Elrod's picked 15 of her favorite short works for this multi-genre collection spanning 15 years of publication.Also included is a never before published VAMPIRE FILES story, featuring her urban fantasy vampire PI, Jack Fleming!Each story has been polished afresh for this anthology, with pages of new material added.More information -- and previews of the stories! -- may be found at her website vampwriter-dot-com.Titles:1. A Night at the (Horse) Opera (Vampire Files, Fleming)2. The Breath of Bast (Vampire Files), Ecsott)3. Bossman (Original mystery, no vamps)4. Slaughter (Vampire Files, Fleming & Gordy)5. The Devil's Mark (Original historical vampire)6. You'll Catch Your Death (Vampire Files)7. Izzy's Shoe-In (Historical mystery introducing Izzy DeLeon, fearless girl reporter)8. The Quick Way Down (Vampire Files, Fleming and Gordy)9. The Scottish Ploy (Original romance/mystery)10. Grave-Robbed (Vampire Files, Fleming)11. The Company You Keep (Vampire Files, Gabriel Kroun)12. Death in Dover (Jonathan Barrett before he got vamped, historical mystery)13. Drawing Dead (ALL NEW VAMPIRE FILES, Fleming)14. King of Shreds and Patches (Hamlet from a different point of view, mystery)15. Fugitive (Science fiction/space opera)16. BONUS STORY! The Wind Breathes Cold (Quincey Morris: Vampire)

    For a year and a day later, four Mysterious Strangers appeared, and, as Amatus grew to manhood, they guided him on a perilous quest to discover his true identity--not to mention adventure, danger, tragedy, triumph, and true love.John Barnes has been heralded as "one of the most able and impressive of SF's rising stars" (Publishers Weekly) for his widely praised novels including Orbital Resonance and A Million Open Doors.Now, in One for the Morning Glory, John Barnes has crafted an artful and immensely entertaining fable that takes its place as a modern fantasy classic beside such enduring works as William Goldman's The Princess Bride and T.H. White's The Once and Future King.

     Including never-before published stories by: Neil Gaiman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Kathe Koja, David J. Schow, Bentley Little, Poppy Z. Brite, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, Melanie Tem, Tanith Lee, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Lea Silhol, Freda Warrington, Elizabeth Massie, Brett Alexander Savory, Katherine Ramsland, Yvonne Navarro, Thomas S. Roche, Michael Marano, John Shirley, Brian Hodge, and Elizabeth Engstrom ...all at their most brilliant and most outrageous. Here are dangerous games between lovers, howls from the dark, voyeurs and their victims, disturbed wishes and bitter dreams. Unflinching, uncommon, and underground, these tales vibrate with new life.

    Now, for the first time, all of his short fiction has been collected in one volume, demonstrating the scope, the vision, and the wonder of one of America's greatest storytellers. Courage and achievement are celebrated and questioned, paradoxes examined, and human frailty appreciated in fifteen tales, at once lyrical and provocative, ranging fromthe fantastic to the achingly real. Be it a tale of an expulsion from Eden, a journey through time, the dreams of a failed writer, ora dead woman's ambiguous legacy, each story in Novelties & Souvenirs is a glorious reading experience, offering delights to be savored ... and remembered.Contents:Antiquities (1977)Her Bounty to the Dead (1978)The Reason for the Visit (1980)The Green Child (1981)Novelty (1983)Snow (1985)The Nightingale Sings at Night (1989)Great Work of Time (1989)In Blue (1989)Missolonghi 1824 (1990)Exogamy (1993)Lost and Abandoned (1993)Gone (1996)An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings (2000)The War between the Objects and the Subjects (2002)

    Sample some of my finest offerings, such as - a guardian wolf fearing the coming of man, a producer willing to do anything to bring the first pay per view live werewolf hunt to the world, a zombie running for congress, a vampire trying to get his life insurance company to pay up, a six year old girl, who makes a cookie people will do anything for, the story of the first child born on the Moon, or a draftee in a war against science gone awry. This collection includes the novella, Confessions of a D-List Supervillain. It is one of my favorite endeavors and anyone who has ever cracked open a comic book will appreciate this story about a down on his luck bad guy forced into the reluctant role of world savior. Also inside is a preview of my forthcoming series Battle Maidens.

    As the day's light fades deep in the steamy Everglades, they find themselves in a deserted village built entirely on stilts, a place that seems stopped in time, where the air begins to hum and crackle, then explode with light. And when they recover, the Townsends make a terrifying discovery that puts their lives in deadly danger.

    Contents:Night of the Cooters (1987)French Scenes (1988)The Passing of the Western (1989)The Adventure of the Grinder's Whistle (1977)Thirty Minutes over Broadway! (1987)Hoover's Men (1988)Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance? (1988)Wild, Wild Horses (1988)Fin de Cyclé (1990)

    Four Oxrun Station horror novellas each from a different 20th century decade starting with 1950, keyed to the seasons.

    A journalist makes the mistake of visiting a website where real-life executions are the order of the day... At the foot of an old tree, an insidious evil awaits two boys digging for treasure... A browbeaten salesman finds hope and a possible escape from the banality of his world when he returns home to find a fairytale beanstalk sprouting from his garden... A man resists the social pressure to quit smoking and puts himself at an unimaginable risk... A high school student accepts a dare to ask out the ugliest girl in school and enters a world of pain and violence... A comedian finds himself faced with a most peculiar and deadly audience...The pariah of a village accepts an offer of peace at his mother's funeral, but the olive branch may have hidden thorns...A bunch of barflies doomed to murder sinners get together for one last drink in a dying town...These are just some of the passengers, headed for a ride through the dark uncharted regions of the heart and mind...on The Number 121 to Pennsylvania.Includes such reader favorites as "Empathy", "Mr. Goodnight", "Underneath", "The Grief Frequency" and "Peekers"."In 14 dark fantasies collected here, Burke creates characters whose angst opens them up to uncanny incidents and ghostly encounters that seem an extension of their own spiritual malaise... Burke shows skill at imagining expressive supernatural experiences appropriate for his well-developed characters and their agitated emotions." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY"Don't read it late at night." - BOOKLIST"Each tale grabs you within the first few sentences and never lets go, resulting in a collection guaranteed to take you on one of the scariest rides of your life." - RUE MORGUEContents:IntroductionThe Grief FrequencyThe Number 121 to PennsylvaniaMr. GoodnightEmpathyPeekersHigh on the VineTonight the Moon is OursProhibitedUnderneathSnowmenWill You Tell Them I Died Quietly?The Last LaughCobwebsSaturday Night at Eddie'sStory Notes

    Presents a collection of horror short stories, among them Soft, Green Winter, and The Cleaning Machine.Contents:The Cleaning MachineRatmanLipidleggin'To Fill the Sea and AirGreen WinterBe Fruitful and MultiplySoftThe Last One Mo' Once Golden Oldies RevivalThe Years the Music DiedDat-Tay-VaoDoc JohnsonBucketsTrapsMusclesMenage a TroisCutsBonus storiesPerformanceNight DiveMemoirs of the EffsterRumorsHunters

    Peter Hamilton takes us on a journey from a murder mystery in an alternative Oxford in the 1800s to a story featuring Paula Myo, Deputy Director of the Intersolar Commonwealth's Serious Crimes Directorate.

    These underlying myths and fantasies exist not as musty old stories but as ancient truths that have come to illuminate the modern human condition. The title story touches on themes of grief, redemption, and time travel; "Cold Fire" ventures into love and obsession; and "Peace on Suburbia" introduces readers to a Christmas with an entirely different kind of savior. These and 13 other tales are framed by four interludes—Dreams, Nightmares, Waking, and Rising—that guide readers through a world that is at once familiar and eerily off-kilter.

     In the near future, humanity builds a colony on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. They tunnel into the ice to explore the dark oceans beneath the moon's surface, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. What they find will change them forever, setting humanity on a path to the stars. But the old conflicts and hatreds of Earth are not so easily escaped. Will human colonists on distant planets and moons create a paradise or a horrifying dystopia?

    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.