Volume One contains the following 48 short stories:- The Dead Past- The Foundation of S. F. Success- Franchise- Gimmicks Three- Kid Stuff- The Watery Place- Living Space- The Message- Satisfaction Guaranteed- Hell-Fire- The Last Trump- The Fun They Had- Jokester- The Immortal Bard- Someday- The Author's Ordeal- Dreaming Is a Private Thing- Profession- The Feeling of Power- The Dying Night- I'm in Marsport Without Hilda- The Gentle Vultures- All the Troubles of the World- Spell My Name with an S- The Last Question- The Ugly Little Boy- Nightfall- Green Patches- Hostess- Breeds There a Man…?- C-Chute- In a Good Cause—- What If—- Sally- Flies- Nobody Here But—- It's Such a Beautiful Day- Strikebreaker- Insert Knob A in Hole B- The Up-to-Date Sorcerer- Unto the Fourth Generation- What Is This Thing Called Love?- The Machine That Won the War- My Son, the Physicist- Eyes Do More Than See- Segregationist- I Just Make Them Up, See!- Rejection Slips.

    On the deadly island of Patji, where predators can sense the thoughts of their prey, a lone trapper discovers that the island is not the only thing out to kill him.Mary Robinette Kowal’s “A Fire in the Heavens” is a powerful tale of a refugee seeking to the near-mythical homeland her oppressed people left centuries ago. When Katin discovers the role the “eternal moon” occupies in the Center Kingdom, and the nature of the society under its constant light, she may find enemies and friends in unexpected places.Dan Wells’s “I.E.Demon” features an Afghanistan field test of a piece of technology that is supposed to handle improvised explosive devices. Or so the engineers have told the EOD team that will be testing it; exactly what it does and how it does it are need-to-know, and the grunts don’t need to know. Until suddenly the need arises.Howard Tayler’s “An Honest Death” stars the security team for the CEO of a biotech firm about to release the cure for old age. When an intruder appears and then vanishes from the CEO’s office, the bodyguards must discover why he is lying to them about his reason for pressing the panic button.For years the hosts of Writing Excuses have been offering tips on brainstorming, drafting, workshopping, and revision, and now they offer an exhaustive look at the entire process. Not only does Shadows Beneath have four beautifully illustrated fantastic works of fiction, but it also includes transcripts of brainstorming and workshopping sessions, early drafts of the stories, essays about the stories’ creation, and details of all the edits made between the first and final drafts.Come for the stories by award-winning authors; stay for the peek behind the creative curtain.

    1 The Bastard Stepchild - George R.R. Martin 2 Death by Dahlia - Charlaine Harris 3 The Bleeding Shadow - Joe R. Lansdale 4 Hungry Heart - Simon R. Green 5 Styx and Stones - Steven Saylor 6 Pain and Suffering - S.M. Stirling 7 It's Still the Same Old Story - Carrie Vaughn8 The Lady is a Screamer - Conn Iggulden 9 Hellbender - Laurie R. King 10 Shadow Thieves - Glen Cook 11 No Mystery, No Miracle - Melinda M. Snodgrass 12 The Difference Between a Puzzle and a Mystery - M.L.N. Hanover13 The Curious Affair of the Deodand - Lisa Tuttle 14 Lord John and the Plague of Zombies - Diana Gabaldon15 Beware the Snake - John Maddox Roberts 16 In Red, with Pearls - Patricia Briggs 17 The Adakian Eagle - Bradley Denton

    Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the grey harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song.Contents:Uncle Dobbin's Parrot FairThe Stone DrumTimeskipFreewheelingThat Explains PolandRomano DromThe Sacred FireWinter Was HardPity the MonstersGhosts of Wind and ShadowThe Conjure ManSmall DeathsThe Moon is Drowning While I SleepIn the House of My EnemyBut for the Grace Go IBridgesOur Lady of the HarbourPaperjackTallulah

    Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds Of Exile And Illusion. These novels, Rocannon's World, Planet Of Exile, and City Of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin's ground-breaking classic, The Left Hand Of Darkness.Tor is pleased to return these previously unavailable works to print in this attractive new edition.

    From the battlefields of a Vietnam veteran's memory to an old-time movie hero's search for a serial killer, from Halloween in a special town--where the rules of trick-or-treat are written in blood--to a Texas road where a wrong turn leads to a nest of evil, horror master McCammon is at his terrifying best in this collection of stories.

    Do you love the sound of a peg leg stomping across a quarterdeck? Or maybe you prefer a parrot on your arm, a strong wind at your back? Adventure, treasure, intrigue, humor, romance, danger — and, yes, plunder! Oh, the Devil does love a pirate — and so do readers everywhere! Swashbuckling from the past into the future and space itself, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, presents an incredibly entertaining volume of original stories guaranteed to make you walk and talk like a pirate.Table of Content"Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette"Castor on Troubled Waters" by Rhys Hughes"I Begyn as I Mean To Go On" by Kage Baker"Avast, Abaft!" by Howard Waldrop"Elegy to Gabrielle, Patron Saint of Healers, Whores, And Righteous Thieves" by Kelly Barnhill"Skillet and Saber" by Justin Howe"The Nymph's Child" by Carrie Vaughn"68° 07' 15"N, 31° 36' 44"W" by Conrad Williams"Ironface" by Michael Moorcock"Pirates Solutions" by Katherine Sparrow"We Sleep on Thousand Waves beneath the Stars" by Brendan Connell"Voyage of the Iguana" by Steve Aylett"Pirates of the Saura Sea" by David Freer & Eric Flint"A Cold Day in Hell" By Paul Batteiger"The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth" by Rachel Swirsky"Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake" by Naomi Novik"The Whale below" by Jayme Lynn Blaschke"Beyond the Seagate ff the Scholar-Pirate of Sarskoe" by Garth Nix-

    The two dozen stories chosen for this book by award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan carefully maps this evolution, giving readers a captivating and always-entertaining look at the very best the genre has to offer.A Baghdad merchant encounters an alchemist who may have conquered time; a socialite, a miniature elephant, and a butler attempt to survive a coup masquerading as a wild soiree; a pair of scientists, their species altered in order that they may perform research on an alien world, find themselves embroiled in an interplanetary conflict; a young man begins to question his faith in God when he encounters the remains of a race of tool-using hominids; a warrior treads a grisly path as he strives to stop a rogue wizard's influence; a woman born with her heart outside her body finds solace in the arms of a heartless man; the messiah returns to earth, with disappointing news about the afterlife; figures out of myth and legend do battle with an enemy armed with a frightening weapon...the ability to steal away language itself; a girl and her fortune-teller mother travel the countryside, collecting ghosts.

     Neil Gaiman, “Orange”   Aimee Bender, “The Color Master”   Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover”   Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans”   These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party.   Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico.   Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

    These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar.Contents:The Man Who Bridged the Mist (2011)Wolf Trapping (1989)The Empress Jingu Fishes (2004)The Bitey Cat (2012)Chenting, in the Land of the Dead (1999)My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in my Spouse's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition (2007)Schrödinger's Cathouse (1993)Names for Water (2010)Fox Magic (1993)Spar (2009)The Horse Raiders (2000)26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (2008)At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2003)The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change (2007)The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles (2009)Ponies (2010)

    Also included is an introduction by Herbert describing his personal feelings about the filming of David Lynch's movie version of Dune; Herbert's own favorite short story, Seed Stock and tales from throughout his career, some never before collected.

    In "Stone Animals," a house's haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. This proves just one of several benign but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family newly moved into the house as surely as a more sinister supernatural influence might. The title story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through its account of a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series. Zombies serve as the focus for a young man's anxieties about his future in "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience store clerks who serve them in "The Hortlak." Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.Contents:The Faery Handbag (2004)The Hortlak (2003)The Cannon (2003)Stone Animals (2004)Catskin (2003)Some Zombie Contingency Plans (2005)The Great Divorce (2005)Magic for Beginners (2005)Lull (2002)

    New possibilities previously unimagined appear almost daily . . . and science fiction stories continue to explore those possibilities with delightful results:Collected in this anthology are such compelling stories as:"On K2 with Kanakaredes" by Dan Simmons. A relentlessly paced and absorbing tale set in the near future about three mountain climbers who must scale the face of K2 with some very odd company. "The Human Front" by Ken MacLeod. In this compassionate coming-of-age tale the details of life are just a bit off from things as we know them-and nothing is as it appears to be."Glacial" by Alastair Reynolds. A fascinating discovery on a distant planet leads to mass death and a wrenching mystery as spellbinding as anything in recent short fiction. The twenty-six stories in this collection imaginatively takes us far across the universe, into the very core of our beings, to the realm of the gods, and the moment just after now. Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents, including:Eleanor ArnasonChris BeckettMichael BlumleinMichael CassuttBrenda W. CloughPaul Di FilippoAndy DuncanCarolyn Ives GilmanJim GrimsleySimon IngsJames Patrick KellyLeigh KennedyNancy KressIan R. MacLeodKen MacLeodPaul J. McAuleyMaureen F. McHughRobert ReedAlastair ReynoldsGeoff RymanWilliam SandersDan SimmonsAllen M. SteeleCharles StrossMichael SwanwickHoward WaldropSupplementing the stories are the editor's insightful summation of the year's events and a lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book a valuable resource in addition to serving as the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.

    Anansi. Brer Rabbit. Trickster characters have long been a staple of folk literature, and are a natural choice for the overarching subject of acclaimed editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's third mythic anthology. The Coyote Road features a remarkable range of authors, each with his or her fictional look at a trickster character. These authors include Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles), Charles de Lint (The Blue Girl), Ellen Klages (The Green Glass Sea), Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners), Patricia A. McKillip (Old Magic), and Jane Yolen. Terri Windling provides a comprehensive introduction to the trickster myths of the world, and the entire book is highlighted by the remarkable decorations of Charles Vess. The Coyote Road is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary fantastic fiction.

    Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents, including: Neal Asher, Stephen Baxter, Damien Broderick, Karl Bunker, Aliette de Bodard, Brendan DuBois, Greg Egan, Alexander Jablokov, James Patrick Kelly, Jake Kerr, Nancy Kress, Jay Lake, Ken Liu, Ian R. MacLeod, Paul J. McAuley, Ian McDonald, Sandra McDonald, Sean McMullen, Sunny Moraine, Val Nolan, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Geoff Ryman, Melissa Scott, Martin L. Shoemaker, Allen M. Steele, Michael Swanwick, Lavie Tidhar, and Carrie Vaughn.Supplementing the stories are the editor's insightful summation of the year's events and a lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book both a valuable resource and the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination, and the heart.Content: “The Discovered Country” by Ian R. MacLeod “The Book Seller” by Lavie Tidhar “Pathways” by Nancy Kress “A Heap of Broken Images” by Sunny Moraine “Rock of Ages” by Jay Lake “Rosary and Goldenstar” by Geoff Ryman “Gray Wings” by Karl Bunker “The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn “Transitional Forms” by Paul McAuley “Precious Mental” by Robert Reed “Martian Blood” by Allen M. Steele “Zero For Conduct” by Greg Egan “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard “A Map of Mercury” by Alastair Reynolds “One” by Nancy Kress “Murder on the Aldrin Express” by Martin L. Shoemaker “Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince” by Jake Kerr “The Plague” by Ken Liu “Fleet” by Sandra McDonald “The She-Wolf’s Hidden Grin” by Michael Swanwick “Bad Day on Boscobel” by Alexander Jablokov “The Irish Astronaut” by Val Nolan “The Other Gun” by Neal Asher “Only Human” by Lavie Tidhar “Entangled” by Ian R. MacLeod “Earth 1″ by Stephen Baxter “Technarion” by Sean McMullen “Finders” by Melissa Scott “The Queen of Night’s Aria” by Ian McDonald “Hard Stars” by Brendan DuBois “The Promise of Space” by James Patrick Kelly “Quicken” by Damien Broderick