The debut collection from the vibrant voice of Roxane Gay is a unique blend of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, all interwoven to represent the Haitian diaspora experience.

    Written in the 1890s, during a period of relative isolation, his best stories—included in this selection—recreate vivid images of life and landscapes. They depict the human condition in its many forms: innocence and childhood; love and loss; the city and the village; the natural and the supernatural. Tagore is ’s great Romantic. These stories reflect his profoundly modern, original vision.

    Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.Tidbeck is a rising star in her native country, having published a collection there in Swedish, won a prestigious literary grant, and just sold her first novel to Sweden’s largest publisher. A graduate of the iconic Clarion Writer’s Workshop at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010, her publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Unstuck Annual and the anthology Odd.

    From the top of the Berlin Wall to the depths of the darkest seas, gods and monsters battle their enemies and innermost fears, yet mere mortals make the truly difficult choices. A slightly regretful author and a vengeful-but-dilapidated dragon square off over an abandoned narrative; the children of the Shark God demand painful truths from their chronically absent father; and a bereaved women sacrifices herself to change one terrible moment, effortlessly reversed by a shuffle of the deck. Whether melancholic, comedic, or deeply tragic, each new tale is suffused with misdirection and discovery, expressed in the rich and mesmerizing voice of a masterful storyteller.“The Rock in the Park"“Sleight of Hand” “The Children of the Shark God” “The Best Worst Monster” “What Tune the Enchantress Plays” “La Lune T’Attend” “Up the Down Beanstalk: A Wife Remembers” “The Rabbi’s Hobby” “Oakland Dragon Blues” “The Bridge Partner” “Dirae” “Vanishing""The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon” (A Schmendrick Tale)

    Someone had to be a bagger at a grocery store and fantasize about hitting children in the head with wine bottles. Someone had to fear a puddle floating at him from across the street. Someone had to celebrate beating up a pregnant woman. Someone just HAD to be a nanny, and stare at giant motorized spiders. Jeez oh man! Don't ask why a teenager in a Chicago Bulls overcoat is feeding baby rabbits to a toad. Don't ask why someone had to run around the backyard with a bedsheet cape after drinking moonshine. And don't ask why jumping down stairs feels like success.Just sit back, drink a piss-infused Bloody Mary, and learn to hurt others.

    He is the creation of Scottish born author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A brilliant London-based detective, Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess, and is renowned for his skillful use of deductive reasoning (somewhat mistakenly - see inductive reasoning) and astute observation to solve difficult cases. He is arguably the most famous fictional detective ever created, and is one of the best known and most universally recognizable literary characters in any genre.Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories that featured Holmes. All but four stories were narrated by Holmes' friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson, two having been narrated by Holmes himself, and two others written in the third person. The first two stories, short novels, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in The Strand Magazine in 1891; further series of short stories and two serialized novels appeared almost right up to Conan Doyle's death in 1930. The stories cover a period from around 1878 up to 1903, with a final case in 1914. In this collection you will find:• A Study in Scarlet• The Sign of the Four• The Hound of the Baskervilles• The Valley of Fear Short Story Collections:• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes• The Return of Sherlock Holmes• His Last Bow• The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

    Includes: The Castle; The Trial; Metamorphosis and Other StoriesAlternate edition of ISBN-13: 9781840227260

    Kiernan’s short fiction was first published in 1995. Over the intervening decade and a half, she has proven not only one of dark fantasy and science fiction’s most prolific and versatile authors, but, to quote Ramsey Campbell, “One of the most accomplished writers in the field, and very possibly the most lyrical.” S. T. Joshi has written, “Kiernan’s witchery of words creates a mesmerizing effect that we haven’t seen since the days of Lovecraft and Bradbury.”Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One) presents a stunning retrospective of the first ten years of her work, a compilation of more than two hundred thousand words of short fiction, including many of her most acclaimed stories, as well as some of the author’s personal favorites, several previously uncollected, hard-to-find pieces, and her sf novella, The Dry Salvages, and a rare collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite. Destined to become the definitive look at the early development of Kiernan’s work, Two Worlds and In Between is a must for fans and collectors alike, as well as an unprecedented introduction to an author who, over the course of her career, has earned the praise of such luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, Charles De Lint, and Clive Barker.

    Watching. Waiting for your empires to fall. It won't be long now. We are the fear of death that drives you and the terrible hunger that reshapes you in its name. We are the vengeance born from senseless slaughter and the pulsing reptile desire that negates your consciousness. We are the lie on your lips, the collapsing star in your heart, and the still-warm gun in your shaking hands. The illusion of control is all we'll allow you, and no matter what you do...WE LIVE INSIDE YOU

    Humour, nostalgia, love, friendship, trust and betrayal – Bond captures every mood that makes childhood worth remembering. From the nostalgia of country life revisited in When the Tress Walked, to the beautiful bond of friendship formed between an old widow and a young boy owing to their shared love of flowers in A Bouquet of Love, from a mischievous ghost in Pret in the House to a little boy craving for sweets in The Wild Fruit – this collection encapsulates the magic of extraordinary emotions seen in ordinary lives. Every story is delicately woven into a memorable vignette set in the backdrop of the countryside or the middle class urban life. The many shades of childhood and a rich cast of characters make it a fascinating read, especially for young readers.

    Peter Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a story featuring Paula Myo, Deputy Director of the Intersolar Commonwealth's Serious Crimes Directorate.

    In stories as darkly comic as they are unflinching, people isolated by geography, emotion, or circumstance cut imperfect paths to peace—they have no other choice. A Russian mail-order bride in Finland is rendered silent by her dislocation and loss of language, the mother of a severely disabled boy writes him postcards he'll never read on a cruise ship held hostage by pirates, and an Iowa actuary wanders among the reincarnations of those she's known in her 127 lives. Horrocks' women find no simple escapes, and their acts of faith and acts of imagination in making do are as shrewd as they are surprising.

    A collection of 23 big, fierce stories by xTx.

    A boy with one wing seeks the secret to flight. A girl with a mirror for a face, adored by all, longs to simply eat. A pregnant girl reflects on the effects of metamorphoses. The stories of boysgirls are modern myths: tales that exist within our present time but also outside it, in a place as eternal as Shangri-La or Middle Earth. An unforgettable book of Ovidian imagination, boysgirls testifies that Katie Farris is one of the most talented prose stylists of a new generation. "boysgirls is one for the classic fairy-tale shelves, joining Borges/Lispector, Calvino/Carter, Andersen/d'Aulnoy with its spectral powers. Katie Farris's spare and lyrical language levitates here--she is a haunting and new revelation"--Kate Bernheimer.

    Here you will find stories of Hell and damnation, ghosts, madness, murder, vampires, bizarre hair restoration disasters, and ... pigeons, among other things. Hall of Mirrors is a collection of modern gothic tales with a nail of dark humour hammered through its heart; horrible, grotesque and hilarious. So roll up, ladies and gentlemen, and enter the Hall of Mirrors - if you dare."A modern master of horror, dark comedy, and creepy psychological thrillers. I won't compare him to anyone else because quite frankly, in my humble opinion, he's head and shoulders above them all."Daniel Shaurette. Out of the Coffin Podcast.Hall of Mirrors - The Collected Stories, is a combination of the two previously available Podiobooks podcasts, Hall of Mirrors Volumes One and Two.

    A robbery and its dramatic consequences lead a Spokane Indian to rethink his entire life in Alexie’s "Breaking and Entering," dynamically performed by B. D. Wong. A young Nigerian woman tackles adventure by taking a Greyhound bus to the end of the line and starting a new life in Hartford in Adichie’s longing-filled story "The Thing Around Your Neck," performed by Condola Rashad. Tony winner Boyd Gaines performs Hemon’s heartfelt tale "Good Living," in which a Bosnian emigrant seeks the American dream while selling magazines door to door in Chicago. Lastly, Rita Wolf gives a breathtaking performance of "Hell-Heaven," Lahiri’s story of passions and tensions in a Bengali family in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from her acclaimed collection Unaccustomed Earth. This CD is sure to delight listeners while providing an opportunity for artists and audiences to connect.

    Konrath: "Crouch is one of the best thriller short story writers I know. He uses words like an artist uses a paintbrush; to hurt, to stun, to shock, to provoke, to touch. This collection also features my very favorite short story of all time. Not just my favorite by Crouch, but the best one I've ever read by anyone. It's called "Unconditional." It is flat-out brilliant and unforgettable, and that one tale is worth the price of this entire collection." From the author of DESERT PLACES and LOCKED DOORS comes this complete collection of short stories and novellas. *69 - Tim and Laura West receive a bizarre voicemail on their answering machine that seems to have unintentionally recorded a brutal murder. But what happens when the killer realizes their mistake? This story develops over one terrifying evening, and this young couple will never be the same. REMAKING - Tragic events unfold in a snowy, sleepy Colorado town. From the first scene, in which a man sits alone in the cold, watching a father and son in a diner, you know something is about to go horribly wrong. You may think you know what's happening, but in this thrilling, heartbreaking story, nothing is as it seems. ON THE GOOD, RED ROAD - A group of four hard men trying to reach a remote 19th Century mining town become stranded in an early blizzard and resort to drastic, terrifying measures, to stay alive. SHINING ROCK - An older couple encounter a strange and menacing visitor during a camping trip in the North Carolina mountains. Friendly at first, this stranger seems to know them, seems to know their secrets, and as things escalate, they become convinced that they may never leave these mountains alive. PERFECT LITTLE TOWN - Ron and Jessica Stahl are a power couple from California, on a Christmas holiday in Colorado. When they stop for the afternoon in sleepy Lone Cone, they're charmed by the quaint tourist town. But the folksy hospitality will vanish as the sun drops behind the mountains. The Stahls couldn't have picked a worse night of the year to get snowed into this perfect little town with a dark, dark secret. SERIAL - The classic horror short I wrote with J.A. Konrath, in which we turn our attention to the twin golden rules of hitchhiking: # 1: Don't go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy. # 2: Don't pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be a raving nutcase. So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2? THE NEWTON BOYS' LAST PHOTOGRAPH - At 25 words, the shortest story I ever wrote. But it packs a wallop. THE METEOROLOGIST - Peter, a disgraced meteorologist and chronic wanderer, has traveled the country for years in his Winnebago, in search of the only thing that gives his life meaning. He's just arrived in the middle of nowhere-Hokie, Kansas-for the same purpose, but when he meets a waitress named Melanie, another sufferer, he's faced not only with his first real human contact in years, but perhaps someone who can save him. UNCONDITIONAL - A conversation between two people-devastating, tragic, and beautiful. THE PAIN OF OTHERS - Letty Dobesh, a gorgeous, degenerate thief, is fresh out of the clink and back to her old tricks-in this case, burglarizing suites at a luxury hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. But when she's surprised by returning guests on her last room of the day, she's forced to hide in the closet to avoid getting caught, and inadvertently overhears a hitman being contracted to murder the wife of a wealthy lawyer. This 60,000-word short story collection also contains a foreword by J.A. Konrath and introductions to each story by the author. BLAKE CROUCH is the author of four novels and numerous short stories, including "Serial" which he co-wrote with J.A. Konrath and has been downloaded more than 300,000 times. He lives in southwest Colorado, where he is at work on a new book. His website is www.blakecrouch.co

    Getting it out into the world will be my next project after finishing the Warm Bodies sequel.--A man and a woman on their first date discover they have amazing powers.A Tyrannosaurus Rex enjoys modern life as the guardian and spiritual mentor of Seattle.An angry stoplight manages traffic for the lawless humans it despises.An immortal and indestructible man discovers the horror and beauty of living forever.A serpent exchanges emails with government agencies, confessing to a lifelong murder spree.A feral cat sends psychic postcards to the family dog he left behind.A child abandoned into foster care grows into a very, very hungry man.A boy competes with his older brother for the affections of a girl before discovering a mysterious hole in the bottom of a lake.An old man reminisces on his career as a disease engineer for a shadowy world organization.A teenage girl and her kid brother make their way through a post-apocalyptic Seattle while being pursued by a large, lonely zombie.The black hole at the center of our galaxy delivers a fierce and final soliloquy.From the author of WARM BODIES, a collection of strange stories about strange people, strange creatures, and strange objects experiencing joys and hungers that are not strange at all.20 stories, including "Grass Through The Concerete" a novella set in the world of WARM BODIES.Limited Edition designed and published by the author. Only 500 copies will be made. All copies are signed.

    Magic and myth collide in Peter S. Beagle’s “The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon.” When two children bring home a wandering magician named Schmendrick, their mother and the stranger spin stories all night...stories that hide and reveal remarkable truths. Jonathan L. Howard has written several stories and novels featuring Johannes Cabal, necromancer extraordinaire. But in the tale “House of Gears,” Cabal’s expertise in the dark arts offers little help when he faces down a mad scientist with a thirst for immortality. Music boxes and robotic dogs are the vestiges of a long tradition of mechanical wonders. Hunting unicorns is a lucrative business for the right team of hunter and bait. In Carrie Vaughn’s “The Hunter’s Ode to His Bait,” one hunter and his maiden assistant decide to wrap up their careers in a dangerous quest for the ultimate unicorn.

    All of it. Its wars, its empires. Each and every one of its decline-and-falls. It's really terribly simple. It's the story of a bunch of mediocrities who are trying to look special. And it is my duty, it is my pleasure, to expose the lot of them.A little boy who betrays his father to the mercies of Santa Claus. An assassin whose personality is so insipid he erases people with his very presence. A kitty cat that likes to hunt only endangered species. Camel marriages, killer angels, and conjuring tricks that cause worldwide plague.The history of mankind. As told through twenty-one tales of the comic and the macabre. Frightening and funny. Heartbreaking and wise.Robert Shearman's stories have won the World and British Fantasy Awards, the Edge Hill Reader's Prize, and the Shirley Jackson Award

            Here are provocative and shocking tales of family, love, betrayal, terrorism, murder, rape, revenge all set in the Pacific Islands of Hawaii, Tonga, Easter Island, Tahiti, the Marquesas, Australia, where the author has lived and traveled extensively.         Davenport offers her readers not just mesmerizing writing, but also brings bulletins from an ancient, yet seemingly brave, new world barely explored in contemporary literature.        A Chinese-Hawaiian Navy SEAL pursues Al Qaeda operatives who murdered his daughter. A young Tongan girl betrays her father, and sacrifices her future, when she discovers his adultery. In trying to hide their men from slave-ships roaming the Pacific, the women of Easter Island ultimately become their victims.     As Paul Gauguin lies dying of syphilis and morphine-addiction, the mystery of who painted his last portraits is finally solved. A Tahitian girl searches for her natural father, a French Foreign Legionnaire, and learns the terrible price of too much curiosity.        An Australian Aborigine exacts final payback from the white men who raped her. A Hawaiian brother and sister struggle for normalcy, and even happiness, in their life-long afflictions with Foetal-Alcohol Syndrome.                                 **PRAISE FOR KIANA DAVENPORT'S WRITING** "She exhibits the character great writers must have. You can't read Kiana Davenport without being transformed."--Alice Walker "Reading Davenport is an overwhelming experience. Her prose is sharp and shining as a sword."--Isabel Allende "Her writing has an intensity of feeling, a dedication to a level of writing few bestsellers possess."--Norman Mailer "Writing that's timeless, magical, a powerful, moving experience."--The Washington Post "Davenport's imagination and vision will haunt you for a long time."--The Chicago Tribune          ** Amazon Reader-Reviews of  HOUSE OF SKIN PRIZE-WINNING STORIES** (5 Stars) "STUNNED BY THE POWER OF THESE STORIES! They are so visceral, the intensity knocked me over. I cried while reading "The Lipstick Tree" and "Dragon Seed." These beautiful stories will haunt me for a long time."--Becky Young (5 Stars) "STUNNING! Great stories about obsession, loss and love."--Joyce Akesson(5 Stars) "WONDERFUL STORIES WRITTEN BY A MASTER TALE SPINNER!  With this one book Davenport now ranks among my favorite authors."--Thomas Dulaney (5 Stars) "AN EXTRAORDINARY WORLD. You will never read another world as fantastic as this one. With extraordinarily succinct yet poetic style, Davenport defines the beauty and tragedy of these characters in a way that's stunning."--Scott F. Gray (5 Stars) "HOUSE OF SKIN IS A MUST-READ. Her Pacific stories are exotic, vivid, beautiful, riveting. I am a huge fan of this writer."--Honi Aumiller.

    It Wuill All Be Carried AwayBleed OutEmancipation, with TeethFrom Here to OblivionGator BoyIncident on a Rain-Soaked CornerAlways Too LateThe Most Natural Thing in the WorldHeartThe Bad Little Pet

    The Grimoire Diaboligue. A massive eBook collection of the most brutal of Mr. Lee's short stories and novellas. All available in one place for the first time digitally.Mr. TorsoMiss TorsoThe DritiphilistGrub Girl In The Prison Of Dead WomenThe McCrath Model SS40-C Series SMakakThe BabyMotherThe Wrong GuyEver NatHandsTheSalt-Diviner

    Read about Emily Dickinson's dog, women pilots in WWII, future Hollywood, a haunted Europa, and more!

    THE STORYTELLERS: The authors come to us from many different genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult, Paranormal, Christian Horror, Mystery/Thriller, Romance, and Poetic Prose. Expect to find vampires, werewolves, demons, monsters, psychopaths and plenty of feckless victims hankering to be taken advantage of in the worst way. Each tale features one or more feckless characters; someone who just can't seem to succeed, someone who never gets it quite right, or just can't catch a break no matter how hard they try. This book should tickle fancies across the board, and will definitely frighten the sensitive-hearted, so tell your friends. Note: BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW, Content Rated PG-13 for mild language, sexual situations, and violence.

    From Bram Stoker Award nominated author Kaaron Warren, comes Book 6 in the Twelve Planets collection series.Country road, city street, mountain, creek.These are stories inspired by the beauty, the danger, the cruelty, emptiness, loneliness and perfection of the Australian landscape.Table of ContentsIntroduction by Gemma FilesMountainCreekRoadSky

    A masterclass in the genre, from an author who deservedly lays claim to being one of the major fiction writers of our time.

    Set in Malgudi, a fictional town that has become part of modern Indian folklore, his stories reveal the essence of India and of human experience.This collection includes some of R.K.Narayan's best Malgudi stories.

    It’s ruthless, messy, mind-altering, and raw. It takes no prisoners. It chews you up and spits you out and leaves you for dead. Love is, you could say, very much like a zombie.In this haunting short story collection, anything is possible—a dying musician turns to tea for inspiration; a police sergeant struggles with a very unusual victim; a young wife is trapped in a house hiding unimaginable evil….With "Hungry For You", A.M. Harte explores the disturbing and delightful in an anthology that unearths the thin boundary between love and death.

    Lovecraft ranks among the most adapted authors in history--along with Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King.  His unnervingly scary tales appeal to both diehard fans of horror and readers with mainstream tastes, and H.P. Lovecraft Goes to the Movies presents the very best of his filmed stories. Additionally, this unique collection provides an enlightening historical introduction, short headnotes for each story calling out interesting trivia, and an appendix with credits for each screen version. THE STORIES INCLUDE:"The Colour out of Space": filmed twice, once as a vehicle for Boris Karloff called Die, Monster, Die!"The Dunwich Horror," also filmed two times, once with Dean Stockwell"Pickman's Model" and "Cool Air": both for Rod Serling's Night Gallery TV program"The Call of Cthulhu," which laid the foundation for the Cthulhu Mythos

    A sham pastor hires a cocaine-sniffing centaur to act as mascot for an Evangelical mega-church's arena football team; Paul Revere flashes across a revolutionary sky on the back of a sunbird; an ammo-less infantry drummer and a bleeding medic are beat back to a Best Western parking lot in the Battle of Sacramento--such are the situations contained in Ryan Ridge's HUNTERS & GAMBLERS. Winners of the negative lottery, these characters have learned to love to lose everything until there's nothing left to lose. And the end is desperate, black, drenched in whiskey, but punctuated by poignancy and revelry and revelation. The tales in this lurid, edgy debut illuminate blackness with even blacker humor and a sense of outlandish beauty.

    This free sampler of devotional stories will help start off anyone's new year with hope and inspiration with its three specially selected stories from each of Chicken Soup for the Soul's devotional books.

    This omnibus edition includes the stories - "Scouting Jasmine," - "The Golem Hunt," - "An Evening For Jaz and Vayl," - "Paul and Brady Get Hoodoo with the Voodoo," and - "Zombie Jamboree."Word Count 27,000""

    PRAISE FOR ERIC JAMES STONE: "The author creates a clever plot and characters worth rooting for, all leading to an exciting climax." - Brit Marschalk, Tangent Online"Stone explores many themes: the nature of life, magic versus technology, magic as technology, moral dilemmas, and self-sacrifice being only a few." - Scott M. Sandridge, The Fix"This wonderfully written science fiction story deftly pulls off laugh after laugh while also illuminating critical issues surrounding science, religion, culture, and, most importantly, what exactly is that thing we call truth." - Jason Sanford, storySouth"Eric James Stone manages to combine religion and science in an entertaining, well-plotted tale that doesn't come off as overly preachy." - Rena Hawkins, Tangent Online

    Or try to.In that respect, the characters we meet in Impossibilia are like any of us. They have things inside them too. Only their things are a little... different.A dead wife that won't leave. A wolf. The secret to being the luckiest man alive.Impossibilia was Doug's first collection of short fiction and includes the following novelettes:"Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by van Gogh" (Aurora Award Finalist)"Spirit Dance" (Aurora Award WINNER)"Going Down to Lucky Town" (Aurora Award Finalist)In "Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by van Gogh," remote viewing drives a search through the past for lost masterpieces. An ex-CIA agent, haunted by the presence of his dead wife, falls in love with a beautiful remote viewer with her own secret. But can viewing the past change the present?Cree legends, a love triangle, a covert government agency, and shape shifters collide in the award-winning "Spirit Dance," described in Challenging Destiny as "...a vivid and wonderfully written tale about Native Canadian spirits, in the vein of Thomas King." In "Going Down to Lucky Town," an itinerant gambler chases a streak of luck across the country, while trying to win back the love of his daughter. The secret he finds forces him into an ultimate gamble for the highest stakes of all: his daughter's life.And through all the stories, these characters share one more thing beyond what they hold inside. In the decisions they face, in the choices they make, they do what they do out of love. Lost love, found love, the love of a child. But love. So maybe they aren't that different from us after all..."Highly, highly recommended." —Fantasy Book Critic"The writing is superb. Douglas Smith is an artisan and his stories beautifully crafted. ... In my search for the perfect short story, the three in this volume certainly qualify." —SF Crowsnest Book Reviews"Rarely have I seen such an apt title to any book! Douglas Smith has given us three amazing stories that are so unusual and beautiful that no other name than Impossibilia could possibly describe this collection. Each tale was rapture and ecstasy, magical and mysterious, perfect and implausible. In short, I loved them all from the first word to the last. ... I don’t know what else to say without spoiling things for you so I won’t say anything else, except READ THIS BOOK!!!" —Mass Movement Magazine

    Donaldson has also written some of the most distinctive short fiction of recent decades. This generous collection brings together much of the best of that shorter work and provides an ideal showcase for its author s depth, versatility, and consummate literary artistry.Included here are eleven stories and novellas that run the gamut from horror ( The Conqueror Worm ) to high fantasy ( Daughter of Regals ), from contemporary spiritual drama ( Unworthy of the Angel ) to action-oriented SF ( Animal Lover ), together with such uncategorizable gems as The Killing Stroke, with its unique combination of magic and martial arts, and The Woman Who Loved Pigs, an astonishing account of personal transformation and long-delayed revenge.In settings that range from the deeply familiar to the wholly imagined, The Best of Stephen R. Donaldson offers a gallery of tales that have the resonance and moral complexity of compact novels. Beneath their often-gaudy surfaces, they show us very real people who confront, and sometimes overcome, extreme adversity, who struggle to find balance and harmony in an inherently chaotic universe. Each story is the clear product of a master storyteller. Each demands and rewards repeated readings. Together, they form one of the cornerstone volumes of modern fantasy, a book that will be read and treasured by Donaldson s many fans, and by anyone who values imaginative literature at its finest.

    One woman speaks for them all: "I'm your worst fear. But not the worst thing that can happen."In This Light shimmers with grace as a drunk young woman hits a Native American man on a desolate Montana road, a grieving slave murders the white child she nurses and loves, and two throwaway kids dance in the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree in a stranger's house. Thon's searing prose reveals that the radiant heat inside us all is the hope and hunger for love.

    Thrown in the dumpster by her sleazebag boss, Coco awakens in a land of trash. With her new friend, Rudy (a dying fly), and her knight in garbage armor, the undead dancer tries to find her way home. But first she must escape from the evil Queen of this trashscape - a jealous and insane Ruler of Refuse who has an intense fear of flies. With hints of The Matrix and The Whiz, this heady trip will satisfy your cravings for twisted fairy tales, rotting garbage, and charming weirdos. Long live the Queen!

    Gautier’s stories explore the lives of young African Americans who might all be classified as “at-risk,” yet who encounter different opportunities and dangers in their particular neighborhoods and schools and who see life through the lens of different family experiences.Gautier’s focus is on quiet daily moments, even in extraordinary lives; her characters do not stand as emblems of a subculture but live and breathe as people. In “The Ease of Living,” the young teen Jason is sent down south to spend the summer with his grandfather after witnessing the double murder of his two best friends, and he is not happy about it. A season of sneaking into as many movies as possible on one ticket or dunking girls at the pool promises to turn into a summer of shower chairs and the smell of Ben-Gay in the unimaginably backwoods town of Tallahassee. In “Pan Is Dead,” two half-siblings watch as the heroin-addicted father of the older one works his way back into their mother’s life; in “Dance for Me,” a girl on scholarship at a posh Manhattan school teaches white girls to dance in the bathroom in order to be invited to a party.As teenagers in complicated circumstances, each of Gautier’s characters is pushed in many directions. To succeed may entail unforgiveable compro­mises, and to follow their desires may lead to catastrophe. Yet within these stories they exist and can be seen as they are, in the moment of choosing.

    His stunning collection of stories also deftly captures those in-between states that everyone finds themselves in at some point-those times of limbo when we're between jobs or relationships, or, most memorably, that last "naked summer" when childhood lingers and adulthood has not yet arrived. This is a heart-wrenching collection, at once hilarious and wise. I couldn't put it down." -Elizabeth Stuckey-French, author of The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady

    The stories range from hopeful realism to the dystopian side of speculative fiction. Each story twists and turns through darkness and light, settling somewhere in the shadowy area of day to day life.

    These are obvious concepts when spelled out in clear cut settings. Because of this, how one goes about subverting the norm (as a traitor or revolutionary) is based on what the norm is. What is normal in one society can be, and often is, taboo in another society. This allows tales of subversion to be subtle, blatant, personal, communal, and endless in variation. - from the Foreword by Jennifer Brozek

    Part wolf. 100% crippled.Welcome to Fetish Flights, the only airline where BDSM flight attendants service your every need. Aboard a red-eye flight from Tokyo, Japan to Portland, Oregon, a disabled Vietnam vet is harboring a secret. Every full moon he turns into a ravenous killing machine. When he transforms mid-flight and slaughters most of the passengers and crew, a Japanese punk band, a limbless superhero, a Muslim terrorist, and two stoner pilots must fight to stay alive until they reach land. In the spirit of Snakes on a Plane and Tokyo Gore Police, Cripple Wolf is a hilarious, perverted, and hyper-violent ride for fans of video games, comic books and trash culture.This collection includes six additional stories: Punk Rock Nursing Home, Adrift with Space Badgers, Cook for Your Life, Just Another Day in the Park , Frosty and the Full Monty, and House of Cats.

    These stories are set in Cincinnati, New Jersey, Indiana, Baltimore, East Berlin, and Washington, D.C., but all of them have one thing in common: they are stories about surviving the disasters and dysfunctional relationships we all have with friends, family, and lovers.

    a modern-day bard whose power flows from the bellows of her accordion ... a magical dagger with an extremely unusual power. This collection features six lighter fantasy tales from the award-winning author of GOBLIN QUEST and THE STEPSISTER SCHEME:KitemasterUntrained MelodyBlade of the BunnyOver the HillSpell of the SparrowThe Creature in Your NeighborhoodAs a special bonus, the collection also includes the first chapter of Hines' forthcoming novel LIBRIOMANCER.Each story includes an afterward by the author.

    Spanning four decades and three prize-winning collections, these twenty-one vintage selected stories and thirteen scintillating new ones take us around the world, from Jerusalem to Central America, from tsarist Russia to London during the Blitz, from central Europe to Manhattan, and from the Maine coast to Godolphin, Massachusetts, a fictional suburb of Boston. These charged locales, and the lives of the endlessly varied characters within them, are evoked with a tenderness and incisiveness found in only our most observant seers.No matter the situation in which her characters find themselves--an unforeseen love affair between adolescent cousins, a lifetime of memories unearthed by an elderly couple's decision to shoplift, the deathbed secret of a young girl's forbidden forest tryst with the tsar, the danger that befalls a wealthy couple's child in a European inn of misfits--Edith Pearlman conveys their experience with wit and aplomb, with relentless but clear-eyed optimism, and with a supple prose that reminds us, sentence by sentence, page by page, of the gifts our greatest verbal innovators can bestow.Binocular Vision reveals a true American original, a master of the story, showing us, with her classic sensibility and lasting artistry, the cruelties, the longings, and the rituals that connect human beings across space and time.

    A compendium of stories submitted by everyday people, edited, illustrated--and occasionally exaggerated--by comic artist Mike Holmes. Holmes presents more than 100 comics in his familiar style, bringing middle school embarrassments, near-death experiences, bad dates, and first kisses to life on the page. With behind-the-scenes details, comments and followups from past contributors, and special guest storytellers from the world of comics and comedy, True Story is engaging, funny, and proof that everyone's got a story to tell.

    Includes nine short stories: "Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby", "The Glass Mountain", "I Bought a Little City", "The Palace at Four AM", "Chablis", "The School", "Margins", "Game", and "The Balloon".

    Some obsess privately, such as the protagonist in "The Runner" who becomes neurotically repulsed by the hair follicles on his girlfriend's upper lip, or the proven street ball "cager" of the story "In the Low Post" who stews over his eroding prestige and control on the inner-city basketball court.Edgy, smart, and unpredictable, Derek Hayes' stories shift the narrative voices with such an energetic frequency that readers will want to go back again just to see how he does it.

    It’s one of the best stories I’ve ever critiqued in my years of teaching writing workshops.”—A.C. Crispin“a beautiful story—touching without being sentimental, with characters that come believably to life.”—Victoria Strauss“the beauty of the language carries one along...It is difficult to write a thoughtful story that features a terminal disease without melodrama, and Eugie Foster achieves it with style.”—E. Sedia, TangentTHE BUNNY OF VENGEANCE AND THE BEAR OF DEATH:“a profoundly strange supernatural look at the morality of revenge.”—Nick Gevers, Locus“the story is emotionally effective and, impressively, given its subject matter, makes its point through character and story rather than cold rhetoric.”—Ben Payne, Tangent

    Our authors have combined those two elements in wickedly inventive tales that we are proudly adding to our Warped Words Anthology series. JournalStone Publishing presents thirteen new additions, from thirteen authors, in our five favorite genres. Strange tales spawned from Fantasy and Young Adult, as well as our time honored Horror, Sci-Fi and Paranormal themes. Thirteen divergent tales of horror, desperation, panic, helplessness-even glory. You will feel the weight of time as these poor characters feel it, and you will wonder... Who will survive? Who will have a choice? The results are stunning. You will be squeezed till you cannot breathe in the silence of space. You will lie waiting for death in a tropical haze. A city will crumble as you seek your escape and demons will come to party in your favorite nightspots. Join us as we peek into these very dark places...but keep your eye on the clock. Someone has but..... Ninety Minutes to Live!

    Over the past few decades, sexually transmitted diseases have evolved in unusual ways. Herpes, AIDS, Gonorrhea; these are all STDs of the past. These days, sexually transmitted diseases are more extreme and bizarre. Not exactly diseases anymore, they are more like sexually transmitted body modifications. There's an STD that changes your hair color, an STD that causes your toes to grow larger, one causes you to grow extra breasts on your body, another causes your skin to grow long metal spikes, and there's an especially annoying STD that causes you to ejaculate miniature eyeballs. Tonight is Share Your STD Night at the Demon Seed Swingers Club. Although most members of society fear the idea of contracting these diseases, there are some underground deviants who embrace them. They believe the diseases make them strange, unique, and beautiful. So they come together once a month to trade their wonderful STDs with each other in a surreal, fantastical orgy. However, tonight will not be like other nights. There's a new disease spreading through the sex club, a disease that causes people to become rabid bloodthirsty killing machines. As the infected rampage through the Demon Seed, the survivors realize there's only one thing they can do to survive the night: turn their grotesque STDs into deadly super weapons. Also featuring the short stories: Candy-Coated - A buff dude with a lollipop for a head has a hard time picking up the laydaaays due to all of the bearded truckers who keep trying to lick his head. Ear Cat - A Kitty of the Month Club selection gone horribly wrong. City Hobgoblins - A member of a punk rock band falls in love with a shark-like creature. (a prequel to the cult novel Satan Burger) Porno in August - A group of porn actors find themselves floating in the middle of the ocean, unable to remember who they are or why they are there. (Chosen for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror)

    Featuring stories by: Ambrose Beirce Algernon Blackwood Arthur Conan Doyle William Hope Hodgson M.R. James H.P. Lovecraft Arthur Machen Edgar Allan Poe Robert Louis Stevenson H.G. Wells and other masters of supernatural horror

    It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.

    The interviews that follow have echoes of another, far more famous literary journey, undertaken long ago and in another world.Drawing on the original, unexpurgated tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, six of their most famous works are re-imagined in the rich and endlessly varied landscapes of contemporary America.From the glass towers of Manhattan to the remoteness of the Blue Ridge mountains; from the swamps of Louisiana to the jaded glamour of Hollywood, New World Fairy Tales reclaims the fairy tale for the modern adult audience. A haunting blend of romance and realism, these stripped-back narratives of human experience are the perfect read for anyone who has read their child a bedtime fairy story, and wondered who ever said these were stories meant for children.

    Well-known and award-winning authors take on the role of crime fiction in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland, addressing topics from its representations of Irish identity to the influences of American culture. Contributors include John Connolly, Ken Bruen, Benjamin Black (aka John Banville), Ruth Dudley Edwards, Tana French, Stuart Neville, Eoin McNamee, Alex Barclay, and Declan Hughes.

    This collection of fiction, poetry, and art features some of the independent publishing world’s favourite, most talented writers using recycled material: purloined plots, stolen settings, borrowed premises, and appropriated characters. It is subversion; it is homage. It is a ransacking of the treasure troves in our cultural basement, and nothing is off limits. The stories range from retellings of Shakespeare to Law & Order, from classical theatre to video games. Each piece is something picked up and dusted off, reworked and made new.

    An elderly German woman tends her bees. A family adds, subtracts, multiplies and divides. A girl and her mother pass meaningful moments together. In this slender volume, Chanel Earl explores the many faces of grief, the grief of children, parents, those set to die, and those left behind. This debut collection of tightly written prose weaves together themes of loss and family as well as the hope peculiar to youth. These stories of acceptance and resolve ask questions about love and the beauty of life.

    Claws and Starships collects six stories of the Pelted, ranging from the humor of a xenoanthropologist on the wrong side of mythology to more serious works considering the implications of genetic engineering in a far-future classroom seeded with the children of those laboratories. Come stamp your passport and visit the worlds of the Pelted Alliance in all their variety!Includes the novella "A Distant Sun," and the short stories "Rosettes and Ribbons" (Best in Show anthology), "The Elements of Freedom," "Tears" (Pawprints), "Pantheon," and "Butterfly" (Anthrolations magazine).

    These stories-including fairy tales, urban legends, penny dreadfuls and modern pulps, among many others-leave a resonant echo throughout popular culture. In These Strange Worlds, Daniel Powell's first collection of dark short fiction, these influences collide in fourteen startling and entertaining stories. The lone survivor of a worldwide flu epidemic grows strangely attached to her parasitic partner...A malevolent London rental has a voracious appetite for rock stars, and it's building one hell of a band...A wealthy oil trader is offered a glimpse into another dimension, but is the cost more than he can possibly bear?From Satanic salesmen to zombie Ponzi schemes; from murdering murals to alien invasions, and other curious encounters along the way, These Strange Worlds takes readers on fourteen excursions into the realm of the uncanny. A mixture of new and previously published short stories, Powell's first collection embodies the spectrum of imaginative possibility that is the hallmark of compelling speculative fiction.

    PERFECT LITTLE TOWN – Ron and Jessica Stahl are a power couple from California, on a Christmas holiday in Colorado. When they stop for the afternoon in sleepy Lone Cone, they’re charmed by the quaint tourist town. But the folksy hospitality will vanish as the sun drops behind the mountains. The Stahls couldn’t have picked a worse night of the year to get snowed into this perfect little town with a dark, dark secret.SERIAL – The classic horror short I wrote with J.A. Konrath, in which we turn our attention to the twin golden rules of hitchhiking: # 1: Don’t go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy. # 2: Don’t pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be a raving nutcase. So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2? THE NEWTON BOYS’ LAST PHOTOGRAPH – At 25 words, the shortest story I ever wrote. But it packs a wallop.THE METEOROLOGIST – Peter, a disgraced meteorologist and chronic wanderer, has traveled the country for years in his Winnebago, in search of the only thing that gives his life meaning. He’s just arrived in the middle of nowhere—Hokie, Kansas—for the same purpose, but when he meets a waitress named Melanie, another sufferer, he’s faced not only with his first real human contact in years, but perhaps someone who can save him. UNCONDITIONAL – A conversation between two people—devastating, tragic, and beautiful.THE PAIN OF OTHERS – Letty Dobesh, a gorgeous, degenerate thief, is fresh out of the clink and back to her old tricks—in this case, burglarizing suites at a luxury hotel in Asheville, North Carolina. But when she’s surprised by returning guests on her last room of the day, she’s forced to hide in the closet to avoid getting caught, and inadvertently overhears a hitman being contracted to murder the wife of a wealthy lawyer.SIX IN THE CYLINDER also contains introductions to each story by the author, an interview with Blake, excerpts from all four of his novels, and an excerpt of “The Walk” by Lee Goldberg.About the Author:BLAKE CROUCH was born near the piedmont town of Statesville, North Carolina in 1978. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated in 2000 with degrees in English and Creative Writing. Blake is the author of four novels and numerous short stories, including “Serial” which he co-wrote with J.A. Konrath and has been downloaded more than 300,000 times. He lives with his family in southwest Colorado, where he is at work on a new book. His website is www.blakecrouch.com.Praise for Blake Crouch’s ABANDON:ABANDON [is] two separate works of past and present seamlessly melded together into a single novel that demands to be read in one sitting, so you can better appreciate the beauty of Crouch’s storytelling…[O]ne of those books that almost instantly puts you in the mind of a classic.BOOKREPORTER Ambitious…the palpable suspense just keeps building, and many thriller fans—especially those who like a touch of horror—will lose sleep to find out how it all ends.BOOKLISTABANDON is terrific…a great storyteller hitting his stride.LEE CHILD

    Athena Villaverde is a brave new voice in the world of offbeat young adult fiction. Like a combination of Francesca Lia Block, Charles de Lint, Kathe Koja, Tim Burton, and Hayao Miyazaki, her stories are cute, kinky, edgy, magical, provocative, and strange, full of poetic imagery and vicious sexuality. Clockwork Girl is a collection of three short bizarro novellas that make a perfect introduction to her unique style.CATERPILLAR GIRLCat Filigree is a caterpillar girl trapped in the ugly stages of metamorphosis, desperately waiting to be transformed into a butterfly. With her flaky skin and glazed eyes, she has become one of the least popular girls at her high school. Tormented daily by the popular lady bug girls and fig-beetle jocks, she hides away from the world, listening to Bauhaus records and reading Grant Morrison comics. She thinks she's doomed to be alone forever, until she meets Lilith- a beautiful, punk rock, corset-wearing spider girl whom Cat falls madly in love with. But there's a problem: because she's a spider girl, Lilith has the tendency to kill and eat her lovers. And butterflies happen to be her favorite food.CLOCKWORK GIRLPichi was once a normal human girl. But now her skin is made of brass, her organs have been replaced by cogs and gears, and her heart must be wound up every day in order to stay alive. She is a clockwork girl. Like most children of poor families, she was sold to a toymaker, surgically transformed into a mechanical living doll, and given as a Christmas present to a rich little girl who was no longer satisfied with ordinary porcelain dolls. She has no memory of her past or even her real name. All she knows is that she's in love with her new owner and wants to be with her forever. But what she doesn't know is that little girls always outgrow their toys, eventually.BEEHIVE GIRLHer skin is made of honeycomb. She smells of baked oranges and is dripping with amber- colored honey. Living bees swarm around her like miniature lovers and crawl through her hair as she dances. She is Maya, the queen of the tango; the sexiest, most powerful dancer in town. Every man in the tango community longs to dance with Maya, but very few dare to try. You see, Maya's skin is a living beehive. And if a man attempts to dance with her who lacks the proper amount of talent and grace, he will get stung . . . perhaps even stung to death.

    Chicken'. A woman with four ears gets a chance to make extra money as the mascot of a tattoo parlour, and encounters a middle-aged, cookie-baking stalker who believes she is a sign that the end of the world is nigh.Meet the "freaks"—they're mothers, wives, and lovers: all of them trying negotiate a world that is quicker to stare than sympathize.

    Every police force has an Inspector Monde though they try to deny it. When the blood chills and the hairs on the back of the neck rise they send for him and don't look too closely at what he does. For the Inspector does not particularly believe in the Law but will fight for Justice to his last breath.

    It exists proud and prosperous, never dreaming its dark past was coming to call...On a bright winter’s day a stranger arrives in Elowen, bearing a secret. From this man a dark blight of ruin descends over the great city and henceforth the day becomes known as Winter’s Bane.The day the world changed for the people of Elowen.The day their existence turned into a recurring nightmare.Read of the aftermath of revenge through the eyes of a shopkeeper, a child, ghosts, a blacksmith, a guardsman, an innkeeper, and even a King.Twelve Stories, One Evil.

    In reality, Cinderella wasnt the sweetest belle of the ball. She was an annoying chatterbox. Jack was a petty thief. And Little Red Riding Hood? Spoiled rotten! Its all about point of view. Pull up a chair, and get the full scoop straight from the mouths of the wicked stepmother, the giant, the prince, Baby Bear, and the wolf. Get the Other Side of the Story!

    But; as young Ruskin—the narrator in these interconnected tales—soon discovers; not all is as it seems in this sleepy town. Behind the tranquil facade; Dehra is home to a cast of colourful characters: from plucky old women to possible murderers.‘The Canal’ is a joyful tribute to adolescent mischief and adult resolve; in which a group of roguish boys must face the consequences of antagonizing the much-feared Miss Gamla. ‘Over the Wall’ celebrates the resilience and hard-won dignity of a man ravaged by leprosy as he struggles to come to terms with his malady. The dashing young army captain in ‘At Green’s Hotel’ might be the perfect gentleman—or a murderer. And in ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard’; an old scandal is revived following a chance discovery; leading to wholly unexpected results.By turns charming and poignant; witty and exhilarating; Secrets is vintage Bond.

    In addition The Miracles of Life, set in 16th-century Antwerp during the time of Protestant iconoclasm, and Downfall of a Heart both address the theme of anti-Semitism.