The essential first volume of bestselling author Peter S. Beagle's short stories demonstrates why he is one of America's most influential fantasists. With his celebrated versatility, humor, and grace, Beagle is at home in a dazzling variety of subgenres. Evoking comparison to such iconic authors as Twain, Tolkien, Carroll, L'Engle, and Vonnegut, this career retrospective celebrates Beagle's mastery of the short-story form. An unlikely friendship based...

Fantasy stories. In Will Shetterly's Splatter, killers decide to show a novelist how it's really done, Karen Haber's A Bone Dry Place is set in a suicide-prevention clinic, and in John Ford's Chain Home, Low a sleeping virus strikes a group of wartime pilots.

These weird and often frightening tales showcase Lisa Tuttle's unique ability to disturb and unnerve her readers.

The prince who will conquer all the kingdoms of myth. The woman who must stop him. Not all myths are harmless. Yevliesza, formerly of earth and now of the Mythos, knows that one of the mythical realms is based in darkness. Volkia. This warlike kingdom has shattered the rules of magic, bringing all the realms into peril. When Yevliesza is sent to Volkia on a diplomatic mission, she arrives at a nest of vipers. The cunning ruler of Volkia, Prince Albrecht,...

An anthology of African American fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction features some forty short stories by Octavia E. Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Tananarive Due, Walter Mosley, Ishmael Reed, Steven Barnes, and others.

"Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships--rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown's oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea's young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the Vivacia, the ship is a life...

"Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College--Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet's already wondering how she'll get through. It's not just that it's grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it's designed to stretch the riders' capacity for pain beyond endurance....

Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic was outlawed. Its royal family murdered. At least, that's what Sylvia wants people to believe. The Heir of Jasad escaped the massacre, and she intends to stay hidden, especially from the armies of Nizahl that continue to hunt her people. But a moment of anger changes everything. When Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, Sylvia accidentally reveals her magic-and...