This reprint anthology showcases the best Holmes short fiction from the last 25 years, featuring stories by such visionaries as Stephen King, Neil Gaimen, Laura King, and many others.

    From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of realism, that were imbued with energy and resilience.

    She has been called “an American virtuoso of the short story form” (Salon) and “one of the quiet giants . . . of American fiction” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, for the first time, Davis’s short stories will be collected in one volume, from the groundbreaking Break It Down (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee Varieties of Disturbance. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is an event in American letters.

    A short story about the universe and your place in it.

    Howard Phillips Lovecraft may have been a writer for only a short time, but the creations he left behind after his death in 1937 have shaped modern horror more than any other author in the last two centuries: the shambling god Cthulhu, and the other deities of the Elder Things, the Outer Gods, and the Great Old Ones, and Herbert West, Reanimator, a doctor who unlocked the secrets of life and death at a terrible cost. In Lovecraft Unbound, more than twenty of today's most prominent writers of literature and dark fantasy tell stories set in or inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft. 9 • Introduction (Lovecraft Unbound) • essay by Ellen Datlow 11 • The Crevasse • short story by Dale Bailey and Nathan Ballingrud 31 • The Office of Doom • [Dust Devil] • short story by Richard Bowes 43 • Sincerely, Petrified • short fiction by Anna Tambour 73 • The Din of Celestial Birds • (1997) • short story by Brian Evenson 85 • The Tenderness of Jackals • short fiction by Amanda Downum 99 • Sight Unseen • short fiction by Joel Lane 113 • Cold Water Survival • short story by Holly Phillips 139 • Come Lurk With Me and Be My Love • short fiction by William Browning Spencer 161 • Houses Under the Sea • (2006) • novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan 195 • Machines of Concrete Light and Dark • short story by Michael Cisco 213 • Leng • short fiction by Marc Laidlaw 239 • In the Black Mill • (1997) • short story by Michael Chabon 267 • One Day, Soon • short fiction by Lavie Tidhar 277 • Commencement • (2001) • novelette by Joyce Carol Oates 305 • Vernon, Driving • short fiction by Simon Kurt Unsworth 315 • The Recruiter • short fiction by Michael Shea 331 • Marya Nox • short fiction by Gemma Files 347 • Mongoose • [Boojum] • novelette by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette 375 • Catch Hell • short fiction by Laird Barron 413 • That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable • short fiction by Nick Mamatas

    Fascinating, with some stories weighted entirely differently, the original texts reveal Carver to be a more humane writer than he is usually credited with being.

    Epik High leader Tablo's short stories weave together the secrets and anxieties of youth, whispering words of solace to a lost generation.

    In one afterlife, you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. In another version, you work as a background character in other people’s dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple, or that the universe is running backward, or that you are forced to live out your afterlife with annoying versions of who you could have been. With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

    Bitter Fruit presents the best collection of Manto's writings, from his short stories, plays and sketches, to portraits of cinema artists, a few pieces on himself, and his letters to Uncle Sam which have references to communism, Russia, politics after the Partition and his own financial condition. The concluding section of the book has acknowledgements and reminiscences from Saadat's friends and relatives. Bitter Fruit includes stories like A Wet Afternoon, The Return, A Believer's Version, Toba Tek Singh, Colder Than Ice, The Assignment, Odour, By The Roadside, Bribing the Almighty, The Kingdom's End, The Woman in the Red Raincoat, The Room with the Bright Light, The Great Divide, The Angel, Siraj, An Old Fashioned Man, The Price of Freedom, It Happened in 1919, The Girl from Delhi, A Man of God, Free for All, and A Tale of 1947. There is a collection of sketches too. Manto used to write radio plays and this book has one of the dramas he penned, called In This Vortex. His short stories bring out the most delicate nuances of human nature.

    The last thing Alena Kornov wants to do is to go on the date with him. But when her family pressures her, she can’t say no. Now the ice-cream is absent, the pig is running for its life, and we won’t even mention the dead guy…

    Night Shade Books PresentsFor your 2009 Hugo Award"Best Short Story" considerationTed Chiang’s "Exhalation"As Published inEclipse Two:New Science Fiction and FantasyEdited by Jonathan Strahan

    . . and lost minds. Gris Grimly's mysterious, morbid, and macabre illustrations capture four Poe classics with an unmatchable ghoulish charm. This second installment of illustrated Poe tales, a companion to Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness, includes the perennial favorite The Tell Tale Heart, as well as The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, The Oblong Box, and The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. With little trimming and lots of gory visuals, these stories have never looked better or more frightening.

    "Grand Stand-In" is narrated by an employee of a Nuclear Family Supplemental Provider—a company that supplies "stand-ins" for families with deceased, ill, or just plain mean grandparents. And in "Blowing Up On the Spot," a young woman works sorting tiles at a Scrabble factory after her parents have spontaneously combusted.Southern gothic at its best, laced with humor and pathos, these wonderfully inventive stories explore the relationship between loss and death and the many ways we try to cope with both.

    Now, enter this visionary world - the merciless realm of the demonic Cenobites - in this collection of stories inspired by The Hellbound Heart.Featured here is the graphic work "Wordsworth," from bestselling author Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean, who unlock an explicit way to violate innocence - one torturous puzzle at a time.... New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong logs on to a disturbing website for gamers, where the challenge is agonizing, and the solution beyond painful. When his father disappears, an Oxford student returns to his family's mansion, where a strange mechanism in the cellar holds a curious power, in a haunting illustrated work by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola.

    Mary Miller's BIG WORLD is the second book and first work of fiction to come out of Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a publishing arm of the independent literary journal Hobart. The characters in Mary Miller's debut short story collection BIG WORLD are at once autonomous and lonesome, possessing both a longing to connect with those around them and a cynicism regarding their ability to do so, whether they're holed up in a motel room in Pigeon Forge with an air gun shooting boyfriend as in "Fast Trains" or navigating the rooms of their house with their dad after their mother's death as in "Leak." Mary Miller's writing is unapologetically honest and efficient and the gut-wrenching directness of her prose is reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill and Courtney Eldridge, if Gaitskill's and Eldridge's stories were set in the south and reeked of spilt beer and cigarette smoke.

    Today, as the new worlds, alternate universes, and synthetic pleasures Sheckley foretold become our reality, his vision begins to look less absurdist and more prophetic. This retrospective selection, chosen by Jonathan Lethem and Alex Abramovich, brings together the best of Sheckley’s deadpan farces, proving once again that he belongs beside such mordant critics of contemporary mores as Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and Thomas Pynchon.

    Gene Wolfe, of whom The Washington Post said, “Of all SF writers currently active none is held in higher esteem,” has selected the short fiction he considers his finest into one volume.  There are many award winners and many that have been selected for various Year’s Best anthologies among the thirty-one stories, which include: “Petting Zoo,” “The Tree Is My Hat,” “The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories,” “The Hero as Werewolf,” “Seven American Nights,” “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” “The Detective of Dreams,” and “A Cabin on the Coast.” Gene Wolfe has produced possibly the finest and most significant body of short fiction in the SF and fantasy field in the last fifty years, and is certainly among the greatest living writers to emerge from the genres.  This is the first retrospective collection of his entire career.  It is for the ages.Contents11 • The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories • [Archipelago] • (1970) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe23 • Afterword (The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories) • essay by Gene Wolfe25 • The Toy Theater • (1971) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe30 • Afterword (The Toy Theater) • essay by Gene Wolfe31 • The Fifth Head of Cerberus • (1972) • novella by Gene Wolfe76 • Afterword (The Fifth Head of Cerberus) • essay by Gene Wolfe78 • Beech Hill • (1972) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe83 • Afterword (Beech Hill) • essay by Gene Wolfe84 • The Recording • (1972) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe86 • Afterword (The Recording) • essay by Gene Wolfe88 • Hour of Trust • (1973) • novelette by Gene Wolfe112 • Afterword (Hour of Trust) • essay by Gene Wolfe114 • The Death of Dr. Island • [Archipelago] • (1973) • novella by Gene Wolfe158 • Afterword (The Death of Dr. Island) • essay by Gene Wolfe159 • La Befana • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe162 • Afterword (La Befana) • essay by Gene Wolfe163 • Forlesen • (1974) • novelette by Gene Wolfe201 • Afterword (Forlesen) • essay by Gene Wolfe202 • Westwind • (1973) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe208 • Afterword (Westwind) • essay by Gene Wolfe209 • The Hero as Werwolf • (1975) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe221 • Afterword (The Hero as Werwolf) • essay by Gene Wolfe222 • The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton • (1977) • novelette by Gene Wolfe236 • Afterword (The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton) • essay by Gene Wolfe237 • Straw • (1975) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe243 • Afterword (Straw) • essay by Gene Wolfe244 • The Eyeflash Miracles • (1976) • novella by Gene Wolfe291 • Afterword (The Eyeflash Miracles) • essay by Gene Wolfe292 • Seven American Nights • (1978) • novella by Gene Wolfe331 • Afterword (Seven American Nights) • essay by Gene Wolfe333 • The Detective of Dreams • (1980) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe346 • Afterword (The Detective of Dreams) • essay by Gene Wolfe347 • Kevin Malone • (1980) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe355 • Afterword (Kevin Malone) • essay by Gene Wolfe356 • The God and His Man • (1980) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe360 • Afterword (The God and His Man) • essay by Gene Wolfe361 • On the Train • [Redwood Coast Roamer] • (1983) • shortfiction by Gene Wolfe362 • Afterword (On the Train) • essay by Gene Wolfe363 • From the Desk of Gilmer C. Merton • (1983) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe367 • Afterword (From the Desk of Gilmer C. Merton) • essay by Gene Wolfe368 • Death of the Island Doctor • [Archipelago] • (1983) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe372 • Afterword (Death of the Island Doctor) • essay by Gene Wolfe373 • Redbeard • (1984) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe377 • Afterword (Redbeard) • essay by Gene Wolfe379 • The Boy Who Hooked the Sun • (1985) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe381 • Afterword (The Boy Who Hooked the Sun) • essay by Gene Wolfe382 • Parkroads—A Review • (1987) • shortfiction by Gene Wolfe384 • Afterword (Parkroads—A Review) • essay by Gene Wolfe385 • Game in the Pope's Head • (1988) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe390 • Afterword (Game in the Pope's Head) • essay by Gene Wolfe391 • And When They Appear • (1993) • novelette by Gene Wolfe408 • Afterword (And When They Appear) • essay by Gene Wolfe409 • Bed and Breakfast • (1996) • shortfiction by Gene Wolfe (variant of Bed & Breakfast)426 • Afterword (Bed and Breakfast) • essay by Gene Wolfe427 • Petting Zoo • (1997) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe431 • Afterword (Petting Zoo) • essay by Gene Wolfe433 • The Tree Is My Hat • (1999) • novelette by Gene Wolfe452 • Afterword (The Tree Is My Hat) • essay by Gene Wolfe454 • Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon? • (1999) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe464 • Afterword (Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?) • essay by Gene Wolfe466 • A Cabin on the Coast • (1984) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe475 • Afterword (A Cabin on the Coast) • essay by Gene Wolfe

    There's another mother and another father in this house and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home ... but will she escape and will life ever be the same again?Elsewhere in this collection, a sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who ever owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living. From the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous, Coraline & Other Stories is a journey into the dark, magical world of Neil Gaiman.All other stories in this collection beside Coraline were originally published as M is for Magic.

    Ensnared by the trappings of affluence, adrift in the emptiness of American prosperity, his characters find themselves in the midst of dramas that, however comic, pose profound questions about conformity and class, pleasure and propriety, and the conduct and meaning of an individual life. At the same time, the stories reveal their author to be a master whose prose is at once precise and sensuous, in which a shrewd eye for social detail is paired with a lyric sensitivity to the world at large. “The constants that I look for,” he wrote in the preface to The Stories of John Cheever, “are a love of light and a determination to trace some moral chain of being.”Cheever’s superlative gifts as a storyteller are evident even in his first published work, “Expelled” (1930), which appeared in The New Republic when he was only 18: “I felt that I was hearing for the first time the voice of a new generation,” said Malcolm Cowley, then an editor at the magazine. Moving to Manhattan from his native Massachusetts, Cheever began publishing stories in The New Yorker in the 1930s, establishing a crucial if sometimes contentious relationship that would last for much of his career. His debut collection, The Way Some People Live (1943), was a book that he effectively disowned, regarding it as apprentice work; the best stories in the volume, as selected by editor Blake Bailey, are here restored to print for the first time, offering—along with seven other stories that Cheever never collected—an intriguing glimpse into his early development. By the late 1940s Cheever had come into his own as a writer, achieving a breakthrough in 1947 with the Kafkaesque tale “The Enormous Radio.” It was soon followed by works of startling fluency and power, such as the unsettling “Torch Song,” with its suggestion of menace and the uncanny, as well as the searing, beautiful treatment of fraternal conflict, “Goodbye, My Brother.”Finally, when Cheever and his family moved to Westchester County in the 1950s, he began writing about the disappointments of postwar suburbia in such definitive classics as “The Sorrows of Gin,” “The Five-Forty-Eight,” “The Country Husband,” and “The Swimmer.”This volume, published to coincide with Blake Bailey’s groundbreaking biography, is the largest collection of Cheever’s stories ever published, and celebrates his indelible achievement by gathering the complete Stories of John Cheever (1978), as well as seven stories from The Way Some People Live and seven additional stories first published in periodicals between 1930 and 1953. Also included are several short essays on writers and writing, including a previously unpublished speech on Saul Bellow.Blake Bailey, volume editor, is the author of A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates. His biography of John Cheever won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

    A collection of photographs of Amanda Palmer's (of The Dresden Dolls) death in varying ways, accompanied by stories written by Neil Gaiman (Sandman comics, Coraline, Stardust, Neverwhere).

    The Wide, Wide Sea is set in the past, at a time before the Spackle War, and we get a first look at the fishing village on the sea where some very important things happen at the end of Monsters of Men.Best read after The Ask and the Answer but before Monsters.(again, hints of things to come) - Patrick Ness

    The first in a six-volume series, Volume 1: Threshold contains all of Zelazny's short works from his early years through the mid 1960s--a period of experimentation and growth that flowered into gems such as "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," "The Graveyard Heart," "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth," and "He Who Shapes." The stories in this series are enriched by editors' notes and Zelazny's own words, taken from his many essays, describing why he wrote the stories and what he thought about them in retrospect.

    Green.Kat Richardson’s Greywalker finds herself in too deep when a “simple job” goes bad and Harper Blaine is enmeshed in a tangle of dark secrets and revenge from beyond the grave.For centuries, the being that we know as Noah lived among us. Now he is dead, and fallen-angel-turned-detective Remy Chandler has been hired to find out who killed him in a whodunit by Thomas E. Sniegoski.

    Whether contemplating the sound of a tropical downpour, or the fragrance of lime trees in the Himalayas or on a year spent with his cat Suzie, Ruskin Bond transports us to a quieter, more elegant world where time moves at a gentle pace.

    A short story involving Kit & Rina from the DarkRiver pack. Timeline: Takes place some time after Hostage to Pleasure and before Branded by Fire.This story can be found on Nalini Singh's official website.

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

    

    Find out why it would be great to get accidentally killed by a bus. Find out how to perform hardcore sex and never have any fun. Find out why it would be better if your mom was a Ugandan hooker. And find out how to fill your mouth with confetti before blowing your own head off.Because a dead horse isn't ever fully beaten. Because when you get to Hell there will be a seat saved for you. Because you can't afford too many hellos. Because every time you come home, you stand in the door way and think, "It's time for a monster to eat me now." And then a monster eats you!Be brave enough to read this book.Be brave enough to clone yourself then kill the clone and eat it.

    On the verge of giving up—anchored to dreams that never came true and to people who have long since disappeared from their lives—Van Booy's characters walk the streets of these stark and beautiful stories until chance meetings with strangers force them to face responsibility for lives they thought had continued on without them.Love begins in winter --Tiger, tiger --The Missing statues --The Coming and going of strangers --The City of windy trees

    In "Imitation" she explrored a unique aspect of the Nigerian-American experience. Following the fashion of her country, Nkem has left Nigeria to raise her children in America, while her husband Obiora remains in their homeland. One day, a friend calls Nkem from Africa with the news that Obiora is keeping a girlfriend. "This is what happens when you marry a rich man," says the friend. Caught between two worlds and wanting the best for her children, Nkem faces a difficult decision. All the more powerful for its restraint and calm, "Imitation" is a fascinating tale of one woman's struggle against isolation.

    In "Blythe," an attorney who has become a stay-at-home mother takes a night class in poetry and meets another full-time mother, one whose charismatic brilliance changes everything. In "The Wife of the Dictator," that eponymous wife ("brought back . . . from [the dictator's] last visit to America") grows more desperately, menacingly isolated every day. In "Delicate Edible Birds," a group of war correspondents--a lone, high-spirited woman among them--falls sudden prey to a brutal farmer while fleeing Nazis in the French countryside. In "Lucky Chow Fun," Groff returns us to Templeton, the setting of her first book, for revelations about the darkness within even that idyllic small town. In some of these stories, enormous changes happen in an instant. In others, transformations occur across a lifetime--or several lifetimes. Throughout the collection, Groff displays particular and vivid preoccupations. Crime is a motif--sex crimes, a possible murder, crimes of the heart. Love troubles recur--they're in every story--love in alcoholism, in adultery, in a flood, even in the great flu epidemic of 1918. Some of the love has depths, which are understood too late; some of the love is shallow, and also understood too late. And mastery is a theme--Groff's women swim and baton twirl, become poets, or try and try again to achieve the inner strength to exercise personal freedom. Overall, these stories announce a notable new literary master. Dazzlingly original and confident, Delicate Edible Birds further solidifies Groff's reputation as one of the foremost talents of her generation.

    Bennett's dream home from his childhoodyears. The house was creepy and ominous and Bobby Bennett found he didn't like it much.When Bobby explores the attic and discovers an old radio that was 'cool' enough to put in his bedroom, things begin to happen.Strange and evil things!First, the whispers in the night, then the ghostly image...it wantsBobby to do unspeakable deeds. And most importantly, it wants him to 'replace'! Bobby is terrified to find out what that means!But is Bobby only dreaming or is this nightmare real? He wasn't sure until tragedy struck his new friend. Evil can hide in the strangestand most innocent of places. Can Bobby resist the demands of the ghost who is driven by the 'Demon from Hell' before it is too late for his family...and himself?

    Following his World Fantasy Award-winning Tiny Deaths, this new collection puts a bizarre twist on the love story. What is love, why does it hurt so much, and how is it we keep coming back for more?Love Songs is sometimes poignant, sometimes cruel - but always as startling and fresh as Shearman's fans have come to expect.

    Filled with humor and pathos, with the nearness and danger of life on the edge, these stories chart the anxious inner moments of four related characters.Johnson introduces the teenage Delia in the midst of working up the nerve for a first kiss; and Dooley, who drives a forklift for a living but dreams of a career in music that's been put on ice after a tragic accident. Pudge, an alcoholic who survived a cruel childhood with an abusive father, now hides from his own son, Luis; and Luis, raised without a father, concocts a suitable end for his mother's horrible boyfriend. Determined to save both Pudge and his son from an unhappy end, Johnson's cast of characters huddles together at the local laundromat, scheming.Johnson's stories are sweet, messy, and heart-rending. As we watch her characters through her wide-angle lens, she makes us believe that life is worth living even when the circumstances say otherwise. Irresistible and perfect, More of This World or Maybe Another introduces an original voice in American fiction.

    Few, however, have read his wonderful short stories.Now in one collection, by award-winning editor Andrew Barger, are the 20 greatest short stories of Leo Tolstoy, which give a snapshot of Russia and its people in the late nineteenth century. A fine introduction is given by Andrew Barger. Annotations are included of difficult Russian terms. There is also a Tolstoy biography at the start of the book with photos of Tolstoy's relatives. A Candle, After the Dance, Albert, Alyosha the Pot, An Old Acquaintance, Does a Man Need Much Land?, If You Neglect the Fire You Don't Put It Out, Khodinka: An Incident of the Coronation of Nicholas II, Lucerne, Memoirs of a Lunatic, My Dream, Recollections of a Scorer, The Empty Drum, The Long Exile, The Posthumous Papers of the Hermit Fedor Kusmich, The Young Tsar, There Are No Guilty People, Three Deaths, Two Old Men, andWhat Men Live By.Read the greatest short stories of Leo Tolstoy today!

    A lonely woman reflects on her failed marriage and the single act of violence, years buried, that brought about its destruction. In these eight beautifully written, achingly poignant, and occasionally heartbreaking stories, the fine line between right and wrong, good and bad, love and violence is walked over and over again.In "Good Girl," a depressed widower is forced to decide between the love of a good woman and the love of his own deeply flawed son. In another part of town and another time, thirteen-year-old Ellen, the central figure of "Theory of Realty," is discovering the menaces of being "at that age": too old for the dolls of her girlhood, too young to understand the weaknesses of the adults who surround her. The linked stories "Parts" and "Proof of God" offer distinct but equally correct versions of a brutal crime--one from the perspective of the victim's mother, one from the killer's.

    In her debut collection of fifteen short stories, Amina Cain makes ordinary worlds strange and spare and beautiful. A woman carves invisible images onto ice, a pair of black wings appears in front of a house, and a restless teacher sits in a gallery of miniature rooms. As Miranda Mellis describes, "The revelatory pleasure and hope [in these stories] emanate from an artistry driven by ethical desire." "I highly recommend reading I Go To Some Hollow," says Bhanu Kapil, "because of what it teaches you about love, and the relationship between love and writing." I GO TO SOME HOLLOW is published as part of the TrenchArt: Tracer Series, with an Introduction by Bhanu Kapil and collaborative visual art by Ken Erhlich and Susan Simpson.

    What happens while waiting...Poem here:http://gravitando.wordpress.com/2009/...Artwork here:https://neverwear.net/products/saucer...

    

    Contents:Wise blood --The violent bear it away --A good man is hard to find --The life you save may be your own --A stroke of good fortune --A temple of the Holy Ghost --The artificial nigger --A circle in the fire --A late encounter with the enemy --Good country people --The displaced person.

    In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing– and provide insight into the development of his early style–collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut.Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut's characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever–and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Contents: Letter from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to Walter J. Miller, 1951. Confido F U B A R Shout About It from the Housetops Ed Luby's Key Club A Song for Selma Hall of Mirrors The Nice Little People Hello, Red Little Drops of Water The Petrified Ants The Honor of a Newsboy Look at the Birdie King and Queen of the Universe The Good Explainer

    In the short story, “FUBAR,” we’re taken to a desolate building in a drab industrial complex, where a lonely office worker gains a fresh perspective on life thanks to the intervention of his free-spirited new female assistant. “FUBAR” and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut’s unique voice had been stilled forever–and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.

    They know how to fix cars and washing machines, how to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine, but they have not figured out how to prosper in the twenty-first century. Through the complex inner lives of working-class characters, Bonnie Jo Campbell illustrates the desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife, jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people have no choice but to live off what is left behind. .

    This retrospective volume includes "All Summer in a Day,” Ray Bradbury’s lasting tale of what happened on one special day; "Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, describing what happened to Charlie Gordon when he was made into a genius; "Harrison Bergeron," Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist cautionary tale of mandatory equality; and "The Electric Ant" by Philip K. Dick, concerning what Garson Poole learned after the accident that hospitalized him. This remarkable collection also features some of the most highly acclaimed, award-winning authors, including Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, Shirley Jackson, Peter S. Beagle, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, and Roger Zelazny. Hand-picked by the magazine’s current editor, this is an unmatched assemblage of appealing, first-rate fiction.ContentsIntroduction by Gordon Van Gelder"Of Time and Third Avenue" by Alfred Bester"All Summer in a Day" by Ray Bradbury"One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts" by Shirley Jackson"A Touch of Strange" by Theodore Sturgeon"Eastward ho!" by William Tenn"Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut"This Moment of the Storm" by Roger Zelazny"The Electric Ant" by Philip K. Dick"The Deathbird" by Harlan Ellison"The Women Men Don't See" by James Tiptree, Jr."I See You" by Damon Knight"The Gunslinger" by Stephen King"The Dark" by Karen Joy Fowler"Buffalo" by John Kessel"Solitude" by Ursula K. Le Guin"Mother Grasshopper" by Michael Swanwick"macs" by Terry Bisson"Creation" by Jeffrey Ford"Other People" by Neil Gaiman"Two Hearts" by Peter S. Beagle"Journey into the Kingdom" by M. Rickert"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang

    Each short story cultivates a whimsical sense of imagination and reveals a mature, darker voice than previously experienced from this legendary author. In one tale the Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news, while in another the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm betrays himself in dreaming of a "manageable war." Further storylines include an American librarian who discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is the last living Frenchman, and rivals in a supernatural battle who decide to forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry. Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside a bevy of recently released works, this haunting compilation is appealing to both genre readers and mainstream literature lovers.Includes "By Moonlight," Locus Award-winner for Best Novelette.

    And he enjoys baffling his readers with enigmas like why, after so many years of listening with no results, would a SETI director hear an artificial signal and keep it quiet? Why might an astronomer at a space station, facing imminent death from a solar radiation blast, send off a frantic message that he had discovered a Clyde Tombaugh Special? Tombaugh, of course, was the discoverer of Pluto.What really happened to Christopher Sim, the George Washington of the war against the Ashiyyur? Why had a beloved artist at the top of his profession, with everything to live for, killed himself? Why had a brilliant young biologist discovered how life got started on Earth, but neglected to tell anyone?And there are of course other anomalies to be encountered in McDevitt's work: A computer threatens the literary world, while a time traveler worries the churches. One artificial intelligence runs for president, and another claims to be a Catholic and demands access to the sacraments. Two friends discover that whenever they get together, shuttles crash, wars break out, or tidal waves hammer a coastline.A researcher watches endless fighting on another world and finally rebels against the Academy's hands-off doctrine. Meantime, a crewman stranded light-years from Earth, entertains himself by intercepting radio broadcasts from home, originally transmitted during World War II.Among other questions these tales will answer: What might happen when people in a research lab literally try to play God. Why you don't ever, ever, want to turn out the lights at Bolton's Tower in the Dakotas. Why someone might want to blow up a star. And why it would be a really good idea if Hatch kept his hands off the mallet. These, and twenty-three other cosmic rides, await the reader.Contents:Cryptic (1983)The Fort Moxie Branch (1988)Nothing Ever Happens in Rock City (2001)Tweak (2007)Melville on Iapetus (1983)Lighthouse (2006) by Jack McDevitt and Michael SharaCool Neighbor (2007) by Jack McDevitt and Michael SharaWhistle (1989)In the Tower (1987)Ignition (2005)Indomitable (2008)Last Contact (1988)Never Despair (1997)Windows (2004)Dutchman (1987)The Tomb (1991)Promises to Keep (1984)To Hell with the Stars (1987)The Mission (2004)Report from the Rear (1998)Black to Move (1982)The Far Shore (1982)Sunrise (1988)Kaminsky at War (2006)Fifth Day (2007)Deus Tex (1996)Gus (1991)Welcome to Valhalla (2008) by Jack McDevitt and Kathryn LanceTyger (1991)Auld Lang Boom (1992)Cruising through Deuteronomy (1995)The Candidate (2006)Act of God (2004)Ellie (1995)Time's Arrow (1989)Dead in the Water (1999)Henry James, This One's for You (2005)Time Travellers Never Die (1996)

    Join Wendy Diamond, editor in chief of Animal Fair magazine, pet rescue advocate, author, regular expert on Today and general cat-lover and read 101 heartwarming, amusing, and inspirational stories about our best friends and faithful companions — our cats.You’ll see your own cat with a new eye through these true stories about: learning who’s in charge (the cat, of course!) converting cat haters into cat lovers the amazing intuition of cats learning how to play and enjoy life from our cats cats changing people’s lives learning to say goodbye fabulous rescue cats therapy cats

    Skillfully drawn single panels explore a rich imagined world where actions have unexpected consequences and loneliness pervades, but not without a sense of the absurd. The stories read like vignettes that can span a day or decades, all drawn within a bordered page in intimate detail.Each story unfolds quickly and features characters that run the gamut: joke-writing sisters gone awry, a wandering sleepwalker, a pearl with curious properties, an elusive coughing neighbor, a wide-eyed girl of questionable appeal, even a storm drain. Whether animate or inanimate, sweet or monstrous, Lilli has the ability to infuse them all with pathos, humanity, and humor.

    

    "Crystal Nights" portrays a driven man s moral compromises as he chases an elusive technological breakthrough, while in "Steve Fever" the technology itself falls victim to its own hype."TAP" brings us a new kind of poetry, where a word is more powerful than a thousand images. "Singleton" shows us a new kind of child, born of human DNA modeled in a quantum computer who, in "Oracle", journeys to a parallel world to repay a debt to an intellectual ancestor."Induction" chronicles the methods and motives behind humanity s first steps to the stars. "Border Guards" reflects on the painful history of a tranquil utopia. And in the final story, "Hot Rock", two immortal citizens of the galaxy-spanning Amalgam find that an obscure, sunless world conceals mind-spinning technological marvels, bitter factional struggles, and a many-layered secret history.Greg Egan is the author of seven novels and over fifty short stories. He is a winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

    The stories in The Moon of Letting Go celebrate healing through modern day rituals that honour his Dogrib ancestry. Van Camp speaks in a range of powerful voices: a violent First Nations gangster has an astonishing spiritual experience, a single mother is protected from her ex by a dangerous medicine man, and a group of young men pay tribute to a friend by streaking through their northern town. The stories are set in First Nations communities in the Northwest Territories, Vancouver and rural British Columbia. They have been broadcast on the CBC, and appeared in anthologies, the Walrus, Prairie Fire, and other journals.

    A veritable masterclass in the art of short fiction, The Red Convertible features 31 previously published stories and 5 never-before-published pieces. Presented in one collection for the first time, the stories of The Red Convertible cement Louise Erdich’s position in the pantheon of consummate, innovative writers of the American short story alongside such luminaries as Flannery O’Connor and Charles Baxter.

    Actually, they meet there twice. The first time, there's a curse involved. The second time--you'll have to read and find out. It all adds up to about 4,000 words--perfect as a train read or an after-dinner fable. (Didn't you hear? Doctors recommend after-dinner fables.)

    To save their marriage, they adopt a mortal toddler and begin to raise him, only to discover he has developed terminal leukemia. What follows, set in a fairy den and an oncology ward, is one of the best (and, somehow, realest) short stories ever written, a haunting exploration of love and death that has followed this reader, at least, into marriage, parenthood, and nearly every subsequent day spent on this earth.

    A story set in the same world as the novel Lamentation, although taking place several thousand years earlier than the events in the book.Also contained in Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects

    Jones does for Washington, D.C., and what James Joyce did for Dublin: they expand our ideas and our expectations of the city by exposing its tough but vulnerable underbelly. Crucet’s writing has been shaped by the people and landscapes of South Florida and by the stories of Cuba told by her parents and abuelos. Her own stories are informed by her experiences as a Cuban American woman living within and without her community, ready to leave and ready to return, “ready to mourn everything.” Coming to us from the predominantly Hispanic working-class neighborhoods of Hialeah, the voices of this steamy section of Miami shout out to us from rowdy all-night funerals and kitchens full of plátanos and croquetas and lechón ribs, from domino tables and cigar factories, glitter-purple Buicks and handed-down Mom Rides, private homes of santeras and fights on front lawns. Calling to us from crowded expressways and canals underneath abandoned overpasses shading a city’s secrets, these voices are the heart of Miami, and in this award-winning collection Jennine Capó Crucet makes them sing.

    United in a common loss, Ukamaka is glad to have someone she can confide in about her home, her ex-boyfriend, her life as a graduate student in the United States, and her ambitions. But, in her eagerness to discover a new friend in Chinedu, Ukamaka is slow to realize the tragic and desperate secrets he is protecting from her.       In this poignant, stirring short depicting the solitary lives that immigrants face in the United States, acclaimed author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie celebrates faith and the fragile ties that can grant salvation.   An ebook short.

    Howard (1906-36) is best known for his stories about Conan the Barbarian. However, Howard was a prolific writer of fantasy, horror, historical adventure, Westerns, detective, sports stories, true confessions and other genre fiction. During his short career, he created a number of memorable characters in the pages of Weird Tales and other pulp magazines, including the the vengeful Puritan swashbuckler Solomon Kane, King Kull of Valusia, and the Pictish chieftain Bran Mak Morn.This companion volume to The Complete Chronicles of Conan contains stories featuring Conan's brothers-in-arms, from Howard's very first professionally published story, through the exploits of Kane, Kull, and the Picts, to a number of Oriental adventures, an early draft of a Conan story, and a posthumously published space opera in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs.Compiled and with a historical afterword by Stephen Jones, and lavishly illustrated by Les Edwards, this is a volume that no Robert E. Howard fan will want to miss.

    All belong to one world, united in their diversity and ethnicity. And together they have one aim: to involve and move the reader.The range of authors takes in such literary greats as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, and emerging authors such as Elaine Chiew, Petina Gappah, and Henrietta Rose-Innes.The members of the collective are:Elaine Chiew (Malaysia)Molara Wood (Nigeria)Jhumpa Lahiri (United States)Martin A Ramos (Puerto Rico)Lauri Kubutsile (Botswana)Chika Unigwe (Nigeria)Ravi Mangla (United States)Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)Skye Brannon (United States)Jude Dibia (Nigeria)Shabnam Nadiya (Bangladesh)Petina Gappah (Zimbabwe)Ivan Gabirel Reborek (Australia)Vanessa Gebbie (Britain)Emmanual Dipita Kwa (Cameroon)Henrietta Rose-Innes (South Africa)Lucinda Nelson Dhavan (India)Adetokunbo Abiola (Nigeria)Wadzanai Mhute (Zimbabwe)Konstantinos Tzikas (Greece)Ken Kamoche (Kenya)Sequoia Nagamatsu (United States)Ovo Adagha (Nigeria)From the Introduction:The concept of One World is often a multi-colored tapestry into whichsundry, if not contending patterns can be woven. for those of us who workedon  this  project, ‘One World’ goes beyond the everyday notion of the globeas a physical geographic entity. Rather, we understand it as a universal idea,one that transcends national boundaries to comment on the most prevailingaspects of the human condition.This attempt to redefine the borders of the world we live in through theshort story recognizes the many conflicting issues of race, language, economy,gender and ethnicity, which separate and limit us. We readily acknowledge,however, that regardless of our differences or the disparities in our stories, weare united by our humanity.We invite the reader on a personal journey across continents, countries,cultures and landscapes, to reflect on these beautiful, at times chaotic, renditionson the human experience. We hope the reach of this path will transcend theborders of each story, and perhaps function as an agent of change.Welcome to our world.

    Authors who have appeared within the pages of Sword and Sorceress represent the full spectrum of some of the brightest talent working today -- from C.J. Cherryh, Charles de Lint, and Emma Bull . . . to Deborah J. Ross, Diana L. Paxson, and Laurell K. Hamilton.We are proud to continue the classic and vibrant feminist tradition with this twenty-fourth volume of new magical adventures edited by Elisabeth Waters, secretary and co-editor to Mrs. Bradley.Here are seventeen original stories of remarkable women of power, swashbuckling and magic, spells and duels, arcane sorcery and fabled heroism, written by familiar word-weavers of excitement and adventure, and bright newcomers who are sure to become favorites.Enter a wondrous universe . . .Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and SorceressSword and Sorceress 24 includes stories by Deborah J. Ross, Helen E. Davis, Elisabeth Waters & Michael Spence, Brenta Blevins, K.D. Wentworth, Teresa Howard, Catherine Soto, Josepha Sherman, Cate McBride, Cynthia Ward, Jonathan Moeller, Dave Smeds, Therese Arkenberg, Michael H. Payne, Annclaire Livoti, Julia H. West, and Melissa Mead.

    It has the potential to be groundbreaking in its raw, honest portrayal of a just-barely-functioning family. Billy Lombardo is interested in the beauty of words. He is also a great observer of the world around him, and he is exquisite and precise in getting that world onto the page.Billy Lombardo is the author of The Logic of a Rose: Chicago Stories, a Chicago Tribune “Best Fiction of 2005” selection. His novel Man With Two Arms is due from The Overlook Press in 2010.

    It is not enough to read it as historical—even in his day nobody wrote as he did...An impetus squeezed out with iron, absolutely un-lyrical detachment brings forth tangled, knotted, overloaded sentences painfully soldered together...and driven by a breathless tempo.”—Thomas MannPeter Wortsman captures the breathlessness and power of Heinrich von Kleist’s transcendent prose. These moral tales move across inner landscapes, exploring the bridges between reason and feeling and the frontiers between the human psyche and the divine.The concerns of Heinrich von Kleist are timeless. The mysteries in his fiction and visionary essays still breathe.

    A grieving missionary becomes obsessed with a creature rumoured to live in the forests of the Congo. And, in the title story, a young woman travelling with her scientist mother in Madagascar confronts her burgeoning sexuality and her dream of becoming a long-distance swimmer.

    They are like glinting barbed wire, actually, roped across the field where you are reading, racing, wondering what's next, and then pierced with longing, regret, or revelation. His new collection kept me reading like that — racing to find out what would happen next to these people only Tod Goldberg could create.” —Susan Straight“Tod Goldberg is a gifted writer, a surveyor of the soul, and Other Resort Cities is powerful fiction. He catches his characters at moments of great stress, then reveals their depths to us with compelling insight and great empathy. He sure as hell knows the details that convince. These are inventive and fresh stories that might have been merely clever in lesser hands, but Goldberg’s talent and compassion extends dignity even to the most fucked-up and misbegotten lives.” —Daniel Woodrell“This is an excellent, compulsively readable collection. Goldberg knows and loves the cities of which he writes, and he brings their unsung citizens to life in a brilliant and affecting way.” —Mary Yukari Waters“Darkly funny and ferociously readable, Other Resort Cities is a book you'll want to spend your entire holiday reading. Because of the subtle crime plots that give each story momentum, Goldberg's book doubles as an ideal choice for mystery-lovers.”—Tucson WeeklyIn ten seductive new stories, the author of Simplify and Living Dead Girl encounters the ruthless, vulnerable people who inhabit resort cities, along with their misdemeanors and felonies. A mobster hides out in Las Vegas posing as a rabbi; a casino cocktail waitress adopts a Russian teen in an attempt to outrun her loneliness; a disturbed husband sets up a Starbucks in his living room; a retired sheriff looks for his first wife's remains in the Salton Sea. Vibrant, moving, and often profound, Other Resort Cities is Goldberg at his best.Tod Goldberg is the author of seven books, including the novels Living Dead Girl (Soho Press), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Fake Liar Cheat (Pocket Books/MTV) and the popular Burn Notice series (Penguin). His short story collection Simplify (OV Books) was a 2006 finalist for the SCIBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. He directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California, Riverside's Palm Desert campus.

    Paul Wilson, hailed by the Rocky Mountain News as "among the finest storytellers of our times."

    It is a truth found by all the characters in Mark Valentine’s new full collection of stories since Masques & Citadels. Carden, the quester after lost languages, finds there are some things that cannot be named. The narrator in "The Seer of Trieste" finds the old city harbours an image that has pervaded the most advanced literature of our time, while the strange and tragic secrets of another liminal city are explored in "The Seven Treasures of Bucharest". The voyages of "The White Sea Company" seem to sail beyond any mortal shore, while the smouldering sunrise in "The Dawn at Tzern" brings different illuminations to a priest, a postmaster, a prophet and a soldier. In "Their Dark & Starry Mirrors", a blind Moorish poet receives messages from the Master of Night. In "Undergrowth" a searcher after rare works finds it is possible to get truly lost in books, and in "White Pages" we learn that even blank books have their secrets. And which author should have won "The 1909 Proserpine Prize" for dark literature – Blackwood, Shiel, Hodgson, Stoker, Marjorie Bowen – or another ? As well as these tales, two more curious pieces appear: "The English Leopard" eavesdrops on a conversation about a great lost heraldic beast, while "The Left Temple" provides six startling experiments in evoking the rites of dusk. The author of The Connoisseur stories and editor of Wormwood offers a book of wonder, where neither light nor shadow are ever all they seem. Two years in the making, The Nightfarers is not only the most eclectic and exquisite Mark Valentine collection to date but also his finest. We here at Ex Occidente Press trust this is one of the very few contemporary masterpieces of the weird and the fantastic.ContentsThe 1909 Proserpine PrizeCarden in CapaeaWhite PagesThe Inner SentinelThe Dawn at TzernThe White Sea CompanyUndergrowthThe Seer of TriesteTheir Dark and Starry MirrorsThe Bookshop in Nový SvetThe English Leopard: An Heraldic DialogueThe Box of IdolsThe Axholme TollThe Seven Treasures of BucharestAbout the StoriesThe Nightfarers is a sewn hardcover book - 21 x 27 cm! - of 191 pages with deluxe endpapers and a full-page original frontispiece. Edition strictly limited to 300 copies.

    They experience natural disasters, a sun-worshipping cult, Vietnam flashbacks, kidnapping, addiction, and loss. The book's opening story, "Flood, 1978," follows Hank, who comes to understand his father's deep sense of grief over the death of his wife. Later, in "Hand-painted Angel," Hank's sons see the family spinning apart as their father ages and family secrets are disclosed. In "The Clattering of Bones," Walt mourns the collapse of his marriage after the loss of a child, but in the collection's title story he recognizes his emotional need for family. The concluding story, "Red Peony," unifies the collection, as many of the book's characters come together for a tumultuous 4th of July Celebration.

    This new gathering of long-unavailable or previously uncollected work presents stories from 1951 to 1971 and shows Gallant's progression from precocious virtuosity, to accomplished artistry, to the expansive innovatory spirit that marks her finest work. "Madeleine's Birthday," the first of Gallant's many stories to be published in The New Yorker, pairs off a disaffected teenager, abandoned by her social-climbing mother, with a complacent middle-aged suburban housewife, in a subtly poignant comedy of miscommunication that reveals both characters to be equally adrift. "The Cost of Living," the extraordinary title story, is about a company of strangers, shipwrecked over a chilly winter in a Parisian hotel and bound to one another by animosity as much as by unexpected love. Set in Paris, New York, the Riviera, and Montreal and full of scrupulously observed characters ranging from freebooters and malingerers to runaway children and fashion models, Gallant's stories are at once satirical and lyrical, passionate and skeptical, perfectly calibrated and in constant motion, brilliantly capturing the fatal untidiness of life.

    and remember that each day holds something to be thankful for. You will be empowered and invigorated by these stories about: approaching each day with a positive attitude silver linings, good fortune, and amazing coincidences finding happiness during adversity going back to basics finding joy in friends and family focusing on what really matters how to express gratitude the joy of giving having faith

    Michael Czyzniejewski’s writing is both poignant and playful. The collection includes fl ash and longer fiction and is the antithesis of those collections complained about for having every story too similar to each other.Michael Czyzniejewski was born in Chicago and grew up in its south suburbs. He earned his MFA at Bowling Green State University and now teaches there while editing the Mid-American Review. Since turning twenty-one, he has also worked at Wrigley Field, selling beer in the aisles. He lives in Bowling Green with his wife and son.

    If crooked branches have rapped upon your window at night, it has summoned you... If your dreams are plagued by half-glimpsed terrors, it has claimed you... From one of the most gruesomely original voices in contemporary horror comes this book of thirteen nightmares. Richard Gavin will plunge you into underworlds of Hellish beauty; give you flight on Dread-Moths' wings; tend for you a thicket that blooms with feral children. More than a volume of horror tales, this collection offers visions of a realm whose splendours are as illuminating as they are dark.

    O’Connor’s wonderfully polyphonic tales of family, friendship, and rivalry are set beside those that bring to life forgotten souls on the fringes of society. O’Connor’s writings about Ireland vividly evoke the land he called home, while other stories probe the hardships and rewards of Irish emigration. Finally, we see O’Connor grappling, in both fiction and memoir, with the largest questions of religion and belief.The Best of Frank O’Connor is a literary monument to a truly great writer.

    Ligon's second story collection is a tightly crafted series about a girl wandering the United States, seeking not to find but to escape herself.

    The characters who inhabit these stories travel for business or for pleasure, sometimes out of duty and sometimes in search of freedom, and each encounters the unexpected. From a biologist navigating the stark, icy moonscape of Antarctica to a businesswoman seeking refuge in the lonely islands of the South Pacific, the characters in these stories abandon their native landscapes--only to find that, once separated from the ordinary, they must confront new interpretations of who they really are, and who they're meant to be."Raymond's prose often lights up the poetry-circuits of the brain, less because of lyrical language and more due to things that work as both literal and symbolic nouns: stolen rings, voice-mail messages gone astray; heavy-footed humans in the middle of fragile habitats...Parts of these polished stories, if read aloud, would sound like a smart patient describing a dream to a psychoanalyst."-- The Seattle Times"All of her stories are heartbreakingly honest ... I wouldn't be surprised if she started getting compared to Alice Munro or Jhumpa Lahiri."-- Seattle Books Examiner"Raymond skillfully uses the resources of place, culture, and language to reveal the complications of the heart and the complexities of human character and circumstance." -- Pleiades"Raymond has quiet, unrelenting control over the writing; each story is compelling and thrives because each detail and line of dialogue reveals just a little more about the characters and the evocative settings." -- The Rumpus "In her impressive debut collection, Forgetting English, Midge Raymond sets her stories in a variety of locations outside the continental United States...Alongside personal, human histories, Raymond incorporates larger traditions. Marriage rites. Fertility symbols. The meaning of jade. The natural history of the penguin." --Fiction Writers Review

    Lansdale has attracted a wide and enthusiastic following. His genre-defying work has brought him numerous awards, including the Grand Master of Horror from the World Horror Convention, the Edgar Award, the American Horror Award, seven Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, Italy's Grinzane Prize for Literature, as well as Notable Book of the Year recognition twice from the New York Times.Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is the first "true best of Lansdale" anthology. It brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you'll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale's imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, "the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O'Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain."Whether you're a long-time fan of Joe R. Lansdale or just discovering his work, this anthology brings you the best of a writer whom the New York Times Book Review has praised for having "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace."

    But nature abhors a vacuum; in pursuing escape from the restrictive roles of modern womanhood, a host of baser instincts emerge.

    TuckerFeaturing Tales by:Nathan BallingrudAri BerkHolly BlackFrancesca Lia BlockPhil BrucatoStorm ConstantineCharles de LintBen DobynsAlexandra DuncanJaymi ElfordNeil GaimanLaurell K. HamiltonAlexandra Elizabeth HonigsbergElizabeth Jordan LeggettShira LipkinAngel Leigh McCoySeanan McGuireKris MilleringMaria NutickMidori SnyderS.J. TuckerCarrie VaughnCatherynne M. ValenteTerri WindlingErzebet YellowBoyWith Art and Illustrations by:Jenny AnckornTheodore BlackAmy BrownEcho ChernikHeather Keith FreemanJulia JeffreyStephanie Pui-Mun LawWendy Lyon MartinJames A. OwenBrian SymeChelsea WrightEdited by:Phil Brucato & Sandra BuskirkGraphic Design by:Sherry Lynne Baker

    This collection contains stories of a variety of themes and includes authors from all over the world. The stories are gripping.

    Here, under the author’s careful control and easygoing charisma, everything seems up for grabs, and almost anything seems possible.”—Time Out New York Impossible Princess is the third collection of gay short fiction by PEN Award–winning San Francisco–based author Kevin Killian. A member of the “new narrative” circle including Dennis Cooper and Kathy Acker, Killian is a master short story writer, crafting campy and edgy tales that explore the humor and darkness of desire. A former director of Small Press Traffic and a co-editor of Mirage/Periodical, Killian co-wrote Jack Spicer’s biography, Poet Be Like God, and co-edited three Spicer books, including My Vocabulary Did This To Me: Collected Poems. His latest book, Action Kylie, is a collection of poems devoted to Kylie Minogue.

    Each story follows a theme relevant to anyone who has experienced long life or death, dreams or futility, love or broken relationships. You will emerge from this book with a fresh perspective about the questions you struggle with every day.

    Henry, originally published in 1906, has become one of the best known and most beloved of Chistmas tales. An exuberant couple urged on by their love, make great sacrifices in order to purchase the perfect Christmas gift for the other. The husband sells his gold watch in order to buy expensive combs for his wife's luxurious locks. While the wife sells her hair to the wigmaker in order to buy a chain suitable for her husband's handsome timepiece. When all is revealed on Christmas Eve, the sweet irony of their dual generosity leaves them, whether they know it or not, as the wisest of gift givers: "But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."The artist Joel Priddy employs the same twists of reciprocity in his own work and is well suited to adapting and updating this classic for a modern audience.

     Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre: populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her next collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken -- fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history -- with unsettling urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can't let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death by a question of morality they fail to answer correctly.Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with resounding tenderness towards those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, this new collection from one of Argentina's most exciting writers finds Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

    Ghostly narratives of the Edwardian era, lurid classics from the pulp heyday, and modern-day masterpieces are included in these collections.

    In these dozen stories of adventure and magic from the Orient, a maiden encounters an "oni" demon in the forest, a bride discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, a samurai must appease his sister's angry ghost, strange luck is found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony.A striking debut collection from Eugie Foster.

    Her early-twentieth-century writings continue to inspire writers and activists today. This collection includes selections from both her fiction and nonfiction work. In addition to the title story, there are seven short stories collected here that combine humor, anger, and startling vision to suggest how women's "place" in society should be changed to benefit all. The nonfiction selections are from Gilman's The Man-Made World: Our Androcentric Culture and her masterpiece, Women And Economics, which was translated into seven languages and established her international reputation as a theorist. Also included in a delightful excerpt from Gilman's utopian novel, Herland, an acidly funny tale about three American male explorers who stumble into an all-female society and begin their odyssey by insisting, "This is a civilized country . . . there must be men." Gilman's analyses of economic and women's issues are as incisive and relevant today as they were upon their original publication. This volume is an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover a powerful American writer.Content: Introduction Stories. The yellow wallpaper The unexpected The giant wistaria An extinct angel The rocking-chair Deserted An unnatural mother Three Thanksgivings The Cottagette When I was a witch An honest woman Turned Making a Change Mrs. Elder's Idea Their house Bee Wise Fulfilment If I were a man Mr. Peeble's heart Mrs. Merrill's duties. Selections from the author's autobiography. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

    

    Ross presents a varied world of familial discord, one where a dead fetus evokes more compassion than its mother (“Charactered Pieces”); where two brothers offer the destruction of a family legacy as a birthday gift for their aging father (“My Family’s Rule”); where one brother’s love of Holocaust documentaries pushes his family through the aftermath of his assumed suicide (“The Camp”).Charactered Pieces peels away the superficial armor of public life to reveal the flaws beneath and treats those perceived weaknesses not as hidden sources of pain but as reasons to celebrate life.

    Through its dusty passages are to be heard only the muffled, shivering voices of its ghosts, like the last lingering echoes of some forgotten passion in a lunatic asylum. It has been said that, in the grounds of this ruin, was a hothouse where Romanticism showed its last, grotesque bloom in the form of H. P. Lovecraft, since when the grey desolation of realism has swept over all in a fungoid blight. And yet, there remains a kind of life here, perhaps stranger still than previous blooms, in a weedy and overgrown flowerbed, under the name of Quentin S. Crisp. All God’s Angels, Beware!, the fourth collection of fiction from the contemporary British master of dementia, gathers together for the first time ten examples of Crisp’s own unique species of decayed Romanticism.“Karakasa” is an Orientalist masquerade of decayed futurity. “The Were-Sheep of Abercrave” offers a shaggy-dog tale of such shagginess that its coat has been shaped into a bizarre topiary maze. “Asking For It” sketches a picture of sad singledom amongst the rootless of Tokyo. “The Fox Wedding” brings Far Eastern folklore to a modern setting, with some unpleasant surprises. “Italiannetto” is a sunny, nostalgic love story with Neapolitan style. In “Troubled Joe”, a ghost tethered to this world by chains of resentment searches for someone to hear his story. “Mise en Abyme” presents an escheresque trompe-l’aeil in prose, while in the stunning novella “Ynys-y-Plag” you will discover a weird tale in the tradition of Blackwood and Machen.In these and other stories, Crisp draws equally from East and West to create a vision of the macabre like nothing else in literature. Discover here fleurs du mal of hybrid decadence, whimsy, exoticism, gothickry, horror and beauty.ContentsTroubled JoeThe Were-Sheep of AbercraveYnys-y-PlagKarakasaA Cup of TeaAsking For ItThe Fox WeddingMise en AbymeItaliannettoSuicide Watch

    Set in the Gulf Coast over the course of a year torn halfway by the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, these stories, filled with humor, restraint, and verve, follow the lives of an assembly of unforgettable characters. An exonerated ex-con who may not be entirely innocent, a rabbit farmer in mourning, and an earnest young mariner trying to start a new life with his wife—all are characters that populate the spirited cities and drowsy parishes in Horack’s marvelous portrait of the South. "A knockout winner" for guest judge Antonya Nelson, The Southern Cross marks the arrival of a standout new voice.

    She caters to every label and “no label” across the LGBTQ spectrum: studs, femmes, pillow princesses, no labels, butches, FTM's, bisexuals etc. Meet them all between one cover as your eyes explore fictional stories that will make you laugh and cry and maybe even a little bit angry from heated arguments, fist fights, struggles with religion, heartbreak, closet cases, deception, and passionate sex scenes. Nothing is left to the imagination. There is something for every lesbian from every walk of life.

    A collection of ten short-short stories, some of which previously appeared in journals such as Storyglossia, No Colony, Juked, SmokeLong Quarterly, Night Train, elimae, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

    My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadows and rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards. You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people. Yours are those whose souls were born in the hospitals of the West; they are as a ship without rudder or sail upon a raging sea… . They are strong and eloquent among themselves but weak and dumb among Europeans. They are brave, the liberators and the reformers, but only in their own area. But they are the cowards, always led backward by the Europeans. They are those who croak like frogs boasting that they have rid themselves of their ancient, tyrannical enemy, but the truth of the matter is that this tyrannical enemy still hides within their own souls. They are the slaves for whom time had exchanged rusty chains for shiny ones so that they thought themselves free. These are the children of your Lebanon. Is there anyone among them who represents the strength of the towering rocks of Lebanon, the purity of its water or the fragrance of its air? Who among them vouchsafes to say, "When I die I leave my country little better than when I was born?"

    No two of these fictions are alike, and yet in each, an otherworldly beauty shines through as Levine probes the basic human desire for connection. In "The Cats," Brook has her beloved cat -- and sole companion -- Sis cloned, in order to avoid being alone. In "The World of Barry" a wife lauds the comforts that come from being married to a seemingly ordinary man named Barry. In "Lax Forb," a successful young businessman feels his body evaporating while in a taxi on his way from Cincinnati to Akron. And in "The Wolf," a neurologist escapes the pressures of the city and his marriage for the woods, only to encounter a smiling wolf amongst the trees. Rooted in the quotidian and often mundane details of everyday life, these stories turn our expectations upside down. Magical, funny, and often darkly poetic, these are modern tales that mine the borders between dreams and conscious life, inviting us on a voyage through places and times at once deeply familiar and wondrously strange.

    If you like this American Life, but wish that Ira Glass' voice was a bit softer on the ears, then this is the audio book for you.

    Capricious gods rule a world of women. Zombies breed human cattle. The son of a superhero must decide between his heritage and his religion. Young lovers worship a primordial spider god. The apocalyptic rebirth of the god of the elephants . . .

    Issue one features the novella "The Sex Beast of Scurvy Island" by Andersen Prunty, short fiction by Jordan Krall, Bruce Taylor, Garrett Cook, and Michael James Gibbs, comics by Andrew Goldfarb and Jeremy Kemp, articles by Mykle Hansen and Bradley Sands, a spotlight on author Gina Ranalli, The Wonderland Books Awards, BizarroCon report, and more!

    "A Pool in the Desert" first appeared in Water.The story is loosely connected to McKinley's "Damar" novels (The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown), though readers needn't be familiar with Damar to enjoy this fine work of traditional fantasy.This story was incorporated into 'Water (Tales of Elemental Spirits, #1) by Robin McKinley, Peter Dickinson

    21 stories about love & technology.Available in print:http://www.kevinfanning.com/store/how...or for the Kindle:http://www.amazon.com/How-Learned-Lov...

    The highlight is the slightly absurdist "Shades of White and Road," which develops the whimsy of a magic kingdom and talking objects into something touching and beautiful. Other standouts include the melancholy, postapocalyptic "A Taste of Snow," the fun space frontier tale "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and the clockwork-and-alchemy fantasy "The Butterfly Assassins," which deftly mixes a murder mystery, court intrigue and a stutterer's plight in a world where magic requires verbal incantations. "Paperheart," focusing on the last dragon, and "They Shall Be as They Know," an eschatological zombie story, nicely revisit familiar themes. The poems are not as strong as the fiction but they show decent range. Alexa's voice is a welcome new addition to genre fiction."A girl and her mandroid wander the Twelve Domed Cities of Mars, looking for a place to call home... A young man in the age of practical alchemy eschews incantations he can't utter for fantastic creatures built of cogs and springs... A prehistoric inventor living at the cusp of change finds an ancient winged carcass at the edge of a melting glacier, and has the inspiration of a lifetime... Over two dozen short speculative works from the pages of Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Abyss & Apex, Space & Time Magazine and more, including SpaceWesterns.com's most-read story of all time, "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and its sequel, "Droidtown Blues." PLUS new stories never before published, collected here for the first time.Contents:Shades of White and Road • (2009)A Taste of Snow • (2009)The Clone Wrangler's Bride • (2009)The Butterfly Assassins • (2009)Paperheart • (2009)They Shall Be as They Know • (2009)The Italian • (2009)Plastic Personality Surgery • (2009)Cliffs of Cal'allat • (2009)Neither Wave Nor Wind • (2009)Poor Little Things • (2009)Kingdom at the Edge of Nowhere • (2009)Inclusions • (2007)The Beetle Eater's Dream • (2009)Baseball Trophies, Baby Teeth • (2009)I Consider My Cadaver • (2009)Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths • (2008)Weird Fruits • (2008)To Heroboy, from Tiffani • (2009)Droidtown Blues • (2009)Of Spice and Lime and Tea • (2009)Three Days Dead • (2009)Veilsight • (2008)Flying Solo • (2007)The Green Infinity • (2008)Virgin Soil • (2008)Observations of a Dimestore Figurine • (2009)The Pull of the World and the Push of the Sky • (2009)Milky Way Meat Market • (2009)Foreword (Push of the Sky) • essay by Jay Lake

    Once out of the fray -- far from our cubicles and the relentless rat race -- and back into nature, we find time to ponder bigger questions. Peelle has crafted eight stories that capture these moments: summers riding horses, life as a carnival worker, kidding season on a farm. Quiet and telling, her stories are filled alternately with supreme joy and with deep sorrow, desperation and longing, dreams born and broken -- set in landscapes where the clock ticks more slowly. Her landscapes are the kind of places you want to run away from, or to which you wish you could return, if time hadn't irrevocably changed them. A single thread runs through each of these stories, the unspoken quest to answer one of life's most primal questions: Who am I?Peelle's writing is calm and smooth on the surface -- even soothing in its descriptions of daily life on a farm, for example -- but her words can hardly contain the depth of emotion that lies beneath them. So make some time and find a big tree to sit beneath, take a deep breath, and dive into this quietly impressive collection.