Wild, but curiously childlike; wise and yet playful; existing outside the confines of conventional morality, and yet bringing hope and clarity to everyone whose lives they touch.” —Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, from her introduction to this book. Charles de Lint’s readers have been asking him to put together story collections featuring their favourite Newford characters. The crow girls are among his best-loved characters, so de Lint obliged by gathering their stories all under one roof, so to speak. Some other members of the Newford repertory company show up here, but at the forefront of each story are these two little wild girls with their big personalities. This book features an introduction by Joanne Harris and an afterword by the de Lint. Cover art by Tara Larsen Chang (www.taralarsenchang.com). These stories have all been published before. “Crow Girls” is also available in The Very Best of Charles de Lint and in Moonlight and Vines; “Twa Corbies” in Moonlight and Vines; “The Buffalo Man” in Tapping the Dream Tree; and “A Crow Girls’ Christmas” in Muse and Reverie. “Make a Joyful Noise,” published in a limited edition by Subterranean Press, has not appeared in any of his previous collections. "Nobody does urban fantasy better than Charles de Lint. He has a gift for creating engaging, fully realized characters, totally believable dialogue, and a feeling that magic is just around the corner … He can make you believe 'as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' " —Amazon.com Editorial Review "De Lint's elegant prose and effective storytelling continue to transform the mundane into the magical at every turn. Highly recommended." —Library Journal, Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. "In many hands, the urban fantasy plot involving strange beings just around the corner fails dismally. It does not in the hands of the reliable, the inimitable de Lint … —Booklist " de Lint…clearly has no equal as an urban fantasist and very few equals among fantasists as a folklorist." —Booklist Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better. — Alice Hoffman Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best. — Holly Black Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it’s just damned fine writing. —Quill & Quire

    Doyle, so he decided to bring down the whole corrupt system from the inside. But after discovering something monstrous in the bank's files, he was framed for murder and trapped inside a conspiracy beyond reason.Now Doyle's doing his best to survive against a nightmare cabal of crooked conglomerates, DNA-doped mutants, drug-addled freak show celebs, experimental surgeons, depraved doomsday cults, and the ultra-bad mojo of a full-blown Hexadrine habit. Joined by his pet turtle Deckard, and Dara, a beautiful missionary with a murderous past, Doyle must find a way to save humankind and fight the terrible truth at the heart of...SKULLCRACK CITY

    He’s ready for anything—until his vampire long lost love shows up on his doorstep in desperate need of help. Pregnant and kicked out of her coven, Lyra struggled to raise their rare shifter-vampire daughter Vega alone among humans. When the 16-year-old is kidnapped Lyra swallows her pride and turns to Finn. But how long can she keep him from guessing the truth about who Vega really is? As they race against the clock to save their daughter, they must defeat the threat imposed by demons infiltrating the human world and a hell gate that could destroy the world. Taste of Darkness He spent more than a thousand years imprisoned in Hell… Drake is an ancient dragon shifter, one of the most powerful beings in existence, but over a millennium trapped in utter darkness has left him ill-equipped for modern society. If it wasn’t for Victoria, the sweet female brave enough to befriend him, he’d be lost. She’s smart and gorgeous and everything he never dared dream of during his years of agonizing loneliness. He may not have anything to offer her, but one thing he knows for sure: he’d die to keep her safe. Only to fall into the heaven of her touch. Victoria is a wolf shifter, healer of the Stavros pack. She’s seen a lot, but she’s never met anybody quite like Drake, the fiery, fascinating shifter who can blaze through the skies unseen by mere mortals. He’s lost, dangerous, and the last male she should fall in love with, but the more time she spends helping him navigate modern life, the deeper—and hotter—their connection becomes. She’s thrilled when they finally locate his family, but reuniting with his people plunges them both into unimaginable danger. It's a race against the clock trying to figure out who wants them dead and who they can trust, especially when the threat is closer than they ever imagined. Beyond the Darkness Now that she has her freedom, she’s not giving it up. Dragon shifter Keelin Petronilla spent centuries in forced hibernation dreaming of one thing: freedom. Now she’s living life on her terms—she’s ditched her clan for an unruly wolf pack, she tends bar for a half-demon, and she’s loving it…until a powerful supernatural being targets her. She intends to handle the mysterious attacks on her own…without the help of dragon Alpha Bran Devlin. Sure, he’s sexy in that hot, scowling possessive way, but Keelin wants to live her own life in her own way. Now that he’s found his mate, he’s not letting her go. Former black ops agent Bran Devlin is a born dragon Alpha and leader of a fierce clan. Getting mated was never part of his plan—until a feisty dragon princess gets under his skin in a big way. The hell of it is, she doesn’t want a mate; she just wants to have a good time. He plays along, but when a dark and powerful being marks her for death, he’s determined to stay by her side in spite of her protests. Now that he’s found his mate, he means to keep her safe no matter what the cost…even if he has to risk it all.

    There is a great deal of pain on the poems, but it is a pain that makes sense, a tragic pain whose meaning rises from the way the poems are so firmly molded and formed from within."—James Wright.Hidden Water is an addition to Copper Canyon's definitive collection What About This. Featuring unpublished and uncollected works, never before published correspondences between Stanford and poet Alan Dugan, and extremely rare audio of Stanford reading, Hidden Water is a must for any lover of Stanford, poetry, and the imagination.My wallet was thick as the bible I carried aroundGraphs of Elvis Presley John Lee Hooker Brigitte Bardot and the sodbusterI thought up nom-de-plumes in the outhouse and sent off Burnsfor things cryptic ads I used stamps that made the postmaster ask where I was fromIs it too bold to say that Stanford will soon be recognized as one of the important voices in American literature and pop culture?Born in 1948, Frank Stanford was a prolific poet known for his originality and ingenuity. He has been dubbed "a swamprat Rimbaud" by Lorenzo Thomas and "one of the great voices of death" by Franz Wright. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas, where he lived for most of his life and wrote many of his most powerful poems. Stanford died in 1978. He authored over ten books of poetry, including eight volumes in the last seven years of his life.

    Thirteen-year-old Anthony Faircloth hasn’t spoken a word in almost a month and with each passing day, his near catatonic state worsens. No doctor, test, or scan can tell Anthony’s distraught mother what has happened to her already troubled son. In desperation, she turns to Mira for answers, hoping her unique abilities might succeed where science has failed.At their first encounter, Mira is pulled into Anthony’s mind and finds the child’s psyche shattered into the various movements of Modest Mussorgsky’s classical music suite, Pictures at an Exhibition. As she navigates this magical dreamscape drawn from Anthony’s twin loves of Russian composers and classical mythology, Mira must contend with gnomes, troubadours, and witches in her search for the truth behind Anthony’s mysterious malady.The real world, however, holds its own dangers. The onset of Anthony’s condition coincides with the disappearance of his older brother’s girlfriend, a missing persons case that threatens to tear the city apart. Mira discovers that in order to save Anthony, she will have to catch a murderer who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets contained in Anthony’s unique mind from ever seeing the light.

    This vision and practice derives its facets, tenets, and qualities from quantum physics, futurist traditions, and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness, time, and space. Inside of the space where these three traditions intersect exists a creative plane that allows for the ability of African-descended people to see "into," choose, or create the impending future. Featuring visions by Rasheedah Phillips, Moor Mother Goddess, Warren C. Longmire, Almah Lavon, Joy Kmt, Thomas Stanley, PhD, and Nikitah Okembe-RA Imani, PhD.

    A living form of money results in the unraveling of the world."The bank is there to save and lend.""Workers work and customers spend."

    Fairytales are for little girls because in real life, men cheat. Something Aleigha knows all too well. There are no enchanted castles and no Prince Charmings who will sweep you off your feet. So when she's forced into interviewing the sexy, enigmatic, and eccentric shifter rock star, Morpheus Wolfe, at his creepy mansion out in the middle of nowhere, all Aleigha can see is the fear inside her own heart. And when circumstances trap her there, Aleigha begins a journey she never expected to take. What she doesn't know is that Morpheus has an agenda, and sometimes fairytales do come true.

     THE PORTAL IN THE FOREST This neighborhood has a secret - while the adults work multiple jobs to make ends meet, the children trade around strange trinkets and famous books with odd misprints. It seems that, without supervision, they've gotten into something extremely dangerous: another universe. One adult is not working. One adult notices. One adult discovers their secret - a portal a few miles deep in Virginia woodlands; a portal that goes to a new universe each day. It's a fantastic opportunity to explore, certainly, but there are two problems: the destinations are all dead worlds that have suffered unique and terrible apocalypses… and the portal is getting bigger.

    In a place of origins, the first Fairie Ring withers. Worlds die. Wonder fades. As its last ripple reaches out, fell creatures barricade up the few remaining Bald Mushrooms and wars are fought for the right to possess what precious little remains…. Until Derik, a healer, creeps through lines of armies, thorns, and traps to steal one. Sacrilege. Tying the wonder to his hip in a sack, he finds himself alone on Earth in the gray, declining city of Clarksburg. Without friends, tools, weapons, and even stripped of the ability to read, he must escape pursuit and find refuge for his burden. A burden that stubbornly refuses every attempt to find it a new home. Shadows of war are descending and all Derik has to fend it off is a baker, a chemist, a cerulean sweet, and a withered hope. The chase is on....from world to world and from the Great Lakes to Malawi.

    EVERY DAY! This is a remarkable achievement -- though a schedule familiar to any syndicated newspaper cartoonist -- but in the digital age artists can do it themselves. Inspired by James Kochalka's American Elf, McFadzean began the project in January 2010, originally as an autobiographical daily. Soon, however, it morphed into its current state: death, cosmic insignificance, facial mutation, and ghosts are all used to point out the absurdity of life and the fundamental loneliness of the human condition, more often than not to humorous effect. McFadzean features characters with disparate ages in these strips because they provide different perspectives on related experiences. A kid character is experiencing everything for the first time, but an older one may wonder if he's experiencing something for the last time. This collection of The Dailies will document three years of sequential strips into one handsome package.

    He navigates this world in search of love, respect, drugs, booze, and satisfaction, often seeking others through a haze of fantasy, despite his evident misanthropy. But fantasy and reality mix, leaving everyone involved with questions of which is which, and whether it even matters. Sometimes likable, more often despicable, Luke relates his narratives with lyrical urgency and a healthy dose of fear, anxiety, and the inevitable apathy. These are stories of dark comedy and just plain darkness taking cue from writers the likes of Brett Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk, and Joyce Carol Oates, but with a little less than one foot on the ground and more than a couple twitching antennae in the clouds.