Hartwell demonstrates the amazing depth and power of contemporary speculative fiction, showcasing astonishing short stories from some of science fiction's most respected names as well as exciting new writers to watch. In this anthology, prepare to travel light years from the ordinary into a tomorrow at once breathtaking, frightening, and possible with some of the greatest tales of wonder published in 2012.At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

    The girl detective must go to the underworld to solve the case of the tap-dancing bank robbers. A librarian falls in love with a girl whose father collects artificial noses. A dead man posts letters home to his estranged wife. Two women named Louise begin a series of consecutive love affairs with a string of cellists. A newly married couple become participants in an apocalyptic beauty pageant. Sexy blond aliens invade New York City. A young girl learns how to make herself disappear.These eleven extraordinary stories are quirky, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. Every story contains a secret prize. Each story was written especially for you.Stories from Stranger Things Happen have won the Nebula, Tiptree, and World Fantasy Award. Stranger Things Happen was a Salon Book of the Year, one of the Village Voice's 25 Favorite Books of 2001, and was nominated for the Firecracker Alternative Book Award.Contents:- Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (1998)- Water Off a Black Dog's Back (1995)- The Specialist's Hat (1998)- Flying Lessons (1995)- Travels with the Snow Queen (1996/1997)- Vanishing Act (1996)- Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party (1998)- Shoe and Marriage (2000)- Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water (2001)- Louise's Ghost (2001)- The Girl Detective (1999)Cover painting by Shelley Jackson

    This short story contains a spoiler for book 1.Sicarius, the emperor’s personal assassin, returns from a successful mission only to discover that the enemy is retaliating by sending an assassin of their own. The target? Five-year-old Prince Sespian.Shadows over Innocence is a 4,500-word short story set fourteen years before the first Emperor’s Edge novel. It is available for free on the author’s website: http://www.lindsayburoker.com/Shadows...

    (1974)The Genius Freaks (1973)Aztecs (1977)

    She kisses like a movie star and knows everything about every film ever made. She's also dead and waiting in the Rosebud Theater for Alec Sheldon one afternoon in 1945.... Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town.... Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing....John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead....The past isn't dead. It isn't even past...

    McAuley165 • Perpetuity Blues • (1987) • novelette by Neal Barrett, Jr.193 • Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight • (1987) • novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin220 • The Pardoner's Tale • (1987) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg240 • Glass Cloud • (1987) • novelette by James Patrick Kelly280 • The Evening and the Morning and the Night • (1987) • novelette by Octavia E. Butler303 • Night of the Cooters • [War of the Worlds] • (1987) • shortstory by Howard Waldrop322 • Angel • (1987) • shortstory by Pat Cadigan338 • Shades • (1987) • novelette by Lucius Shepard369 • The Faithful Companion at Forty • (1987) • shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler378 • Candle in a Cosmic Wind • (1987) • novelette by Joseph Manzione413 • The Emir's Clock • (1987) • shortstory by Ian Watson428 • Ever After • (1987) • novelette by Susan Palwick449 • The Forest of Time • (1987) • novella by Michael F. Flynn [as by Michael Flynn ]495 • The Million-Dollar Wound • (1987) • shortstory by Dean Whitlock505 • The Moon of Popping Trees • (1987) • novelette by R. Garcia y Robertson536 • Diner • (1987) • shortstory by Neal Barrett, Jr.551 • All the Hues of Hell • (1987) • shortstory by Gene Wolfe564 • Halley's Passing • (1987) • shortstory by Michael McDowell580 • America • [The Mormon Sea] • (1987) • novelette by Orson Scott Card605 • For Thus Do I Remember Carthage • (1987) • shortstory by Michael Bishop622 • Mother Goddess of the World • (1987) • novella by Kim Stanley Robinson675 • Honorable Mentions: 1987 • essay by Gardner Dozois

    Some call it the ultimate frontier. Humans are the verge of breaking its bonds with Earth and reaching other planets, other worlds, other galaxies. And when we do, will we go forth in peace? Or take with us our conflicts, our battles, our wars? In this latest title in the acclaimed 'Future Chronicles' series of speculative fiction anthologies, twelve authors take us on that incredible journey with adventurers, colonists, and space marines as they push the boundaries against the unknown, against alien empires, and themselves. "The Galaxy Chronicles" features stories by USA Today and Amazon bestselling authors Nick Webb (Constitution), Raymond L. Weil (The Lost Fleet), Jasper T. Scott (Dark Space), plus nine more of today's top authors in speculative and science fiction.

    Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries. Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

    This Penguin Classics edition brings together a dozen of the master's tales-from his early short stories "Under the Pyramids" (originally ghostwritten for Harry Houdini) and "The Music of Erich Zann" (which Lovecraft ranked second among his own favorites) through his more fully developed works, "The Dunwich Horror," The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and At the Mountains of Madness. The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories presents the definitive corrected texts of these works, along with Lovecraft critic and biographer S. T. Joshi's illuminating introduction and notes to each story.Contains the following tales:- The Tomb- Beyond the Wall of Sleep- The White Ship- The Temple- The Quest of Iranon- The Music of Erich Zann- Imprisoned with the Pharaohs aka Under the Pyramids- Pickman's Model- The Case of Charles Dexter Ward- The Dunwich Horror- At the Mountains of Madness- The Thing on the Doorstep

    Here for the first time are his short stories and other short form fiction collected into one volume. A Blink of the Screen charts the course of Pratchett's long writing career: from his schooldays through to his first writing job on the Bucks Free Press,; to the origins of his debut novel, The Carpet People; and on again to the dizzy mastery of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.Here are characters both familiar and yet to be discovered; abandoned worlds and others still expanding; adventure, chickens, death, disco and, actually, some quite disturbing ideas about Christmas,all of it shot through with his inimitable brand of humour.With an introduction by Booker Prize-winning author A.S. Byatt, illustrations by the late Josh Kirby and drawings by the author himself, this is a book to treasure.

    This star-studded follow-up to the acclaimed "Firebirds" contains riveting, original stories by some of today's masters of science fiction and fantasy, including Fancesca Lia Block, Alan Dean Foster, Diana Wynne Jones, and Tanith Lee.

    A pilot is on an emergency mission to a planet whose colony is doomed if he doesn't get there fast. He has just enough fuel to reach the planet—then he finds that he has a stowaway, a young girl wanting to be with her brother on the colony. If the pilot spaces the girl, the ship will barely make it to the planet. If he does not, the ship will crash and both of them as well as the colony will die. What will he do? The Cold Equations appeared in the August 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

     Its companion series – Alt.Chronicles, The Illustrated Chronicles and Chronicle Worlds – are similarly ground-breaking in their coverage of less mainstream tropes such as alternative history and shared universes. Created by award-winning author Samuel Peralta, and edited by some of the most-respected editors in the genre, each volume brings together work from visionary new voices and from the grandmasters of modern science fiction and fantasy. This Future Chronicles Special Edition volume is a compendium of stories selected from the Chronicles’ standalone titles, and includes five new stories, never before published, from some of today’s best writers in speculative fiction.

    He is employed by Freeground station as a port traffic controller, a job he took after completing a tour in the military. His only real joy in life is his participation in true-to-life military simulations with a cadre of friends who come together regularly to defeat challenges made to test the brightest military cadets and officers alike. These restricted scenarios stand as an addictive preoccupation that is so enticing that they ignore the potential repercussions of breaking in to participate. When someone betrays their identities to the Freeground Fleet Admiralty, Jonas and his friends are faced with a far greater challenge: to venture out into the more populated regions of the galaxy to acquire technology and knowledge. They are tasked with laying the groundwork for the Freeground Nation in their efforts to reconnect with the rest of humanity, and to secure the armaments they might need to defend themselves from encroaching enemies. Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins is a collected trilogy that chronicles the early adventures of an ambitious crew. Their leader, Jonas Valent, has the least to lose and everything to gain as he tells the tale of his first tour as Captain of a ship tasked with making allies and discovering new technologies for the good of his people. This simple mission becomes more complicated as the crew ventures further into the settled fringes of the galaxy. This trilogy spawned the best selling Spinward Fringe eBook series. This is where it all began, when one man was challenged to aspire for more than an idle life. A Space Opera Adventure enjoyed across the globe by all ages.

    Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories "Children of the Corn," "The Lawnmower Man," "Graveyard Shift," "The Mangler," and "Sometimes They Come Back"-which were all made into hit horror films.From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.Contents:· Introduction · John D. MacDonald · in · Foreword · fw · Jerusalem’s Lot · nv Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · Graveyard Shift · ss Cavalier Oct ’70 · Night Surf · ss Cavalier Aug ’74 · I Am the Doorway · ss Cavalier Mar ’71 · The Mangler · nv Cavalier Dec ’72 · The Boogeyman · ss Cavalier Mar ’73 · Gray Matter · ss Cavalier Oct ’73 · Battleground · ss Cavalier Sep ’72 · Trucks · ss Cavalier Jun ’73 · Sometimes They Come Back · nv Cavalier Mar ’74 · Strawberry Spring · ss Ubris Fll ’68; Cavalier Nov ’75 · The Ledge · ss Penthouse Jul ’76 · The Lawnmower Man · ss Cavalier May ’75 · Quitters, Inc. · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · I Know What You Need · nv Cosmopolitan Sep ’76 · Children of the Corn · nv Penthouse Mar ’77 · The Last Rung on the Ladder · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978 · The Man Who Loved Flowers · ss Gallery Aug ’77 · One for the Road · ss Maine Mar ’77 · The Woman in the Room · ss Night Shift, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978Librarian's Note: Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780450042683