Now he offers us a superb quintet of novellas -- five dazzling masterworks of speculative fiction, including "Orphans of the Helix," his award-winning return to the Hyperion Universe -- that demonstrates the unique mastery, breathtaking invention, and flawless craftsmanship of one of contemporary fiction's true greats.Human colonists seeking something other than godhood encounter their long-lost "cousins"...and an ancient scourge.A devastated man in suicide's embrace is caught up in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with a young woman possessing a world-ending power.The distant descendants of a once-oppressed people learn a chilling lesson about the persistence of the past.A terrifying ascent up the frigid, snow-swept slopes of K2 shatters preconceptions and reveals the true natures of four climbers, one of whom is not human.At the intersection of a grand past and a threadbare present, an aging American in Russia confronts his own mortality as he glimpses a wondrous future.

    * The Rizzoli Bag -- A sad young man in a Roman cafe is offered a once-in-a-lifetime bargain... * Out of the Frying Pan -- The life of a part-time witch working in a shopping mall is turned upside down in a day... * The Queen and the Thief and the Dragon -- A (fairy) tale of the True West, and a young monarch's solution to a thorny diplomatic problem... * Bears -- An ancient sorrow (with a modern twist) wanders through the tumult of a pre-Lenten street carnival... * The Fix -- In the dark guts of Rome's Colosseum, a slave boy with an impossible dream becomes entangled in the machinations of immortals... * Herself -- In the heart of Dublin, something is killing the People of the Hills -- and it's going to take Ireland's only superhero to stop it... * Hopper Painting -- Desolation and redemption in a midnight diner... * The Back Door -- Two terrorists meet in Zurich to carry out a very unusual heist with a confederate who's more dangerous than they imagine......And of course, the title story, beloved and sought after for a quarter century by Young Wizards fans, and finally available in an ebook -- along with the only other Young Wizards short story, Theobroma.

    Yet a generation later, land has not been sighted and rust cakes her gigantic hull. In the bowels, sinister creatures proliferate and her motley cargo dance, degenerate or die...

    It was the night before Halloween, the night we always called Wreck Night or Devil's Night back when we were kids and Halloween was second in our hearts only to Christmas. At least the newspapers got that much right. The day, I mean. They pretty much screwed up the rest of the story. I was there that night. Let me tell you what really happened…

    My sister was not most little girls.Inside you'll experience intimate first hand accounts of modern day murders, kidnappings, and violent revenge. Other stories are heart-warming with whimsical mysteries, gothic fairy tales, and supernatural monstrosities.

    MooreRed Dirt by Mira GrantBlack Water by Weston OchseInstinct by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and G.P. CharlesNo Guns at the Bar by Aaron RosenbergStrange Harvest by Jon McGoranNo Business at All by Javier Grillo-MarxuachGanbatte by Keith R.A. DeCandidoWhite Flame on Sunday by James Ray TuckWet Tuesday by David FarlandPrince of Peace by Jeremy RobinsonRookie by Joe McKinneyThree Times by Jennifer Campbell-HicksPsych Eval by Larry CorreiaCrash Course by Dana FredstiAtoll by Jonathan Maberry©2017, 2017 Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt; foreword copyright by Tony Eldridge (P)2017 Macmillan Audio

    One tale recounts the author's search for a Kafka story that can only be found in an elusive and quite possibly cursed edition. Other stories feature humans dressing in full-body protective exoskins in the personas of old Hollywood movie stars to barter old Earth movies for an alien aphrodisiac and a young boy coming to terms with creation and moulding his own man out of detritus from a nearby forest. In the title story, a great fantasy writer loses touch with the world he has created and pleads with his young assistant to help him visualise the story's end and enable him to complete his greatest novel ever.

    Datlow has produced a collection filled with some of the most powerful voices in the field: Pat Cadigan, Terry Dowling, Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Fowler, Glen Hirshberg, K. W. Jeter, Joyce Carol Oates, and Lucius Shepard, to name a few. Each author approaches fear in a different way, but all of the stories' characters toil within their own hell. An aptly titled anthology, Inferno will scare the pants off readers and further secure Ellen Datlow's standing as a preeminent editor of modern horror.

    Contents:The Devil in the BelfryLionizingX-ing a ParagraphMetzengersteinThe System of Doctor Tarr and Professor FetherHow to Write a Blackwood ArticleA PredicamentMystificationDIddlingThe Angel of the OddMellonta TautaThe Duc de L'omeletteThe Oblong BoxLoss of BreathThe Man that was Used UpThe Business ManThe Landscape GardenMaelzel's Chess PlayerThe power of WordsThe Colloquy of Monos and UnasThe Conversation of Eiros and CharmionShadow, A Parable

    From the Kafka-esque "Scars" to a ballad like tale of erotic obsession in "The Crossing, " to the mother-daughter bond given a fatal twist in "Death Mother" the stories in The Collector of Hearts illuminate the mysteries of the human experience -- both intellectual and visceral. It is a stunning and richly diverse anthology of mood and menace -- haunting, elegiac, and compulsively readable.

    At the time it seems like the perfect place to do it, so quiet, so secluded. But they have no way of knowing that they've moved into what was once a sacred site of an old religion. And that the old god is not dead--only waiting. Already the god's dark power has begun to spread, changing and polluting all that it touches. A hideous evil pervades the small town. Soon the dead no longer stay dead. When the power awakens the rotting crew of a ship that sank decades earlier, a nightmare of bloodshed and violence begins for the Stainforths, a nightmare that can end only with the ultimate sacrifice--death.