Terminal baptism, erotic performance art, and voodoo economics with actual voodoo. An integrity gene is harvested from the brain of an unwilling schoolteacher. Christopher Columbus lands in modern-day Manhattan. John Wayne seeks treatment from a cinematic oncologist. Sports fans save the universe every day. The Cat’s Pajamas is a provocative collection of satiric short fiction from Nebula and World Fantasy award–winning author James Morrow. Included is “Auspicious Eggs,” in which ritual procreation and compulsory abortion are mandated by the Catholic Church. Two original pieces were written specifically for The Cat’s Pajamas: the play “Come Back, Dr. Sarcophagus,” and the short story “Fucking Justice.”

Ramsey Campbell is the world's most honored living horror writer, with more than twenty World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and other awards to his credit. Hailed as one of the most literate and literary writers of our time, in genre and out, Campbell has been acclaimed as a "master of dark fantasy" by Clive Barker, one of today's "finest writers of supernatural horror and psychological suspense" by the Charleston Post & Courier, the "master of a skewed and exquisitely terrifying style" by Library Journal, "one of the world's foremost horror writers" by the San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle, and a "master of mood" by Publishers Weekly. In The Darkest Part of the Woods, Campbell introduces readers to the Price family, whose lives have for decades been snarled with the fate of the ancient forest of Goodmanswood. Here, Dr. Lennox Price discovered a hallucinogenic moss that quickly became the focus of a cult-and though the moss and the trees on which it grew are long gone, it seems as if the whole forest can now affect the minds of visitors. After Lennox is killed trying to return to his beloved wood, his widow seems to see and hear him in the trees-or is it a dark version of the Green Man that caresses her with leafy hands? Lennox's grandson heeds a call to lie in his lover's arms in the very heart of the forest-and cannot help but wonder what the fruit of that love will be. And Heather, Lennox's daughter, who turned her back on her father's mysteries and sought sanctuary in the world of facts and history? Goodmanswood summons her as well . . .At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Crime, drugs, and pollution have made the cities of the world virtually inhabitable, and the air and water are slowly killing the residents who remain. A small group of survivors escapes to the wilderness of northern Canada to make a new life. But now the Earth is ready to fight back and rid itself of its abusers.

Literary allusions abound in this volume as Di Filippo recasts a classic Melville story of slave rebellion at sea-with aliens; "Ailoura" tells the Puss in Boots fairy tale as a space opera romp; "Observable Things" has Cotton Mather encountering with Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane; and "A Monument to After-Thought Unveiled" has poet Robert Frost starting his career writing horror fiction for Weird Tales magazine, edited by H. P. Lovecraft. Emperor of Gondwanaland contains eighteen stories, including one published only in this collection.

Winner of the 2003 World Fantasy Award Graham Joyce chronicles a haunting, war-torn terrain in this heartrending novel of one family's quest to begin again -- without forgetting the lives they left behind. The Facts of Life Set in Coventry, England, during and immediately after World War II, The Facts of Life revolves around the early years of Frank Arthur Vine, the illegitimate son of young, free-spirited Cassie and an American GI. Because Cassie is too unreliable and unstable to act as his proper guardian -- and is prone to blue periods in which she wanders off without warning or recollection -- Frank is brought up in the care of his strong-willed, stout-drinking grandmother, Martha Vine, who has, among other homemaking talents, the untoward ability to communicate with the dead. So begins the first decade of Frank's life, one in which ghosts have a place at the table and divine order dictates the outcome of his days. Along the way there are brief stays with each of his six eccentric aunts, visits to the local mortuary, and voices inside of his own head that suggest that he, too, has the gift of supernatural intuition. An affecting tale of family and history, war and peace, love and madness, The Facts of Life will leave readers spellbound with its resounding expression of magic realism.

The best novel yet from a World Fantasy Award and four time British Fantasy Award winning author.This is the story of a young woman growing up in the midlands in 1966 - a woman who may be a witch. As a baby, Fern was taken in by Mammy Cullen who schooled her in the art of old hedgerow medicine, of traditional midwifery, herbs, folk songs and tales. She comes of age in the 1960s but lives on the margins of society until a group of Beatniks descends on the small village she calls home. Then a young woman dies after visiting Mammy for a brew to stop her pregnancy, setting off a landslide of events that threatens everything Fern has ever known.

As usual, acclaimed horror anthologist Stephen Jones has chosen the finest short stories and novellas of supernatural and psychological fiction. With the most comprehensive review of the year, useful contact lists, and a fascinating necrology as a bonus, this is one book that every horror fan must have.

A bookstore can be a wonderful, welcoming place of both commerce and curiosity. That's the goal for Woody, an American recently transferred to England to run a branch of Texts. He wants a clean, orderly store and lots of sales to show his bosses when they arrive from the States for a pre-Christmas inspection. Not easy given the shop's location in a foggy strip mall.And things keep going wrong. No matter how often the shelves are put in order before the doors are locked at night, when the staff returns in the morning, books are lying all over the floor, many damp and damaged beyond repair. The store's computers keep acting up-errors appear in brochures and ads and orders disappear completely. And even when the machines are turned off, they seem to glow with a spectral gray light.The hit-and-run death of an employee in the store's parking lot marks a turning point. One employee accuses another of making sexual advances and they come to blows. Between one sentence and the next, one loses his ability to read. The security monitors display half-seen things crawling between the stacks that vanish before anyone can find them.Desperate, Woody musters his staff for an overnight inventory. When the last customers reluctantly depart, leaving almost-visible trails of slime shining behind them, the doors are locked, sealing Woody and the others inside for a final orgy of shelving. The damp, grey, silent things that have been lurking in the basement and hiding in the fog may move slowly, but they are inexorable. This bookstore is no haven. It is the doorway to a hell unlike any other. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The first book of a trilogy of novels known collectively as "The Rosy Crucifixion." It is autobiographical and tells the story of Miller's first tempestuous marriage and his relentless sexual exploits in New York. The other books are "Plexus" and "Nexus."

Brian Evenson's fifth story collection constructs a human landscape as unearthly as it is mundane. Replete with the brutality, primordial waste, and savage blankness familiar to readers of his earlier works, Evenson's Kafkaesque allegories entice the mind while stubbornly disordering it. In the title story an obsessive consciousness folds back on itself, creating a vertiginous mélange of Poe and Borges, both horrific and metaphysical. Here, as in Moran's Mexico, and Greenhouse, the solitary nature of reading and writing leads characters beyond human limits, making the act of putting words to paper a monstrous violation opening onto madness. In White Square the representation of humans by dimly colored shapes confirms our feeling that something lies behind these words, while seeming to mock us with the futility of seeking it. Evenson's enigmatic names-Thurm, Bein, Hatcher, Burlun-placeable landscapes, and barren rooms all combine to create a semblance of conceptual abstraction, as though the material universe had come to exist inside someone's head. Small wonder that Evenson's work has attracted so much attention among philosophers, literary critics, and other speculative intelligences, for it continuously projects a tantalizing absence, as though there were some key or code that, if only we knew it, would illuminate everything. However, the blade of discernment wavers, and we are left to our own groping interpretations.

- Aspect published the previous novel in the series, The Skrayling Tree, in hardcover (0-446-53104-9) in 2003 and in mass market (0-446-61340-1) in 7/04. The prior novel. The Dreamthief's Daughter (Aspect hardcover, 2001, 0-446-52618-5; mass market, 2002, 0-446-61120-4) received praise from the Washington Post, Denver Post, and Locus, where it was featured on the 2001 Recommended Reading list. - Aspect reissued Moorcock's classic Gloriana, or the Unfulfill'd Queen in trade paperback in 8/04. Gloriana won Moorcock the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and the British Fantasy Award. - Moorcock's Elric the Eternal Champion saga has been optioned by Universal Pictures, with Chris and Paul Weitz (American Pie) producing. - Michael Moorcock is a vanguard author, editor, journalist, critic, and rock musician, who is editor of the controversial magazine New Worlds. A member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, Moorcock has won the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the British Fantasy Award, among others.

For more than a decade, readers have turned to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror to find the most rewarding fantastic short stories. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling continue their critically acclaimed and award-winning tradition with another stunning collection of stories. The fiction and poetry here is culled from an exhaustive survey of the field, nearly four dozen stories ranging from fairy tales to gothic horror, from magical realism to dark tales in the Grand Guignol style. Rounding out the volume are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantasy and horror, and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.ContentsSummation 1999: FantasyTerri WindlingSummation 1999: HorrorEllen DatlowHorror and Fantasy in the Media: 1999Edward BryantComics: 1999, Seth JohnsonObituaries: 1999, James FrenkelDarkrose and Diamond, Ursula K. Le GuinThe Chop Girl, Ian R. MacLeodThe Girl Detective, Kelly LinkThe Transformation, N. Scott MomadayCarabosse, Delia ShermanHarlequin Valentine, Neil GaimanToad, Patricia A. McKillipThe Dinner Party, Robert GirardiHeat, Steve Rasnic TemThe Wedding at EsperanzaLinnet TaylorRedescending, Ursula K. Le GuinYou Don't Have to be Mad . . .Kim NewmanThe Paper-Thin Garden, Thomas WhartonThe Anatomy of a MermaidMary SharrattThe Grammarian's Five DaughtersEleanor ArnasonThe Tree Is My Hat, Gene WolfeWelcome, Michael Marshall SmithThe Pathos of Genre, Douglas E. WinterShatsi , Peter CrowtherKeepsakes and Treasures: A Love StoryNeil GaimanWhat You Make It, Michael Marshall SmithThe Parwat Ruby, Delia ShermanOdysseus Old, Geoffrey BrockThe Smell of the Deer, Kent MeyersChorion and the PleiadesSarah Van ArsdaleCrosley, Elizabeth Engstromn0 Naming the Dead, Paul J. McAuleyThe Stork-Men, Juan GoytisoloThe Disappearance of Elaine ColemanSteven MillhauserWhite, Tim LebbonDear Floods of Her Hair, James SallisMrs. Santa Decides to Move to FloridaApril SelleyTanuki, Jan HodgmanAt Reparata, Jeffrey FordSkin So Green and Fine, Wendy WheelerOld Merlin Dancing on the Sands of TimeJane YolenSailing the Painted OceanDenise LeeGrandmother, Laurence SnydalSmall Song, Gary A. BraunbeckThe Emperor's Old BonesGemma FilesThe Duke of Wellington Misplaces His HorseSusanna ClarkeHalloween Street, Steve Rasnic TemThe Kiss, Tia V. TravisThe Beast/The Hedge, Bill LewisPixel Pixies, Charles de LintFalling Away, Elizabeth BirminghamHonorable Mentions: 1999