FICTION AND FANTASY LITERATURE

Andrews McMeel Publishing and Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strips and #1 best-selling author of Dilbert humor books, have agreed to publish Mr. Adams’ new project called God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment. God’s Debris is Scott’s first non-Dilbert, non-humor effort. The author describes the book as “a thought experiment wrapped in a story. It’s designed to make your brain spin around inside your skull.” Some content of the book is nonfiction because the opinions and philosophies of the characters might have lasting impact on the reader. Others believe it is fiction because the characters don’t exist. Imagine that you meet a very old man who – you eventually realize – knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life: quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability — in a way so simple, so novel and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? God’s Debris isn’t the final answer to the Big Questions. But it might be the most compelling vision of reality you will ever read. The thought experiment is this: Try to figure out what’s wrong with the old man’s explanation of reality. Share the book with your smart friends then discuss it later while enjoying a beverage. The book was initially offered to the public as an e-book, and the book has since become the #1 best-selling e-book on the planet. Because of the e-book offering, the Internet is buzzing with comments from the book’s fans.

A millennium into the future two advances have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. Isaac Asimov’s Robot novels chronicle the unlikely partnership between a New York City detective and a humanoid robot who must learn to work together. Detective Elijah Baiey is called to the Spacer world Aurora to solve a bizarre case of roboticide. The prime suspect is a gifted roboticist who had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to commit the crime. There’s only one catch: Baley and his positronic partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, must prove the man innocent. For in a case of political intrigue and love between woman and robot gone tragically wrong, there’s more at stake than simple justice. This time Baley’s career, his life, and Earth’s right to pioneer the Galaxy lie in the delicate balance.

Led by its founding father, the psychohistorian Hari Seldon, and utilizing science and technology, the Foundation survived the greed and barbarism of its neighboring warrior-planets. Now cleverness and courage may not be enough. For the Empire—the mightiest force in the Galaxy—is even more dangerous in its death throes. Even worse, a mysterious entity called the Mule has appeared with powers beyond anything humanly conceivable. Who—or what—is the Mule? And how is humanity to defend itself against this invulnerable avatar of annihilation? Filled with nail-biting suspense, nonstop action, and cutting-edge speculation, Foundation and Empire is the story of humanity’s perpetual struggle against the darkness that forever threatens to overwhelm the light—and of how the courage of even a determined few can make all the difference in the universe.

“The Up-to-Date Sorcerer” is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the July 1958 issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and reprinted in the 1969 collection Nightfall and Other Stories. Requested and encouraged by editor Anthony Boucher, the story is a deliberate attempt by the author to write something humorous that incorporates his love of the complex yet logical plots found in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. It consists largely of a series of puns on the opera The Sorcerer. Quotes from Gilbert and Sullivan operas occur frequently in Asimov’s stories; also in some of his verses explaining how he thinks up new plots for his stories. The words “up-to-date” in the title refer to the titles of musical burlesques of the 1880s and early 1890s like Faust up to date. In 1894, also, George Augustus Sala wrote a book called London Up to Date.

In a twenty-first century Earth where the development of the positronic brain has revolutionized the way of life, beloved household robot “Andrew” struggles with his unusual capacity for emotion and dreams of becoming human.

Most of Asimov’s robot short stories, which he began to write in 1939, are set in the first age of positronic robotics and space exploration. The unique feature of Asimov’s robots is the Three Laws of Robotics, hardwired in a robot’s positronic brain, with which all robots in his fiction must comply, and which ensure that the robot does not turn against its creators.

When one of his graduate students asks a chemistry professor for permission to marry his daughter, the old man sets up a puzzle. The prize if the student can solve it? As he puts it, “You will have my blessing.”

The first novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series The epic saga that inspired the Apple TV+ series Foundation, now streaming. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future – to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire – both scientists and scholars – and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the most influential in the history of science fiction, celebrated for their unique blend of breathtaking action, daring ideas, and extensive worldbuilding. In Foundation, Asimov has written a timely and timeless novel of the best – and worst – that lies in humanity, and the power of even a few courageous souls to shine a light in a universe of darkness.

Azazel, an enchanting, other-wordly imp, uses his magical powers to help humans beset by ill fortune, but his efforts frequently have unexpected results, in this collection of fantasy tales

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. As unsurpassed blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women dedicated to preserving humanity’s light in a galaxy plunged into a nightmare of ignorance and violence thirty thousand years long. After years of struggle, the Foundation lies in ruins, destroyed by the mutant mind power of the Mule. But it is rumored that there is a Second Foundation hidden somewhere at the end of the Galaxy, established to preserve the knowledge of mankind through the long centuries of barbarism. The Mule failed to find it the first timebut now he is certain he knows where it lies. The fate of the Foundation rests on young Arcadia Darell, only 14 years old and burdened with a terrible secret. As its scientists gird for a final showdown with the Mule, the survivors of the First Foundation begin their desperate search. They too want the Second Foundation destroyed, before it destroys them.

“Hell-Fire” is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, originally published in the May 1956 issue of Fantastic Universe and reprinted in the 1957 collection Earth Is Room Enough. It is one of a number of stories, such as “Darwinian Pool Room” and “Silly Asses”, in which Asimov worries about the nuclear arms race of the 1950s.

Only a few know the terrifying truth – an outcast Earth scientist, a rebellious alien inhabitant of a dying planet, a lunar-born human intuitionist who senses the imminent annihilation of the Sun… They know the truth – but who will listen? They have foreseen the cost of abundant energy – but who will believe?These few beings, human and alien, hold the key to the Earth’s survival.

Here, from a grand master of science fiction, is the long-awaited final novel of the greatest science-fiction series ever told. Completed just before his death, Forward the Foundation is the crowning achievement of a great writer’s life, a stirring testament to the creative genius of Isaac Asimov. As Hari Seldon struggles to perfect his revolutionary theory of psychohistory and ensure a place for humanity among the stars, the great Galactic Empire totters on the brink of apocalyptic collapse. Caught in the maelstrom are Seldon and all he holds dear, pawns in the struggle for dominance. Whoever can control Seldon will control psychohistory – and with it the future of the galaxy. Among those seeking to turn psychohistory into the greatest weapon known to man are a populist political demagogue, the weak-willed Emperor Cleon I, and a ruthless militaristic general. In his last act of service to humankind, Hari Seldon must somehow save his life’s work from their grasp as he searches for its true heirs – a search that begins with his own granddaughter and the dream of a new Foundation

The Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are among the great masterworks of science fiction. An ingenious blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women determined to shield enlightened humanity from a ceaseless threat of darkness and ultimate annihilation. Golan Trevize, former councilman of the First Foundation, has chosen the future, and it is Gaia. A superorganism, Gaia is a holistic planet with a common consciousness so intensely united that every dewdrop, every pebble, every being, can speak for all – and feel for all. It is a realm in which privacy is not only undesirable, it is incomprehensible. But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know. Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity’s roots: fabled Earth…if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia’s first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia’s vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.

Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building, the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are one of the great masterworks of science fiction. With extraordinary vision, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of men and women devoted to safeguarding humanity against an unyielding deluge of barbarism and warfare. At last, the costly and bitter war between the two Foundations has come to an end. The scientists of the First Foundation have proved victorious; and now they return to Hari Seldon’s long-established plan to build a new Empire on the ruins of the old. But rumors persist that the Second Foundation is not destroyed after all – and that its still-defiant survivors are preparing their revenge. Now two exiled citizens of the Foundation – a renegade Councilman and a doddering historian-set out in search of the mythical planet Earth…. and proof that the Second Foundation still exists. Meanwhile, someone – or something – outside of both Foundations seems to be orchestrating events to suit its own ominous purpose. Soon representatives of both the First and Second Foundations will find themselves racing toward a mysterious world called Gaia and a final, shocking destiny at the very end of the universe!

This daring story of humanity’s future introduces one of the great masterworks of science fiction: the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov. Unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, bold ideas, and extensive world-building, they chronicle the struggle of a courageous group of people to save civilization from a relentless tide of darkness and violence – beginning with one exceptional man. It is the year 12,020 GE and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capital of the Galactic Empire, 40 billion people have created a civilization of unimaginable technological and cultural complexity. Yet Cleon knows there are those who would see him fall – those whom he would destroy if only he could read the future. Hari Seldon has come to Trantor to deliver his paper on psychohistory, his remarkable theory of prediction. Little does the young Outworld mathematician know that he has already sealed his fate and the fate of humanity. For Hari possesses the prophetic power that makes him the most wanted man in the Empire…the man who holds the key to the future – an apocalyptic power to be known forever after as the Foundation.

Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot launches readers on an adventure into a not-so-distant future where man and machine , struggle to redefinelife, love, and consciousness—and where the stakes are nothing less than survival. Filled with unforgettable characters, mind-bending speculation, and nonstop action, I, Robot is a powerful reading experience from one of the master storytellers of our time.

A spellbinding novel set in the universe of Isaac Asimov’s classic Galactic Empire series and Foundation series Due to circumstances within our control…tomorrow will be canceled. The Eternals, the ruling class of the Future, had the power of life and death not only over every human being but over the very centuries into which they were born. Past, Present, and Future could be created or destroyed at will. You had to be special to become an Eternal. Andrew Harlan was special. Until he committed the one unforgivable sin – falling in love. Eternals weren’t supposed to have feelings. But Andrew could not deny the sensations that were struggling within him. He knew he could not keep this secret forever. And so he began to plan his escape, a plan that changed his own past…and threatened Eternity itself.

“The Singing Bell” is a science fiction mystery short story by American writer Isaac Asimov, which first appeared in the January 1955 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was reprinted in the 1968 collection Asimov’s Mysteries. “The Singing Bell” was the first of Asimov’s Wendell Urth stories. Ray Bradbury. Henry the Ninth. Test by Theodore Thomas “Test” is a short story about people’s need for power. The power being that to control other’s ideas, opinions and self identity, through fear of divergence and government control. From the moment Robert Proctor wakes up from his hypnosis, the reader sees that the foundation of the world he is living is based on control. The act of hypnosis itself is someone going into your mind and telling you exactly what to do.

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. Atlas Shrugged is the “second most influential book for Americans today” after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991. In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts? This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did. In defense of those greatest of human qualities that have made civilization possible, he sets out to show what would happen to the world if all the heroes of innovation and industry went on strike. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he have to fight his battle not against his enemies but against those who need him most? Why does he fight his hardest battle against the woman he loves? The answers will be revealed once you discover the reason behind the baffling events that wreak havoc on the lives of the amazing men and women in this remarkable book. Tremendous in scope and breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, which launched an ideology and a movement. With the publication of this work in 1957, Rand gained an instant following and became a phenomenon. Atlas Shrugged emerged as a premier moral apologia for capitalism, a defense that had an electrifying effect on millions of readers (and now listeners) who had never heard capitalism defended in other than technical terms.

A condemned man stands on the edge of a railroad bridge with a rope around his neck. The Union Army is preparing to hang him during a tumultuous period of the Civil War. His thoughts drift to that of his wife, his children, and his sacrifice for the great cause of the South. But what if he is able to escape the hangman’s noose and make an escape downriver past the Union soldiers? What sort of thoughts and fantasies go through a man’s mind as he faces the gallows. Find out in one of the most popular and influential American short stories of all time, which includes a shocking ending.

This narrative begins with the death of its hero. Silas Deemer died on the 16th day of July, 1863, and two days later his remains were buried. As he had been personally known to every man, woman and well-grown child in the village, the funeral, as the local newspaper phrased it, “was largely attended.” In accordance with a custom of the time and place, the coffin was opened at the graveside and the entire assembly of friends and neighbors filed past, taking a last look at the face of the dead. And then, before the eyes of all, Silas Deemer was put into the ground. Some of the eyes were a trifle dim, but in a general way it may be said that at that interment there was lack of neither observance nor observation; Silas was indubitably dead, and none could have pointed out any ritual delinquency that would have justified him in coming back from the grave. Yet if human testimony is good for anything (and certainly it once put an end to witchcraft in and about Salem) he came back…

Brain Wave. From the multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author: “A panoramic story of what happens to a world gone super intelligent” (Astounding Science Fiction). With “wonderfully logical detail . . . exciting storytelling and moving characterization” (Anthony Boucher), science fiction master Poul Anderson explores what happens when the next stage of evolution is thrust upon humanity and animals. As Earth passes out of a magnetic field that has suppressed intelligence for eons, the mental capacity for all mammals increases exponentially, radically changing the structures of society. Twilight World. After the nuclear holocaust of World War III, humanity has to rebuild in the midst of famine, savagery, and chaos. Residual radiation has resulted in an increasing rate of mutant births. But as the human race faces its own extinction, some of the so-called abnormal children may have just what it takes to survive . .

A New York Times Notable Book and Hugo and Nebula Award Finalist: This epic chronicle of ten immortals over the course of history “succeeds admirably” (The New York Times). The immortals are ten individuals born in antiquity from various cultures. Immune to disease, able to heal themselves from injuries, they will never die of old age—although they can fall victim to catastrophic wounds. They have walked among mortals for millennia, traveling across the world, trying to understand their special gifts while searching for one another in the hope of finding some meaning in a life that may go on forever.

Forget minor hazards like nuclear bombs. The discovery of time travel means that everything we know, anyone we know, might not only vanish, but never even have existed. Against that possibility stand the men and women of the Time Patrol, dedicated to preserving the history they know and protecting the future from fanatics, terrorists, and would-be dictators who would remold the shape of reality to suit their own purposes. But Manse Everard, the Patrol’s finest temporal trouble-shooter, bears a heavy burden. The fabric of history is stained with human blood and suffering which he cannot, must not do anything to alleviate, lest his tampering bring disastrous alterations in future time. Everard must leave the horrors of the past in place, lest his tampering – or that of the Patrol’s opponents, the Exaltationists – erase all hope of a better future, and instead bring about a future filled with greater horrors than any recorded by past history at its darkest and most foul.

The Queen of Air and Darkness is a fantasy novel by English writer T. H. White. It is the second book in his series The Once and Future King. It continues the story of the newly crowned King Arthur, his tutelage by the wise Merlyn, his war against King Lot, and also introduces the Orkney clan, a group of characters who would cause the eventual downfall of the king.

The gathering forces of the Dark Powers threatened the world of man. The legions of Faery, aided by trolls, demons and the Wild Hunt itself, were poised to overthrow the realms of light. And alone against the armies of Chaos stood one man, the knight of Three Hearts and Three Lions. Carlsen, a twentieth-century man snatched out of time to become again the legendary Holger Danske to fight for the world he had helped to build.

A Midsummer Tempest is a 1974 alternative history fantasy novel by Poul Anderson. In 1975, it was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Novel and won the Mythopoeic Award. The setting is in a parallel world where William Shakespeare was not the Bard but the Great Historian. In this world, all the events depicted within Shakespeare’s plays were accounts of historical fact, not fiction. As some of the plays depicted anachronistic technology, Anderson extrapolated that this world was more technologically advanced than in reality. However, the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream are also part of this world. The novel takes place in the era of Cromwell and Charles I, but the characters deal with the English Civil War which is coeval with an Industrial Revolution. The fairy element provides a plot tension with the more advanced technology.

The world has been conquered by demons, yet a seeker named Lethe, one of the Old Ones travels to a keep hidden in the mountains. There she finds nine children who come from different backgrounds, yet their futures will soon be woven together.

Winner of England’s Booker Prize and a literary sensation, Possession traces the lives of a pair of young academics as they uncover a clandestine relationship between two long-dead Victorian poets. As they unearth their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany—what emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passions and ideas.

A master of American letters and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series returns with a sequel to The Witches of Eastwick about the three much-loved divorcées—three decades later. More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick. The three divorcées—Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie—have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world, to such foreign lands as Canada, Egypt, and China, and renew old acquaintance. Why not, Sukie and Jane ask Alexandra, go back to Eastwick for the summer? The old Rhode Island seaside town, where they indulged in wicked mischief under the influence of the diabolical Darryl Van Horne, is still magical for them. Now Darryl is gone, and their lovers of the time have aged or died, but enchantment remains in the familiar streets and scenery of the village, where they enjoyed their lusty primes as free and empowered women. And, among the local citizenry, there are still those who remember them, and wish them ill. How they cope with the lingering traces of their evil deeds, the shocks of a mysterious counterspell, and the advancing inroads of old age, form the burden on Updike’s delightful, ominous sequel.

Gertrude and Claudius are the “villains” of Hamlet: he the killer of Hamlet’s father and usurper of the Danish throne; she his lusty consort, who marries Claudius before her late husband’s body is cold. But in this imaginative “prequel” to the play, John Updike makes a case for the royal couple that Shakespeare only hinted at. Gertrude and Claudius are seen afresh against a background of fond intentions and family dysfunction, on a stage darkened by the ominous shadow of a sullen, erratic, disaffected prince. “I hoped to keep the texture light,” Updike said of this novel, “to move from the mists of Scandinavian legend into the daylight atmosphere of the Globe. I sought to narrate the romance that preceded the tragedy.”

“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.

Stanley found a deserted house in the middle of some Pennsylvania woods owned by a steel company. The ramshackle house was frightening at first. Not caring if he was trespassing, Stanley fixed up the lean-to that still had a roof & moved in. His brother Morris (the youngest) & Bernard (the eldest) tried to persuade him to return to his job as a school janitor. People in town said he’d become a hermit

Now Wakes the Sea: In JG Ballard’s short story, a man lives far from the coast, yet dreams that a mass of water approaches. Read more

In a profound sense, “The Subliminal Man” is a basic critique of the underlying dichotomy that pervades the concept of advertising-that of needs versus wants. Read more

Willis had met Miss Hollister but once, and that, for a certain purpose, was sufficient. He was smitten. She represented in every way his ideal, although until he had met her his ideal had been something radically different. She was not at all Junoesque, and the maiden of his dreams had been decidedly so. She had auburn hair, which hitherto Willis had detested. Indeed, if the same hirsute wealth had adorned some other woman’s head, Willis would have called it red. This shows how completely he was smitten. She changed his point of view entirely. She shattered his old ideal and set herself up in its stead, and she did most of it with a smile…

Several European mercenaries, led by a cold-hearted man named Locke, have bought land in the jungles of South America that is inhabited by a tribe of Amazonian natives. When the tribe refuse to leave, one of Locke’s cohorts impulsively fatally shoots a native child accidentally. The elder of the tribe puts a curse on the men which, one by one, strikes them down with a gruesome condition that makes their bodies incredibly delicate; a mote of dust can slice their skin open, the soles of their feet crack when they stand. After his men die off, Locke returns to the tribe to beg for forgiveness. However, when he gets there, the tribe has been massacred by some of his other colleagues. Locke begins to suffer the symptoms of the deadly curse just as he realizes there is now no way of having it removed.

It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold. When the answer comes, it’s not one she expects. Out of nowhere comes a wave, and Candy, led by a man called John Mischief (whose brothers live on the horns on his head), leaps into the surging waters and is carried away. Where? To the Abarat: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from The Great Head that sits in the mysterious twilight waters of Eight in the Evening, to the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of Gorgossium, the island of Midnight, ruled over by the Prince of Midnight himself, Christopher Carrion. Candy has a place in this extraordinary world: she is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart. Forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered.

A young gay prostitute is hired by an archaeologist. During the course of the night he stumbles into the bathroom to discover a Roman-esque statue of a man lying in the bath. Over the next few weeks, he has the sense of being haunted by a doppelgänger. At the same time, his mind and body transforms; he becomes cold and lifeless, no longer needing to eat or sleep. He finally discovers his doppelganger, the statue from the bath, at his father’s grave, crying in sorrow, as he is unmoved. It becomes clear that the doppelganger has become more convincing as a human than he is, and he wanders away, allowing it to continue living in his persona.

She nearly died on the operating table…masked men removed the cancers, and her womb…but Elaine Rider lived on, mourning. Until, after a midnight visit to the newly opened crypt of All Saints Church – a plague pit heaped with bodies, festering now they are exposed – she is suddenly a picture of health and vitality…of The Life of Death Kavanagh’s morbid preference was for the sad, fragile Elaine he met before. Before she had the power to kill with her touch. But who is Kavanagh? Elaine mistakes him for death in disguise, her clean-boned guardian, her promised lover. He is something far worse, as she will learn… Also included in this an adaptation by Steve Niles of Clive Barker’s New Murders on the Rue Morgue, illustrated by the brilliant Hector Gomez.

Strange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us…. Donald Miller, geologist and academic, has walked along the edge of a chasm for most of his nearly 80 years, leading a charmed life between endearing absent-mindedness and sanity-shattering realization. Now, all things must converge. Donald will discover the dark secrets along the edges, unearthing savage truths about his wife Michelle, their adult twins, and all he knows and trusts. For Donald is about to stumble on the secret… of The Croning. From Laird Barron, Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Imago Sequence and Occultation, comes The Croning, a debut novel of cosmic horror.

In the cloud-washed airspace between the cornfields of Illinois and blue infinity, a man puts his faith in the propeller of his biplane. For disillusioned writer and itinerant barnstormer Richard Bach, belief is as real as a full tank of gas and sparks firing in the cylinders . . . until he meets Donald Shimoda—former mechanic and self-described messiah who can make wrenches fly and Richard’s imagination soar. . . . In Illusions, the unforgettable follow-up to his phenomenal bestseller Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach takes to the air to discover the ageless truths that give our souls wings: that people don’t need airplanes to soar . . . that even the darkest clouds have meaning once we lift ourselves above them . . . and that messiahs can be found in the unlikeliest places—like hay fields, one-traffic-light midwestern towns, and most of all, deep within ourselves.

A man takes possession of a house with an old tower attached to it. The tower has a bad reputation with the locals. The man and a friend decide to enter a room in the tower which has been shut up for a long time. Their dog is nervous in the chamber, and once the window is opened, they find it looks out into a world not their own.

The Black Place of the Soul-Changer was doing business in Rome six centuries before Christ. It will probably be there on the last day of the cosmos. This is the Psychoshop, where you can dump any unwanted aspect of your spirit as long as you exchange it for something else — arcane knowledge, a change of luck, or a sixth sense. Just remember: All sales are final. Half finished upon Bester’s death, and completed by Zelazny, Psychoshop envisions a commercial establishment that attracts customers from Edgar Allan Poe to a sorcerer intent on fabricating the Beast of Revelations. Brimming with wit and imagination, scandalously sexy and fabulously strange, Psychoshop is science fiction as you’ve never read it before.

When Officer Guerra is confronted with a disgruntled dragon blocking traffic, he discovers that an author wrote the dragon into existence, then abandoned the story leaving the dragon without conclusion. Together they venture to the author’s house whereupon the author writes a satisfying ending to the story thus sending the dragon to, well, nobody is quite sure, but the dragon fades with a smile on his face.

Sometimes a story interests me too much, for one reason or another, simply to let it go: I need to know what happens later. This doesn’t happen often, and when it does I hate it, but there you are. And so it is with this one. I need to know what comes next for Angie and Marvyn (not to mention El Viejo). That’s why somewhere up ahead there will be a full novel detailing the further adventures of these two Korean–American siblings. I plan on giving it the title which inspired this story in the first place: My Stupid Brother Marvyn the Witch.

The Fantasy Worlds of Peter Beagle

The whimsical tale of a lovely young girl who plays the guitar, has a mother in the Bronx, and turns into a werewolf at night — much to the distress of the man she loves.

The spellbinding story of a wealthy and jaded woman who plans the ultimate party…with Death as the guest-of-honor.

An intricately woven tapestry of love and death follows the adventures of Tikat, who enters a dark realm of magic in search of the lover he witnessed being brought back to life, and encounters three cloaked women who are on a quest of their own–to save the world’s most powerful wizard. Reprint.

Dark Adventure Radio Theatre: The Lurking Fear brings to life H.P. Lovecraft’s tale of a lingering supernatural horror in a 1930s-style radio drama. Dark Adventure Radio Theatre presents the tale with a huge cast of professional actors, exciting sound effects, and thrilling original music by Troy Sterling Nies. It’s like movies you can enjoy with your eyes closed. A student of Native American lore investigates Yig – the shadowy snake god of an extinct tribe of the Great Plains. His investigation uncovers an account from 1889 of settlers homesteading in the Indian Territories of Oklahoma. A pervasive fear of snakes nudges a simple settler towards madness. Are his fears of the dreaded snake god’s curse just the result of hearing old stories, or is a new story unfolding as Yig’s curse takes hold?

In for a Penny or The Man Who Believed in Himself (in: Sci Fiction, February 20, 2002)

The Shadow from the Steeple” is a short story by Robert Bloch that first appeared in the September 1950 issue of Weird Tales. It is the third and final story in a trilogy by Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft started by Bloch in 1935 with The Shambler from the Stars, and continued by H. P. Lovecraft in 1936 with The Haunter of the Dark. The trilogy concluding in this short story is also the final exploration of the mystery surrounding the “Shining Trapezohedron” in the works of the Lovecraft Circle. The plot of “The Shadow from the Steeple” follows Edmund Fiske, a friend of Robert Blake’s, who spends years searching for Ambrose Dexter, the doctor who disposed of the Shining Trapezohedron, in hopes of explaining Blake’s disappearance. Dexter turns out to have been turned by the weird crystal into an avatar of Nyarlathotep–and to have aided humanity’s development of nuclear weapons.

“Notebook Found in a Deserted House” is a Cthulhu Mythos short story by American writer Robert Bloch. It was first published in the May 1951 issue of Weird Tales. As the title implies, the entire text is that of a notebook found in an empty house. The notebook is written by Willie Osborne, a farm boy who had lived with his grandmother until she died.

Jump onboard Robert Bloch’s That Hellbound Train! Martin, an out-of-luck orphan, struggles to fulfill the American dream — but fate conspires against him at every turn. On the verge of giving up hope, our young protagonist is visited by a monstrous train, one whose conductor might just have a ticket to fame and riches… if Martin is willing to pay the price!

It began in twilight—a twilight I could not see. My eyes opened on darkness, and for a moment I wondered if I were still asleep and dreaming. Then I slid my hands down and felt the cheap lining of the casket, and I knew that this nightmare was real. I wanted to scream, but who can hear screams through six feet of earth above a grave? Better to save my breath and try to save my sanity. I fell back, and the darkness rose all around me. The darkness, the cold, clammy darkness of death.. Read more.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a series of children’s fantasy books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. They chronicle the adventures of the Grace children, twins Simon and Jared and their older sister Mallory, after they move into the Spiderwick Estate and discover a world of fairies that they never knew existed. The first book, The Field Guide, was published in 2003 and then followed by The Seeing Stone (2003), Lucinda’s Secret (2003), The Ironwood Tree (2004), and The Wrath of Mulgarath (2004).

The Centaur is one of the greatest “mystical” works by Blackwood, wherein he explores man’s empathy with the unknown forces of the universe Read more.

“The Doll” is a straightforward tale of vengeance with a supernatural twist. A colonel’s daughter receives a doll from a dark and mysterious foreigner.

Adventures come to the adventurous, and mysterious things fall in the way of those who, with wonder and imagination, are on the watch for them; but the majority of people go past the doors that are half ajar, thinking them closed, and fail to notice the faint stirrings of the great curtain that hangs ever in the form of appearances between them and the world of causes behind. For only to the few whose inner senses have been quickened, perchance by some strange suffering in the depths, or by a natural temperament bequeathed from a remote past, comes the knowledge, not too welcome, that this greater world lies ever at their elbow, and that any moment a chance combination of moods and forces may invite them to cross the shifting frontier…

In Transition a clerk is knocked down by a trolley-bus while carrying home Christmas presents for his wife and children. He completes the journey as a ghost, but of course no-one can see him, or his gifts. Except, that is, for his youngest child, whose much-anticipated desire for the shiny, wrapped parcels under his arms allows her to see him. So much so, in fact, that his parcels drop at her feet, while he is escorted elsewhere by Minturn, who had gone down with the Titanic.

Vampires . . . they ache, they love, they thirst for the forbidden. They are your friends and lovers, and your worst fears. At a club in Missing Mile, N.C., the children of the night gather, dressed in black, look for acceptance. Among them are Ghost, who sees what others do not; Ann, longing for love; and Jason, whose real name is Nothing, newly awakened to an ancient, deathless truth about his father, and himself. Others are coming to Missing Mile tonight. Three beautiful, hip vagabonds—Molochai, Twig, and the seductive Zillah, whose eyes are as green as limes—are on their own lost journey, slaking their ancient thirst for blood, looking for supple young flesh. They find it in Nothing and Ann, leading them on a mad, illicit road trip south to New Orleans. Over miles of dark highway, Ghost pursues, his powers guiding him on a journey to reach his destiny, to save Ann from her new companions, to save Nothing from himself. . . .