“The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen,” copyright © 2012 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.“The Last Master of Aeronautical Winters,” copyright © 2012 by Larry D. Sweazy“Lowstone,” copyright © 2012 by Anton Strout“The Flower of Arizona,” copyright © 2012 by Seanan McGuire“The Ghost in the Doctor,” copyright © 2012 by Brenda Cooper“Surveyor of Mars,” copyright © 2012 by Christopher McKitterick“Coyote, Spider, Bat,” copyright © 2012 by Steven Saus“Maybe Another Time,” copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith“Renn and the Little Men,” copyright © 2012 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch“Showdown at High Moon,” copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Brozek"The Clockwork Cowboy,” copyright © 2012 by J. Steven York“Black Train,” copyright © 2012 by Jeff Mariotte“Lone Wolf,” copyright © 2012 by Jody Lynn Nye

    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

    It is a place of contradictions—the bright lights mask the peeling paint; a carnie in greasy overalls slinks away from the direction of the Barker’s seductive call. It is a place of illusion—is that woman’s beard real? How can she live locked in that watery box?And while many are tricked by sleight of hand, there are hints of something truly magical going on. One must remain alert and learn quickly the unwritten rules of this dark show. To beat the carnival, one had better have either a whole lot of luck or a whole lot of guns—or maybe some magic of one’s own.Featuring stories grotesque and comical, outrageous and action-packed, Carniepunk is the first anthology to channel the energy and attitude of urban fantasy into the bizarre world of creaking machinery, twisted myths, and vivid new magic.RACHEL CAINE’s vampires aren’t child’s play, as a naïve teen discovers when her heart leads her far, far astray in “The Cold Girl.” With “Parlor Tricks,” JENNIFER ESTEP pits Gin Blanco, the Elemental Assassin, against the Wheel of Death and some dangerously creepy clowns. SEANAN McGUIRE narrates a poignant, ethereal tale of a mysterious carnival that returns to a dangerous town after twenty years in “Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid, and the Open, Lonely Sea.” KEVIN HEARNE’s Iron Druid and his wisecracking Irish wolfhound discover in “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” that the impossibly wholesome sounding Kansas Wheat Festival is actually not a healthy place to hang out. With an eerie, unpredictable twist, ROB THURMAN reveals the fate of a psychopath stalking two young carnies in “Painted Love.”

    Green.Kat Richardson’s Greywalker finds herself in too deep when a “simple job” goes bad and Harper Blaine is enmeshed in a tangle of dark secrets and revenge from beyond the grave.For centuries, the being that we know as Noah lived among us. Now he is dead, and fallen-angel-turned-detective Remy Chandler has been hired to find out who killed him in a whodunit by Thomas E. Sniegoski.

    Le Guin redrew the map of modern science fiction. In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, she imagined a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain—an array of worlds whose divergent societies, the result of both evolution and genetic engineering, afford a rich field for literary explorations of “the nature of human nature,” as Margaret Atwood has described Le Guin’s subject. Now, for the first time, the complete Hainish novels and stories are collected in a definitive two-volume Library of America edition, with new introductions by the author.Le Guin first conceived her League of All Worlds in three early novels of daring inventiveness. In Rocannon’s World (1966), Hainish scientist Gaverel Rocannon ventures to an unnamed planet to conduct a peaceful ethnological survey only to discover a secret outpost of the League’s deadly enemy. In Planet of Exile (1966), the fate of colonists from Earth stranded on distant Werel depends on working together with the planet’s indigenous peoples if they are to survive the oncoming fifteen-year winter. City of Illusions (1967), set far in the future on a sparsely populated Earth that has lost contact with all other planets and is ruled by the mysterious, mind-lying Shing, turns on the appearance of an amnesiac with yellow eyes who may hold the key to humanity’s freedom.In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Earth-born Genly Ai travels to wintery Gethen to convince its nations to join the Ekumen, the confederation of known worlds. To do so he must navigate the subtleties of politics and culture on a planet populated by an ambisexual people who have never known war. This is the novel that inspired Harold Bloom to observe that “Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature.”The Dispossessed (1974), a philosophical adventure story in which a physicist strives to complete a theory of simultaneity that will for the first time allow instantaneous communication between all the planets of humanity, is set against the backdrop of Le Guin’s richly textured vision of what an anarchist society might look like in practice.Also included are four short stories and six essays about the novels, plus the surprising original 1969 version of the story “Winter’s King.” The endpaper map of Gethen has been colorized from a drawing by Le Guin herself.

    Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

    Each short story cultivates a whimsical sense of imagination and reveals a mature, darker voice than previously experienced from this legendary author. In one tale the Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news, while in another the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm betrays himself in dreaming of a "manageable war." Further storylines include an American librarian who discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is the last living Frenchman, and rivals in a supernatural battle who decide to forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry. Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside a bevy of recently released works, this haunting compilation is appealing to both genre readers and mainstream literature lovers.Includes "By Moonlight," Locus Award-winner for Best Novelette.

    Subterranean Press bundles together all of their John Scalzi titles into one easy-to-buy special this November:How I Proposed To My Wife: An Alien Sex StoryAn ElectionJudge Sn Goes GolfingQuestions for a SoldierThe Sagan DiaryThe Tale of the WickedThe God EnginesYou're Not fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to the Coffee Shop

    But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres—they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 continues to explore the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Yu bringing his unique view—literary, meta, and adventurous—to the series’ third edition.

    "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.)

    It didn't, however, prevent him from making millions through brilliant investments, and now the enigmatic recluse has experienced the extraordinarily unexpected: love at first sight.But a whirlwind courtship and marriage to Madeleine -- beautiful, witty, and equally ill-at-ease with reality -- is bringing Quentin something other than the bliss he anticipated, for now he must meet his new wife's family.A bizarre, dysfunctional collection of extreme characters, they are guarding a secret both shocking and terrifying -- as is Madeleine herself. And suddenly Quentin Fears must prevent his dream woman from unleashing an ageless malevolence intent on ruling the world.

    Now, for the first time, that fiction has been gathered together in one place, ready to be enjoyed one twisting, tangled tale at a time. Her work crosses genres and subverts expectations.Meet the mad scientists of “Laughter at the Academy” and “The Tolling of Pavlov’s Bells.” Glory in the potential of a Halloween that never ends. Follow two very different alphabets in “Frontier ABCs” and “From A to Z in the Book of Changes.” Get “Lost,” dress yourself “In Skeleton Leaves,” and remember how to fly. All this and more is waiting for you within the pages of this decade-spanning collection, including several pieces that have never before been reprinted. Stories about mermaids, robots, dolls, and Deep Ones are all here, ready for you to dive in. This is a box of strange surprises dredged up from the depths of the sea, each one polished and prepared for your enjoyment. So take a chance, and allow yourself to be surprised.Enjoy.

    It is home to the greatest miracle a man could imagine: a doorway to Heaven itself. the town’s name is Wormwood, and it is due to appear on the 21st September 1889, somewhere in the American Midwest. There are many who hope to be there: travelling preacher obeisance Hicks and his simple messiah, Soldier Joe;Henry and Harmonium Jones and their freak show pack of outlaws; the Brothers of the order of Ruth and theirsponsor Lord Forset (inventor of the Forset thunderpack and other incendiary modes of personal transport); and finally, an aging gunslinger with a dark history. They will face dangers both strange and terrible: monstrous animals, predatory towns, armies of mechanical natives,and other things besides. Wormwood defends its secrets, and only the brave and resourceful will survive...

     Suspenseful, surprising, sometimes dark, sometimes humorous-these all-new stories will ensure that readers never think of vampires (or birthdays) in quite the same way again. In New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Dracula Night," Sookie Stackhouse is the only human at the annual commemoration of Dracula's birth. But this year, the Prince of Darkness actually shows up-and finds Sookie to be a tasty-looking present. New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's crime-solving wizard Harry Dresden, of the Dresden Files novels, heads to a role-playing party to give his vampire brother a birthday present in "It's My Birthday Too," only to discover there are some bloodthirsty party crashers who don't share their brotherly love. In "Twilight," Cassandra DuCharme, who appeared in New York Times bestselling author Kelley Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, knows she has to kill to live as a vampire another year-but finds herself disturbingly disinterested in the hunt. Plus ten more bloody good birthday stories that take the cake.Contents xi • Preface: A Few Words (Many Bloody Returns) • (2007) • essay by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner1 • Dracula Night • [Sookie Stackhouse 4.3] • shortstory by Charlaine Harris21 • The Mournful Cry of Owls • novelette by Christopher Golden50 • I Was a Teenage Vampire • novelette by Bill Crider73 • Twilight • [Women of the Otherworld Short Fiction 7.2] • novelette by Kelley Armstrong100 • It's My Birthday, Too • [The Dresden Files 9.2] • novella by Jim Butcher146 • Grave-Robbed • [Vampire Files] • novelette by P. N. Elrod176 • The First Day of the Rest of Your Life • [The Morganville Vampires: Extras 2.5] • novelette by Rachel Caine201 • The Witch and the Wicked • novelette by Jeanne C. Stein230 • Blood Wrapped • [Henry Fitzroy] • novelette by Tanya Huff254 • The Wish • shortstory by Carolyn Haines265 • Fire Ice and Linguini for Two • [Garnet Lacey 2.5] • novelette by Lyda Morehouse [as by Tate Hallaway ]290 • Vampire Hours • novelette by Elaine Viets318 • How Stella Got Her Grave Back • novelette by Toni L. P. Kelner

    The Girl Who Heard Dragons and fourteen other stories of alien worlds and strange beings are all brought magically alive by the magic pen of Anne McCaffrey.