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Contains four novellas: Stranger in the House; Sugar and Spice; The Murder in the Stork Club; Ruth.

In these deftly woven noir novellas, Vera Caspary draws on her own rich, independent life as a woman at a time of great social change, including her own experience of Manhattan’s Stork Club, which, from 1929 to 1965, was one of the most prestigious nightclubs in the world.

The title novella The Murder in the Stork Club features working-class detective Joe Collins, who is married to Sara Haworth, a writer of radio mysteries who belongs in Stork Club café society. Joe has to try to clear Sara’s name when an ex-lover is murdered shortly after she has dinner with him.

“Variety is the soul of pleasure,” And variety is what this comprehensive new collection of Connie Willis is all about. The stories cover the entire spectrum, from sad to sparkling to terrifying, from classics to hard-to-find treasures with everything in between – orangutans, Egypt, earthworms, roast goose, college professors, mothers-in-law, aliens, secret codes, Secret Santas, tube stations, choir practice, the post office, the green light on Daisy’s dock, weddings, divorces, death, and assorted plagues, from scarlet fever to “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And a dog.

Famous for her “sure-hand plotting, unforgettable characters, and top-notch writing,” Willis has been called, “the most relentlessly delightful science fiction writer alive,” and there are numerous examples here. Among them, Willis’s most famous stories – the Hugo- and Nebula-Award-winning “Fire Watch” and “Even the Queen” and “The Last of the Winnebagos” – along with undiscovered gems like Willis’s heartfelt homage to Jack Williamson, “Nonstop to Portales.” Her magical Christmas stories are here, too, from “Newsletter” to “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know…” which last year was made into the TV movie, Snow Wonder, starring Mary Tyler Moore.

We’ve collected stories from throughout Willis’s career, from early ones like “Cash Crop” and “Daisy, in the Sun,” right up to her newest stories, including the wonderful “The Winds of Marble Arch.” There’s literally something for everyone here. If you’re a diehard Willis fan, you’ll be delighted with hard-to-find treasures like the until-now uncollected, “The Soul Selects Her Own Society…” If you’ve never read Connie Willis, this is your chance to discover “A Letter from the Clearys” and, well, “Chance.” To say nothing of, “At the Rialto,” the funniest story ever written about quantum physicists. And Willis’s chilling, “All My Darling Daughters.”

And…oh, there are too many great stories here to list and pleasures galore. So enjoy!

BEYOND 2001!

By the twenty-first century, the great power struggle on Earth had been resolved in the only possible way. The United States, Russia, and China all have fallen by the wayside, and Brazil has assumed her rightful place as world leader. Thus it is naturally Brazil that conducts the first interstellar explorations, and creates the great space transport system, the Viagens Interplanetaries, to extend her galactic conquests and hold her vast and growing empire together.

SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF

And plunge headlong into the always wild, constantly weird, and frequently whimsical realm of fantasy as invoked by that master magician L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP!

– A social protestor who just happens to be a ghost.
– A mail-order magic business that conjures up a universe of trouble.
– A fledgling wizard who doesn’t know the strength of his own power.

And these are only a sprinkling of the outrageous and amazing creatures and things you’ll encounter as you whir through a world where everything is probable.

The gods of Poseidonis – or Atlantis – were powerful and real. Now they were determined to destroy the kingdom ruled by the father of Prince Vakar, the one man whose mind they could not read. The only way to save the kingdom was to discover that thing which the gods feared most.

To find it, Prince Vakar set out across the largely unknown world where dangers multiplied with every league. There he found savage countries and strange people – the wild Amazons; a voluptuous, ensorcelled queen; a too-charming girl who was half-horse, half-woman; dangerous magicians who ruled hordes of headless slaves; and the Gorgons, who could paralyze their victims at a glance.

Behind was his ambitious brother, determined that Vakar must fail. Even closer were unknown enemies set on his trail by the suspicious gods.

And to add to his troubles, Vakar had no idea of what he sought!

From the vaults of the SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the fantastic worlds of one of the greatest adventure writers of all time, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The son of a Civil War veteran, Edgar Rice Burroughs was a prolific writer for the early pulp magazines. Famous the world over as the creator of Tarzan – and in SF circles for his Martian tales featuring John Carter – Burroughs is a household name. This omnibus collects six more tales of Tarzan of the Apes – perhaps the greatest pulp hero of all time: TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE, TARZAN THE INVINCIBLE, TARZAN TRIUMPHANT, TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD, TARZAN AND THE LION MAN and TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN.

Ten tantalizing tales of man, woman and child – and their cosmic connections…

Contents:
Angel Fix (1974)
Beaver Tears (1976)
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
The Screwfly Solution (1977)
Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
Slow Music (1980)
A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
Out of the Everywhere (1981)
With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)

This collection by Lucius Shepard, one of the most exciting new writers to emerge in the 1980s, includes the eponymous story ¿Barnacle Bill the Spacer¿, about an attempted mutiny on a space station, which won the Hugo Award, as well as ¿Sports in America¿, about a man who finds out just how far he is willing to go when he is hired by a local crime boss to kill a man. In ¿All the Perfumes of Araby¿ a small-time smuggler is granted a vision of the future that compels him to change his life, while ¿Human History¿ is a post-apocalyptic adventure story with a hint of decadence. ¿The Sun Spider¿ is a romance of sorts, with a decidedly gothic twist, while in ¿Beast of the Heartland¿, a boxer at the end of his career is lured back into the ring with the promise of one last big payoff. And anyone who has ever completely lost themselves in a piece of music will recognise the inspiration for ¿A Little Night Music¿. Shepard’s stories are not just wonderfully three-dimensional characters dealing with life-changing events; they are filled with colours, textures, sounds and smells, as he describes his backgrounds with as much care as a master painter.

From one of the best-loved authors of the Golden Age of detective fiction, this collection of short stories by Helen McCloy features psychiatrist-sleuth Dr Basil Willing.

Beginning with her classic, Through a Glass, Darkly, which she later expanded into a full-length novel, McCloy experimented with daringly imaginative concepts within the framework of the formal, fairplay detective story. From doppelgangers to flying saucers each story demonstrates the author’s masterful combination of style, content and technique to produce some of crime fiction’s finest work.

With the most powerful, and most evil, of the elder Gods, Cthulhu, roused from slumber and preparing to destroy all of mankind with a single blow, Titus Crow and Henri-Laurent De Marigny are hopelessly outmatched. But they are not hopeless- They have been joined by heroes from other times, other worlds, other planes of reality. In a marvellous climax, heroes from other Brian Lumley series gather for the dramatic final battle.

After the shocking first contact between humans and alien life on Mars, Carmen Dula and her husband board a tiny, long-range craft with five other humans and two Martians. They travel to a distant solar system that is home to the “Others” – an enigmatic, powerful, and possibly immortal race. Once there, they manage to find enough common purpose to forge a delicate truce between human, Martian, and Other.

By the time Carmen and her party are sent back to Earth, fifty years have passed – and the Earthlings have not been idle. They have built a massive flotilla of warships to defend Earth against the Others’ expected aggression. But the Others have more power than any could imagine.

And they will brook no insolence from the upstart human race…

The things from beyond the Milky Way galaxy found the intelligent races of our universe amusingly slight. To them, possessors of vast cosmic power, the strivings of various humanoids to outdo each other were a source of contemptuous entertainment.

They established a contest between the worlds. It would be an Olympiad of the whole galaxy – a Galactiad. Let these puny interstellar intelligences meet each other in contest. Pit one against the other – and let the losers beware!

Earth had its team – a mixed group of powerful athletes and genius scientists. Because other worlds did not always believe in the ideal of good sportsmanship, they had to confront the reality. Win at all costs . . . or goodbye to humanity!

Rudolf Mallory was one of the many pathetic pieces of human flotsam on the tide of the 20th-century neurosis. He was a man who had reached the end of his rope, death seemed pleasant by comparison… He tried to take the easy way out, but something went wrong. Unknown to Mallory other men had problems too. Separated by vast distances of time and space, Rumal, citizen of an advanced humanoid society, with a strangely different technology had also decided to end it all…

Time and Space are almost perfect but rare warps and blemishes do exist in the continuum. They can produce peculiar events.

The Englishman from 1963 suddenly found himself on the other side of the galaxy. Rumal found himself in England. They had been unable to solve their own problems – could they solve each other’s?

Everyone knows the story of the Marie Celeste. Kemlo and Kerowski hardly expected to find an aerial Marie Celeste adrift in the void.

But caught, with others, in the worst astral storm of their experience, they had other things to think about for the moment. And after that there was yet another, one still more important…

Through the means of what he calls “speculative fiction”, Michael Bishop examines the various links between man and the supernatural by exploring the relationships and conflicts between mortals and deities of other worlds, in other times and within other cultures. His scope isn’t limited to alien environments, however. Bishop’s talent for transforming the commonplace into the fantastic often reaches into our own backyards, and the results are astounding:

– A father’s love for his son and the influence of the evangelist’s strange teachings prompt a desperate and violent act.
– In a surreal world of unceasing movies where the inhabitants serve constantly as an audience, one man seeks to confront he ultimate power which controls their lives.
– A young boy’s talent for ventriloquism results in an irresistible summons from an all-powerful source.
– A Midwestern farmer’s compelling visions draw him to the oceanic god of an unusual cult.
– Mysterious airborne hieroglyphics become a young scientist’s obsession.

With these and other stories, Michael Bishop weaves a colourful tapestry of character, theme and circumstance which attests to his position as on of the best in the field.

The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth’s fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. Now Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter Martians and then the mysterious Others, and her colleagues struggle to find a way, using nineteenth-century technology, to reclaim the future that has been stolen from them.

FAILWAY- the organisation whose process could break through into an inferior energy level, transporting the people into other dimensions, bringing them pleasures simple, exciting, exotic or erotic…
FAILWAY- a police state, which tolerated no opposition. It was ruthless, thorough, and invariably fatal to its opponents…
FAILWAY- against whose other-world power stood one man…
DALROI

Mysterious radio signals were being received from the planet Uranus, and Earth’s leading scientists decided that a complete investigation was needed. For the first time, the U.N.E.X.A. planned a two-ship expedition, under the overall command of Chris Godfrey. Serge, Morrey and Tony were of course included, and four other astronauts made up the crew of the two ships.

At first the signals made little difference to them, except that they produced violent headaches if listened to for more than a few seconds. But when Chris awoke after a spell of hypothermia and tried to call the other ship he was horrified to hear the sinister sounds from Uranus on the wavelength which connected the two ships with each other and both of them with Control, back on Earth…

Man is an intelligent mammal. His intelligence lies in his brain. In mammals the tissues of the central nervous system are irreplaceable. The human brain contains something like 100,000,000,000,000 neurons, but 100,000 are destroyed on average each day of a man’s life. Cosmic rays and general internal and external radioactivity account for most of this destruction.

Hunger and Gradey decided on an illegal experiment. They brought up a small group of children in a strange artificial setting where there was practically no radiation. The setting was improved. The environment grew more shielded as generations passed. At last the Thinkers exploded into a world that had not dreamed of their existence. The world was facing other complications at the moment. An alien had appeared from the other side of the cosmos! Humanity was faced with two potentially deadly enemies; could they be turned against each other, or was one a secret friend?

Xalia was old when the Pyramids were built. Xalia was a woman when Gaza was an untouched coastal plain. Xalia was a woman when Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees. She was not alone. There were others like her. Human, yet more than human. Some were good. Others were evil. Others, like Xalia, still retained some human qualities. Even a goddess can fall in love and when she does Time and Space become meaningless. Xalia was prepared to go to any lengths to accomplish her strange purpose. What of those who got in her way? What of those who opposed her? Could Martin Slade resist the advances of a goddess? If not… what would happen to a man who was loved by an Immortal? What happened to those who tried to save him?

Though they live fulfilling, independent lives in three different countries, Olivia Segal, Jamie Arias and Annie Aldrich Thomas remain bound to each other by a past tragedy – and by their pact always to be there for each other at times of great need.

In a London vault lies a story waiting to be read; a tale of evil more than fifty years old, a link with the past and a present danger more terrifying than anything the friends could have dreamed up in their wildest nightmares.

Empire builder Max Feyman had ruthlessly gained control of an invention called the ‘zipdrive’, a system of ultra-fast space travel. But his world is shattered when his daughter Celia, vacationing on the moon, is suddenly rendered unable to walk or speak – dependent on others to remain alive. Then, across the solar system, others are also struck down. Feyman must find a cure for the mysterious affliction that threatens not only the life of his only daughter – but also humanity itself.

The Final Encyclopedia tells of the events which occur when the human race is split into three splinter cultures: the Friendlies, fanatic in their faith; the truth-seeking Exotics; and the warrior Dorsai. But now humanity is threatened by the power-hungry Others, whose triumph would end all human progress.

Hal Mayne is an orphan who was raised by three tutors: an Exotic, a Friendly and a Dorsai. He is the only human capable of uniting humanity against the Others. But only if he is willing to accept the terrible destiny of . . . Saviour of mankind.

When Ruth Lasseter hires an escort to cover for a workplace affair, she lets a deeply disturbed young man into her life. Though she survives the consequence, she’s left with the lingering suspicion that he hasn’t simply disappeared. He’s still out there, taking out his problems on other woman just like her.

There was a moment when Ruth had her chance to stop him for good. But she didn’t take it.

Now she sees that closure-for both of them-lies on the other side of that line.