Or at least that's his reputation. Some reputations are deserved, some not. Or perhaps Tymon's notoriety is a means toward quite a different end.

    Something is creeping up the stairs, something is standing outside the door. Something is sobbing, sobbing in the dark; something is sighing across the floor... "The Specialist's Hat" by Kelly Link is one of 27 short horror stories in Nightfire's audio anthology.Come Join Us by the Fire S2 is the second installment of Nightfire's audio-only horror anthology, featuring a wide collection of short stories from emerging voices in the horror genre as well as longtime fan favorites. The collection showcases the breadth of talent writing in the horror genre today, with contributions from a wide range of genre luminaries including Laird Barron, Indrapramit Das, Shaun Hamill, Daniel M. Lavery, Matthew Lyons, T. Kingfisher, Seanan McGuire, Nibedita Sen, and Nightfire’s own Cassandra Khaw and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.The full Table of Contents is as follows:Cassandra Khaw- "Some Breakable Things"Sarah Langan- "The Changeling"Shaun Hamill- "Music of the Abyss"Caitlín R. Kiernan- "Standing Water"Tade Thompson- "Bone"T. Kingfisher- "Origin Story"Silvia Moreno-Garcia- "The Sound of Footsteps"Laird Barron- "Jōren Falls"Damien Angelica Walters- "Tooth, Tongue, and Claw"Sunny Moraine- "If Living is Seeing I'm Holding My Breath"Matthew Lyons- "Blood Daughter"Jessica Guess- "Mama Tulu"Daniel M. Lavery- "Prodigal Son"Seanan McGuire- "Emergency Landing"Indrapramit Das - "You Will Survive This Night"‘Pemi Aguda- "Things Boys Do"Kelly Link- "The Specialist's Hat"Clay McLeod Chapman- "The Fireplace"Nibedita Sen- "Pigeons"Camilla Grudova- "Ghost Bread"Catherynne M. Valente- "The Days of Flaming Motorcycles"Brian Evenson- "The Cabin"Maria Dahvana Headley- "The Krakatoan"Craig Laurance Gidney- "Spyder Threads"Mariana Enriquez- "Things We Lost in the Fire"Gabino Iglesias- "The Song of the Lady Rose"Nick Antosca- "The Quiet Boy"

    Besides the acclaimed, Hugo-winning title piece and its influential prequels, the 36 stories include the British SF Association Award winner "Cube Root", and eight "Year's Best" and "Best Of" anthology choices. SF, fantasy, horror, and unclassifiable Langford weirdness ranging from 1975 to 2003.Contents: *Introduction (Different Kinds of Darkness) (2004) • essay by David Langford *Heatwave (1975) / short story by David Langford *Accretion (1977) / short story by David Langford *Connections (1978) / short story by David Langford *Training (1979) / short story by David Langford *The Final Days (1981) / short story by David Langford *Answering Machine (1982) / short story by David Langford * Hearing Aid (1982) / short story by David Langford * Wetware (1984) / short story by David Langford * Cube Root (1985) / short story by David Langford * Notes for a Newer Testament (1985) / short story by David Langford *In a Land of Sand and Ruin and Gold (1987) / short story by David Langford *Ellipses (1990) / short story by David Langford *A Surprisingly Common Omission (1990) / short fiction by David Langford *A Snapshot Album (1991) / short story by David Langford *Leaks (1991) / short story by David Langford *Waiting for the Iron Age (1991) / short story by David Langford *Blossoms That Coil and Decay (1992) / short story by David Langford *A Game of Consequences (1998) / short story by David Langford *Logrolling Ephesus (2003) / short fiction by David Langford *Too Good to Be (1983) / short story by David Langford *In the Place of Power (1984) / short story by David Langford *The Arts of the Enemy (1992) / short story by David Langford *As Strange a Maze as E'er Men Trod (1998) / short story by David Langford *Cold Spell (1980) / short story by David Langford *3.47 AM (1983) / short story by David Langford *The Facts in the Case of Micky Valdon (1989) / short story by David Langford *The Motivation (1989) / short story by David Langford *Encounter of Another Kind (1991) / short story by David Langford *The Lions in the Desert (1993) / short story by David Langford *Deepnet (1994) / short story by David Langford *Serpent Eggs (1994) / short story by David Langford *Blood and Silence (1995) / short story by David Langford *Blit [Blit] (1988) / short story by David Langford * What Happened at Cambridge IV [Blit] (1990) / short story by David Langford * comp.basilisk FAQ [Blit] (1999) / short fiction by David Langford (variant of Comp.Basilisk FAQ) *Different Kinds of Darkness [Blit] (2000) / short story by David Langford *Original Appearances (Different Kinds of Darkness) (2004) • essay by uncredited.

    Clark, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam Sharon Hsu, and Alex Bledsoe; reprint fiction by E. Lily Yu; essays by Meg Elison, Marissa Lingen, Malka Older, and Katharine Duckett; poems by Ada Hoffmann, Brandon O’Brien, Leah Bobet, and Betsy Aoki; interviews with Eugenia Triantafyllou and Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam by Caroline M. Yoachim; and Nilah Magruder’s Fallen Embers on the cover.

    New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month. We are a 2013 Hugo Award nominee for Best Semiprozine! FICTION Perfect by Haddayr Copley-Woods Steel Snowflakes in My Skull by Tom Piccirilli The Cultist's Son by Ferrett Steinmetz Repairing the World by John Chu Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary by Pamela Dean (eBook/subscriber exclusive) The Violent Century (extract) by Lavie Tidhar (eBook/subscriber exclusive) POETRY Cogs by Beth Cato Unlabelled Core c. Zanclean (5.33 Ma) by Michele Bannister Tell Me the World is a Forest by Chris Lynch Aristeia by Sonya Taaffe NONFICTION Resolute: Notes from the Editor-in-Chief by Sigrid Ellis Interview with Cover Artist Mehrdad Isvandi by Loraine Sammy Interview with Ferrett Steinmetz by Maggie Slater After Our Bodies Fail by Abra Staffin-Wiebe Cover art by Mehrdad Isvandi Edited by Sigrid Ellis

    Contentsvii • Introduction (Morning Child and Other Stories) • essay by Gardner Dozois1 • Morning Child • (1984) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois10 • A Special Kind of Morning • (1971) • novelette by Gardner Dozois59 • The Hanging Curve • (2002) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois73 • A Kingdom by the Sea • (1972) • novelette by Gardner Dozois103 • A Dream at Noonday • (1970) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois119 • Ancestral Voices • (1998) • novella by Gardner Dozois and Michael Swanwick191 • Fairy Tale • (2003) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois210 • The Peacemaker • (1983) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois230 • Machines of Loving Grace • (1972) • shortstory by Gardner Dozois237 • Chains of the Sea • (1973) • novella by Gardner Dozois

    Jonathan Strahan) , which you can listen to [official url]. I love his narration; it’s heart-breaking. I grew up watching Reading Rainbow, so it was pretty awesome to grow up to write words that LeVar Burton read out loud!Reading time: 56:27

    of Orgueil unknown)• Beatrice Feels a Heart by Anna Koriath• Lost and Found: On Naomi Mitchison's Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Catherine Rockwood•   Review: Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison by Catherine Rockwood• What Vile by Mark Waldron• A Tree Party by Mark Waldron• Airspace by C. J. Evans• Divorce by C. J. Evans• Blur by Carmen Maria Machado

    This book collects sixteen wondrous stories of fantasy, science fiction, horror and things in between from the imagination of award-winning fictionist Dean Francis Alfar.

    While Raffi and Seven of Nine are enjoying some much-needed R&R in Raffi’s remote hideaway, their downtime is interrupted by an urgent cry for help: a distant, beleaguered planet has enlisted the Fenris Rangers to save an embattled evacuation effort. As Raffi and Seven team up to rescue a mysteriously ageless professor whose infinity-shaped talisman has placed him in the deadly sights of a vicious Romulan warlord, they take tentative steps to explore the attraction depicted in the final moments of Picard season one.Star Trek: No Man’s Land is a rich, fully dramatized Star Trek: Picard adventure as Michelle Hurd and Jeri Ryan pick up their respective characters once more. Written for audio by Kirsten Beyer, a cocreator, writer, and producer on the hit Paramount+ series Star Trek: Picard, and Mike Johnson, a veteran contributor to the Star Trek comic books publishing program, this audio original offers consummate Star Trek storytelling brilliantly reimagined for the audio medium. In addition to riveting performances from Hurd and Ryan exploring new layers of Raffi and Seven’s relationship, Star Trek: No Man’s Land features a full cast of actors playing all-new characters in the Star Trek: Picard universe, including Fred Tatasciore, Jack Cutmore-Scott, John Kassir, Chris Andrew Ciulla, Lisa Flanagan, Gibson Frazier, Lameece Issaq, Natalie Naudus, Xe Sands, and Emily Woo Zeller, and is presented in a soundscape crackling with exclusive Star Trek sound effects. Drawing listeners into a dramatic, immersive narrative experience that is at once both instantly familiar and spectacularly new, Star Trek: No Man’s Land goes boldly where no audio has gone before as fans new and old clamor to discover what happens next.

    The readings are recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. The Selected Shorts radio series is a co-production of Symphony Space and WNYC, New York Public Radio, and is heard on public radio stations nationwide."

    Jemisin, originally published in the August 2008 issue of Jim Baen’s Universe.In “Playing Nice with God’s Bowling Ball,” a police detective tries to understand how a children’s dispute over a playing card could have led to a mysterious disappearance.

    A. Corey . . . Somewhere in the vast expanse of space, a group of prisoners lives in permanent captivity.The only company they have is each other and the Belters who guard them. The only stories they know are the triumphs and crimes that brought them there. The only future they see is an empty life in an enormous room.And then the man from Mars came along . . .Set in the hard-scrabble solar system of the Expanse, The Vital Abyss deepens James S. A. Corey's acclaimed series.

    While there have been exceptions, many Oprah authors are no more writer's writers than Kenny G is a saxophonist's saxophonist.The best way to find the hottest, most influential writers writing would be (1) to read every issue of every magazine that publishes new fiction, and (2) to read every good book that comes out. Which would work fine if you were Burgess Meredith in that episode of "The Twilight Zone" where everyone in the world disappears except this bookish guy who's left alone -- o, lovely briar patch -- inside a library. (Six words of advice: Take good care of your glasses.) Absent that, what do you do?I've said it before (in this very space), and I'll say it again: The best possible way to keep tabs on what's up with North American fiction is to buy, year in and year out, each year's volume of The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. Both collections have been around for more than 80 years, have had their ups (mostly artistic) and downs (mostly commercial), but are both currently enjoying commercial heydays. During the 1970s, BASS's sales sank to a series-threatening 7,000 copies a year, before it hit on some bright ideas that saved it. Beginning in 1978, instead of one editor choosing everything himself (Edward O'Brien, from 1915 to 1940) or herself (Martha Foley, from 1941 to 1977), a series editor winnowed the 3,000 or so published stories each year down to a stack of 120 (a task, says current series editor Katrina Kenison that has become much harder the past couple years than it was when she began in 1991, when she had to scrape to find 120 she thought were terrific). Then a guest editor picks 20 stories to include (this year's, Amy Tan, seems to have done an especially able job and wrote a smart and delightful introduction). Beginning in 1983 (with an Anne Tyler-edited edition that was one of the series's strongest), BASS began to be published simultaneously in both hardback and paperback editions. And in 1987, it began to feature short comments by the writers, talking about their stories. BASS (better selling than O. Henry in recent years) began consistently to sell over 100,000 copies a year.O. HENRY's nadir came more recently. Coinciding with BASS's resurgence, O. Henry, in the 1980s, became the American short story's poor, quirky stepchild. (Not in a good way.) But it received a major overhaul in 1997. A single editor (now Larry Dark) still, as has typically been the case, picks the 20 stories to include. But now, O. Henry also includes a list of 50 short-listed stories (with brief synopses) and comments by the authors of each year's anointed 20. Furthermore, three guest jurors (this year, Sherman Alexie, Stephen King, and Lorrie Moore), pick from those 20 a first, second, and third prize. Sales have zoomed.You could read this year's editions of these two indispensable annuals and -- without breaking a sweat (with no effort more strenuous than feeling the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, though I did, as did Tan, read most of these stories on a StairMaster) -- glean this exemplary shorthand of whom you should be reading, circa 1998-1999.Most Valuable Player: Alice Munro. Why (aside from the fact that she's the greatest living writer in English): Her story, "Save the Reaper," certainly the best short story I read last year, is one of only two included in both the 1999 BASS and O. Henry. In awarding it third prize in O. HENRY, Moore (whose "People Like That Are the Only People Here" was the only story included in both the 1998 BASS and O. Henry) discerns the story's parallels not only with Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" but also with the myths of Eros, Demeter, and Hermes. Moore writes that, in contrast to the O'Connor masterpiece, "[a]s always in the fictional world of Munro, a character's fate pivots not on the penitential moment but on the erotic one."Neither annual allows any writer to be represented by more than one story (a custom that became a rule when both Munro and Richard Bausch landed two gems apiece in BASS 1990), but Munro's "Cortes Island" is short-listed for both and "Before the Change" is short-listed in O. Henry. All three stories are collected in her National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book The Love of a Good Woman.MVP Runners-Up: Annie Proulx, Pam Houston, Lorrie Moore.Why: All three are included in both volumes. Proulx's story "The Bunchgrass Edge of the World" is included in BASS and short-listed in O. Henry, "The Mud Below" in O. Henry and short-listed in BASS. Both are included in Proulx's collection Close Range, which includes two other stories honored in previous years ("Brokeback Mountain" and "The Half-Skinned Steer") and, even in an amazing year for short story collections, is one of the year's most talked-about books.Houston is the year's most-cited story writer, with four: "Cataract" is included in O. Henry; "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had" is included BASS; two other stories ("Then You Get Up and Have Breakfast" and "Three Lessons in Amazon Biology") are short-listed in BASS. All are included in her collection Waltzing the Cat.In addition to serving as an O. Henry juror, Moore has a story, "Real Estate," included in BASS, and her story "Lucky Ducks" is short-listed there. Both are from the exquisite Birds of America.Rookie of the Year: Jhumpa Lahiri.Why: Her funny, gentle, heartbreaking story "Interpreter of Maladies" -- about a nonjudgmental part-time translator/part-time cabdriver in India, who takes an American family sightseeing, gets a decorous crush on the woman, and leads the children into endangerment at the hands of hanuman monkeys -- is the only other story in both volumes. Although Lahiri's work has appeared in The New Yorker, this story originally ran in The Agni Review -- a good journal, but one you may not regularly read. Both annuals had picked it for inclusion before the publication of Lahiri's first book, also called Interpreter of Maladies. The book is, justly, one of the sleeper successes of the year."Our record of discovery is pretty good," says BASS's Kenison. "Chances are, year in and year out, you'll pick up a volume and read a story by someone you've never heard of. The next year, that writer's everywhere you look."This year, that's Lahiri.Also receiving votes are these 18 writers, an intriguing mix of veterans and new voices, also either short-listed or included in both volumes (and if you want to be the savviest reader on your block, you'll read more of these people's work): Poe Ballantine, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Michael Byers, Kiana Davenport, Chitra Divakaruni, Nathan Englander, Mary Gaitskill, Tim Gautreaux (whose "The Piano Tuner," included in BASS and collected in his new book, Welding with Children, is my favorite non-Munro story in either book), Heidi Julavitz, Sheila Kohler, David Long, Steven Millhauser, Kent Nelson, Cynthia Ozick, Melissa Pritchard, John Updike (he's very good), David Foster Wallace (he's very smart), Joy Williams.—Mark Winegardner

    For a humble shopkeeper in Yiwu, it’s a living, selling lottery tickets. Until a winning ticket opens up mysteries he’d never imagined. Lavie Tidha's Yiwu is a Tor.com Original short story.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.