In Calabria


Peter S. Beagle - 2017
    Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy’s scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming and writing poetry. But one chilly morning, as though from a dream, an impossible visitor appears at the farm. When Claudio comes to her aid, an act of kindness throws his world into chaos. Suddenly he must stave off inquisitive onlookers, invasive media, and even more sinister influences.Lyrical, gripping, and wise, In Calabria confirms Peter S. Beagle's continuing legacy as one of fantasy's most legendary authors.

Rushed


Brian Harmon - 2013
    With no idea how to cure himself of this odd new compulsion, he decides to let it take its course and go for a drive, hoping that once he proves to himself that there is nowhere to go, he can return to his normal life. Instead, he finds himself hurled headlong into a nightmare adventure across a fractured Wisconsin as the dream reveals itself one heart-pounding detail at a time. <br><br>Horror, science fiction, dark fantasy. From the author of The Temple of the Blind. 84,000 words.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath


H.P. Lovecraft - 1943
    P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) published by Arkham House posthumously in 1943 in the collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep. Begun probably in the autumn of 1926, it was completed on January 22, 1927 and was unpublished in his lifetime. It is both the longest of the stories that make up his Dream Cycle and the longest Lovecraft work to feature protagonist Randolph Carter. Along with his 1927 novel The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, it can be considered one of the significant achievements of that period of Lovecraft's writing. The Dream-Quest combines elements of horror and fantasy into an epic tale that illustrates the scope and wonder of humankind's ability to dream.The dream-quest of unknown Kadath --Celephais --The silver key --Through the gates of the silver key --The white ship --The strange high house in the mist

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories


Elizabeth Hand - 2006
    This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers. Included in this collection are "The Least Trumps," in which a lonely women reaches out to the world through symbols, tattooing, and the Tarot, and "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," where neo-pagan rituals bring a recently departed soul to something very different than eternal rest. Written in the author's characteristic poetic prose and rich with the details of traumatic lives that are luminously transformed, Saffron and Brimstone is a worthy addition to an outstanding career.* Elizabeth Hand's work has been selected as a Washington Post Notable Book and a New York Times Notable Book, and she has been awarded a Nebula Award and two World Fantasy Awards.

Destroyer of Worlds


Dennis Sharpe - 2013
    Even the seemingly most insignificant of lives can have an enormous impact on the world, and every living creature on it. Death isn't always the end, and to some even an apocalypse can be little more than a means to an end.

Academic Exercises


K.J. Parker - 2014
    Parker, and it is a stunner. Weighing in at over 500 pages, this generous volume gathers together thirteen highly distinctive stories, essays, and novellas, including the recent World Fantasy Award-Winner, “Let Maps to Others”. The result is a significant publishing event, a book that belongs on the shelf of every serious reader of imaginative fiction.The collection opens with the World Fantasy Award-winning “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong”, a story of music and murder set against a complex mentor/pupil relationship, and closes with the superb novella “Blue & Gold”, which features what may be the most beguiling opening lines in recent memory. In between, Parker has assembled a treasure house of narrative pleasures. In “A Rich, Full Week”, an itinerant “wizard” undergoes a transformative encounter with a member of the “restless dead.” “Purple & Black”, the longest story in the book, is an epistolary tale about a man who inherits the most hazardous position imaginable: Emperor. “Amor Vincit Omnia” recounts a confrontation with a mass murderer who may have mastered an impossible form of magic.Rounding out the volume — and enriching it enormously — are three fascinating and illuminating essays that bear direct relevance to Parker’s unique brand of fiction: “On Sieges”, “Cutting Edge Technology”, and “Rich Men’s Skins”.Taken singly, each of these thirteen pieces is a lovingly crafted gem. Together, they constitute a major and enduring achievement. Rich, varied, and constantly absorbing, Academic Exercises is, without a doubt, the fantasy collection of the year.Contents:- A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong (2011)- A Rich, Full Week (2010)- Amor Vincit Omnia (2010)- On Sieges (2009)- Let Maps to Others (2012)- A Room with a View (2011)- Cutting Edge Technology (2011)- Illuminated (2012)- Purple and Black (2009)- Rich Men’s Skins; A Social History of Armour (2013)- The Sun and I (2013)- One Little Room an Everywhere (2012)- Blue and Gold (2010)Cover illustration by Vincent Chong

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart


Jesse Bullington - 2009
    The year is 1364, and the brothers Grossbart have embarked on a naïve quest for fortune. Descended from a long line of graverobbers, they are determined to follow their family's footsteps to the fabled crypts of Gyptland. To get there, they will have to brave dangerous and unknown lands and keep company with all manner of desperate travelers-merchants, priests, and scoundrels alike. For theirs is a world both familiar and distant; a world of living saints and livelier demons, of monsters and madmen. The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.

A Cosmology of Monsters


Shaun Hamill - 2019
    . . until it swallows her up.Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in .

The Ape's Wife and Other Stories


Caitlín R. Kiernan - 2013
    Kiernan has been described as one of “the most original and audacious weird writers of her generation” (Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, The Weird), “one of our essential writers of dark fiction” (New York Times), and S. T. Joshi has proclaimed, “hers is now the voice of weird fiction.” In The Ape's Wife and Other Stories—Kiernan’s twelfth collection of short fiction since 2001—she displays the impressive range that characterizes her work. With her usual disregard for genre boundaries, she masterfully navigates the territories that have traditionally been labeled dark fantasy, sword and sorcery, science fiction, steampunk, and neo-noir. From the subtle horror of “One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm)” and “Tall Bodies” to a demon-haunted, alternate reality Manhattan, from Mars to a near-future Philadelphia, and from ghoulish urban legends of New England to a feminist-queer retelling of Beowulf, these thirteen stories keep reader always on their toes, ever uncertain of the next twist or turn.

Inside Job


Connie Willis - 2005
    Smart, dedicated, gorgeous, and, thanks to her last movie before she hung up on Hollywood, rich, she's a pleasure to oblige when she says Rob has to witness this channeler Ariaura's act--on her, not the Eye's, nickel--despite channelers being so last year. It's quite a show, all right, for in the midst of Ariaura's particular ancient wise guy's basso spiel, a gravelly baritone interrupts (both voices emanate from the channeler's female mouth) to berate the audience as "yaps" and the act as "claptrap." Why is Ariaura undermining herself? Or is she? After all, she angrily accuses Rob and Kildy of scheming to destroy her. Could the baritone belong to a genuine channeled spirit? Willis, one of sf's most spirited writers, rounds on the New Age; pays tribute to a great, skeptical journalist; and affectionately parodies pulp fiction at its best in this irresistible entertainment.

Odd Interlude #1


Dean Koontz - 2012
    BUT YOU MIGHT NOT GET OUT.  Nestled on a lonely stretch along the Pacific coast, quaint roadside outpost Harmony Corner offers everything a weary traveler needs—a cozy diner, a handy service station, a cluster of cottages . . . and the Harmony family homestead presiding over it all. But when Odd Thomas and company stop to spend the night, they discover that there’s more to this secluded haven than meets the eye—and that between life and death, there is something more frightening than either.  Includes a preview of the next thrilling novel in Dean Koontz’s acclaimed Odd Thomas series: Odd Apocalypse! “Koontz gives his character wit, good humor, a familiarity with the dark side of humanity—and moral outrage.”—USA Today “The nice young fry cook with the occult powers is Koontz’s most likable creation . . . candid, upright, amusing and sometimes withering.”—The New York Times “Suspense, tension, and surprising plot twists . . . Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of his work. . . . One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune

X's For Eyes


Laird Barron - 2015
    Alas, life is complicated in mid-1950s USA when you’re child heirs to the throne of Sword Enterprises, a corporation that has enshrined Machiavelli’s The Prince as its operating manual and whose patriarch believes, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, would be a swell company logo. Consider also those long, cruel winters at the Mountain Leopard boarding school for assassins in the Himalayas, or that Dad may be a supervillain, while an uncle occasionally slaughters his nephews and nieces for sport; and the space flight research division of Sword Enterprises “accidentally” sent a probe through a wormhole into outer darkness and contacted an alien god. Now a bloodthirsty cult and an equally vicious rival firm suspect the Tooms boys know something and will spare no expense, nor innocent life, to get their claws on them. Between the machinations of the disciples of black gods and good old corporate skullduggery, it’s winding up to be a hell of a summer vacation for the lads.

I Am Legend


Richard Matheson - 1954
    but he is not alone. Every other man, woman and child on the planet has become a vampire, and they are hungry for Neville's blood.By day he is the hunter, stalking the undead through the ruins of civilisation. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.How long can one man survive like this?

Ghost Camera


Darcy Coates - 2014
    This gift comes at a steep price; the ghosts are resentful and hungry, and the cameras offer them a rare chance to reach their favourite prey… humans. Jenine didn’t know any of this when she found an abandoned Polaroid camera in a lighthouse. At first she assumes the ghostly shapes in the photos are a glitch or a prank – but then the spirits begin to hunt her down, and she’s forced into a deadly race to free herself from the camera’s curse.

Dominion


C.S. Friedman - 2012
    For it is rumored there is a forest where the fae has become so powerful that it devours all who enter it, and he means to test its power.This novella prequel to C.S. Friedman's bestselling Coldfire Trilogy (Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, Crown of Shadows) offers fans of the series a tale of Tarrant's secret history, while new readers will enjoy a chilling introduction to one of High Fantasy's most fascinating—and deadly—worlds.