Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written an adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf explores the fundamentals of truths, the limits of power, the excesses of ambition, and our need to understand them all.

    Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 King’s Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks—experiences that led first to his memorable short story “My Travels with Al-Qaeda” and later to the creation of Osama.“In a world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante...”“Joe’s quest to find the man takes him across the world, from the backwaters of Asia to the European Capitals of Paris and London, and as the mystery deepens around him there is one question he is trying hard not to ask: who is he, really, and how much of the books is fiction? Chased by unknown assailants, Joe’s identity slowly fragments as he discovers the shadowy world of the refugees, ghostly entities haunting the world in which he lives. Where do they come from? And what do they want? Joe knows how the story should end, but even he is not ready for the truths he’ll find in New York and, finally, on top a quiet hill above Kabul—nor for the choice he will at last have to make...

    Lansdale - “Neighbors” by Megan Lindholm - “I Know How to Pick ’Em” by Lawrence Block - “Shadows For Silence in the Forests of Hell” by Brandon Sanderson - A Cosmere story - “A Queen in Exile” by Sharon Kay Penman - “The Girl in the Mirror” by Lev Grossman - A Magicians story - “Second Arabesque, Very Slowly” by Nancy Kress - “City Lazarus” by Diana Rowland - “Virgins” by Diana Gabaldon - An Outlander story - “Hell Hath No Fury” by Sherilynn Kenyon - “Pronouncing Doom” by S.M. Stirling - An Emberverse story - “Name the Beast” by Sam Sykes - “Caretakers” by Pat Cadigan - “Lies My Mother Told Me” by Caroline Spector - A Wild Cards story - “The Princess and the Queen” by George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire story

    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?

    For Hemingway fans The Complete Short Stories is an invaluable treasury.

    Moreau to Dr. Doom, readers have long been fascinated by insane plans for world domination and the madmen who devise them. Typically, we see these villains through the eyes of good guys. This anthology, however, explores the world of mad scientists and evil geniuses—from their own wonderfully twisted point of view. An all-star roster of bestselling authors—including Diana Gabaldon, Daniel Wilson, Austin Grossman, Naomi Novik, and Seanan McGuire ... twenty-two great storytellers, all told—have produced a fabulous assortment of stories, guaranteed to provide readers with hour after hour of high-octane entertainment born of the most megalomaniacal mayhem imaginable. Everybody loves villains. They’re bad; they always stir the pot; they’re much more fun than the good guys, even if we want to see the good guys win. Their fiendish schemes, maniacal laughter, and limitless ambition are legendary, but what lies behind those crazy eyes and wicked grins? How—and why—do they commit these nefarious deeds? And why are they so set on taking over the world? If you've ever asked yourself any of these questions, you’re in luck: It’s finally time for the madmen’s side of the story.Between each chapter falls a single-page essay by the editor, by way of introduction to the story ahead; they have titles of their own, but all contain spoilers, so are not listed here (they can be found on the Internet Science Fiction Database if desired). All individual works in this anthology are in short story form, with the exception of Diana Gabaldon's 80-page Outlander novella, and unless otherwise noted, were first published within. CONTENTS Foreword - Chris Claremont, The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius (p9)01 - Austin Grossman, Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List (p16)02 - Harry Turtledove, Father of the Groom (p28)03 - Seanan McGuire, Laughter at the Academy: A Field Study in the Genesis of Schizotypal Creative Genius Personality Disorder (SCGPD) (p38)04 - David D. Levine, Letter to the Editor (p52)05 - Jeremiah Tolbert, Instead of a Loving Heart (2004, p59)06 - Daniel H. Wilson, The Executor (p68)07 - Heather Lindsley, The Angel of Death Has a Business Plan (p83)08 - Dave Wolverton (as David Farland), Homo Perfectus (p96)09 - L.A. Banks, Ancient Equations (p108)10 - Alan Dean Foster, Rural Singularity (p123)11 - Genevieve Valentine, Captain Justice Saves the Day (p133)12 - Theodora Goss, The Mad Scientist's Daughter (2010, p142)13 - Diana Gabaldon, The Space Between (2012 Outlander novella, p161)14 - Carrie Vaughn, Harry and Marlowe Meet the Founder of the Aetherian Revolution (p245)15 - Laird Barron, Blood and Stardust (p261)16 - L.E. Modesitt Jr., A More Perfect Union (p276)17 - Naomi Novik, Rocks Fall (p289)18 - Mary Robinette Kowal, We Interrupt This Broadcast (Lady Astronaut short story, p298)19 - Marjorie M. Liu, The Last Dignity of Man (p306)20 - Jeffrey Ford, The Pittsburgh Technology (p328)21 - Grady Hendrix, Mofongo Knows (p341)22 - Ben H. Winters, The Food Taster's Boy (p357)

    From the tale of commitment, loneliness and hope in Of Mice and Men, to the tough yet charming portrait of people on the margins of society in Cannery Row, to The Pearl's examination of the fallacy of the American dream, Steinbeck stories of realism, that were imbued with energy and resilience.

    She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King. This remarkable anthology of gothic fiction, spanning two centuries of American writing, gives us an intriguing and entertaining look at how the gothic imagination makes for great literature in the works of forty-six exceptional writers. In showing us the gothic vision—a world askew where mankind’s forbidden impulses are set free from the repressions of the psyche, and nature turns malevolent and lawless—Joyce Carol Oates includes Henry James’s “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” Herman Melville’s horrific tale of factory women, “The Tartarus of Maids,” and Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” which are rarely collected and appear together here for the first time.Added to these stories of the past are new ones that explore the wounded worlds of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Peter Straub, Raymond Carver, and more than twenty other wonderful contemporary writers. This impressive collection reveals the astonishing scope of the gothic writer’s subject matter, style, and incomparable genius for manipulating our emotions and penetrating our dreams. With Joyce Carol Oates’s superb introduction, American Gothic Tales is destined to become the standard one-volume edition of the genre that American writers, if they didn’t create it outright, have brought to its chilling zenith.rom Wieland, or The transformation / Charles Brockden Brown --The legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving --The man of adamant / Nathaniel Hawthorne --Young Goodman Brown / Nathaniel Hawthorne --The Tartarus of maids / Herman Melville --The black cat / Edgar Allan Poe --The yellow wallpaper / Charlotte Perkins Gilman --The romance of certain old clothes / Henry James --The damned thing / Ambrose Bierce --Afterward / Edith Wharton --The striding place / Gertrude Atherton --Death in the woods / Sherwood Anderson --The outsider / H.P. Lovecraft --A rose for Emily / William Faulkner --The lonesome place / August Derleth --The door / E.B. White --The lovely house / Shirley Jackson --Allal / Paul Bowles --The reencounter / Isaac Bashevis Singer --In the icebound hothouse / William Goyen --The enormous radio / John Cheever --The veldt / Ray Bradbury --The Dachau shoe / W.S. Merwin --The approved / W.S. Merwin --Spiders I have known / W.S. Merwin --Postcards from the Maginot Line / W.S. Merwin --Johnny Panic and the Bible of dreams / Sylvia Plath --In bed one night / Robert Coover --Schrödinger's cat / Ursula K. Le Guin --The waterworks / E.L. Doctorow --Shattered like a glass goblin / Harlan Ellison --Human moments in World War III / Don DeLillo --The anatomy of desire / John L'Heureux --Little things / Raymond Carver --The temple / Joyce Carol Oates --Freniere (from Interview with the Vampires) / Anne Rice --A short guide to the city / Peter Straub --In the penny arcade / Steven Millhauser --The reach / Stephen King --Exchange value / Charles Johnson --Snow / John Crowley --The last feast of Harlequin / Thomas Ligotti --Time and again / Breece D'J Pancake--Replacements / Lisa Tuttle --Spirit seizures / Melissa Pritchard --Cat in glass / Nancy Etchemendy --The girl who loved animals / Bruce McAllister --Ursus Triad, later / Kathe Koja and Barry N. Malzberg --(from Geek Love) The nuclear family: his talk, her teeth / Katherine Dunn --Subsoil / Nicholson Baker

    Put a map at the start of a book, and we know an adventure is going to follow. Displaying this truth with beautiful full-color illustrations, The Writer’s Map is an atlas of the journeys that our most creative storytellers have made throughout their lives. This magnificent collection encompasses not only the maps that appear in their books but also the many maps that have inspired them, the sketches that they used while writing, and others that simply sparked their curiosity.   Philip Pullman recounts the experience of drawing a map as he set out on one of his early novels, The Tin Princess. Miraphora Mina recalls the creative challenge of drawing up ”The Marauder’s Map” for the Harry Potter films. David Mitchell leads us to the Mappa Mundi by way of Cloud Atlas and his own sketch maps. Robert Macfarlane reflects on the cartophilia that has informed his evocative nature writing, which was set off by Robert Louis Stevenson and his map of Treasure Island. Joanne Harris tells of her fascination with Norse maps of the universe. Reif Larsen writes about our dependence on GPS and the impulse to map our experience. Daniel Reeve describes drawing maps and charts for The Hobbit film trilogy. This exquisitely crafted and illustrated atlas explores these and so many more of the maps writers create and are inspired by—some real, some imagined—in both words and images.   Amid a cornucopia of 167 full-color images, we find here maps of the world as envisaged in medieval times, as well as maps of adventure, sci-fi and fantasy, nursery rhymes, literary classics, and collectible comics. An enchanting visual and verbal journey, The Writer’s Map will be irresistible for lovers of maps, literature, and memories—and anyone prone to flights of the imagination.

    Each story is unique, yet universal.In this book, the impact of wildfire, a wayward priest, or a mysterious disappearance ricochet across communities, threading through stories. Here, ordinary actions such as ice skating or going to church reveal hidden truths. One choice threatens a lifelong friendship. Siblings save each other. Rescue and second chances are possible, and so is revenge.On the surface, it seems that nothing ever happens in these towns. But Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock shows that underneath that surface, teenagers' lives blaze with fury, with secrets, and with love so strong it burns a path to the future.

    One is the main course of dinner, another the porn star contracted to copulate in space for a reality TV show. They become futuristic ant farms, get knocked up by the star high school quarterback and have secret abortions, use parakeets to reverse amputations, make love to garden gnomes, go into air conditioning ducts to confront their mother’s ghost, and do so in settings that range from Hell to the local white-supremacist bowling alley.

    By sending us to alternate universes and chronicling ordinary magic, introducing us to mythical beasts and talking animals, and engaging with a wide spectrum of emotion from tenderness to fear, each of these stories challenge the way we see our place in the cosmos. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 represents a wide range of the most accomplished voices working in science fiction and fantasy, in fiction, today—each story dazzles with ambition, striking prose, and the promise of the other and the unencountered.

    John HarrisonHunting mother/ Sage WalkerMount Olympus/ Ben Bova Border guards/ Greg Egan Scherzo with tyrannosaur/ Michael SwanwickA hero of the empire/ Robert SilverbergHow we lost the moon, a true story/ Frank W. Allen & Paul J. McAuleyPhallicide/ Charles Sheffield Daddy's world/ Walter Jon WilliamsA Martian romance/ Kim Stanley RobinsonThe sky-green blues/ Tanith LeeExchange rate/ Hal ClementEverywhere/ Geoff Ryman Hothouse flowers/ Mike Resnick Evermore/ Sean Williams Of scorned women & causal loops/ Robert GrossbachSon observe the time/ Kage BakerHonorable mentions: 1999

    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.

    Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds Of Exile And Illusion. These novels, Rocannon's World, Planet Of Exile, and City Of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin's ground-breaking classic, The Left Hand Of Darkness.Tor is pleased to return these previously unavailable works to print in this attractive new edition.