There are 12 pieces in all here, ranging from those first published in places like Interzone and Pulphouse to a two-page poem taken from the pages of Asimov's. Although many readers may be familiar with Hand's longer works, such as Glimmering or Waking the Moon, here she shows that she's a master of short fiction as well. Her stylish prose and keen insights make for some wonderful stories. --Craig E. EnglerContents:Last Summer at Mars Hill (1994)The Erl-King (1993)Justice (1993)Dionysus Dendrites (1993) poemThe Have-Nots (1992)In the Month of Athyr (1992)Engels Unaware (1992)The Bacchae (1991)Snow on Sugar Mountain (1991)On the Town Route (1989)The Boy in the Tree (1989)Prince of Flowers (1988)

    Yes, it will be dangerous, frequently brutal, and often devastating. But it’s also savagely funny, deliriously strange, and absolutely brimming with adventure.In these edgy, unexpected tales, a body-hopping mercenary avenges his pet elephant, and an orphan falls in love with a sentient starship. Fighters ally to power a reality-bending engine, and a swamp-dwelling introvert tries to save the world—from her plague-casting former wife.So come meet Kameron Hurley in the future. The version she's created here is weirder—and far more hopeful—than you could ever imagine.

    Showcasing this cutting-edge talent, Poe’s Children now brings the best of the genre’s stories to a wider audience. Featuring tales from such writers as Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Carroll, Poe’s Children is Peter Straub’s tribute to the imaginative power of storytelling. Each previously published story has been selected by Straub to represent what he thinks is the most interesting development in our literature during the last two decades.Selections range from the early Stephen King psychological thriller “The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet,” in which an editor confronts an author’s belief that his typewriter is inhabited by supernatural creatures, to “The Man on the Ceiling,” Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem’s award-winning surreal tale of night terrors, woven with daylight fears that haunt a family. Other selections include National Book Award finalist Dan Chaon’s “The Bees”; Peter Straub’s “Little Red’s Tango,” the legend of a music aficionado whose past is as mysterious as the ghostly visitors to his Manhattan apartment; Elizabeth Hand’s visionary and shocking “Cleopatra Brimstone”; Thomas Ligotti’s brilliant, mind-stretching “Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story”; and “Body,” Brian Evenson’s disturbing twist on correctional facilities.Crossing boundaries and packed with imaginative chills, Poe’s Children bears all the telltale signs of fearless, addictive fiction.

    Gates [has a] pitch-perfect ear for contemporary speech... and... [a] keen, journalistic eye."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesIn this comic, fiercely compassionate novel, David Gates, whose first novel Jernigan was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, sends his protagonist on a visceral journey to the dark side of suburban masculinity, explores the claims youth makes on middle age, and the tenacious --at times perverse--power of love to assert itself.When Doug Willis has a mid-life crisis, he doesn't join a gym or have an affair. Instead he gets himself arrested while camping with his wife and kids, takes a two month leave of absence from his PR job, and retreats to his farmhouse in rural Preston Falls--where he plugs in his guitar and tries to shut out his life.While his wife, Jean, struggles to pay the bills and raise their sullen, skeptical kids, Willis's plans for hiatus crumble into Dewars-and-cocaine fueled disarray. A shattered window, an unguarded gun, and a shady small town attorney force a crisis--and Willis can't go home again. With its biting humor and harsh realism, Preston Falls confirms David Gates as a talent in the tradition of Russell Banks and Richard Ford: a master of dark truths and private longings.

    He's a man whose average working day involved defeating witches and banishing werewolves, while ensuring the Royal pot of tea never crossed the thin line separating 'brewed' from 'stewed.' What's more, 1,500 years after that golden age, he's still doing it - here in the modern world, right under our noses.When King Arthur and six of his knights are exposed as living among us, Merlin is unleashed and a grim apocalypse unfolds, uncovering secrets from the past that King Arthur would rather stay buried. When Lucas is forced to confront his own peculiar destiny, will he choose to sacrifice his true love and lay down his life in the service of his master? Sleepless Knights  is a tale of high adventure and warm humor, with a spring in its step, a twinkle in its eye and, at its heart, the ultimate butler."I suggest you find something to hold on to," I said. "I fancy this will be somewhat unorthodox."I edged the car onto the embankment at the side of the road, which got progressively steeper the closer we got to the tanker. Realising that I was not about to stop for him, or indeed his vehicle, the driver ran for the safety of the surrounding fields. Between the cab of the tanker and the side of the road there was a gap exactly half the width of the Jaguar. I took the last few metres of the embankment at top speed.The car swung up onto its right side. The wheels left the ground, and we shot up and clear through the gap. The weight of the Grail on the roof turned us upside down in mid-air, and the momentum of the jump flipped us back round again in a perfect side roll. We landed upright on the road, on the other side of the tanker, just as its engine caught fire.The world exploded.

    Under the spell of the island, Lawrence hopes to rebuild the magic he and Juliet once felt for each other. But everything changes when the child Miranda goes missing. Who is to blame for the girl's mysterious disappearance? And why? - A gripping and evocative novel set on the Isle of Man by Jane Holland, author of multiple novels under numerous pseudonyms, including LOCK THE DOOR and Kindle #1 Bestseller GIRL NUMBER ONE. She is also an award-winning poet.

    McHugh examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations.Contents:Ancestor Money (2003)In the Air (1995)The Cost to Be Wise (1996)The Lincoln Train (1995)Interview: On Any Given Day (2001)Oversite (2004)Wicked (2005)Laika Comes Back Safe (2002)Presence (2002)Eight-Legged Story (2003)The Beast (1992)Nekropolis (1994)Frankenstein's Daughter (2003)

    But no matter what his subject, Mr. White always writes about it in a prose that is a joy to read."--New York Times

    Now, high in the mountains on a quest to see who could bag the biggest deer, old jealousies and hatreds were being dusted off and revived. Everyone knew an explosion was coming. No one knew who would survive. And none of them were willing to turn back. Reissue.

    E. van Vogt was one of the giants of the 1940s, the Golden Age of classic SF. Of his masterpieces, The World of Null-A is his most famous and most influential. Published in 1949 it was the first major trade SF hardcover, and has been in print in various editions ever since. The entire careers of Philip K. Dick, Keith Laumer, Alfred Bester, Charles Harness, and Philip Jose Farmer were created or influenced by The World of Null-A, and so it is required reading for anyone who wishes to know the canon of SF classics.It is the year 2650 and Earth has become a world of non-Aristotelianism, or Null-A. This is the story of Gilbert Gosseyn, who lives in that future world where the Games Machine, made up of twenty-five thousand electronic brains, sets the course of people's lives. Gosseyn isn't even sure of his own identity, but realizes he has some remarkable abilities and sets out to use them to discover who has made him a pawn in an interstellar plot.

    "Will you give me your blood to drink, though you die of it?" In an unexpected twist on a fairy tale, an artist goes into the wilderness to fulfill his father's debt and finds himself the prisoner of a dangerous, alienly beautiful monster.

    It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start.Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts.Now a new generation of storytellers have taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying.Packed with award-winning authors, this anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror.From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles.

    Inside was a dark, surreal, discomfiting story of the horrors that can befall a family. It was so powerful that it won the Bram Stoker Award, International Horror Guild Award, and World Fantasy Award--the only work ever to win all three. Now, Melanie Tem and Steve Rasnic Tem have re-imagined the story, expanding on the ideas to create a compelling work that examines how people find a family, how they hold a family together despite incomprehensible tragedy, and how, in the end, they find love.Loosely autobiographical, The Man on the Ceiling has the feel of a family portrait painted by Salvador Dali, where story and reality blend to find the one thing that neither can offer alone: truth.

    But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.Lost Everything is a stunning novel about family and faith, what we are afraid may come to be, and how to wring hope from hopelessness.

    Then again, he never imagined that a chance meeting with a lost and dying dog named Shandy would change his life forever. Step into the small Irish village of Galbally, where the unwitting Spencer stumbles headfirst into a parallel world that will test his will, sanity, and even physical well-being. Time and promise are running out. Will unnatural forces and events scare Spencer away before he can connect again with the mysterious dog? Will he find his way forward before Shandy meets her inevitable fate? Or will suspicious locals and a nefarious Dublin innkeeper force Spencer from the village before he completes his life-altering mission? Follow Spencer as he races to save a little Irish dog named Shandy. If he only realized that it is Shandy who is trying to save him...