Half of the stories portray the strengths--for good and evil--of unicorns and half show the good (and really, really bad-ass) side of zombies. Contributors include many bestselling teen authors, including Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Margo Lanagan. This anthology will have everyone asking: Team Zombie or Team Unicorn?

    In Jim Butcher’s ”Curses”, Harry Dresden investigates how to lift a curse laid by the Fair Folk on the Chicago Cubs. In Patricia Briggs’ “Fairy Gifts,”, a vampire is called home by magic to save the Fae who freed him from a dark curse. In Melissa Marr’s “Guns for the Dead”, the newly dead Frankie Lee seeks a job in the afterlife on the wrong side of the law. In Holly Black’s “Noble Rot”, a dying rock star discovers that the young woman who brings him food every day has some strange appetites of her own.Featuring original stories from 20 authors, this dark, captivating, fabulous, and fantastical collection is not to be missed!Contents:Curses / by Jim Butcher --How the pooka came to New York City / by Delia Sherman --On the slide / by Richard Bowes --The Duke of Riverside / by Ellen Kushner --Oblivion by Calvin Klein / by Christopher Fowler --Fairy gifts / by Patricia Briggs --Picking up the pieces / by Pat Cadigan --Underbridge / by Peter S. Beagle --Priced to sell / by Naomi Novik --The bricks of Gelecek / by Matthew Kressel --Weston walks / by Kit Reed --The projected girl/ by Lavie Tidhar --The way station / by Nathan Ballingrud --Guns for the dead / by Melissa Marr --And go like this / by John Crowley --Noble rot / by Holly Black --Daddy longlegs of the evening / by Jeffrey Ford --The skinny girl / by Lucius Shepard --The Colliers' Venus (1893) / by Caitlín R. Kiernan --King pole, gallows pole, bottle tree / by Elizabeth Bear.

    Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.These are the facts.Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

    . . a serial killer who defies death . . . a house with a violent mind of its own and another that holds a grotesque secret within its peeling walls. Here are witches who feast on faces, changeling rites of passage, a venerable vampire contemplating his end, and a fanged brat who drains the patience of a bumbling teenage boy. Here too are a flamboyant young novelist in search of a subject more compelling than his own eerie existence and the daughter of a sorcerer fighting to free her lover — and her will — from sinister bonds. Enter the world of GOTHIC!, a celebration of the literary form made famous by such writers as Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe. With chilling stories by: Joan Aiken M. T. Anderson Neil Gaiman Caitlín R. Kiernan Gregory Maguire Garth Nix Celia Rees Janni Lee Simner Vivian Vande Velde Barry Yourgrau

    Bold women warriors, wise women, sorceresses wielding the powers of light - all are ready to aid those in need with no thought to the perils them themselves will face.Let some of today's fines fantasy writers - Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Diana Paxson, and their fellow visionaries - carry you off to the enchanted lands where stalwart heroines pit their skills against such terrors as:an ancient dragon that has long held a kingdom hostage to its terrible hunger...a stealer of magics who seeks to drain the power from all who cross her path...a mortal so caught in evil's thrall that not even his own family is safe from harm...and all the other enemies that only those long-trained to battle with sword and spell can hope to overcome...

    There's another mother and another father in this house and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home ... but will she escape and will life ever be the same again?Elsewhere in this collection, a sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who ever owned it, a stray cat does nightly battle to protect his adopted family, and a boy raised in a graveyard confronts the much more troubled world of the living. From the scary to the whimsical, the fantastical to the humorous, Coraline & Other Stories is a journey into the dark, magical world of Neil Gaiman.All other stories in this collection beside Coraline were originally published as M is for Magic.

    In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut's trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned "murder counselor" concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing– and provide insight into the development of his early style–collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It's impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut.Featuring a Foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut's characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever–and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Contents: Letter from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., to Walter J. Miller, 1951. Confido F U B A R Shout About It from the Housetops Ed Luby's Key Club A Song for Selma Hall of Mirrors The Nice Little People Hello, Red Little Drops of Water The Petrified Ants The Honor of a Newsboy Look at the Birdie King and Queen of the Universe The Good Explainer

    A desperate young woman makes a prayer to the Saint of Sidewalks, but the miracle she receives isn’t what she expected. A painter spies a naked man, crouched by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, transform into a beautiful white bird and decides to paint him, and becomes involved in his curse. Jeanne, a duelist and a sacred blade for God and Her holy saints, finds that the price of truth is always blood. And in the novella “Once, Future” Howard reimagines the Arthurian romance on a modern college campus as a story that is told, and told again, until the ending is right.

    Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, bestselling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals. Now, editors John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen have brought together leading fantasy writers such as Orson Scott Card and Seanan McGuire to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans—and, really, any reader with an appetite for richly imagined worlds. Stories include: Seanan McGuire’s “Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust” finds Dorothy grown up, bitter, and still living in Oz. And she has a murder to solve—assuming Ozma will stop interfering with her life long enough to let her do her job. In “Blown Away,” Jane Yolen asks: What if Toto was dead and stuffed, Ozma was a circus freak, and everything you thought you knew as Oz was really right here in Kansas? “The Cobbler of Oz” by Jonathan Maberry explores a Winged Monkey with wings too small to let her fly. Her only chance to change that rests with the Silver Slippers. In Tad Williams’s futuristic “The Boy Detective of Oz,” Orlando investigates the corrupt Oz simulation of the Otherland network. Frank Baum’s son has the real experiences that his father later fictionalized in Orson Scott Card’s “Off to See the Emperor.”Some stories are dystopian... Some are dreamlike... All are undeniably Oz.***No stranger to Oz reinvention himself, Wicked author Gregory Maguire provides the foreword to these outstanding modern stories inspired by the enchanting Land of Oz.

    Our issues are also filled with author interviews, art features, book reviews and tips for writers. This month, we feature an exclusive interview with Brandon Sanderson on his latest journey to the United Arab Emirates. We also include short stories from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Jeff Wheeler* ("The Beesinger's Daughter"), Amazon bestselling Carrie Anne Noble ("The Perfect Specimen"), and Cecilia Dart-Thornton who came out of hiding to let us publish her latest ("The Churchyard Yarrow"). We also feature stories this month by Steve Yeager ("Rain Dance") and Brendon Taylor ("The Apothecant"). You'll also get two articles, one written by NYT bestselling author Anthony Ryan and the other by David Pomerico, Harper Voyager US's Executive Editor. Still not convinced to give it a try? We'll also be publishing an extended sample of Wall Street Journal bestselling author Charlie N Holmberg's** latest novel ("Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet"). * Wall Street Journal, June 2016 ** Wall Street Journal, June 2015

    "Straub at his spellbinding best".--Publishers Weekly.

    In a world changed by mutation and madness, the past reminds us of who we are, and our memories ground us to who we’ll become. My name is Zoe Cartwright, and I see people’s memories. They haunt me. I know things I shouldn’t about my friends and family--their experiences with love and loss, hope and fear--things that must never be forgotten. Stories that must be written down. The world has already changed so much; who knows what the future will hold.  These are our stories from the world before The Ending.

    Czerneda and other great names in the genre.Contents:The resonance of light / by Geoffrey Landis --Out of China / by Julie E. Czerneda --Site Fourteen / by Laura Anne Gilman --Silent Leonardo / by Kage Baker --A call from the wild / by Dorranna Durgin --Axial axioms / by James Alan Gardner --The terminal solution / by Robin Wayne Bailey --The Ashbazu effect / by John G. McDaid --A word for heathens / by Peter Watts --A ghost story / by Jihane Noskateb --The executioner's apprentice / by Kay Kenyon --Swimming upstream in the wells of the desert / by Mike Resnick and Susan R. Matthews --Unwirer / by Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross --When the morning stars sang together / by Isaac Szpindel --Herd mentality / by Jay Caselberg

    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

    Wrapped in the woman’s arms is a baby, stone-cold, not breathing, and without a pulse. But then his eyes open and look up at Wanda — and he begins to move.The family hides the child — whom they name Stony — rather than turn him over to authorities that would destroy him. Against all scientific reason, the undead boy begins to grow. For years his adoptive mother and sisters manage to keep his existence a secret — until one terrifying night when Stony is forced to run and he learns that he is not the only living dead boy left in the world.