The following list is a compilation of suggested actions you can execute to ruin your life. This is not a guarantee for complete destruction of your current social status, family affairs, and or friendships. Reader discretion is advised.1. Live your life exactly how you want.2. Disregard any advice or concern from family or friends.3. Move far away from everyone you know.4. Meet a mysterious stranger and let them into your home.5. Chase after the stranger and enter a microcosm of your own making.6. Revisit all the people you have wronged.And remember: This book is not about you.

    An elderly lady with Charles Bonnet syndrome comes to terms with the little people she keeps seeing, while a newly formed populist group gathers to burn down her retirement residence. A woman born with a genetic abnormality is mistaken for a vampire, and a crime committed long ago is revenged in the Arctic via a 1.9 billion-year-old stromatolite.In these nine tales, Margaret Atwood ventures into the shadowland earlier explored by fabulists and concoctors of dark yarns such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Daphne du Maurier and Arthur Conan Doyle - and also by herself, in her award-winning novel Alias Grace. In Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood is at the top of her darkly humorous and seriously playful game.

     These are some of the stories you will encounter in Chimerascope, the first full collection of short fiction from multi-award-winning Canadian author, Douglas Smith. Sixteen engaging stories of fantasy and science fiction that take you from love in fourteenth-century Japan to humanity's last stand, from virtual reality to the end of reality, from alien drug addictions to a dinner where a man loses everything.

    Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape.Nathan Ballingrud was born in Massachusetts but has spent most of his life in the South. He worked as a bartender in New Orleans and New York City and a cook on offshore oil rigs. His story "The Monsters of Heaven" won the inaugural Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with his daughter.

    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)

    This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers. Included in this collection are "The Least Trumps," in which a lonely women reaches out to the world through symbols, tattooing, and the Tarot, and "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," where neo-pagan rituals bring a recently departed soul to something very different than eternal rest. Written in the author's characteristic poetic prose and rich with the details of traumatic lives that are luminously transformed, Saffron and Brimstone is a worthy addition to an outstanding career.* Elizabeth Hand's work has been selected as a Washington Post Notable Book and a New York Times Notable Book, and she has been awarded a Nebula Award and two World Fantasy Awards.

    EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT brings together twenty stories from the extraordinary talent of fantasy author Cat Rambo. Here are tales from seaport city of Tabat, both before and after the sorcerous wars that destroyed the Old Continent. Here are alchemical explanations for failed blind dates. Here you'll find a dryad, the last great elephant, and an uneasy blur of humanity. Cat Rambo doesn't simply amaze and delight, she restores wonder to her readers with every page. You won't simply believe that pigs can fly, you'll question why you ever doubted the premise at all.Contents:Eight Letters of Wonder • essay by Michael LivingstonHer Eyes Like Sky, and Coal, and MoonlightThe AccordionI'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore SaidHeart in a BoxIn the Lesser Southern IslesUp the ChimneyThe Silent FamiliarEvents at Fort PlentitudeThe Dew Drop Coffee LoungeNarrative of a Beast's LifeEagle-Haunted Lake SammammishSugarA Key Decides Its DestinyThe Towering Monarch of His Mighty RaceIn Order to ConserveRare Pears and GreengagesA Twine of FlameThe Dead Girl's Wedding MarchWorm WithinMagnificent Pigs

    Contributing authors include Julio Cortazar, Jean Muno, Karen Joy Fowler, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Carmen Maria Machado, Nathan Ballingrud, and more. 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.

    My name is Jimmy Plush. I'm a private detective. I'm also a teddy bear. It all started when the original Jimmy Plush entered my life, offering to take my gambling debts away if I agreed to switch bodies with him. But I didn't know that being a three-foot-high plush toy would be such a living hell, especially now that everyone in town wants a piece of me. All I've gotten out of this deal is a faithful Chinese chauffeur, a custom teddybear .45, and a girlfriend who won't take off the fox suit she turns tricks in. Now I've got to keep this town clean and try to track down the real Jimmy Plush without losing my stuffing for good. Only one thing is for sure: Life is hard when you're soft. Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective is a high octane pulp satire. In the tradition of Sam Spade, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, Hellboy and Howard the Duck comes a new kind of hero, a hero that reminds us that the measure of a man is in his guts and his gun.

    In 1633 Al-Shouf, a mother keeps demons at bay with the combined power of grief and music. In 1775 Paris, as social tensions come to a boil, a courtesan tries to save the woman she loves. In 1838 Georgia, a pregnant woman's desperate escape from slavery comes with a terrible price. In 1900 Ilocos Norte, a forest spirit helps a young girl defend her land from American occupiers. These gripping stories have been passed down through the generations, hidden between the lines of journal entries and love letters. Now 27 of today's finest authors – including Tananarive Due, Sofia Samatar, Ken Liu, Victor LaValle, Nnedi Okorafor, and Sabrina Vourvoulias – reveal the people whose lives have been pushed to the margins of history.

    I envy those of you making your first acquaintance with this author.” – From the introduction by Matthew Carpenter Respected as one of today’s leading figures of weird fiction for his striking imagination, versatility, and deeply emotional stories, Jeffrey Thomas here offers up fourteen searing tales. Included are the haunting and surreal "Ghosts in Amber," in which a man is compelled to visit a mysterious derelict factory that harbors chilling secrets; "Jar of Mist," which focuses on a father who, in seeking to understand his daughter’s suicide, encounters a dream-like other realm; "Those Above," which imagines an alternate Victorian society controlled by vast monstrous entities from beyond; and the title novelette "The Endless Fall," which concerns an astronaut who crash-lands on an unknown forested world where time seems to work in an alien way, and where he finds he is unfortunately not alone. “With brutal elegance and chilling subtlety, Thomas pulls his readers into his dark visions immediately from every opening line.” – Paul Di Filippo, in ASIMOV’S “Jeffrey Thomas’ imagination is as twisted as it is relentless.” – F. Paul Wilson “In time he will, in this reviewer’s opinion, be listed alongside King, Barker, Koontz, and McCammon.” – Brian Keene

    The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath?Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!TABLE OF CONTENTS“Bitter Perfume” Laura Blackwell“Violet is the Color of Your Energy” Nadia Bulkin“Body to Body to Body” Selena Chambers“Magna Mater” Arinn Dembo“De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae” Jilly Dreadful“Hairwork” Gemma Files“The Head of T’la-yub” Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)“Bring the Moon to Me” Amelia Gorman“Chosen” Lyndsey Holder“Eight Seconds” Pandora Hope“Cthulhu of the Dead Sea” Inkeri Kontro“Turn out the Lights” Penelope Love“The Adventurer’s Wife” Premee Mohamed“Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961″ Sharon Mock“The Eye of Juno” Eugenie Mora“Ammutseba Rising” Ann K. Schwader“Cypress God” Rodopi Sisamis“Lavinia’s Wood” Angela Slatter“The Opera Singer” Priya Sridhar“Provenance” Benjanun Sriduangkaew“The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad” Molly Tanzer“Lockbox” E. Catherine Tobler“When She Quickens” Mary Turzillo“Shub-Niggurath’s Witnesses” Valerie Valdes“Queen of a New America” Wendy N. Wagner

    His extraordinary imagination spawned both the Elder God Cthulhu and his eldritch cohorts, and the strangely compelling town of Innsmouth, all of which feature within these pages. Stephen Jones, one of the world's foremost editors of dark fiction, will complete the Lovecraft story in his extensive afterword, and award-winning artist Les Edwards will provide numerous illustrations for this must-have collection.

    K. Jemisin, Charles Yu, Jamie Ford, and more. For many Americans, imagining a bright future has always been an act of resistance. A People's Future of the United States presents twenty never-before-published stories by a diverse group of writers, featuring voices both new and well-established. These stories imagine their characters fighting everything from government surveillance, to corporate cities, to climate change disasters, to nuclear wars. But fear not: A People's Future also invites readers into visionary futures in which the country is shaped by justice, equity, and joy.Edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, this collection features a glittering landscape of moving, visionary stories written from the perspective of people of color, indigenous writers, women, queer & trans people, Muslims and other people whose lives are often at risk.Contributors include: Violet Allen, Charlie Jane Anders, Ashok K. Banker, Tobias S. Buckell, Tananarive Due, Omar El Akkad, Jamie Ford, Maria Dahvana Headley, Hugh Howey, Lizz Huerta, Justina Ireland, N. K. Jemisin, Alice Sola Kim, Seanan McGuire, Sam J. Miller, Daniel José Older, Malka Older, Gabby Rivera, A. Merc Rustad, Kai Cheng Thom, Catherynne M. Valente, Daniel H. Wilson, G. Willow Wilson, and Charles Yu.

    It’s how so many of our most beloved stories start.Fairy tales have dominated our cultural imagination for centuries. From the Brothers Grimm to the Countess d’Aulnoy, from Charles Perrault to Hans Christian Anderson, storytellers have crafted all sorts of tales that have always found a place in our hearts.Now a new generation of storytellers have taken up the mantle that the masters created and shaped their stories into something startling and electrifying.Packed with award-winning authors, this anthology explores an array of fairy tales in startling and innovative ways, in genres and settings both traditional and unusual, including science fiction, western, and post-apocalyptic as well as traditional fantasy and contemporary horror.From the woods to the stars, The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales takes readers on a journey at once unexpected and familiar, as a diverse group of writers explore some of our most beloved tales in new ways across genres and styles.