By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most unique writers of our time.Contents:• A Study in Emerald • (2003) • novelette• The Fairy Reel • (2004) • poem (variant of The Faery Reel)• October in the Chair • (2002) • shortstory• The Hidden Chamber • (2005) • poem• Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire • (2004) • shortstory (variant of Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire)• The Flints of Memory Lane • (1997) • essay• Closing Time • (2003) • shortstory• Going Wodwo • (2002) • poem• Bitter Grounds • (2003) • novelette• Other People • (2001) • shortstory• Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story • (1999) • shortstory• Good Boys Deserve Favours • (1995) • shortstory• The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch • (1998) • shortstory• Strange Little Girls • (2001) • shortstory• Harlequin Valentine • (1999) • shortstory• Locks • (1999) • poem• The Problem of Susan • (2004) • shortstory• Instructions • (2000) • poem• How Do You Think It Feels? • (1998) • shortstory• My Life • (2002) • poem• Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot • (1998) • shortstory• Feeders and Eaters • (2002) • shortstory• Diseasemaker's Croup • (2003) • shortstory• In the End • (1996) • shortstory• Goliath • (1998) • shortstory• Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky • (2002) • shortstory• How to Talk to Girls at Parties • (2006) • shortstory• The Day the Saucers Came • (2006) • poem• Sunbird • (2005) • novelette• Inventing Aladdin • (2003) • poem• The Monarch of the Glen • [American Gods] • (2003) • novelette

    Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press,; to the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco and, actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas,all of it shot through with his inimitable brand of humour.With an introduction by Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt, illustrations by the late Josh Kirby and drawings by the author himself, this is a book to treasure.

    Delany appropriated the conceits of sword-and-sorcery fantasy to explore his characteristic themes of language, power, gender, and the nature of civilization. Wesleyan University Press has reissued the long-unavailable Nevèrÿon volumes in trade paperback. The eleven stories, novellas, and novels in Return to Nevèrÿon's four volumes chronicle a long-ago land on civilization's brink, perhaps in Asia or Africa, or even on the Mediterranean. Taken slave in childhood, Gorgik gains his freedom, leads a slave revolt, and becomes a minister of state, finally abolishing slavery. Ironically, however, he is sexually aroused by the iron slave collars of servitude. Does this contaminate his mission - or intensify it? Presumably elaborated from an ancient text of unknown geographical origin, the stories are sunk in translators' and commentators' introductions and appendices, forming a richly comic frame.

    Magic features in the world, but is rare and mostly confined to the various priesthoods. The city of Ro Canarn has been assaulted by Knights of the Red. Amongst them is a Karesian Enchantress of the Seven Sisters, intent on manipulating the men of Ro to her ends. Her Sisters intend the assault to be the first move in a longer game, a war intended to destroy worship of the Gods of men and bring back the malevolent Forest Giant of pleasure and blood.The young Lord of Canarn, and one of his closest friends, plan a desperate gambit to take back the city, whilst his sister journeys north and confronts more of the Sisters' schemes as they try to conquer the rest of the lands of men.Divided by geography and surrounded by enemies, a disparate group of Clerics, Priests, Knights, criminals and warriors must defeat overwhelming odds to seize back the lands of men from those unknowingly under the sway of the Dead God and his Enchantresses.The Duke of Canarn is dead, executed by the King's decree. The city lies in chaos, its people starving, sickening, and tyrannized by the ongoing presence of the King's mercenary army. But still hope remains: the Duke's children, the Lord Bromvy and Lady Bronwyn, have escaped their father's fate.Separated by enemy territory, hunted by the warrior clerics of the One God, Bromvy undertakes to win back the city with the help of the secretive outcasts of the Darkwald forest, the Dokkalfar. The Lady Bronwyn makes for the sanctuary of the Grass Sea and the warriors of Ranen with the mass of the King's forces at her heels. And in the mountainous region of Fjorlan, the High Thain Algenon Teardrop launches his Dragon Fleet against the Red Army. Brother wars against brother in this, the epic first volume of the long war.

    This rollicking adventure begins with a shipwreck on an island where notable characters of literature, history, and folklore coexist — Hamlet and Oedipus, Don Quixote and Doctor Faustus, Becky Sharp and Daniel Boone. From carousing with Robin Hood to crossing swords with the Green Knight and stealing a ride on Huck Finn's raft, our traveler, A. Clarence Shandon, undertakes a whirlwind tour of the classics. And just as the truths of great stories ennoble those who take them to heart, a selfish and cynical drifter is transformed into the gallant knight known as Silverlock.

    But when an ancient book falls into his hands, Drothe finds himself in possession of a relic capable of bringing down emperors-a relic everyone in the underworld would kill to obtain.

    Here, in one volume, are his masterpieces of mystery, terror, humor, and adventure, including stories such as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The Pit and the Pendulum, to name just a few, that defined American romanticism and secured Poe as one of the most enduring literary voices of the nineteenth century.

    Yet, in the uprising against the emperor, the two quickly become the best of friends after a series of adventures fighting against vast conscripted armies, silk-draped airships, and shapeshifting gods. Once the emperor has been overthrown, however, they each find themselves the leader of separate factions—two sides with very different ideas about how the world should be run and the meaning of justice.Fans of intrigue, intimate plots, and action will find a new series to embrace in the Dandelion Dynasty.

    Named after the migrant workers of America's Dust Bowl, these novels convey Blish's "history of the future," a brilliant and bleak look at a world where cities roam the Galaxy looking for work and a sustainable way of life.In the first novel, They Shall Have Stars, man has thoroughly explored the Solar System, yet the dream of going even further seems to have died in all but one man. His battle to realize his dream results in two momentous discoveries anti-gravity and the secret of immortality. In A Life for the Stars, it is centuries later and anti-gravity generations have enabled whole cities to lift off the surface of the earth to become galactic wanderers. In Earthman, Come Home, the nomadic cities revert to barbarism and marauding rogue cities begin to pose a threat to all civilized worlds. In the final novel, The Triumph of Time, history repeats itself as the cities once again journey back in to space making a terrifying discovery which could destroy the entire Universe. A serious and haunting vision of our world and its limits, Cities in Flight marks the return to print of one of science fiction's most inimitable writers.A Selection of the Science Fiction Book Club

    Jones's Sword of Shadow seriesAs a newborn Ash March was abandoned--left for dead at the foot of a frozen mountain. Found and raised by the Penthero Iss, the mighty Surlord of Spire Vanis, she has always known she is different. Terrible dreams plague her and sometimes in the darkness she hears dread voices from another world. Iss watches her as she grows to womanhood, eager to discover what powers his ward might possess. As his interest quickens, he sends his living blade, Marafice Eye, to guard her night and day.Raif Sevrance, a young man of Clan Blackhail, also knows he is different, with uncanny abilities that distance him from the clan. But when he and his brother survive an ambush that plunges the entire Northern Territories into war, he yet seeks justice for his own . . . even if means he must forsake clan and kin.Ash and Raif must learn to master their powers and accept their joint fate if they are to defeat an ancient prophecy and prevent the release of the pure evil known as the End Lords.

    Johnny Mnemonic (1981)The Gernsback Continuum (1981)Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977)The Belonging Kind (1981) with John ShirleyHinterlands (1981)Red Star, Winter Orbit (1983) with Bruce SterlingNew Rose Hotel (1984)The Winter Market (1985)Dogfight (1985) with Michael SwanwickBurning Chrome (1982)

    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"

    A rabble of hard-talking, hog-riding, whore-mongering brawlers they may be, but the Grey Bastards are Jackal's sworn brothers, fighting at his side in a land where there's no room for softness.And once Jackal's in charge--as soon as he can unseat the Bastards' tyrannical, seemingly unkillable founder--there's a few things they'll do different. Better.Or at least, that's the plan. Until the fallout from a deadly showdown makes Jackal start investigating the Lot Lands for himself. Soon, he's wondering if his feelings have blinded him to ugly truths about this world, and the Bastards' place in it.In a quest for answers that takes him from decaying dungeons to the frontlines of an ancient feud, Jackal finds himself battling invading orcs, rampaging centaurs, and grubby human conspiracies alike--along with a host of dark magics so terrifying they'd give even the heartiest Bastard pause.Finally, Jackal must ride to confront a threat that's lain in wait for generations, even as he wonders whether the Bastards can--or should--survive.

    "Robin Hobb" and "Megan Lindholm" are both pseudonyms used by California-born Margaret Ogden, who from 1983 to 1992, published exclusively as Lindholm. This generous, 400-page hardcover original brings together short stories and novellas penned under both authorial bylines. As Hobb herself notes, "their" writing and styles differ in significant ways. (P.S. This collection includes stories previously unpublished in the United States.)

    To be Deryni in a land ruled by the all-powerful Church is to be branded an outcast. But now, young Prince Kelson is about to assume the throne after the mysterious death of his father. He must be told of his magical heritage. For his legacy is being challenged by a woman who does not hesitate to lay full claim to her Deryni powers. And to face her in magical combat, Kelson must learn a lifetime’s worth of magic in a few short days.If he loses, he dies as his father did. And if he wins, he is King—but all the world will know that he is also Deryni…