Three novellas about people who travel to alternate worlds: "The Portal in the Picture," "Valley of the Flame" (orig. pub. Ace, 1964), and "The Dark World."

Things are going badly for the Clan in this SF novel of the Merchant Princes, the immensely popular series by Charles Stross. Locked in a vicious civil war for control over the kingdom of Niejwein, their army is bottled up inside a fortress under siege in two parallel universes at once. Duke Angbard, the Clan's leader, has been laid low by a stroke: plotters are already conspiring in readiness for the deadly dance to come. Miriam, rescued from a tight spot in New Britain, finds the hopes of the young, progressive faction focused on her. But do they want her as a leader or a figurehead? She soon finds herself thrown into a desperate struggle for power. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the Clan, researchers working for the US government have achieved a technological breakthrough.

Lindsey's life changed the night she saw her beloved grandfather in his superhero guise for the first time. It changed again the day she got caught in a strange storm, and she tookup her grandfather's mantle as a protector. Diagnosed at a young age with a rare chronic illness, she must balance her family's protectiveness against her desire to carry on their legacy and prevent a bitter genius from taking revenge on those who slighted him. Heightof the Storm is the first novel to explore Earth-Prime, the setting of the hit superhero RPG Mutants & Masterminds.

"Tynset takes place during a sleepless night, but as the work unfolds it becomes apparent that the circumstances of the immediate present serve merely as points of departure. Plagued by incessant rumination, the narrator's restless mind spins thread after thread of thought, fantasy, and memory into an elaborate tapestry spanning centuries and covering thousands of miles--all without the narrator ever leaving his house. Hildesheimer famously refused to describe Tynset as a novel; instead, he chose to think of the work as an extended monologue whose structure derives from the musical rondo form, with the recurrence of the titular Norwegian town functioning as a refrain"--

"Legends from Vamland is one of the most beautiful stories about human struggle against fear. The author blends together Romanian legends and myths with those of cultures throughout the world. One can hardly find any noble and beautiful human aspiration in all the cultures of the world whose reflection is not to be found in Legends from Vamland. The work is also intended to be one of science fiction, as the author provides the image of the spiritual life of an imaginary people from an imaginary land. The result is a book of splendid originality. One of the first Romanian writers of science fiction, Vladimir Colin was also an important representative of Jewish culture in Romania. Among his most important works of science fiction are Legends from Vamland, a work in many ways similar to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. These tales have been abridged and retold for English readers by Luiza Carol. Luiza Carol is associate editor of the international poetry magazine Voices Israel. She is an award-winning writer, poet, and translator and a member of the Federation of Israeli Writers and the Academy of American Poets"--