Here comes the bear who ate some really bad dessert and got very angry; a lazy man who would not put out a fire till it reached his beard; a princess who got turned into an onion; a queen who discovered silk, and many more weird and wonderful people and animals.Grandma tells the stories over long summer days and nights, as seven children enjoy life in her little town. The stories entertain, educate and provide hours of enjoyment to them. So come, why don’t you too join in the fun?

    2012 sees The Crime of The Empty House where the former home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Undershaw, lies in disrepair and the threat of being destroyed forever. Commissioned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, Undershaw was witness to the creation of many of his most famous works, including The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Return of Sherlock Holmes. It is a building deserving preservation for the British nation, and indeed the world, for all time. Sadly, the building is currently under threat from the property developers who wish to divide the house into 3 separate units and build a further 5 alongside. Planning permission for development has already been approved by Waverley Borough Council. The Undershaw Preservation Trust (UPT), with Mark Gatiss [BBC Sherlock] as Patron, is dedicated to the preservation and protection of this important literary building and are campaigning to get this decision overturned, so the house can be restored to its original glory and enjoyed as the single dwelling Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended it to be. This book is a collection of short Sherlock Holmes stories and poems written by fans from around the world in support of the Save Undershaw campaign - even the cover has been designed by fans. Royalties from the book go towards the UPT to preserve this wonderful house for future generations of Doyleans, Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts and literary fans of all kinds. More information on the Save Undershaw campaign can be found on their website: www.saveundershaw.com.

    These are but a few of the curiosities collected in this volume of short stories by three acclaimed practitioners of paranormal fiction.But The Curiosities is more than the stories. Since 2008, Maggie, Tessa, and Brenna have posted more than 250 works of short fiction to their website merryfates.com. Their goal was simple: create a space for experimentation and improvisation in their writing—all in public and without a backspace key. In that spirit, The Curiosities includes the stories and each author's comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors.So, are you curious now?

    Marshal Raylan Givens is the mesmerizing hero of numerous books and the hit FX series Justified. Now the first three Raylan books—Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Fire in the Hole—are together in one ebook, along with an excerpt from Raylan, the brand new novel in the series.

    So too are his abiding themes: the madness of war, the vanity of human striving, and the social costs of technological innovation.Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952), is the story of Dr. Paul Proteus, chief engineer at the Ilium Works, an electronics company in upstate New York. Ill at ease with himself and his changing times, Proteus must choose sides in a looming civil war that threatens the brave new world he has helped to create. A kind of postwar Metropolis, Player Piano is at once a witty satire on the culture of General Electric headquarters, where Vonnegut once worked as a publicist, and a profound meditation on the dignity and necessity of work.Set on Earth, Mars, Mercury, and the moons of Saturn, The Sirens of Titan (1959) is a vertiginous ride down a funnel in space-time with a trio of stuffed shirts spoiling for their pratfalls: Winston Niles Rumfoord, a patrician New Englander and paragon of style; his beautiful touch-me-not wife, Beatrice; and Malachi Constant, the world’s luckiest, wealthiest man. Are they really what they imagine themselves to be, the perfected products of a benevolent universe? Or does somebody up there despise them? Only Salo, the gentleman-robot from the planet Tralfamadore, knows for sure.In 1961 a German American named Howard W. Campbell, Jr.—the Tokyo Rose of the Third Reich—is discovered in Manhattan by a team of Nazi hunters and brought to Jerusalem to stand trial. Mother Night (1962) presents Campbell’s prison-cell confessions, revealing him to be a double agent who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Nazi propaganda ministry in order to broadcast intelligence to the Allies. But as he awaits his date with justice, Campbell faces an even more rigorous trial in the court of his own conscience.Rounding out the volume are six of Vonnegut’s best science fiction stories, including “Report on the Barnhouse Effect,” “EPICAC,” “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow,” and “Harrison Bergeron,” the fantasy that skewered “political correctness” before there was a name for it.

    In this, the first of two volumes chronologically collecting all his published adult short stories, we see how Dahl began by using his experiences in the war to write fiction but quickly turned to his powerful and dark imagination to pen some of the most unsettling and disquieting tales ever written.In 27 stories, written between 1944 and 1953, we encounter such classic tales as 'Man from the South', featuring a wager with appalling consequences; 'Lamb to the Slaughter', in which a wife murders her husband yet has a novel idea for throwing the police off the scent; and in 'The Sound Machine', the horrific truth about plants is revealed.Enter the sinister, twisted world of Roald Dahl: whether you're young or old, you'll never want to leave.'Roald Dahl is one of the few writers I know whose work can accurately be described as addictive' Irish Times'The great magician' SpectatorLook out for Volume Two, introduced by Anthony Horowitz Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, Matilda, and many more classics for children, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were most recently the inspiration for the West End play, Roald Dahl's Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson. Roald Dahl's stories continue to make readers shiver today.

    These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.Contents:The Man Who Bridged the Mist (2011)Wolf Trapping (1989)The Empress Jingu Fishes (2004)The Bitey Cat (2012)Chenting, in the Land of the Dead (1999)My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in my Spouse's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition (2007)Schrödinger's Cathouse (1993)Names for Water (2010)Fox Magic (1993)Spar (2009)The Horse Raiders (2000)26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (2008)At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2003)The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change (2007)The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles (2009)Ponies (2010)

    I am among the ranks of millions of people who appreciate the souls of dogs and know they are a gift of pure love and an example of all that is good.” —Jennifer Skiff The Divinity of Dogs is about the moments you learn something profound about life from an experience with a dog. Featuring more than seventy stories culled from hundreds of submissions to the author’s website, these inspiring and heartwarming true stories show where love, tolerance, comfort, compassion, loyalty, joyfulness, and even death have provided experiences that have led to spiritual enlightenment. You’ll meet Little Bit, the Chihuahua who detected a small lump in her owner’s breast, a growth even doctors couldn’t find. There’s Emma, the devoted Rottweiler who ferociously grabbed her owner’s arm at the moment he was trying to commit suicide, saving his life. You’ll be inspired by Luna, the Retriever who dragged her owner to safety after she collapsed late at night in a field. And you’ll fall in love with the many dogs who simply provide steady comfort when needed— dogs like Bo, the Boxer who soothed his mistress after the loss of her son. The author also weaves her own experiences with dogs throughout the book, showing how they comforted her through mistreatment as a child, a divorce, and a cancer diagnosis. The stories that make up The Divinity of Dogs provide hope, help, and healing for readers in the complex and difficult times in which we live. Whether you believe dogs are divine or are actually a gift from the divine, The Divinity of Dogs gives you permission to accept what you know: dogs are healers, educators, protectors, and tangible examples of pure love.

    The titular story revolves around an aging English professor who, mourning the loss of his wife, robs other people's homes of their sentimental knick-knacks. In "Free Ham," a young dropout wins a ham after her house burns down and refuses to accept it. “Has my ham done anything wrong?” she asks when the grocery store manager demands that she claim it. In "Carry Me Home, Sisters of Saint Joseph," a failed commercial writer moves into the basement of a convent and inadvertently discovers the secrets of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. A girl, hoping to talk her brother out of enlisting in the army, brings Bob Dylan home for Thanksgiving dinner in the quiet, dreamy "North Of." In “The Idea of Marcel,” Emily, a conservative, elegant girl, has dinner with the idea of her ex-boyfriend, Marcel. In a night filled with baffling coincidences, including Marcel having dinner with his idea of Emily, she wonders why we tend to be more in love with ideas than with reality. In and out of the rooms of these gritty, whimsical stories roam troubled, funny people struggling to reconcile their circumstances to some kind of American Ideal and failing, over and over.  The stories of Safe as Houses are magical and original and help answer such universal and existential questions as: How far will we go to stay loyal to our friends? Can we love a man even though he is inches shorter than our ideal? Why doesn’t Bob Dylan ever have his own smokes? And are there patron saints for everything, even lost socks and bad movies? All homes are not shelters. But then again, some are. Welcome to the home of Marie-Helene Bertino.

    A late starter, Baker published her first short stories in 1997, at the age of forty-five. From then until the end of her life, she wrote prolifically and well, leaving an astonishing body of work behind.The Best of Kage Baker is a treasure trove that gathers together twenty stories and novellas, eleven of which have never been collected anywhere. The volume is bookended by a pair of tales from her best known and best loved creation: The Company, with its vivid cast of time traveling immortals. In “Noble Mold,” Mendoza the botanist and Joseph, the ancient “facilitator,” find themselves in 19th century California, where a straightforward acquisition grows unexpectedly complex, requiring, in the end, a carefully engineered “miracle.” In “The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park,” an autistic Company operative named Ezra encounters a lost soul named Kristy Ann, and finds a way to give her back the world that she has lost.Among the volume’s many other highlights are a pair of brilliant Company novellas: the Hugo Award-nominated “Son, Observe the Time” and “Welcome to Olympos, Mr. Hearst,” a tour de force set in the Hollywood of the 1930s and featuring an encounter with legendary newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. There is also a generous assortment of equally brilliant standalone tales, including “Calamari Curls,” the account of a faded resort town that takes a surprising turn into Lovecraftian terrain, and the World Fantasy Award-nominated “Caverns of Mystery,” in which ancient stories play themselves out repeatedly, shaping and altering the world around them.These are only a few of the pleasures waiting within this book. The Best of Kage Baker is exactly what the title proclaims: the best short work of a gifted and irreplaceable writer. Anyone with an interest in first-rate imaginative fiction – anyone with an interest in lovingly crafted fiction of any kind – needs to read this book.

    Through classic comics, blog entries, and a wealth of other wacky new material, experience Jon’s dating disasters, phone call faux pas, wardrobe malfunctions, and mirthful mishaps—and cheer the geek with a heart of gold as he finally finds true love with Liz, the veterinarian. (Who’d have thunk it?) So, rejoice, Jon fans, and enjoy the fun. The moment of goof has arrived!

    Lavishly designed and illustrated, Wagner's psychological portrayals and ingenious use of Southern landscape make this publication an event.

    To accomplish this, the most primal element of storytelling--a single human voice describing events exactly as it experienced them--is adhered to without embellishment or exception. Within these pages lie taut, unadorned first person narratives from agonized souls, minus all the stylish techniques which dilute, stretch, and burden tales of terror with unnecessary detail. Here you will find no entry into the thoughts of any characters other than the narrator's, no standard passages of dialogue, no humor, no extraneous gore, no romance. The twenty untitled stories inside this book spill forward without page or even paragraph breaks, taking the form of uninterrupted confessions, creating an effect of pure campfire terror. Knifepoint strips away all the tired conventions which water down traditional horror fiction, leaving nothing but the story's riveting spine to compel and chill you to the core.If this collection is expanded in the future, those possessing a copy of any particular edition need only send a page from it to the author to receive a free copy of the new one.

    A Collection of Satyajit Ray's best short stories in one volume! Best-known for his immensely popular short stories mysteries and the A collection of forty-nine Feluda adventures of Professor Shonku, Satyajit Ray was also one of the most skilful short story writers of his generation.

    Now the secret is out - and so, brought together in one volume, are these three spellbinding stories of future shock and suspense.THE LONG WALK: A chilling look at the ultra-conservative America of the future where a gruelling 450-mile marathon is the ultimate sports competition.ROADWORK: An immovable man refuses to surrender to the irresistible force of progress.THE RUNNING MAN: TV's future-favourite game show, where contestants are hunted to death in the attempt to win a $1 billion jackpot.

    Some were previously published. Some are brand-spanking new. The opening story, "State Liquor," concerns a twenty-five-year-old woman and her eighteen-year-old husband trying to buy alcohol on their way to their strip mall jobs, the afternoon of their wedding. In "Fistful," a pregnant teenager gets revenge on the young man who both impregnated and beat her, before leaving town with another man. In "Habitrail," a woman returns home after the death of her father, to find her husband in communication with the television set and a god he calls Chaos, rather than her. There are over ninety stories in this collection. Repeated themes include: driving, smoking, teenagers, drinking, escape, the Midwest, masturbation, self-loathing, blood and loneliness.

    Her stories have gained many honors, including the Writers of the Future award, Locus Award, and the Nebula Award. This current collection collects 16 of her more recent stories, as well as earlier work not previously collected. It also includes a previously unpublished story. FINDING HOME:Key SignaturesThe Weight of WishesFAIRY TALES:How I Came to Marry a HerpetologistStrikes of the HeartSwitchedFINDING EACH OTHER:SourheartInner ChildHome For ChristmasAnger ManagementTrees Perpetual of SleepHostile TakeoverHere We Come A-WanderingPERMEABLE BORDERS:The Wisdom of DisasterA Fault Against the DeadThe Trouble with the TruthHOME:Gone to Heaven Shouting

    Set in and around Shillong, Cherrapunjee and pockets of Assam, these tales are shaped against a larger historical canvas of the early days of the British Raj, the World Wars, conversions to Christianity, and the missionaries.Spanning a sweep of centuries, from the mid-1800s to the present day, the stories work as a historical, sociological documentation of a place and its people, interweaving the quotidian and the mythic, the mundane and the extraordinary.This is a world in which the everyday is infused with folklore and a deep belief in the supernatural. Here, a girl dreams of being a firebird. An artist watches souls turn into trees. A man shape-shifts into a tiger. Another is bewitched by water fairies. Political struggles and social unrest interweave with fireside tales and age-old superstitions.

    ***Best Small Press Debut of 2012 -- The Atlantic Wire***May We Shed These Human Bodies peers through vast spaces and skies with the world's most powerful telescope to find humanity: wild and bright and hard as diamonds.

    R. Martin had already established himself as a giant in the field of fantasy literature. Now in one exclusive eBook edition are both volumes of Dreamsongs, featuring the very best of Martin’s early works. This convenient bundle provides a rare treat for Martin’s devoted readers, offering fascinating insights into his journey from a young writer to the #1 New York Times bestselling force of nature.Gathered in Dreamsongs: Volume I are some of George R. R. Martin’s most time-honored tales, including Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker award–winning stories, cool fan pieces, and the original novella The Ice Dragon. Dreamsongs: Volume II contains acclaimed stories such as the World Fantasy Award winner “The Skin Trade,” as well as the first novella in the Ice and Fire universe, The Hedge Knight—plus two early screenplays. Featuring a dazzling array of subjects and styles, Dreamsongs is the perfect collection for both Martin devotees and a new generation of fans.

    But is the future already written - or do you have the power to alter it?From fantastical prophecies to predictions of how the future will transpire, Foretold is a collection of stories about our universal fascination with life's unknowns and of what is yet to come as interpreted by fourteen of young adult fiction's brightest stars.

    The stories within this collection range from hilarious to downright disturbing, proving that Jeff Strand is still a master at what he's known for: a delicious blend of the humorous and the horrific. Strand fans will take delight in the seven new stories first printed in Dead Clown Barbecue, including "Pett Semmuteary" "Dummy" "True Hero" "Fangboy and the Troll" "Stop Stabbing Me" "Pregnancy Test" and "Push the Button."DescriptionA man who finds a severed nose on a plate on his dining room table. A bell that can summon Satan (maybe). Casual Fridays at work that get out of control. A cheery outlook on the post-apocalyptic landscape. The final thoughts of a doomed skydiver. A girl punished by having to share a bed with her grandmother’s corpse. Revenge via baking a tarantula into a cake. A shocking look at where those awful computer-generated book covers come from. And the lost tale of Fangboy.These are only a few of the demented stories in DEAD CLOWN BARBECUE, a collection of thirty gleefully macabre tales, seven of which were written just for this collection. There’s even a brand new one about a ventriloquist dummy. Those things creep you out, right? You’ll laugh. You’ll scream. Okay...you probably won’t actually scream, unless you already had issues before you started reading, but you might cringe and get a little spooked.“No author working today comes close to Jeff Strand’s perfect mixture of comedy and terror.” - Cemetery Dance

    These are not your mother's bedtime stories. In this mesmerizing debut collection, Aubrey Hirsch will lead you into the darkest recesses of human life, where hope and longing and love and loss look all too much like one another. Each of these sixteen stories may be filled with its own kind of despair, but they are not despairing as Hirsch enters with deep sympathy into the souls of lonely women (Cheater, Hydrogen Event in a Bubble Chamber, Made in Indonesia), broken men (Leaving Seoul, Advice for Dealing with the Loss of a Beloved Pet), young recruits (The Specialists), and dutiful daughters (Strategy #13: Journal, No System for Blindness). With a hard intelligence, Hirsch considers the toll of heartache (Why We Never Talk About Sugar, Certainty) and loss (The Borovsky Circus Goes to Littlefield, Paradise Hardware) and the simple cost of longing. Taut and tension filled, these stories will transport you into the heart of what it means to be human. But be careful. Hirsch's compassion arrives on a knife blade. And you just may find your own heart cut open.

    These stories hold the readers enthrall from the opening sentence itself, bringing the various characters to life in vivid detail.

    A little boy betrays his father to the harsh mercies of Santa Claus. A widower suspects his dead wife’s face is growing over his own. A man goes to Hell, and finds he’s roommate to the ghost of Hitler’s pet dog. Giant spiders, killer angels, ghost cat photography, and the haunted house right at the centre of the Garden of Eden.Deliciously frightening, darkly satirical, and always unexpected, Robert Shearman has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Edge Hill Reader’s Prize. Remember Why You Fear Me gathers together his best dark fiction, the most celebrated stories from his acclaimed books, and ten new tales that have never been collected before.This ebook contains four bonus novelettes drawn from throughout Shearman’s impressive career: “Tiny Deaths,” “Jolly Roger,” “The Big Boy’s Big Book of Tricks,” and the previously unpublished “The Girl from Ipanema.”

    Home from Afghanistan, Sean Wolfe is avoiding his dreams. Will Jamie Russo and an old coin give him new hope? Once betrayed by love, Alan James is embittered. Will a sweet reunion in Central Park heal his broken heart? Helen Wolfe is struggling to provide for herself and her family. Is Bernie O’Day her answer to prayer? Damaged in body and soul by war, William Wolfe’s fiancée has rejected him. Will he ever risk his heart again? Will love persevere despite unimaginable odds?

    The rights have been reverted to the authors.

    In “They Promised Dreamless Death” a salesmen sells sleep with the promise of a better life, but what dreams lurk beneath the substrate of consciousness for those who take it are stranger than they ever imagined. In “Your Demiurge is Dead,” while the world adjusts to the death of God and the new reign of the Triple Goddess, Charles hunts for an Oklahoma murderer and is forced to confront his religious ideals when he encounters a new prophet. “The Dog That Bit Her,” is the story of a neurotic young woman who gains freedom from her co-dependent marriage with the bite of a rabid dog. And in the semi-autobiographical “The Singing Grass,” the artist and the writer converge at a meadow haunted by a carnivorous deer and the burnt monsters that show them the consequences of an artistic life.

    Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.

    They know there are whole worlds out there that have never been seen, some as distant as the Amazon rain forest, others as close as a neighbor’s house, the curtains left open. Laura van den Berg helps us discover these worlds, blending the mundane and routine with the strange and unexpected. The search won’t always end with the stories—these restless narrators will always be left with mysteries unsolved, questions unanswered and hidden aches not quite healed—but what they see along the way will be nothing short of marvelous.Order here.

    Official site: www.forehadows.net"Foreshadows: The Ghosts of Zero" is a unique 19-story anthology of dark science fiction paired with a 19-track album of original soundtrack songs and instrumentals. In the dystopia of "Foreshadows," multinational corporations vie for power on the world stage, individuals take extreme measures to find answers, and a mysterious creature called the Geist lurks between both groups, pursuing an unknown mission.Contents:• Foreword by C.S. Friedman• Prologue: "The Ghosts of Zero" by the Digital Alchemist• "Geist Anthropic 1:4" by Jeff LaSala, John LaSala, and Jeremy L.C. Jones; music by Michelangelo and Dylan Leeds• "Too Much is Never Enough" by Don Bassingthwaite; music by Bilian• "Cenotaph, or We've Been Reduced to Lo-Fi" by Mike Ferguson; music by Alternate Modes of Underwater Consciousness and Colin Garvey• "Graveduggery" by Brian W. Matthews and Jeff LaSala; music by Michelangelo• "Love Simulacra" by Joe Rixman; music by Bilian• "Cold as the Gun" by Robert J. Randisi; music by Joshua Wentz• "...And Weave the Spider's Web" by Keith Baker; music by Joshua Wentz• "Geist Threnodic 2:4" by Jeff LaSala and John LaSala; music by Dylan Leeds and Ali Kilpatrick• "Best Served Flash-Frozen" by Ed Greenwood; music by Michelangelo• "Geist Eidetic 3:4" by Jeff LaSala and John LaSala; music by Dylan Leeds• "All the Good Things You Are" by Robert Velarde; music by Bilian• "Twenty-One-Oh" by Ari Marmell; music by Michelangelo• "Made in Brazil | Living in Japan" by Jaleigh Johnson; music by Gene Pritsker and Bilian• "Crossed Swords" by Ken Hart; music by Michelangelo• "Geist Intrinsic 4:4" by Jeff LaSala and John LaSala; music by Dylan Leeds• "Anodyne Fading: The Wolf Without" by Christopher Dinkins; music by Thee Crumb• "Lament" by Brian W. Matthews; music by another cultural landslide• "Deep in the Deep: Reaction-Diffusion Dies Tonight" by Rosemary Jones; music by Jeremy Simmons• "Unto the Interface" by Ruth Lampi and Jessica Van Oort; music by Ali Kilpatrick• [Physical book+CD only]: Unique code for downloading entire soundtrack (songs and instrumentals) as single-edit MP3s, additional extended edits, and other bonus materials.

    A severed hand is on a desperate mission to ruin somebody's evening. While a mob war reaches its bloody climax, the Mayor is up to his neck in dead prostitutes.And Clockwork Joe? He just wants to be a real boy.Bizarro Press proudly presents the latest in dieselpunk-bizarro-horror-noir. This......is GrudgePunk

    The story was nominated for multiple awards and is now recognized as one of its author’s signature accomplishments.Over the years, Shepard has revisited this world in a number of brilliant, independent narratives that have illuminated the Dragon’s story from a variety of perspectives. This loosely connected series reached a dramatic crossroads in the astonishing novella, “The Taborin Scale”. The Dragon Griaule now gathers all of these hard to find stories into a single generous volume. The capstone of the book—and a particular treat for Shepard fans—is “The Skull,” a new 40,000 word novel that advances the story in unexpected ways, connecting the ongoing saga of an ancient and fabulous beast with the political realities of Central America in the 21st century. Augmented by a group of engaging, highly informative story notes, The Dragon Griaule is an indispensable volume, the work of a master stylist with a powerful—and always unpredictable—imagination.

    Breaking away from a two-decade career as advertising copywriter and small businessman, he reinvented himself as a modernist storyteller whose influence was foundational for modern American writing. Without Anderson’s example, the work of Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck, McCullers, Mailer, and Kerouac is almost unthinkable. In mapping the America he knew widely and intimately—an America of small towns, big-city boarding houses, racetracks, isolated farms—he opened up new regions of America’s inner life in stories that remain astonishing for their stylistic freedom, their emotional candor and sexual frankness, and the exactness of their observation.Anderson wrote in many genres, but it was in the short story that he found his ideal form. This volume collects for the first time all the books of stories he published in his lifetime—Winesburg, Ohio (1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and Death in the Woods (1933)—along with a generous selection of stories left uncollected or unpublished at his death. Taken together they offer powerful evidence of Anderson’s extraordinary capacity to illuminate what is hidden under the surface of seemingly ordinary lives and to give expression to private delusions and desires.When Winesburg, Ohio appeared, Hart Crane wrote: “America should read this book on her knees. It constitutes an important chapter in the Bible of her consciousness.” Weaving memories of his small-town youth into a series of interrelated stories, Anderson realized a stunning collective portrait, a haunting, expressionist set of variations on themes of isolation, frustration, and encroaching obsession. It remains a central masterwork of American literature.Anderson’s later collections are no less imbued with his intuitive sense of the shapes of lives as felt from the inside. In such stories as “I Want to Know Why,” “Out of Nowhere into Nothing,” “The Man Who Became a Woman,” “An Ohio Pagan,” and “Brother Death,” he offers breathtaking insights, catching his characters unawares with deep empathy for their fragility and strangeness.

    Brimming over with his trademark wisdom, warmth and candour, this collection shows why Ruskin Bond is one of India's most treasured writers.THis book contains the following stories:Rain in the MountainsScenes from a Writer's LifeThe Lamp Is Lit.Landour DaysNotes from a Small Room

    'My Mother Was an Upright Piano' builds on the strengths of Tania Hershman's first collection of short stories 'The White Road', which was commended by the judges of the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers.

    A stockman, John, knows Flame for all of his life and records the amazing stories about the chestnut stallion before their final heart-breaking encounter.

    Now the man who'd left her waiting at the altar is making her hope for things she had long stopped wishing for.Last Minute Bride by Janet DeanElise Langley was stung to the quick when her would-be suitor suddenly left town. But when David Wellman returns and they are thrown together organizing their friends' wedding, can she open her heart again?Her Ideal Husband by Pamela NissenAs a girl, Lydia Townsend hoped to marry Jebediah Gentry—until his rejection spoiled her dreams. When family duty brings her home, it's Jeb's chance to show Lydia that now is the time for her wedding dreams to come true.

    Topics cover civil rights, road trips in Baja, and Elvis' s visits to his aging mother. Also tributes by authors such as Donna Tartt and Ron Rosenbaum.

    A gun slinging Muslim wizard in the old West. A disgruntled super villain pining for prison reform. A cybernetic soldier who might or might not be receiving messages from God. Prepare yourself to be transported to new and fantastical worlds.The short stories in this collection have been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell awards. They’ve been reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and other anthologies, recorded for numerous podcasts, and translated into several foreign languages. Now they are collected in one place for the first time. Experience for yourself the original voice of one of fantasy’s rising stars!STORIES IN THIS ANTHOLOGYWhere Virtue LivesHooves and the Hovel of Abdel JameelaJudgment of Swords and SoulsDoctor Diablo Goes Through the MotionsGeneral Akmed’s Revenge?Mister Hadj’s Sunset RideThe Faithful Soldier, PromptedIron Eyes and the Watered Down World

     This volume concentrates more on love in all its hilarious and tragic manifestations: marriage, adultery, fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, and the wisdom and redemption found in heartbreak, grief, even unexpected happiness.

    Welcome to the strange and startling world of Adam Marek; a menagerie of futuristic technology, sinister traditions, and scientifically grounded superpowers — a place where the absurd and the mundane are not merely bedfellows, but interbreed. At the core of Adam Marek’s much-anticipated second short story collection is a single, unifying theme: a parent’s instinct to protect a particularly vulnerable child. Whether set amid unnerving visions of the near-future or grounded in the domestic here-and-now, these stories demonstrate that, sometimes, only outright surrealism can do justice to the merciless strangeness of reality, that only the fantastically illogical can steel us against what ordinary life threatens. Bonus BackLit materials will include an interview and a list of Marek’s recommended books.

    

    Whether set in terrestrial oceans or on far-off space stations, Cat Rambo’s masterfully told stories explore themes of gender, despair, tragedy, and the triumph of both human and non-human alike. Cats talk, fur wraps itself around you, aliens overstay their welcome, and superheroes deal with everyday problems.Contents:Near: Stories of the Near Future and the Far *Introduction (Near / Far) (2012) • essay by Cat Rambo *Near (2012) •• collection by Cat Rambo * The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each (2009) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Peaches of Immortality (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo (variant of “The immortality Game” in Lightspeed) * Close Your Eyes (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Therapy Buddha (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut (2009) / short story by Cat Rambo * Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars (2006) / short story by Cat Rambo * 10 New Metaphors for Cyberspace (2007) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * RealFur (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Not Waving, but Drowning (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Vocobox (2012) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Long Enough and Just So Long (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Legends of the Gone (2009) / short fiction by Cat RamboFar (2012) •• collection by Cat Rambo * Futures (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Kallakak's Cousins (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Amid the Words of War (2010) / short story by Cat Rambo * Timesnip (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Angry Rose's Lament (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Seeking Nothing (2010) / short story by Cat Rambo * A Querulous Flute of Bone (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Zeppelin Follies (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Space Elevator Music (2012) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Surrogates (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain (2012) / short story by Cat Rambo * Bus Ride to Mars (2012) / short story by Cat Rambo.

    One of India’s most original and audacious writers, Uday Prakash, weaves three tales of living and surviving in today’s globalized India. In his stories, Prakash portrays realities about caste and class with an authenticity absent in most English-language fiction about South Asia. Sharply political but free of heavy handedness.

    In ten captivating and tender stories, E. J. Levy takes readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love--whether between a man and woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a mother and a child--drawing readers into tales of passion, adultery, and heartbreak. A disheartened English professor's life changes when she goes rock climbing and falls for an outdoorsman. A gay oncologist attending his sister's second wedding ponders dark matter in the universe and the ties that bind us. Three psychiatric patients, each convinced that he is Christ, give rise to a love affair in a small Minnesota town. A Brooklyn woman is thrown out of an ashram for choosing earthly love over enlightenment. A lesbian student of film learns theories of dramatic action the hard way--by falling for a married male professor. Incorporating theories from physics to film to philosophy, from "Rational Choice" to Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," these stories movingly explore the heart and mind--shooting cupid's arrow toward a target that may never be reached.

    She can show the terrifying aspect of things as outre as enchanted dragons or the zombie apocalypse, or as commonplace as dysfunctional families and the Santa Claus army. To borrow her own words, 'It hurts, and it's horrible, and it's beautiful . . . and we might as well enjoy it'." - Award-winning Stephen DedmanThe collection includes the stories:Bread And CircusesJesse’s GiftFrom Little Things . . .Us, After The House Came BackThe Bearded OnesBerries And IncenseTo Wish On A Clockwork HeartPhantasy Moste GroteskThe Blind ManRed DeliciousAfter The JumpRota FortunaeNepentheThe Female Of The Species Is More Deadly Than The MaleThe Emancipated Dance

    Here, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler has followed his keen sense of the supernatural to collect the most chilling and uncanny tales in the canon. These spectral stories span more than a hundred years, from modern-day horrors by Joyce Carol Oates, Chet Williamson and Andrew Klavan, to pulp yarns from August Derleth, Greye La Spina, and M. L. Humphreys, to the atmospheric Victorian tales of Rudyard Kipling, Edith Wharton, and H. P. Lovecraft, not to mention modern works by the likes of Donald E. Westlake and Isaac Asimov that are already classics. Some of these stories have haunted the canon for a century, while others are making their first ghoulish appearance  in book form.  Whether you prefer possessive poltergeists, awful apparitions, or friendly phantoms, these stories are guaranteed to thrill you, tingle the spine, or tickle the funny bone, and keep you turning the pages with fearful delight.Including such classics as “The Monkey’s Paw” and “The Open Window” and eerie vintage illustrations, and also featuring haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore! AlsoFeaturing haunted mansions, midnight frights, lovers from beyond the grave, rapping, tapping, wailing shades, and ghosts, ghouls, and specters galore!

    His fantastic ability to mix satire with though provoking 'what ifs' is clearly seen in this compilation of thirty-two short stories entitled, Fancies and Goodnights. He pulls the reader into a world of fantasy, make believe, and even 'Hell'. As the stories unfold, the surreal and bizarre become almost possible as we weave in and out of 'reality'. John Collier uses the shortcomings, selfishness and downright stupidity of ordinary man and his incredible imagination to develop a new and exciting twist in each of these witty stories. Subjects such as eternal youth potions, man-eating flowers, and murder are fraught with humor and mystery. He leaves the audience wanting more.

    From Science Fiction Icon Philip K Dick, this collection of stories includes the story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which is the basis for the new movie, Total Recall, starring Kate Beckinsale and Colin Farrell.

    These authentic stories offer an entertaining and insightful window into Middle Eastern culture from one of region’s most beloved folk heroes.

    She’s done this before, working her shake tent, filling his head deep at night with images he can’t quite make out through the mist. She warned him about kikwaakew.” 25 years after the war of Three Day Road, Joseph Boyden revisits Xavier Bird, who looks to his sons to help defeat an old foe on the trap lines. Kikwaakew first appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Walrus magazine. Three Day Road is winner of the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Roger’s Writers Trust Fiction Prize.

    From the summer isles to the mysterious people next door all the way to the odd guy one cubicle over, Hand teases apart the dark strangenesses of everyday life to show us the impossibilities, broken dreams, and improbable dreams that surely can never come true.“Ten evocative novellas and stories whisper of hidden mysteries carved on the bruised consciousness of victims and victimizers. Memories and love are as dangerous as the supernatural, and Hand often denies readers neat conclusions, preferring disturbing ambiguity. The Hugo-nominated “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” marries science fiction and magical realism as three men recreate a legendary aircraft’s doomed flight for a dying woman. A grieving widower in “Near Zennor” unearths a secret of spectral kidnapping in an ancient countryside. “Hungerford Bridge,” a lesser piece, shares a secret that can only be enjoyed twice in one’s life. Celtic myth and human frailty entangle in the darkly romantic “The Far Shore.” The vicious nature of romantic love is dissected with expressionistic abandon in the dreamlike “Summerteeth.” Hand’s outsiders haunt themselves, the forces of darkness answering to the calls of their battered souls. Yet strange hope clings to these surreal elegies, insisting on the power of human emotion even in the shadow of despair. Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsThe Maiden Flight of McCauley’s BellerophonNear Zennor (a Shirley Jackson Award winner)Hungerford BridgeThe Far ShoreWinter’s WifeCruel Up NorthSummerteethThe Return of the Fire WitchUncle LouErrantryElizabeth Hand's novels include Shirley Jackson Award–winner Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Available Dark.

    The University Press of Kentucky has long been the publisher of his work, beginning in 1980 with the reissue of River of Earth and the publication of his final story collection, The Run for the Elbertas. The Press also played a key role in the final flourishing of Still's career in the 1980s and 90

    Her previous misdemeanours in a nightmarishly controlling world have caught up to her, and she is taken in with other felons for re-education. Little does she know what this re-education will include...or its price. In "WordThieves", Sarah White is trapped in a nightmarishly bureaucratic peacenik paradise on Io. Spending her days daydreaming about untranslatable words and craving candy, her world is mostly idyllic. Until, that is, she runs into an old familiar face, and breaks the fragile tension holding her life together. What crimes are committed in the name of peace, control, and harmony? In a world where public violence is a distant memory and peer pressure is a mandated punishment, Clarice and Sarah are about to find out.

    Each story either shows the narrator's past in a land called Bighikistan, or peeks at his subconscious in a series of insomnia-influenced dreams and nightmares. In the 27 fast-paced stories that make up Konrath's bizarro compendium, themes drift from finding meaning in life ("Oil Change Introspection Therapy"), political extremism ("Tree AIDS and the Slurpee Abortion Speech"), and sexual fetish ("The George Washington Buttplug"). The absurdism challenges and humors readers with taboo subjects such as big-budget snuff film cartoons, franchised bondage dungeons in airports, and hundreds of protestors self-immolating themselves because of a nationwide McRib ban. Filled with dark humor and outrageous stylings, this compilation drifts through a paranoid Kafkaesque dreamscape parodying the information overload of the modern world.

    It's hard not to be pulled into the deceptively charming female heads and start laughing along, relating to the frazzled divorced woman unhappy to bump into her ex-boyfriend, or the little girl innocently feeding birds outside by the pool. Then a devastating twist towards the end lurches your heart out and shocks you so much you have to go back to reread the beginning to see what the author had slyly slipped past that you'd barely noticed. Think: Flannery O'Connor meets Desperate Housewives. A poetic, hilarious and haunting collection." - Susan Shapiro, author of Overexposed and Five Men Who Broke My Heart

    Love stories and private eyes, a boy living on a lonely salt cay and a girl's dream of freedom at sea, hurricanes and heroes -- all told with humor ad the insight that comes from firsthand experience.

    A stalker comes into your house while you are sleeping and does your dishes and your taxes because he loves you. A teenage D&D enthusiast searches for his lost broadsword and some people to roll 20 sided dice with. Little kids make Molotov cocktails out of beer bottles in retaliation for getting shot in the ass with a salt gun. One aggravated dog and a belligerently drunken ghost wage war over the living room couch. A man goes up against his girlfriend’s cat in a domestic battle for affection; the cat just so happens to be a 1/4 ton blood muzzled lion.Want to learn how to use a Tiger Tank to rob a bank to fund your vacation to Fiji? What will you do when Aunt Joan calls up on a broken cellphone and gives the winning lottery numbers from beyond the grave? What’s more appealing, becoming a stripper or a clown? Inside, you’ll meet two donuts who fall in love and try to avoid the big hands swooping down into the box. A mailman trying to break a land speed record through a traffic circle. A little girl who wants nothing more than to get murdered in a toxic lake rather than move to Indiana.Careen out of control in stolen cars. Take your kids to Burgerland. Come on a date to a supper club on the Ocean where the speaker cabinets are so large they might make your head explode when the band takes the stage with their thousand pound clarinets of doom. This book is a wild ride, fast and engaging. These 40 stories will surprise, entertain and probably do your taxes for you while you sleep.

    Compulsive, breakneck reading!" -BRIAN KEENE author of The Rising and Ghoul IT'S THEIR WORLD... NOW GET THE FUCK OFF! Whether on the sun-kissed beaches of a nameless South Pacific paradise or in the suffocating dungeons of retail Hell, the misfits of evolution and mistakes of misbegotten science are battling, breeding, and feeding. And they're looking at you... COMING ATTRACTIONS! They came seeking cheap thrills and interspecies recreational sex, but they reaped a whirlwind of clusterfuckery when they toyed with the unspeakable forces of monster lust. From the idyllic nostalgia of WW2 to the thoroughly bat-shit future, witness the wages of sin and mutation as you've never seen them before (unless you read them previously in the periodicals or anthologies in which they first appeared)! OUR MAIN FEATURE! The world gave him a blank check and a demand: Create giant monsters to fight our wars. But Dr. Otaku was not satisfied with mere chaos and mass destruction.... Even as his subversively delicious kaiju creatures undermined the very fabric of American life, he hatched a scheme to animate the cities themselves and inaugurate a new dark age of mega-monster abominations who would finally give humanity the ass-whipping it deserved. Now only one man, riding inside the skull of a much larger man, stands between us and the planet-devastating madness of... ALL-MONSTER ACTION!

    Follow interwoven narrators as they cross paths at different points in time. Lose yourself within the words and take from it what you will...

    All profit from sales of this anthology go directly to Down syndrome charities. Featuring the imaginations of Jack Ketchum, Gary Braunbeck, Gene O'Neill, Gary McMahon, Gord Rollo, Jeff Strand, Michael Bailey, and many others, with an introduction by Thomas F. Monteleone.

    At times funny, but always incisive, this collection of stories examines the survival of those whose only certainty is dysfunction.

    LGBT Studies. MARGINS OF TOLERANCE focuses on gay men in flux traveling, in transit, or at a crossroads in their lives, seeking to understand their place in the ever-changing landscape of gay identity. This collection also focuses on loyalty and betrayal: between gay lovers, among the gay community itself, and lastly between the gay community and the at-large heterosexual community."Eric Sasson is a seriously gifted writer who has uncovered a powerful, haunting truth, that we only know we've reached the margins of tolerance when we come face-to-face with the intolerable." Justin Torres"

    Each fictionalized narrative is based on a real victim of a serial killer, and each is told from a different perspective – a mother, a shrink, a cop, a sister – to reveal the stark afterlife of human carnage. Leveraging the emotional power of personal testimony, Mikita Brottman presents an unblinking psychological portrait of murder, a dark descent that illuminates our cultural obsession with violence and the need for “closure” that persists in the hearts and minds of those who live in its wake.Mikita Brottman takes terrifying risks but never puts a foot wrong. These stories begin with delicate precision and build stunning pace and power. This is fiction that is truer and more penetrating than the savage facts at its core.—Katherine Dunn, Author of Geek LoveA baker’s dozen of harrowing, often heartbreaking, stories—each based on a notorious real-life murder case and told in a different, utterly compelling voice—Thirteen Girls manages the improbable feat of conjuring up the full horror and emotional devastation of serial homicide by focusing exclusively on the aftermath of the crimes and those left to deal with the consequences: family members, police officers, witnesses, survivors. Known for her brilliant, provocative cultural criticism, Mikita Brottman has produced a stunning work of crime fiction–a genuine tour de force.”—Harold Schechter, Author of The Serial Killer Files

    Every society and every generation has its version of the apocalypse: swine flu, genetic mutation, global warming, nuclear fallout, the second coming, peak oil, mass extinction, giant irradiated ants, zombies… Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days is the first anthology of its kind to bring together the poetry and prose of some of America’s finest (though not always most well-known) literary voices with an eye for the literary and the popular, for story and lyric, for the past and the future, for the psychological and the physical, for the real and the fantastic.Apocalypse Now examines our obsession with life and death, creation and destruction, and the physical realms we occupy and, eventually, no longer will, asking: How will the end come? What will we do when all the lights go out?

    You’ll delight in discovering all the exciting erotic possibilities, and ways of getting and staying turned on. It all starts with a little sexting in A.M. Hartnet’s sizzling “Safe for Work” office tryst and Cole Riley’s moving “Same As It Ever Was” shows that makeup sex can be the start of something new and better. Dirty talk leads to lustful surprises and inspiration for the neighbors in “The Mitzvah” by Tiffany Reisz. Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel notes that the lovers in this daringly romantic anthology are “able to open up in the ways they do is precisely because they have another person to rely on, coax them, challenge them, tease them and seduce them into traveling down a new sexual path. Whether that means outdoor sex, kink, a trip to a strip club or a very sensual massage, we get to see how the layers of trust that have been built up get used to stoke the fire that burns between them.”

    Anything for You is stimulating reading, both for experienced players and those just discovering the joy of tying up your lover or bending over for the one you love these explicit stories of obsessive desire unlock the door to a world of obsessive desires, the passion that lies just beneath the skin. Bondage is the stuff of fantasy for a shockingly large segment of the population and true happiness is discovering what makes your partner tick. In this case, it might well be the tickle of rope on naked skin, or a firm paddling. Rachel Kramer Bussel's is a guidebook to great sex, told story by delicious story of uninhibited, adventurous sex sure to keep the home fires burning Each boldly wrought tale shared with your lover is another door opened into the erotic mindscape.

    Whether she is describing the setting sun or the way people are gathered at a village council like ‘thickly strewn grain on the threshing floor’, the varied rhythms of a dalit drum or a young woman astride her favorite buffalo, Shyamala walks us through a world that is at once particular and small, and simultaneously universal. Set in the madiga quarter of a Telangana village, the stories spotlight different settings, events and experiences, and offer new propositions on how to see, think and be touched by life in that world. There is a laugh lurking around every other corner as the narrative picks an adroit step past the grandiose authority of earlier versions of such places and their people—romantic, gandhian, administrative—and the idiom in which they spoke. These stories overturn the usual agendas of exit—from the village, from madiga culture, from these little communities—to hold this life up as one of promise for everyone. With her intensely beautiful and sharply political writing, Shyamala makes a clean break with the tales of oppression and misery decreed the true subject of dalit writing.

    These are a few of the 37 women featured in Brian Whitney's slim but potent debut collection. Told through the points of view of sex addicts and their willing victims, these stories seduce the reader with their spare, rhythmic prose and hypnotic storytelling. Whitney reveals the dark side of relationships in permissive times--the drugs, the scamming, the cheating, the neediness, the love that somehow survives it all. Erotic, unflinching, surprisingly perceptive, this book will change forever the way you view the battle of the sexes.

     GPS by Rick Hautala DUST DEVIL by Gary Brandner SHARPE IS EXTRAORDINARY by David Dunwoody THE GIRL WHO DROWNED by Tracy L. Carbone DUST AT THE CENTER OF ALL THINGS by John F.D. Taff LOOK BEHIND YOU by Eric Shapiro LONE WOLF by Gregory L. Norris WIDDERSHINS by Hollie Snider A GENTLEMAN'S FOLLY by Phil Hickes And the novelette THE END OF AUTUMN by Aric Sundquist. Edited by Peter Giglio

    The jacket description reads: Abby Frucht's new story collection, THE BELL AT THE END OF A ROPE, brings us intimately into the lives of characters who are as bizarre as they are endearing. A woman visits her sister, only to find that the sister, who is slowly unhinging, has made an enormous seafood feast for a former congresswoman she neglected to invite; an eight-year-old girl punches her kindred spirit in the nose just to see what it feels like; a woman who once hid her smoking from her disapproving husband loses interest in cigarettes after his death. Frucht’s deadpan yet playful voice remarks the most fantastical situations constantly occurring amid the ordinary. Her stories ask: What’s normal, anyway? What is life if not unpredictable, unbelievable, and bizarre enough to keep us wanting more?“The first time I read a story by Abby Frucht I experienced something we all want when engaging with art: I felt completely full, and thrilled, and scared. I walked out into the cold night and kept walking. Not lost, but needing to be in the world because after reading Frucht the world felt different, it felt more intimate. The Bell at the End of a Rope is an incredible, ecstatic, funny, dark collection. Reading it is an experience much like watching a house on fire: there is danger, there is destruction, but there is also beauty, light, and above all . . . heat.”—Matthew Dickman “A perfect reading experience: colorful, unpredictable characters, stories that charm and startle, and language that is precise and utterly original. Wit, humor, and pathos. The real winner is the reader.”—Evan Fallenberg “A magnificent collection of stories.”—Robin Oliveira

    By Emma Bull: "The Princess and the Lord of Night" "Man of Action" "The Last of John Ringo" "De la Tierra" "What Used to Be Good Still Is" "Joshua Tree" "Silver or Gold" By Will Shetterly "The Princess Who Kicked Butt" "Oldthings" "Brian and the Aliens" "Taken He Cannot Be" "Little Red and the Big Bad" "Secret Identity" "The People Who Owned the Bible" "Kasim's Haj" "The Thief of Dreams" "Black Rock Blues" "Dream Catcher"

    Includes all new stories by Piers Anthony, Jeff Strand, Joe McKinney, Lisa Morton, Jeremy C. Shipp, Gary McMahon, Aric Sundquist, and many more! You don’t want to miss this staggering collection of horror and dark fantasy! Complete TOC: INSIDE THE BOXES by Jeff Strand DOWN IN THE WOODS TODAY by Emily C. Skaftun DOLLHOUSE by Craig Wallwork POOR ME AND TED by Kate Jonez A LITTLE CRIMSON STAIN by Joe McKinney I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE by S.S. Michaels DREAMS OF A RAGGED DOLL by Cate Gardner ATTIC DOG by David Raffin WHEN HARRY KILLED SALLY by Lisa Morton LIVING DOLL by Piers Anthony THE WHITE KNIGHT by Aric Sundquist THE DOLL TREE by Amelia Mangan A LITTLE TERROR by Phil Hickes GIVE IT A NAME by Gary McMahon DISCARDED by Nancy Rosenberg England GOOGLY by Jeremy C. Shipp RUBIK'S CUBE by Melanie Mascio A BRIGHTLY-COLORED BOX FILLED WITH STARS by Dorian Dawes THE TEA-SERVING DOLL by Mae Empson

    Hot sex."Heartscaping" - F/F fic involving, of all things, plants. No, not garden vegetables!"Homecoming" - M/? fic; home is where the heart is. Especially when you have a sentient house."Hunting Hound" - F/M fic; because this princess needs something more than the usual prince. Mild trigger warnings for (consensual) sexual violence."The Spy Who..." - F/M fic; a message comes in that needs to be revealed through a chemical reaction by the queen and her head spy, by unconventional means."Everything But" - F/M; Marriage can be truly transformative. Sometimes literally."Fruit of Knowledge, Seed of Truth" - F/M/?; a Snow White tale like you've never read it before."Her Master's Voice" - M/F; what's the dynamic when he's in charge, and she's a werewolf that could rip him apart?"Summer Nights" - M/F; the man lurking through the summer parties at the lakehouses is not what he seems, and she's not the usual type either. Of course they gravitate to one another behind the boathouse. Mild trigger warnings for (consensual) sexual violence."Spaced" - ?/F; Lost in space, losing heat. how else to feel alive?

    Truly amazing collection!"—Margaret Cho"Sister Spit is like the underground railroad for burgeoning queer writers. Not only in the van, but in the audiences trapped in the hinterlands of America and looking to escape. Sister Spit saves lives."—Justin Vivian Bond, author of TANGO: My Childhood, Backwards and in High HeelsA collection of writing and artwork from the irreverent, flagrantly queer, hilariously feminist, tough-talking, genre-busting ruffians who have toured with the legendary Sister Spit. Co-founded in 1997 by award-winning writer Michelle Tea, Sister Spit is an underground cultural institution, a gender-bending writers' cabaret that brings a changing roster of both emerging writers and some of the most important queer and counterculture artists of the day to universities, art galleries, community spaces, and other venues across the country and worldwide.Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road captures the provocative, politicized, and risk-taking elements that characterize the Sister Spit aesthetic, stamping the raw energy and signature style of the live show onto the page. Bratty poets and failed priestesses, punk angst and tough love, too much to drink and tattooed timelines—this anthology captures it all in a collection of poetry, personal narrative, fiction, and artwork. Featuring a who's who of queer and queer-centric writers and artists, the collection functions as a travelog, a historical document, and a yearbook from irreverent graduates of the school of hard knocks.Includes contributions by Eileen Myles, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, MariNaomi, Cristy Road, Ali Liebegott, Blake Nelson, Lenelle Moise, and many more!

    to necrophilia, serial killers, the paranormal, cults, freak shows, jilted lovers and even a old curse are told within in the twenty horrifying stories from Tales From A Mortician. Each story will have your skin crawling or your stomach turning. Masterfully told by a writer who has more experience with the dead than anyone ever should, Michael Gore, who is a mortician by day, horror writer by night. Mr. Gore uses the bodies that come into his basement everyday as inspiration for his terrifying tales. While each uniquely haunting story is told in a grim light, they all have one thing in common, someone always ends up dead. Which makes sense being that Mr. Gore's favorite saying is.... "Every Body Has a Story."

    Beacon - Drowning wasn't their worst fate The Occupants of Heathstone House - Fathomless misery and a strange giftEnd of Story - A unique tale of the blood