This collection also includes The Star, A Dream of Armageddon, The Cone, A Moonlight Fable, The DiamondMaker, The Lord of the Dynamos, and The Country of the Blind. Newly designed and typeset in a modern 5.5-by-8.5-inch format by Waking Lion Press.

    Pull up a chair, grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths...and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.Callahan's Crosstime Saloon contains the following stories, virtually all of which were published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact: * "The Guy With the Eyes" * "The Time-Traveler" * "The Centipede's Dilemma" * "Two Heads Are Better Than One" * "The Law Of Conservation of Pain" * "Just Dessert" * "A Voice is Heard in Ramah..." * "Unnatural Causes" * "The Wonderful Conspiracy"

    For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago. These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona Webster

    Steinbeck tackles two important literary traditions here; American naturalism, with its focus on the conflict between natural instincts and the demand to conform to society's norms, and the short story cycle. Set in the heart of 'Steinbeck land', the lush Californian valleys.

    Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

    Magnus Mills gives us a wiry novel of tensile strength that proves him a writer of ferocious talent. Eerie, resonant, spare yet rich in tones both hilarious and ominous—as if a work by Irvine Welsh, or perhaps Macbeth, had been adapted by the Coen brothers—his story has a finale so ingenious, insidious, and satisfying, it remains locked in the mind long after the last wire has been strung into place.

    Each begins in a quietly factual way, making all the more dramatic the crescendo of fear and puzzlement that ensues as each new circumstance is revealed. Even without his supremely logical brain child, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle shows that his tales are unbeatable for thrills and excitement.Contents:Tales of terror:The horror of the heightsThe leather funnelThe new catacombThe case of Lady SannoxThe terror of Blue John GapThe Brazilian catTales of mystery:The lost specialThe beetle-hunterThe man with the watchesThe japanned boxThe black doctorThe Jew's breastplateThe nightmare room.

    This collection of horror stories, many previously unpublished, includes "The Medusa," "Conversations in a Dead Language," and "Mad Night of Atonement." By the author of Grimscribe.

    A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers.

    Odd is a tale of how an ordinary man profited from an extraordinary time paradox when he stops to help a man seemingly lost and confused, and then learns the reasons why.Stitch in Time concerns an elderly lady reflecting on a lost love and, thanks to her sons' experiments with time, finally discovering the reason why her lover abandoned her so many years ago.Oh Where, Now, is Peggy MacRafferty? is a social satire on Hollywood glamour in which a bright, individual young Irish woman becomes part of the celebrity circuit, and loses all that makes her special in the process of becoming a star.Random Quest combines romance and parallel universes.A Long Spoon is the story of how a demon is summoned by mistake and the lengths the couple that invoked him have to go to get rid of him without losing their souls in the bargain.

    ‘Rashōmon’ and ‘In a Bamboo Grove’ inspired Kurosawa’s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as ‘The Nose’, ‘O-Gin’ and ‘Loyalty’ paint a rich and imaginative picture of a medieval Japan peopled by Shoguns and priests, vagrants and peasants. And in later works such as ‘Death Register’, ‘The Life of a Stupid Man’ and ‘Spinning Gears’, Akutagawa drew from his own life to devastating effect, revealing his intense melancholy and terror of madness in exquisitely moving impressionistic stories.A WORLD IN DECAY- Rashōmon- In a Bamboo Grove- The Nose- Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale- The Spider Thread- Hell ScreenUNDER THE SWORD- Dr. Ogata Ryōsai: Memorandum- O-Gin- LoyaltyMODERN TRAGICOMEDY- The Story of a Head That Fell Off- Green Onions- Horse LegsAKUTAGAWA'S OWN STORY- Daidōji Shinsuke: The Early Years- The Writer's Craft- The Baby's Sickness- Death Register- The Life of a Stupid Man- Spinning Gears

    Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here... but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to Booker Prize winners: including William Gibson, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Franz Kafka, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Haruki Murakami, M. R. James, Neil Gaiman, Mervyn Peake, and Michael Chabon.

    Seventeen stories written over the past fifteen years reveal the author's vision of human love and tragedy.Wants --Debts --Distance --Faith in the afternoon --Gloomy tune --Living --Come on, ye sons of art --Faith in a tree --Samuel --The burdened man --Enormous changes at the last minute --Politics --Northeast playground --The little girl --A conversation with my father --The immigrant story --The long-distance runner

    Haunted, a collection of sixteen tales that range from classic ghost stories to portrayals of chilling psychological terror, raises the genre to the level of fine literature - complex, multi-layered, and gripping fiction that is very scary indeed. In the title story, "Haunted, " the pubescent Melissa and her best friend, the sexually precocious Mary Lou, ignore "no trespassing" signs to explore forbidden houses. But the deserted Minton farm is one place where they should not have gone, and years later Melissa is tormented by her memories of its malevolence...and the murder of Mary Lou. In the novella, "The Model, " a sexual threat seems to underlie the interaction between young Sybil Blake and "Mr. Starr, " who asks her to be his model, but the truth about her own identity, and his, shows that the danger is lurking in a different part of the heart. The "Accursed Inhabitants of the House of Bly, " a macabre reworking of Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw, " resurrects the evil of Miss Jessel and Quint, who are up to their old tricks with the children, Miles and Flora, but with new, perverse, and brilliant revelations. The tales in this collection plunge the reader into nightmare worlds where violence slips in unexpectedly, where reality turns into a funhouse mirror, and where American culture goes awry in shocking, provocative ways. Joyce Carol Oates is a master storyteller of the dark side. She writes with skillfully controlled prose, tightly woven plots, and deep psychological insight that m her fictional horror worthy to set alongside the stories of Edgar Allan Poe - and far above all the rest.Haunted --The doll --The bingo master --The white cat --The model --Extenuating circumstances --Don't you trust me --The guilty party --The premonition --Phase change --Poor Bibi --Thanksgiving --Blind --The radio astronomer --Accursed inhabitants of the House of Bly --Martyrdom

    L. Kennedy's first collection of stories, are small people - the kind who inhabit the silence in libraries, who never appear on screen and who never make the headlines. Often alone and sometimes lonely, her characters ponder the mysteries of sex and death-and the ability of public transport to affect our lives.