The latest volume in the acclaimed Heiresses of Russ series features stories that are anything but invisible: the women in these tales are not hiding and are not easily overlooked but rather are choosing the harder path, the more dangerous route, whether that leads to love or loss or adventure. Included in these pages are stories that have won a World Fantasy Award, a Tiptree Award, and a British Fantasy Award...but every one of these stories chosen by guest editor A.M. Dellamonica (herself an award-winning writer of queer speculative fiction) is emblematic of the new vitality to be found in lesbian-themed tales of wonder, the eerie, and the miraculous.

This selection from the first ten years of the Evergreen Review gives the full flavor of the energy, savvy, excitement, and gall that characterized the magazine during the days of its publication. It also happens to bring together some of the world’s best writers in one volume, in the company of their peers. Evergreen was more than another literary magazine. Founded by Barney Rossett of Grove Press and publishing from 1957 through 1973 (it now exists as an online only magazine), it was the voice of a movement that helped to change the attitudes and prejudices of the culture at large through the language of art—and succeeded. It was always damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Here are original short stories by Samuel Beckett and Jack Kerouac (with his “October in the Railroad Earth” predating the publication of On the Road ); Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” (previously published only as a pamphlet); a selection from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind ; and a passage from Alexander Trocchi’s Cain’s Book . Also included are a fantastic sample of the original and iconic magazine covers which were works of art themselves—a heavily bearded Ginsberg cavorting in a sport coat and Uncle Sam top hat in 1966—and several reprinted comic strips; notably, Michael O’Donoghue’s “The Adventure of Phoebe Zeit-geist.”

When this master storyteller breaks new ground, he does it with a flame-thrower. The first part of this book was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, sparking both outrage and acclaim. The next two sections, published here for the first time, unravel visions even more dangerous. Both heart-breaking and heart-warming, this is a violent, sexy, no-holds-barred tale of a ferocious soul coming to terms with a brutal, uncompromising world. From the desperate streets of Los Angeles' urban jungle to the greener jungles of Vietnam, from the sanctuary of a Saigon whore house to the heat-scorched follies of Arizona, a disabled veteran discovers that true intimacy is something to be feared as much as cherished. This astonishing work dives headlong into the darkest parts of the heart, coming out again on the far side, to discover the most human of all human adventures. Take this journey and you will never be the same.