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.

    Ballard has been one of Britain's most celebrated novelists. From the beginning he has been equally admired for his distinctive and highly influential short stories, the first of which - "Prima Belladonna" and "Escapement" - appeared in Science Fantasy and New Worlds in 1956. Now, all of his published stories - including four not previously featured in a collection - have been arranged in the order of original publication, providing an unprecedented opportunity to review the career of one of Britain's greatest writers.A Washington Post Best Book of 2009, Boston Globe Best Book, Los Angeles Times Favorite Book, and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book.Contents:- Prima Belladonna [Vermilion Sands] (1956)- Escapement (1956)- The Concentration City (1957, variant of Build-Up)- Venus Smiles [Vermilion Sands] (1957)- Manhole 69 (1957)- Track 12 (1958)- The Waiting Grounds (1959)- Now: Zero (1959)- The Sound-Sweep (1960)- Zone of Terror (1960)- Chronopolis (1960)- The Voices of Time (1960)- The Last World of Mr. Goddard (1960)- Studio 5, The Stars [Vermilion Sands] (1961)- Deep End (1961)- The Overloaded Man (1961)- Mr F. is Mr F. (1961)- Billennium (1961)- The Gentle Assassin (1961)- The Insane Ones (1962)- The Garden of Time (1962)- The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista [Vermilion Sands] (1962)- Thirteen to Centaurus (1962)- Passport to Eternity (1962)- The Cage of Sand (1962)- The Watch-Towers (1962)- The Singing Statues [Vermilion Sands] (1962)- The Man on the 99th Floor (1962)- The Subliminal Man (1963)- The Reptile Enclosure (1963)- A Question of Re-Entry (1963)- The Time-Tombs (1963)- Now Wakes the Sea (1963)- The Venus Hunters (1963)- End-Game (1963)- Minus One (1963)- The Sudden Afternoon (1963)- The Screen Game [Vermilion Sands] (1963)- Time of Passage (1964)- Prisoner of the Coral Deep (1964)- The Lost Leonardo (1964)- The Terminal Beach (1964)- The Illuminated Man (1964)- The Delta at Sunset (1964)- The Drowned Giant (1964)- The Gioconda of the Twilight Noon (1964)- The Volcano Dances (1964)- The Beach Murders (1966)- The Day of Forever (1966)- The Impossible Man (1966)- Storm-Bird, Storm-Dreamer (1966)- Tomorrow Is a Million Years (1966)- The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race (1966)- Cry Hope, Cry Fury! [Vermilion Sands] (1967)- The Recognition (1967)- The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D [Vermilion Sands] (1967)- Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan (1968)- The Dead Astronaut (1968)- The Comsat Angels (1968)- The Killing Ground (1969)- A Place and a Time to Die (1969)- Say Goodbye to the Wind [Vermilion Sands] (1970)- The Greatest Television Show on Earth (1972)- My Dream of Flying to Wake Island (1974)- The Air Disaster (1975)- Low-Flying Aircraft (1975)- The Life and Death of God (1976)- Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown (1976)- The 60 Minute Zoom (1976)- The Smile (1976)- The Ultimate City (1976)- The Dead Time (1977)- The Index (1977)- The Intensive Care Unit (1977)- Theatre of War (1977)- Having a Wonderful Time (1978)- One Afternoon at Utah Beach (1978)- Zodiac 2000 (1978)- Motel Architecture (1978)- A Host of Furious Fancies (1980)- News from the Sun (1981)- Memories of the Space Age (1982)- Myths of the Near Future (1982)- Report on an Unidentified Space Station (1982)- The Object of the Attack (1984)- Answers to a Questionnaire (1985)- The Man Who Walked on the Moon (1985)- The Secret History of World War 3 (1988)- Love in a Colder Climate (1989)- The Enormous Space (1989)- The Largest Theme Park in the World (1989)- War Fever (1989)- Dream Cargoes (1990)- A Guide to Virtual Death (1992)- The Message from Mars (1992)- Report from an Obscure Planet (1992)

    Cimmeria poem1 The Phoenix on the Sword 19322 The Frost-Giant's Daughter 19763 The God in the Bowl 19524 The Tower of the Elephant 19335 The Scarlet Citadel 19336 Queen of the Black Coast 19347 Black Colossus 19338 Iron Shadows in the Moon 19349 Xuthal of the Dusk 193310 The Pool of the Black One 193311 Rogues in the House 193412 The Vale of Lost Women 196713 The Devil in Iron 1934

    A chronicle of the final seven days of a town that is about to be razed to the ground by an invading army. The lonely voyage of an elephant from Kerala to a princess’s palace in Morocco. A fabled cook who flavours his food with precious stones. A coterie of international diplomats trapped in near-Earth orbit. These, and the other stories can be found in this collection.

    The eighteen stories of Manuel Gonzales’s exhilarating first book render the fantastic commonplace and the ordinary extraordinary, in prose that thrums with energy and shimmers with beauty. In “The Artist’s Voice” we meet one of the world’s foremost composers, a man who speaks through his ears. A hijacked plane circles a city for twenty years in “Pilot, Copilot, Writer.” Sound can kill in “The Sounds of Early Morning.” And, in the title story, a man is at war with the wife he accidentally shrank. For these characters, the phenomenal isn’t necessarily special—but it’s often dangerous. In slightly fantastical settings, Gonzales illustrates very real guilt over small and large marital missteps, the intense desire for the reinvention of self, and the powerful urges we feel to defend and provide for the people we love. With wit and insight, these stories subvert our expectations and challenge us to look at our surroundings with fresh eyes. Brilliantly conceived, strikingly original, and told with the narrative instinct of a born storyteller, The Miniature Wife is an unforgettable debut.

    In To Walk the Night, Bark Jones and his college buddy Jerry Lister, a science whiz, head back to their alma mater to visit a cherished professor of astronomy. They discover his body, consumed by fire, in his laboratory, and an uncannily beautiful young widow in his house—but nothing compares to the revelation that Jerry and Bark encounter in the deserts of Arizona at the end of the book. In The Edge of Running Water, Julian Blair, a brilliant electrophysicist, has retired to a small town in remotest Maine after the death of his wife. His latest experiments threaten to shake up the town, not to mention the universe itself.

    Men and Cartoons contains eleven fantastical, amusing, and moving stories written in a dizzying array of styles that shows the remarkable range and power of Lethem's vision. Sometimes firmly grounded in reality, and other times spinning off into utterly original imaginary worlds, this book brings together marvelous characters with incisive social commentary and thought provoking allegories. 
      A visionary and creative collection that only Jonathan Lethem could have produced, the Vintage edition features two stories not published in the hardcover edition, "The Shape We're In" and "Interview with the Crab."

    In the award-winning title story, the narrator recounts the events of an expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1928 to collects gorillas for the Louisville Museum of Natural History. A mother invents a fairy-tale world for her son in 'Halfway People'. Twin sisters backpacking through Europe receive a mysterious invitation. A rebellious teenager is sent to a brutal reform school hidden away in paradise. A young woman inherits the family submarine. In 'The Dark', a researcher tracking plague outbreaks finds himself in the Viet Cong tunnels of Vietnam. A mystery writer visits an archaeological dig in Egypt and sets a curse in motion. In two stories, 'Booth's Ghost' and 'Standing Room Only', Fowler explores the circumstances of Lincoln's assassination from the perspectives of John Wilkes Booth's family and friends.Fowler, perhaps best known for her novels, is a master of the short story form: the secret history, the account of first contact, the murderous, ordinary tensions of family life. She draws on fairy tales, historical narratives, and war reportage, measuring the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness in the fantastic tradition of writers such as Shirley Jackson, T.H. White, Karen Russell, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

    An old-fashioned barbershop is the site of a medieval ritual of bloody terror.... During a post-apocalyptic Christmas celebration, a messenger from the South brings tidings of great horror.... From a ghostly Civil War battlefield to a combat theme park in Vietnam, from the omnipotent brain of an autistic boy to a shocking story of psychic vampires, journey into a world of fear and mystery, a chilling twilight zone of the mind.

     The Hugo Award-winning author of such groundbreaking and innovative novels as "Accelerando, Halting State," and "Saturn's Children" delivers a rich selection of speculative fiction- including a novella original to this volume- brought together for the first time in one collection, showcasing the limitless imagination of one of the twenty-first century's most daring visionaries.

    From the surreal to the mundane, these stories exhibit his ability to transform the full range of human experience in ways that are instructive, surprising, and relentlessly entertaining. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an iceman, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, a holiday in Hawaii, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

    Best friends Anna and Corry share one last morning on Earth. A solitary woman inherits a penny arcade haunted by a beautiful stranger. A prep-school student requires more than luck when playing dice with a faerie. Ladies who lunch—dividing one last bite of dessert—delve into new dimensions of quantum politeness. At summer camp, a young girl discovers the heartbreak of forbidden love.Whether on a habitat on Mars or in a boardinghouse in London, discover Ellen Klages’ wicked, wondrous adventures full of cheeky wit, empathy, and courage.

    Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.

    Enter a world of mystics and unicorns, angels and kings -- all realized with the same dazzling style and imagination that has made Stephen R. Donaldson a modern master of the fantasy genre.Daughter of Regals is a fantasy novella concerning a unique royal line and an unusual conception of magic.The Conqueror Worm is a deliciously creepy "horror" piece in which havoc is wreaked by one lowly centipede.Ser Visal's Tale begins as a simple story told over several flagons of wine at the local inn, this novella ends with a surprising twist.Gilden-Fire is the famous chapter about Korik of the Bloodguard and his mission to Seareach that was part of the original manuscript of The Illearth War, but omitted from the published version.

    A student plagiarizes a paper and holds fast to her alibi until she finds herself complicit in the resurrection of one professor's shadowy past. A dinner party becomes the occasion for the dissolution of more than one marriage. A woman is hired to find a wife for the one true soulmate she's ever found. In all, Rebecca Lee traverses the terrain of infidelity, obligation, sacrifice, jealousy, and yet finally, optimism. Showing people at their most vulnerable, Lee creates characters so wonderfully flawed, so driven by their desire, so compelled to make sense of their human condition, that it's impossible not to feel for them when their fragile belief in romantic love, domestic bliss, or academic seclusion fails to provide them with the sort of force field they'd expected.