr. Kurosawa's trusted advisors is orchestrating a plan to use a weapon powerful enough to wipe out a city, things go to hell in a hand basket fast...and Owl has to pick sides.

The wild second adventure for unforgettable antiquities thief Owl--a modern-day "Indiana Jane" who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world--from the pen of rising urban fantasy star Kristi Charish. For fans of Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Jennifer Estep, Jenn Bennett, and the like. The series also includes Owl and the Japanese Circus and Owl and the Electric Samurai.

Alix Hiboux, better known as Owl, international antiquities thief for hire, is settling into her new contract job for Vegas mogul Mr. Kurosawa, a red dragon with a penchant for ancient, supernatural artifacts. And now he has his sights set on some treasures of the mysterious Syrian City of the Dead that are sitting in a recluse's private collection.

There's just one wrinkle. To stop the resurrection of an undead army that could wreak havoc on Los Angeles, Owl must break into a heavily guarded archaeological sight in one of the most volatile regions in the world. A detour through Libya and a run-in with Somali pirates sends the clock ticking hastily toward total paranormal disaster.

Meanwhile, Alexander and the Paris vampires have stopped stalking Owl's apartment, but they have by no means forgotten their death grudge against her. To top everything off, Owl finds out the hard way that there is nothing heavenly about the City of Angels...

The third exciting novel starring the unforgettable antiquities thief Owl--a modern-day "Indiana Jane" who reluctantly navigates the hidden supernatural world. From the pen of rising urban fantasy star Kristi Charish, this fast-paced novel is for fans of Kim Harrison, Jim Butcher, Jennifer Estep, Jenn Bennett, and fantasy lovers everywhere.

The International Archaeology Association (IAA) is responsible for keeping all things supernatural under wraps. They're also responsible for ruining the promising archaeology career of Alix Hiboux, better known as Owl.

Needless to say, Owl's still a little sore about that.

Just to keep Owl's life lively, the IAA has opened a bounty on the two designers of World Quest, the online RPG that is much, much more than it seems. Owl needs to locate the notorious gaming duo before the other mercenaries do. But finding the gamers won't be easy since every clue points to them hiding out in the legendary lost city of Shangri-La. Not to mention that the last time Owl and the game designers spoke, their conversation didn't exactly end on the best note...

Meanwhile, undercurrents of supernatural politics are running amok in Tokyo, dragging Owl and her friends into a deadly game of wits with an opponent who calls himself the Electric Samurai. The cost of losing? All-out civil war between two powerful supernatural factions.

All in all, just another great day on the job.

Through no fault of her own, Alix has found herself essential to the fate of the world as we know it. She didn't mean for this to happen--she was quite happy being merely the notorious antiquities thief, and ex-archeologist, known as Owl.

However, years ago, Owl reluctantly entered the secret world of the supernatural. Her goals: complete one job, escape one bounty on her head, continue her thieving in peace.

Fast forward to today. Now, she has become a key player in a brutal paranormal civil war that is rapidly getting out of hand. The leader of one of these factions--a lethal opponent called the Electric Samurai--grows more powerful by the second. To stop him, Owl sets out to find the long-lost, legendary group known as the Tiger Thieves.

But will it be too little too late? One thing Owl misses about "normal" archaeology: there are few emergencies with thousand-year-old relics.

A Lethal Leap

It's 1976, and Sam Leaps out of a women named Ann-Marie Renerie. But Ann-Marie is not pleased with her changed life. She's left with a plea-bargained jail sentence she doesn't remember agreeing to, and a hazy memory of the name of the man she thinks is responsible for her imprisionment.

1988: Ann-Marie's sentence is over and now she is dedicated to the single obsessive purpose that got her through twelve years in prison. Death to Dr. Sam Beckett!

Meanwhile, Sam, on his messiest mission yet-as a female mud westler-must work on his own. He can't be told that Al and the rest of the Project are frantically struggling to stop a madwoman before she stops Sam Beckett-forever!

This adventure classic tells the adventures of one man against the strange wonders of a not-so-deserted isle.

A stranded sailor is pitted against the strange wonders of a deserted island inhabited by the brutish and nearly inhuman decendents of a pirate crew as well as strange creatures from the mythology of the ancient Greeks---from satyrs to a mysterious Dryad...who speaks fluent French! And, of course, there's a beautiful woman to be won...

This little-known adventure novel is full of intrigue, adventure, lost cities and savages. A must-read for adventure pulp fans!

To control the past, they edited history. To control the future, they edited literature.

London, 1953, Coronation year - but not the Coronation of Elizabeth II.

Thirteen years have passed since a Grand Alliance between Great Britain and Germany was formalized. George VI and his family have been murdered and Edward VIII rules as King. Yet, in practice, all power is vested in Alfred Rosenberg, Britain's Protector. The role and status of women is Rosenberg's particular interest.

Rose Ransom belongs to the elite caste of women and works at the Ministry of Culture, rewriting literature to correct the views of the past. But now she has been given a special task.

Outbreaks of insurgency have been seen across the country; graffiti daubed on public buildings. Disturbingly, the graffiti is made up of lines from forbidden works, subversive words from the voices of women. Suspicion has fallen on Widowland, the run-down slums where childless women over fifty have been banished. These women are known to be mutinous, for they have nothing to lose.

Before the Leader arrives for the Coronation ceremony of King Edward and Queen Wallis, Rose must infiltrate Widowland to find the source of this rebellion and ensure that it is quashed.

This book is a combination of the two original Buck Rogers stories (Armadeddon 2419 A.D. and The Airlords of Han) together as one.

This is the story of how World War One veteran Anthony Rogers, after investigating an incident at a remote mine, wakes up five hundred years in the future. He awakes to a occupied America, ruled by the Air Lords of the Han with there gleaming cities and giant air ships suspended on beams of force. The Han supress the remants of the American population who live by stealh in the forests with hidden factories and plans to liberate thier homeland from the Han invaders. Buck Rogers, with his knowledge of long forgotten combat and tactics, comes to their aid. With his help, the Han's days are numbered.

Rhia Harlyn is a noble in Shen, one of the dozens of shadowlands which separate the bright, alien skyland. She has a missing brother, an unwanted marriage proposal and an interest in science considered unbecoming in her gender. Her brother's disappearance coincided with a violent unsolved murder, and Rhia impulsively joins the search party headed into the skyland - a place whose dangers and wonders have long fascinated her. The dangerous journey brings her into conflict with a young rebel stuck between the worlds of shadow and light, and a charismatic cult leader who believes he can defeat death itself.

The sky is falling, and only one dilettante scientist can save the world, in the startling finale of the Shadowlands duology.

Rhia Harlyn risks death for science. Accused of heresy for promoting an unorthodox cosmology, she must defend herself, her work and her House alone. If only she could rely on her feckless brother Etyan, transformed through the combination of an occult scientist's experiments and the harsh rays of the skyland sun. But she knows she cannot.

When Dej, Etyan's half-alien lover, finally uncovers Etyan's dark secret she runs off into the perilous skyland. She is looking for peace in a world that has rejected her; what she discovers instead will change everyone's lives.

Meanwhile, overhead, the very stars themselves are shifting. Rhia is about to find herself proved disastrously right...

The vendetta in space had started centuries before "Mouse" Storm was born with his grandfather's raid on the planet Prefactlas, the blood bath that freed the human slaves from their Sangaree masters. But one Sangaree survived - the young Norborn heir, the man who swore vengeance on the Storm family and their soldiers, in a carefully mapped plot that would take generations to fulfill.

Now Mouse's father Gneaus must fight for an El Dorado of wealth on the burning half of the planet Blackworld. As the great private armies of all space clash on the narrow Shadowline that divides inferno from life-sheltering shade, Gneaus' half- brother Michael plays his traitorous games, and a man called Death pulls the deadly strings that threaten to entrap them all - as the Starfishers Trilogy begins.

A now classic study of the Horror work of writer Ira Levin.

Hadrian Marlowe is lost.

For half a century, he has searched the farther suns for the lost planet of Vorgossos, hoping to discover a way to contact the elusive alien Cielcin. He has pursued false leads for years among the barbarian Normans as captain of a band of mercenaries, but Hadrian remains determined to make peace and bring an end to nearly four hundred years of war.

Desperate to find answers, Hadrian must venture beyond the security of the Sollan Empire and among the Extrasolarians who dwell between the stars. There, he will face not only the aliens he has come to offer peace, but contend with creatures that once were human, with traitors in his midst, and with a meeting that will bring him face to face with no less than the oldest enemy of mankind.

If he succeeds, he will usher in a peace unlike any in recorded history. If he fails, the galaxy will burn.

It is a grim time for the Empire of Sabis. The barbarian hordes are invading, yet no one in the capital city wants to believe the growing danger. No one, that is, except the philosopher-scientist, Sulun, and his followers.

It is 500 years since the fall of the Sabrin Empire, an empire whose rulers sealed their fate by refusing to countenance the devel opment of weapons that could have saved them from the barbarians. Now the Sabirn have fallen on hard times indeed, & lie supine beneath the boot of the Ancar, laboring in mines & fields & stretts at work no member of a "higher" race would touch.

But rumors abound that among the Sabirn are some who retain occult knowledge, & use it in secret rites aimed at the overthrow of the new master race. The Ancar say this is justification for genocide. The Sabirn say genocide is justification for anything; The Sword of Knowledge cuts both ways.

Continues the Sword of Knowledge trilogy about the people of Sabis who have been oppressed by the wizards of Ancar since their empire was conquered five hundred years ago.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1971. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1972 Annual World's Best SF , edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1972), edited by Lester del Rey. It is included in the collections The Earth Book of Stormgate (1978), The Earth Book of Stormgate 3 (1981), and David Falkayn: Star Trader (2009).

Tom Tyson journeys to a futuristic Australia where terraforming, genetic engineering and mental sciences have become a way of life and tribal satellites monitor perpetually warring Ab'O states.

Contents:

• 3 - Colouring the Captains - novella
• 47 - The Only Bird in Her Name - (1985) - novelette
• 71 - The Robot Is Running Away from the Trees - novelette
• 101 - What We Did to the Tyger - (1986) - short story
• 119 - Spinners - novelette
• 143 - So Much for the Burning Queen - short story
• 163 - Mirage Diver - novelette
• 191 - Time of the Star - (1986) - novelette

The Blue Captain... Of the seven Nationals who have won Colours and fine sand-ships from the tribes, earning for themselves the right to cross the eerie and exotic Australia of the future, Tom Rynosseros is the most mysterious. He is the one from the Madhouse, the Captain whose adventures among the powerful tribes of the interior reveal a hidden purpose, a destiny waiting out in the red deserts which affects not only Nation but the Dreamtime itself.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1992) - essay by Jack Vance
• Breaking Through to the Heroes - (1992) - novelette
• Going to the Angels - (1992) - novelette
• Vanities - (1990) - short story
• A Dragon Between His Fingers - (1986) - short story
• Djinn of Anjoulis - (1992) - short story
• A Song to Keep Them Dancing - (1992) - short story
• Stoneman - (1992) - short story
• Privateers' Moon - (1992) - novelette
• Dreaming the Knife - (1992) - short story
• Totem - (1992) - novelette

A Ship, a Star, a Woman's Face... All that Tom Rynosseros remembers from his time in the Madhouse. But who was he? Why did the powerful Ab'O tribes send him there? What do the three signs mean? From the haunted streets of Twilight Beach to the burning heart of this future Australia, from the eerie wind-river called the Soul to the dream-ridden shores of the Inland Sea, Tom searches desperately for whatever pieces of his life he can find.

Contents:

1. 1 - Shatterwrack at Breaklight - (1985) - short story
2. 17 - The Babel Ships - (1993) - novelette
3. 49 - Sailors Along the Soul - (1993) - short story
4. 69 - Roadsong - (1991) - novelette
5. 99 - Larrikin Wind - (1990) - short story
6. 113 - Nights at Totem Rule - (1993) - novelette
7. 155 - The Final Voyage of Captain Gelise - (1992) - short story
8. 167 - The Leopard - (1993) - novelette
9. 193 - A Whisper from the Voice at the Vanishing Point - (1993) - novelette
10. 215 - The Green Captain's Tale - (1993) - novelette
11. 241 - Ship's Eye - (1992) - novelette

Tom Rynosseros commands a sandship and searches for his lost memories and the meaning of three images left from his incarceration in the Madhouse.

Contents:

• 3 - The Leopard - poem
• 5 - Doing the Line - One - (2007) - short story
• 13 - A Woman Sent Through Time - (1994) - novelette
• 39 - Doing the Line - Two - (2007) - short story
• 41 - The Maiden Death - (1997) - short story
• 59 - Doing the Line - Three - (2007) - short story
• 63 - No Hearts to Be Broken - (1997) - short story
• 75 - Doing the Line - Four - (2007) - short story
• 77 - Fear-Me-Now - (1993) - novelette
• 97 - Doing the Line - Five - (2007) - short story
• 101 - Ships for the Sundance Sea - (1995) - novelette
• 139 - Doing the Line - Six - (2007) - short story
• 143 - Swordplay - (2007) - short story
• 159 - Doing the Line - Seven - (2007) - short story
• 163 - Tessarina and the Target Man - (2007) - short story
• 173 - Doing the Line - Eight - (2007) - short story
• 177 - The Bull of September - (2007) - novella
• 227 - Doing the Line - Nine - (2007) - short story
• 231 - Coyote Struck by Lightning - (2003) - novelette
• 255 - Coming Down - (2003) - novelette
• 279 - Sewing Whole Cloth - (2003) - novelette
• [304] - The Complete Rynosseros [Rynosseros bibliography] - (2007) - essay

There is more than one history of the world.

Before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, once governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments, not Egypt -- but Ægypt.

What if it were really so?

In the 1970s, a historian named Pierce Moffett moves to the New England countryside to write a book about Ægypt, driven by an idea he dare not believe -- that the physical laws of the universe once changed and may change again. Yet the notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of Fellowes Kraft, author of romances about Will Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it, a key, perhaps, to Ægypt.

Also published as The Solitudes.

Love & Sleep continues the tale of Ægypt, a magical country displaced from the physical world. Historian Pierce Moffett's route toward Ægypt had been charted from his youth in the coal hills of Kentucky, where he was introduced to Catholic doctrine and country mysticism, to an urchin girl with ancestral ties to werewolves, and to an elemental creature that may have abetted the forest fire he accidentally started. In the current day, Pierce and Boney Rasmussen, his patron, search the work of historical novelist Fellowes Kraft for clues to a fabulous treasure--an endeavor that parallels the adventures of Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, centuries before, to sort out a cosmology on the edge of profound change.

Stately, gorgeously rendered, both wide and deep, this second volume in the Ægypt quartet will reward those searching for an absorbing literary fantasy.

For the past two decades, John Crowley has created some of the most beautiful and evocative fiction written anywhere. A recipient of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, he has written yet another masterpiece that brings together his distinctive blend of magic, mystery, adventure, and wonder.

When the world ends, it ends somewhat differently for each soul then alive to see it; the end doesn't come all at once but passes and repasses over the world like the shivers that pass over a horse's skin.

For the people in this novel, the concerns of everyday life -- children and love affairs, work and friendship -- are beginning to transmute into the extraordinary and to reveal the forces, dark and light, that truly govern their lives.

So it is for Pierce Moffett, would-be historian and author, who has moved from New York to the Faraway Hills, where he seems to discover -- or rediscover -- a path into magic, past and present. And so it is for Rosie Rasmussen, a single mother grappling with her mysterious uncle's legacy and her young daughter Samantha's inexplicable seizures. For Pierce's lover Rose Ryder, whose life is lived half in dream, another path unfolds: she's drawn into a cult that promises to exorcise her demons.

A great cycle of time is ending, as it did once before, in the bygone days of witchcraft and wars of religion. The lives of Renaissance wizard John Dee and rogue philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake, haunt the present: their stories, true and false, are being reenacted in the peaceful Faraway Hills and may hold the key to the future.

It is the dark of the year, between Halloween and the winter solstice, and the gateway is open between the worlds of the living and the dead. Pierce and Rosie, Samantha and Rose Ryder, and their enemies and allies -- who have powers hidden until now--must take sides in an age-old war that is approaching the final battle.

Or is it? In a John Crowley novel, nothing is as it seems. Crowley draws us into a cosmic tug-of-war between familiarity and strangeness, couples us with characters much like ourselves, and then works his own potent magic on the proceedings. Daemonomania is a journey into the very mystery of existence: what is, what went before, and what could break through at any moment in our lives.

Endless Things is the fourth and final novel in John Crowley's AEgypt sequence. Crowley explores transformations physical, magical, alchemical, and personal, through the interwoven histories of philosopher-martyr Giordano Bruno, the marriage of the Winter King and the beginning of the Thirty Years War, the fragmented story of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross, and the restoration of Pierce Moffett to the world and time and place which he has made for himself.

In the years since the Hooded Man emerged from the forest to defeat the new Sheriff of Nottingham, his reputation has spread. Now a new threat has risen and The Dragon and The Widow must be tackled by Robert and his band. But when an assassin is dispatched, just as skilled as Robert with a bow and arrow, the Hooded Man finds himself once more fighting to survive!

Contents:

• v - Introduction (The World Below) - essay by Everett F. Bleiler
• 1 - The Amphibians - [Amphibians - 1] - (1925) - novel by S. Fowler Wright
• 204 - The World Below - [Amphibians - 2] - (1929) - novel by S. Fowler Wright

The World Below is about an adventurer who travels 500,000 years into the future with the aid of a time machine. There he encounters a race of intelligent furry beings, the Amphibians. With their help he explores the planet and is eventually captured by the Dwellers, super-intelligent beings who direct the destinies of the planet.

Publication can be confusing as both the first and second installment have been published as The World Below. They are typically paired as The Amphibians (part 1) and The World Below (part 2), or as The World Below (part 1) and The Dwellers (part 2).

From quiet, elegiac, contemporary tales to far-future, deep-space sagas, the stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Karen Joy Fowler for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 demonstrate the vast spectrum of what science fiction and fantasy aims to illuminate, displaying the full gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears -- of not just what we can accomplish or destroy as a person, but what we can accomplish or destroy as a people -- and throwing us into strange new worlds that can only be explored when we shed the shackles of reality.

Table of Contents
(works which are available to read online for free are linked)

Editorial

• Foreword by John Joseph Adams
• Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler

Fantasy

• Meet Me in Iram by Sofia Samatar from Meet Me in Iram/Those Are the Pearls
• Interesting Facts by Adam Johnson from Harper's Magazine
• The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary by Kij Johnson from Clarkesworld Magazine
• The Mushroom Queen by Liz Ziemska from Tin House
• Tea Time short story by Rachel Swirsky from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Duniazát by Salman Rushdie from The New Yorker
• The Thirteen Mercies by Maria Dahvana Headley from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Things You Can Buy for a Penny short story by Will Kaufman from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller from Uncanny Magazine
• Ambiguity Machines: An Examination by Vandana Singh from Tor.com

Science Fiction

• The Game of Smash and Recovery by Kelly Link from Strange Horizons
• Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente from Uncanny Magazine
• By Degrees and Dilatory Time by S.L. Huang from Strange Horizons
• The Daydreamer by Proxy by Dexter Palmer from The Bestiary
• Headshot by Julian Mortimer Smith from Terraform
• No Placeholder for You, My Love by Nick Wolven from Asimov's Science Fiction
• Lightning Jack's Last Ride by Dale Bailey from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Rat Catcher's Yellows short story by Charlie Jane Anders from Press Start to Play
• Three Bodies at Mitanni (podcast) by Seth Dickinson from Analog Science Fiction & Fact
• The Great Silence by Allora & Calzadilla & Ted Chiang from e-flux journal

After centuries of calm, the Nameless One is stirring.

An army is gathering; thousands of giants, ogres, and other creatures are joining forces from all across the Desolate Lands, united, for the first time in history, under one, black banner. By the spring, or perhaps sooner, the Nameless One and his forces will be at the walls of the great city of Avendoom.

Unless Shadow Harold, master thief, can find some way to stop them.

Epic fantasy at its best, Shadow Prowler is the first in a trilogy that follows Shadow Harold on his quest for a magic Horn that will restore peace to the Kingdom of Siala. Harold will be accompanied on his quest by an Elfin princess, Miralissa, her elfin escort, and ten Wild Hearts, the most experienced and dangerous fighters in their world...and by the king's court jester (who may be more than he seems... or less).

Reminiscent of Moorcock's Elric series, Shadow Prowler is the first work to be published in English by the bestselling Russian fantasy author Alexey Pehov. The book was translated by Andrew Bromfield, best known for his work on the highly successful Night Watch series.

Tristen is a weapon in an ancient war between wizardry and sorcery. He is a summoning and a shaping, brought to life by a wizard. And his sword is a weapon as well. Its keen blade, marked Illusion on one side and Truth on the other, once helped Tristen win the throne of Ylesuin for the young king Cefwyn, gaining Tristen the stewardship of the brave country of Amfel.

But the scarlet banners of war are unfolding again, and far more than the kingdom is at stake. Now Tristen must take up the sword -- as well as the Sihhe magic he has forsworn. He is destiny's own, created a combatant in a far older and more fearsome conflict than any ever imagined by mere mortal man. And he is about to do battle once more....

Author of The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, one of the most acclaimed fantasy series of all time, master storyteller Stephen R. Donaldson returns with the second book in his long-awaited new science fiction series--a story about dark passions, perilous alliances, and dubious heroism set in a stunningly imagined future.

Beautiful, brilliant, and dangerous, Morn Hyland is an ex-police officer for the United Mining Companies--and the target of two ruthless, powerful men. One is the charismatic ore-pirate Nick Succorso, who sees Morn as booty wrested from his vicious rival, Angus Thermopyle. thermopyle once made the mistake of underestimating Morn and now he's about to pay the ultimate price. Both men think they can possess her, but Morn is no one's trophy--and no one's pawn.

Meanwhile, withing the borders of Forbidden Space, wait the Amnioin, an alien race capable of horrific atrocities. The Amnion want something unspeakable from humanity--and they will go to unthinkable lengths to get it.

In Forbidden Knowledge, Stephen R. Donaldson spins a galaxy-wide web of intrigue, deception, and betrayal that tightens with inexorable strength around characters and readers alike.

Karyn and her husband Roy had come to the peaceful California village of Drago to escape the savagery of the city. On the surface Drago appeared to be like most small rural towns.

But it was not.

The village had a most unsavory history. Unexplained disappearances, sudden deaths.

People just vanished, never to be found.

For Karyn it was the howling.

The howling that had heralded the nightmare in Drago... the nightmare that had joined her husband Roy to the she-wolf Marcia and should have ended forever with fire.

But it hadn't.

Roy and Marcia were still alive, and deadly, and thirsty for the most horrifying vengeance imaginable...

They are man. And they are beast.

Once again they stalk the night, eyes aflame, teeth flashing in vengeance.

Malcolm is the young one.

He must choose between the familiar way of the human and the seductive howling of the wolf.

Those who share his blood want to make him one of them.

Those who fear him want him dead.

Only one woman and one man want to help him.

Even though they can't believe their ears. Or their eyes.

The war in the Land of the Faerie has finally ended. Prince Cassandra dispatches Stormwolf, formerly a Hound but cured by his prince's magic and restored to the Rider he once was, to the Shadowlands to call home the People who remain refugees there. But Stormwolf finds the Hounds of the Wild Hunt now prey upon the souls of the humans, draining them of the magic which is the very lifeblood of the People. With the help of Valory Martin, a mortal psychic, Stormwolf must find the magic needed to defeat the Hunt before it's too late.

Zanos the Gladiator and Astra, a master reader, are loyal citizens of the Aventine Empire. Nevertheless, one holds a deadly secret and the other is drawn into a high-level conspiracy that brings them together and propels them into a desperate flight to the Savage Empire. A prophecy of peace and hope might provide a new life for them there--if their pursuing enemies don't kill them first. One of Zanos and Astra's new friends in the Savage Empire is the blind reader Torio, who has unexpectedly gained the rare talent of prophecy. The cryptic messages of his new gift send Zanos, Astra, Torio, and his beloved Melissa on a danger-filled journey north to Zanos's homeland. There, each one finds a personal destiny, and all must pay a price for confronting the lethal Sorcerers of the Frozen Isles.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Flight to the Savage Empire - [The Savage Empire - 4] - (1986) - novel by Jean Lorrah and Winston A. Howlett
• 179 - Sorcerers of the Frozen Isles - [The Savage Empire - 5] - (1986) - novel by Jean Lorrah

In the Aventine Empire, gladiator games still slake the multitudes' undying thirst for blood. Magister Astra hated the games - with her telepathic powers, she felt the warriors' agonies as her own. But the Master had once again sent her there to tend the wounded: it was a punishment - but for what? Even her strongest Reading couldn't tell her. Not until an unexpected death and an exotic, mind-bending drug brought her into the pat of the ex-slave warrior Zanos did Astra begin to understand the web of deceit, greed, and vengeance that would send them both in a desperate Flight To The Savage Empire.

The Strangers from Africa arrived on the shores of the Savage Empire seeking aid in battle to the death against Z'Nelia the Witch-Queen. The powerful adept was forced to refuse them, for his true duity was to protect the people of his own kingdom from harm. But when the Africans kidnapped his brother by marrage, Wulfston was forced to cross the seas in pursuit of his traitorous guests. And what began as a simple rescue mission became a deadly contest of wills.

Owls Hoot in the Daytime & Other Omens is the 5th and final volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume contains all of the John the Balladeer stories (sometimes better known as Silver John), Manly's most famous character.

Contents:

• Introduction by Karl Edward Wagner
• O Ugly Bird!
• The Desrick on Yandro
• Vandy, Vandy
• One Other
• Call Me From the Valley
• The Little Black Train
• Shiver in the Pines
• Walk Like A Mountain
• On the Hills and Everywhere
• Old Devlins Was A-Waiting
• Nine Yards of Other Cloth
• Wonder As I Wander
• Farther Down the Trail
• Trill Coster's Burden
• The Spring
• Owls Hoot in the Daytime
• Can These Bones Live?
• Nobody Ever Goes There
• Where Did She Wander?
• Afterword by Gerald W. Page

The world of Myrial is racing toward apocalypse. For aeons, its mysterious Curtain Walls have functioned to separate realm from realm, and race from race, so that each cordoned area remains a sanctuary for its species. But now the miraculous walls that have provided order for so long are disintegrating with disastrous results.

Mingling climates are causing unrelenting rains or deadly droughts, while warlike races are preying mercilessly on the helpless and meek. And the carnage will only grow worse unless a seasoned woman-warrior, a brazen firedrake, and a venerable Dragon with amazing telepathic powers--all trusted members of the Shadowleague--succeed where everyone else has failed. For they must first locate the heart of Myrial, where the secret for undoing this disaster resides. In order to reach their goal, however, they must overcome treachery, intrigue, and evil--and a mysterious figure from the past whose actions threaten to tear the Shadowleague apart.

On the world of Myrial, the mysterious Curtain Walls have begun to fall and the realms and races that have been carefully separated from the beginning of time are now confronting each other, with terrible consequences. Hideous winged creatures have attacked the city of Tiarond, turning its streets and public squares into a killing ground. As bewildered groups of survivors flee the city in all directions, others make the treacherous journey to the sacred Temple, where the ancient power that can save the world lies hidden.

Meanwhile, two women warriors and a brazen firedrake journey to the realm of the Shadowleague, taking with them a Dragon Seer's telepathic knowledge that might be used to repair the Curtain Walls. Yet not even that will be enough. For before the Shadowleague can act to save a rapidly unraveling reality, it must decide if it will trust a ruthless exile with a bloody past who can bring order to Myrial--or hasten its harrowing descent into annihilation.

The Curtain Walls have fallen--leaving the world of Myrial vulnerable to unknown enemies from other realms. A slaughter by brutal winged invaders has left the city of Tiarond reeling, and the laws governing reality itself no longer seem to hold. Under the rule of a renegade leader, the Shadowleague slowly gathers itself together from its tattered remnants and braces for a devastating attack meant to shatter it forever. Missing is a ring, the symbol of Myrial's divine power--and a reminder to its new ruler of the part he played in the collapse of the Curtain Walls. It must be found before his secret is discovered.

Missing also is the one man whose mind holds the Dragon Seer's knowledge of all tribal memories. Two warriors and a firedrake embark on an urgent mission to find him--before the Dragons do.

When all hope seems lost, a young boy points the way to an amazing discovery. Caverns beneath Tiarond hold ancient artifacts that just might be the key they're all searching for--but which they may be sorry they've found...

The long-awaited return to Emma Newman's popular fantasy series, A Little Knowledge takes us back to the Split Worlds, where dynastic families feud across the ages, furthering the agendas of their cruel supernatural patrons.

"Emma Newman is an extraordinary new voice in SF/F." ?Paul Cornell, Hugo Award winner, and author of London Falling and Saucer Country

Cathy and Will are now the Duchess and Duke of Londinium, the biggest Fae-touched Nether city, but they have different ideas of what their authority offers. Pressured by his Fae patron, Lord Iris, Will struggles to maintain total control whilst knowing he must have a child with his difficult wife. Cathy wants to muscle the Court through two hundred years of social change and free it from its old-fashioned moral strictures. But Cathy learns just how dangerous it can be for a woman who dares to speak out...

Meanwhile, as Sam learns more about the Elemental Court it becomes clear that the Fae are not the only threat to humanity. Sam realises that he has to make enemies of the most powerful people on the planet, or risk becoming the antithesis of all he believes in.

Threatened by secret societies, hidden power networks, and Fae machinations, can Sam and Cathy survive long enough to make the changes they want to see in the world?

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, April 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Xeelee: Endurance (2015).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction I: First, Some Jokes - essay by Pat Murphy
• Introduction II: Transformations in Reading - essay by Karen Joy Fowler
• Birth Days - (2003) - short story by Geoff Ryman
• Everything But the Signature is Me - (1978) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill - (2003) - short story by Sandra McDonald
• Boys - (2003) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• Genre: A Word Only the French Could Love - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• excerpts from Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls - (2003) - short fiction by Matt Ruff
• Judging the Tiptree - essay by Suzy McKee Charnas
• The Catgirl Manifesto: An Introduction - (2003) - short fiction by Richard Calder [as by Christina Flook]
• Looking Through Lace - (2003) - novella by Ruth Nestvold
• "Tiptree" and History - essay by Joanna Russ
• What I Didn't See - (2002) - short story by Karen Joy Fowler
• The Snow Queen - (1844) - novelette by Hans Christian Andersen
• The Lady of the Ice Garden - (2003) - novelette by Kara Dalkey
• Travels with the Snow Queen - (1996) - novelette by Kelly Link

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2) - (2005) - essay by Debbie Notkin
• Talking Too Much: About James Tiptree, Jr. - (2005) - essay by Julie Phillips
• Letter to Rudolf Arnheim - (2005) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation - (2005) - short fiction by Raphael Carter
• The Gift - (2004) - novella by L. Timmel Duchamp
• excerpts from Camouflage - (2005) - short fiction by Joe Haldeman
• excerpts from Troll: A Love Story - (2005) - short fiction by Johanna Sinisalo
• Looking for Clues - (2005) - essay by Nalo Hopkinson
• Nirvana High - (2004) - novelette by Eileen Gunn and Leslie What
• Five Fucks - (1996) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• All of Us Can Almost... - (2004) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Brains of Female Hyena Twins - (2005) - essay by Gwyneth Jones
• Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea - (1994) - short fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Kissing Frogs - (2004) - short story by Jaye Lawrence

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3) - essay by Jeffrey D. Smith
• Have Not Have - (2001) - novelette by Geoff Ryman
• The Glass Bottle Trick - (2000) - short story by Nalo Hopkinson
• Wooden Bride - (2004) - short story by Margo Lanagan
• Dearth - (2005) - short story by Aimee Bender
• Mountain Ways - (1996) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Shame - (2006) - essay by Pam Noles
• The Future of Female: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode - (1990) - essay by Dorothy Allison
• Liking What You See: A Documentary - (2002) - novella by Ted Chiang
• The Girl Who Was Plugged In - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Dear Alice Sheldon - (2006) - essay by L. Timmel Duchamp
• Little Faces - (2005) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• Knapsack Poems - (2002) - short story by Eleanor Arnason

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

Set in the same universe as Arkfall (although a totally independent story), The Ice Owl tells a tale capturing that moment when we start to lose our childhood...when we start to realize that our parents and the "grown-ups" are just as flawed as we are... everyone struggling to deal with their own demons.

It is also a story about past crimes and the haunting echo of ghosts long dead, of a life-long quest for redemption and, for some, the final revenge for crimes lost in the stellar dust...

In the domed city of Atlanta, after the breakup of the United States, a young writer named Julian Cawthorn is in trouble. Because he insulted the daughter of a public official, Cawthorn is out of work, and virtually unemployable. He begs a temporary job on the city newspaper and finds himself assigned to cover the first public appearance of the aliens Cygnusians, travelers from outer space who have been living in seclusion in Atlanta while visiting Earth.

A Christian revivalist dictatorship rules Atlanta; church services are as much social as they are religious events. When one of the aliens chooses to appear at a church service, Julian watches as the first alien from space stands up and is "saved". The alien's voluntary salvation is taken as a sign that the state religion is indeed the one true religion, and minority groups, previously tolerated, are attacked by gangs, leaving Atlanta in turmoil.

The service is a turning point in Julian's life. He is hired by Fiona Bitler, hostess to and protector of the aliens; at her invitation he goes to work in the secret alien enclave. In this environment Julian comes to know the fascinating aliens. He is mystified by the aliens' interest in his personal life and cannot understand how they have acquired so many oddly human characteristics in their brief period on Earth.

Apprenticed to a venerable wizard when his hunter and trapper parents disappear into the forest never to be seen again, Darian is difficult and strong willed--much to the dismay of his kindly master. But a sudden twist of fate will change his life forever, when the ransacking of his village forces him to flee into the great mystical forest. It is here in the dark forest that he meets his destiny, as the terrifying and mysterious Hawkpeople lead him on the path to maturity. Now they must lead the assault on his besieged home in a desperate attempt to save his people from certain death!

It has been four years since Darian saw his village sacked and burned by barbarians. Taking refuge with the Hawkbrothers, he soon finds his life's calling--as a Healing Adept. But even as he learns the mystical ways of this ancient race, Darian cannot escape the dangers threatening his future. Another tribe of barbarians is approaching. The time has come...to stand up and fight.

From fantasy legends Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon comes the third and final volume in a powerful saga charged with war and magic, life and love....

Two years after his parents disappearance, Darian has sought refuge and training from the mysterious Hawkbrothers. Now he has opened his heart to a beautiful young healer. Finally Darian has found peace and acceptance in his life. That is, until he learns that his parents are still alive-and trapped behind enemy borders....

Angel Crawford is a loser.

Living with her alcoholic deadbeat dad in the swamps of southern Louisiana, she's a high school dropout with a pill habit and a criminal record who's been fired from more crap jobs than she can count. Now on probation for a felony, it seems that Angel will never pull herself out of the downward spiral her life has taken.

That is, until the day she wakes up in the ER after overdosing on painkillers. Angel remembers being in an horrible car crash, but she doesn't have a mark on her. To add to the weirdness, she receives an anonymous letter telling her there's a job waiting for her at the parish morgue--and that it's an offer she doesn't dare refuse.

Before she knows it she's dealing with a huge crush on a certain hunky deputy and a brand new addiction: an overpowering craving for brains. Plus, her morgue is filling up with the victims of a serial killer who decapitates his prey--just when she's hungriest!

Angel's going to have to grow up fast if she wants to keep this job and stay in one piece. Because if she doesn't, she's dead meat. Literally.

Angel Crawford is finally starting to get used to life as a brain-eating zombie, but her problems are far from over. Her felony record is coming back to haunt her, more zombie hunters are popping up, and she's beginning to wonder if her hunky cop-boyfriend is involved with the zombie mafia. Yeah, that's right--the zombie mafia.

Throw in a secret lab and a lot of conspiracy, and Angel's going to need all of her brainpower--and maybe a brain smoothie as well--in order to get through it without falling apart.

Our favourite white trash zombie, Angel Crawford, has enough problems of her own, what with dealing with her alcoholic, deadbeat dad, issues with her not-quite boyfriend, the zombie mafia, industrial espionage and evil corporations. Oh, and it's raining, and won't let up.

But things get even crazier when a zombie movie starts filming in town, and Angel begins to suspect that it's not just the plot of the movie that's rotten. Soon she's fighting her way through mud, blood, bullets and intrigue, even as zombies, both real and fake, prowl the streets.

Angel's been through more than her share of crap, but this time she's in way over her head. She'll need plenty of brainpower to fit all the pieces--and body parts--together in order to save herself, her town, and quite possibly the human race.

Our favorite zombie Angel Crawford has come a long way from her days as a pain-pill-addicted high school dropout with a felony record. After a year highlighted by murder, kidnapping, and the loss of her home, all she wants to do is kick back, relax, and maybe even think about college.

But when key members of the "Zombie Mafia" go missing, she has no choice but to get involved. Angel is certain Saberton Corporation is behind the disappearances, yet she can't shake the sense that a far deeper conspiracy is at work. With the small band of friends she can trust, Angel strikes out to track down the missing zombies.

But when unexpected danger threatens to destroy her, all the brains and bravado in the world may not be enough to keep her from going to pieces.

Angel Crawford has buried her loser past and is cruising along in undead high gear--that is, until a murder-by-decapitation sends her on a hazardous detour. As Angel hunts for the killer, she uncovers a scheme that would expose zombies to the public and destroy the life she's built, and she's determined not to rest until she finds out who's behind it.

Soon she's neck-deep in lies, redneck intrigue, zombie hunters, and rot-sniffing cadaver dogs. It's up to her to unravel the truth and snuff out the conspiracy before the existence of zombies makes headline news and she's outed as a monster.

But Angel hasn't quite escaped the pill-popping ghosts of her past--not with an illicit zombie pharmaceutical at her fingertips. Good thing she's absolutely sure she can handle the drug's unpredictable side effects and still take down the bad guys...or maybe she's only one bad choice away from being dead meat--for real this time.

Angel knows a thing or two about kicking ass, but now the ass she needs to kick might be her own.

Angel Crawford has finally pulled herself together (literally!) after her disastrous dismemberment on Mardi Gras. She's putting the pieces of her life back in order and is ready to tackle whatever the future holds.

Too bad the future is a nasty bitch. There's a new kind of zombie in town: mindless shamblers, infectious and ravenous.

With the threat of a full-blown shambler pandemic looming, and a loved one stricken, Angel and the "real" zombies scramble to find a cure. Yet when Angel uncovers the true reason the plague is spreading so quickly, she adds "no-holds-barred revenge" to her to-do list.

Angel is busting her ass dealing with shambling hordes, zombie gators, government jerks, and way too many mosquitos, but this white trash chick ain't giving up.

Good thing, since the fate of the world is resting on her undead shoulders.