Elegantly structured, these stories span the globe and beyond, from small-town America and sunny Caribbean islands to the Arctic Ocean and the very gates of Heaven itself. And though some of the stories are steeped in mythology, they remain grounded in universal experiences: loss of identity, leaving home, parenthood, joy, and longing.Crisscrossing the pages of Awayland are travelers and expats, shadows and ghosts. A girl watches as her homesick mother slowly dissolves into literal mist. The mayor of a small Midwestern town offers a strange prize, for stranger reasons, to the parents of any baby born on Lenin's birthday. A chef bound for Mars begins an even more treacherous journey much closer to home. And a lonely heart searches for love online--never mind that he's a Cyclops. With her signature tenderness, Ramona Ausubel applies a mapmaker's eye to landscapes both real and imagined, all the while providing a keen guide to the wild, uncharted terrain of the human heart.

    The ebook from Gateway contains 11 stories, same as the VIE volume (only three stories from the Dobson edition), and the ebook from Spatterlight contains 9 stories.

    This new collection of stories marks a departure in Barthelme's work with the introduction of a new mode in which he abandons all forms of characterization other than dialogue in an attempt to shift and alter reader expectations and perceptions

    Acclaimed editors Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly bring their keen editorial sensibilities to the third volume of the Year's Best Weird Fiction. The best weird stories of 2015 features work from Robert Aickman, Matthew M. Bartlett, Sadie Bruce, Nadia Bulkin, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Conn, Brian Evenson, L.S. Johnson, Rebecca Kuder, Tim Lebbon, Reggie Oliver, Lynda E. Rucker, Robert Shearman, Christopher Slatsky, D.P. Watt, Michael Wehunt, Marian Womack, Genevieve Valentine No longer the purview of esoteric readers, weird fiction is enjoying wide popularity. Chiefly derived from early 20th-century pulp fiction, its remit includes ghost stories, the strange and macabre, the supernatural, fantasy, myth, philosophical ontology, ambiguity, and a healthy helping of the outre. At its best, weird fiction is an intersecting of themes and ideas that explore and subvert the Laws of Nature. It is not confined to one genre, but is the most diverse and welcoming of all genres.

    ClubA Washington Post Notable BookAn NPR Great Read of 2013From the author of the novel Swamplandia!—a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize—comes a magical and uniquely daring collection of stories that showcases the author’s gifts at their inimitable best. Within these pages, a community of girls held captive in a Japanese silk factory slowly transmute into human silkworms and plot revolution; a group of boys stumble upon a mutilated scarecrow that bears an uncanny resemblance to a missing classmate that they used to torment; a family’s disastrous quest for land in the American West has grave consequences; and in the marvelous title story, two vampires in a sun-drenched lemon grove try to slake their thirst for blood and come to terms with their immortal relationship.Vampires in the lemon grove --Reeling for the Empire --Seagull army descends on Strong Beach, 1979 --Proving up --Barn at the end of our term --Dougbert Shackleton's rules for Antarctic tailgating --New veterans --Graveless doll of Eric Mutis

    The Master of Rampling Gate is a chilling tale of vampiric seduction enhanced by seductive videos about vampires, the black plague, the gothic style, and Anne Rice herself.Set in the gasslit streets of 1888 London and the wild moors of the countryside beyond, The Master of Rampling Gate tells the story of Julie, a young woman who becomes obsessed with the house her father swore her and her brother to tear down upon his death. Julie can't imagine what lies in wait at Rampling Gate, a spirit that haunted her father for years and now yearns for her flesh. The Master of Rampling Gate is a sublime love story in which Julie struggles to choose between the world of reason and rationality and the dark promises of a creature she is almost helpless to resist. Experience this rare Anne Rice short story as a Vook. Read AND watch the heart pounding tale as you take a journey back in time to the late 1800s, a world of endless nights, secret passions and the promise of dark and nameless pleasures . "

    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.

    something that might answer?Dave Burns has asked.Now he, and his friends, might not live long enough to understand the reply.

    Travel rain-shot streets with a gang of hip malcontents, hooked on the most powerful drug you can imagine. Yet Vurt feathers are not for the weak. As the mysterious Game Cat says, ‘Be careful, be very careful’. But Scribble isn’t listening. He has to find his lost love. His journey is a mission to find Curious Yellow, the ultimate, perhaps even mythical Vurt feather. As the most powerful narcotic of all, Scribble must be prepared to leave his current reality behind. This edition also includes three additional short stories by Noon.

    Where nature rubs against small towns, in mountains and woods and bedrooms, here is strangeness seen through a poet’s eye.They say there are always greener pastures. These stories consider the cost of that promise.