Search Worlds Without End

Some places are too good to be true.

Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map.

In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things.

After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico. And the closer Mona gets to her mother's past, the more she understands that the people of Wink are very, very different...

From one of our most talented and original new literary voices comes the next great American supernatural novel: a work that explores the dark dimensions of the hometowns and the neighbors we thought we knew.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - The Menhir - short story
• 13 - M81: Ursa Major - (1956) - short story (variant of The End of the Journey)
• 32 - The Enlightened Ones - (1958) - novelette
• 59 - Judgement Day - (1963) - short story
• 70 - The Intruders - (1958) - novelette (variant of Intruders on the Moon 1957)
• 93 - The Butterflies - (1956) - short story
• 106 - The Lizard of Woz - (1958) - short story
• 117 - Welcome Home - (1963) - short story

Since his wife, Michelle, left seven years ago, Jeffy Coltrane has worked to maintain a normal life for himself and his eleven-year-old daughter, Amity, in Suavidad Beach. It's a quiet life, until a local eccentric known as Spooky Ed shows up on their doorstep.

Ed entrusts Jeffy with hiding a strange and dangerous object--something he calls "the key to everything"--and tells Jeffy that he must never use the device. But after a visit from a group of ominous men, Jeffy and Amity find themselves accidentally activating the key and discovering an extraordinary truth. The device allows them to jump between parallel planes at once familiar and bizarre, wondrous and terrifying. And Jeffy and Amity can't help but wonder, could Michelle be just a click away?

Jeffy and Amity aren't the only ones interested in the device. A man with a dark purpose is in pursuit, determined to use its grand potential for profound evil. Unless Amity and Jeffy can outwit him, the place they call home may never be safe again.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May-June 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 17 (2012), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

The Weapon Shops of Isher

By the year 4784, the Empire of Isher ruled the universe and an impetuous willful girl ruled the empire. Into this epoch, the most scientifically powerful period humanity ever knew, a time-staggering bombshell was tossed. It came in the form of a man from today, a victim of a conflict which was as old as that empire and which now threatened to be the end of both Isher and its worlds.

Gateway to Elsewhere

Tony Gregg was just an ordinary everyday American until the day he came into possession of an old Barkut coin. He knew that it was more than just a collector's curio because there was no such place on any map of Earth, past or present. He learned then that it could be used as a key - a key to a GATEWAY TO ELSEWHERE.

When Ron runs away, he ends up in Bordertown, a grim city that lies between the real world and the world of faerie, a place where elf and human gangs stalk the streets side by side, and where magic works better than technology. If the city doesn't kill him, it just may teach him what it is to be human.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold
• The Green Child - short story by John Crowley
• Pooka's Bridge - short story by Gillian Fitzgerald
• The Hosting of the Sidhe - (1893) - poem by William Butler Yeats
• The Judgement of St. Yves - short story by Evangeline Walton
• Sweetly the Waves Call to Me - short story by Pat Murphy
• The Merman in Love - poem by Jane Yolen
• The Renders - short story by Janny Wurts
• The Golden Slipper - (1959) - short story by Antanas Vaiciulaitis
• A Spell for Sleeping - poem by Alastair Reid
• The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship - (1972) - short story by Gabriel García Márquez (trans. of El último viaje del Buque Fantasma 1954)
• Pale Horse - (1969) - poem by Masao Takiguchi
• The Thunder Cat - (1965) - short story by Nicholas Stuart Gray
• Queen Louisa - (1972) - short story by John Gardner
• The Song of the Dragon's Daughter - (1977) - poem by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Prodigal Daughter - novelette by Jessica Amanda Salmonson
• Little Boy Waiting at the Edge of the Darkwood - short fiction by Andrew J. Offutt
• The Tree's Wife - (1978) - short story by Jane Yolen
• Introduction (An Islandian Tale: The Story of Alwina) - essay by Tappan King
• An Islandian Tale: The Story of Alwina - (1981) - novelette by Austin Tappan Wright
• The Unicorn Masque - novelette by Ellen Kushner
• The Succubus - (1971) - poem by John Alfred Taylor
• Ku Mei Li: A Chinese Ghost Story - novelette by M. Lucie Chin
• Tatuana's Tale - (1973) - short story by Miguel Angel Asturias (trans. of Leyenda de la Tatuana 1930)
• Overheard on a Saltmarsh - (1912) - poem by Harold Monro
• Tales of Houdini - short story by Rudy Rucker
• Oh! My Name Is John Wellington Wells - (1877) - poem by W. S. Gilbert
• Elric at the End of Time - novelette by Michael Moorcock
• Song of Amergin - (1948) - poem by Robert Graves
• Viriconium Knights - [Viriconium] - short story by M. John Harrison
• The Magician - (1971) - short story by William Kotzwinkle
• Sea Change - short story by C. J. Cherryh
• Contributors' Notes - essay by uncredited

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold
• In the Very Earliest Time - poem by Eskimo Chant
• Junction's Pleasure - novelette by Richard Englehart
• The Ern Queen - short story by Jane Newbold
• Gwydion's Loss of Llew - poem by Ellen Kushner
• Amigo Heliotropo - (1963) - short story by Felix Marti-Ibanez
• The Golden Goat - short story by Michael de Larrabeiti
• The Island and the Cattle - (1979) - poem by Nicholas Moore
• The Fallen Country - novelette by S. P. Somtow
• Small Dragon - (1962) - poem by Brian Patten
• The Twelve Dancing Princesses - (1971) - poem by Anne Sexton
• The Courtship of Mr. Lyon - (1979) - short story by Angela Carter
• Lord of the Reedy River - (1971) - poem by Donovan Leitch
• In the Hall of Grief - short story by Jane Yolen
• Magic Strings - poem by Li Ho
• The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World - (1971) - short story by Gabriel García Márquez (trans. of El ahogado más hermoso del mundo 1968)
• Haunted - (1955) - poem by R. P. Lister
• Visitors to a Castle - (1972) - short story by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• A Tourist Camped on a Donegal Field - poem by Terri Windling
• Gran and the Roaring Boys - (1974) - short story by Jenny Sullivan
• Homecoming - (1967) - poem by Peter Viereck
• The Little Dirty Girl - novelette by Joanna Russ
• A Young Man, Gleaming, White - (1968) - short story by Joäo Guimaräes Rosa
• Cerridwen and the Quern of Time - short story by Paul Hazel
• The Ship from Away - short story by Evangeline Walton
• The Day the World Died - short fiction by Thomas Wiloch
• Blood and Dreams - novelette by Richard Monaco
• The Trash Dragon of Shensi - (1978) - poem by Andrew Glazer
• The Vanishing Trolls - (1980) - short story by Gaird Wallig
• The Magic Wood - (1945) - poem by Henry Treece
• The Healer - novelette by Robin McKinley
• The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath - novelette by Patricia A. McKillip
• The Moon Porthole - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• Contributors' Notes - essay by uncredited

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Betty Ballantine
• God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot - (1966) - poem by Leonard Cohen
• The Stagman - novelette by Robin McKinley
• Harvest Child - short story by Steve Rasnic Tem
• And When the Green Man Comes - (1966) - poem by John Haines
• Simpson's Lesser Sphynx - short story by Esther M. Friesner
• Intruder - (1975) - poem by Susan Feldman
• The Duke of Orkney's Leonardo - (1976) - short story by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• The Unknown - (1982) - short story by María Luisa Bombal (trans. of Lo secreto 1941)
• In the Court of the Crimson King - (1969) - poem by Peter Sinfield
• The Warrior's Daughter - short story by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe
• Gretel in Darkness - (1969) - poem by Louise Gluck
• Rocinante - short story by Steven R. Boyett
• Springsong in East Gruesome, Vermont - (1968) - poem by Ramon Guthrie
• The Idol's Eye - short story by James P. Blaylock
• The Lady of the House of Love - (1975) - short story by Angela Carter
• The Undead - (1954) - poem by Richard Wilbur
• Voices Answering Back: The Vampires - (1969) - poem by Lawrence Raab
• Happy Dens: or, A Day in the Old Wolves Home - short fiction by Jane Yolen
• The Six Badgers - (1960) - poem by Robert Graves
• The Chapel Perilous - (1955) - short story by Naomi Mitchison
• Malagan and the Lady of Rascas - short story by Michael de Larrabeiti
• Bones - novelette by P. C. Hodgell
• The Toaster - (1980) - poem by William Jay Smith
• The One We Were - novelette by Tanith Lee
• On the Dark Side of the Station Where the Train Never Stops - short story by Pat Murphy
• Simultaneously - (1964) - poem by David Ignatow
• "Franz Kafka" by Jorge Luís Borges - (1970) - short story by Alvin Greenberg
• The Strange Fellows' Palm-Wine Tapster - (1952) - short story by Amos Tutuola
• Tort and the Dancing Market-Women - (1952) - short story by Amos Tutuola
• Kitty - (1981) - short story by Paul Bowles
• Princeps Tenebrarum - (1984) - poem by John Alfred Taylor
• Riquiqui, I Love You! - (1963) - novelette by Felix Marti-Ibanez
• Being a Giant - (1976) - poem by Robert Mezey
• A Matter of Music - novelette by Patricia A. McKillip
• Contributors' Notes - essay by uncredited
• Index to the Elsewhere Trilogy - essay by uncredited