The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to find the answer to the question, “And then what happened?” Edited by Neil Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and “master anthologist” (Booklist) Al Sarrantonio, Stories is a groundbreaking collection that reinvigorates and expands the boundaries of imaginative fiction, affording some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O’Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley, Jodi Picoult, the volume’s editors, and others—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. A brilliant and visionary compendium of diverse tales, Stories will transform your view of the world and ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.

"In 1973 celebrated writer and editor Harlan Ellison announced the third and final volume of his unprecedented anthology series, which began with Dangerous Visions and continued with Again, Dangerous Visions. But for reasons undisclosed, The Last Dangerous Visions was never completed. Provocative and controversial, socially conscious and politically charged, wildly imaginative yet deeply grounded, the thirty-two never-before-published stories, essays, and poems in The Last Dangerous Visions stand as a testament to Ellison's lifelong pursuit of art, uniting a diverse range of science fiction writers both famous and newly minted, including Max Brooks, Edward Bryant, Cecil Castellucci, James S. A. Corey, Howard Fast, P. C. Hodgell, Dan Simmons, Robert Sheckley, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Mildred Downey Broxon, and Cory Doctorow, among others. The historic publication of The Last Dangerous Visions completes the long-awaited final chapter in an incredible literary legacy."--Amazon.

From a writer whose every book is a literary event, a superbly accomplished work of fiction. "Last Night is a spellbinding collection of stories about passion-by turns fiery and subdued, destructive and redemptive, alluring and devastating. In ten powerful stories, Salter portrays men and women in their most intimate moments. A book dealer faces the truth about his life-as it is and never will be again-when he is visited unexpectedly by his brash former girlfriend. A lonely married woman, after a disturbing encounter with a drunken poet at a dinner party, finds herself irresistibly drawn to his animal surrogate, a huge tawny-eyed dog. A lover of poetry must come to terms with his wife's request to give up what may be his most treasured relationship. And in the title story, already hailed by Frank Conroy as "a masterpiece, clearly and without question," a translator, tormented by an agonizing sense of inevitability, assists in his wife's suicide even as he performs a last betrayal. A haunting symphony of desire, memory, and loss-from a writer whose assured style and emotional insight make him one of our most compelling voices at work today.

One need only read the first lines of Tess Slesinger's title story-or indeed any of her stories-to know that hers is a unique literary voice, one that rivets a reader's attention to the page from the very beginning and holds it to the very end. Hers is, one soon discovers, also a wholly feminine voice: compelling, filled with insight, acute at observation, sure of its tone, and everywhere discovering the reality behind human appearances and pretensions. This is a remarkable collection of short stories by a brilliant young writer who was cut off in her prime when she died of cancer in 1945. “An intensely feminine book, in which bleakness, unemployment, heartache and heartlessness are combined with an agreeable feeling of settling down for conversation with an intimate, disillusioned, gossipy, malicious and often witty friend.”- New Statesman . “A genuine short-story writer...she has a good eye for the little tombstones of life.”- Nation .

The passing of Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire in the spring of 2019 was a grievous blow to his many friends, colleagues, and devotees, but his literary legacy is likely to endure for decades to come. In this volume, which spans the spectrum of his work from the 1980s to the present day, Pugmire demonstrates why he became perhaps the leading proponent of Lovecraftian short fiction in his time. Several tales are set in Pugmire's Sesqua Valley--a parallel to Lovecraft's Arkham Country, and based on the Pacific Northwest topography he knew from a lifetime's residence. But beyond the mere evocation of landscape, Pugmire's tales are enlivened by the presence of vivid, piquant characters--male and female, gay and straight, sinister and naïve, all of whom contribute to the atmosphere of refined strangeness that was Pugmire's signature achievement. But Pugmire's work extended well beyond mere Lovecraftian pastiche, and in such tales as "The Barrier Between" and "The Boy with the Bloodstained Mouth" he demonstrates both originality and skill in weird creation. In sum, this volume is a testament to the pioneering imagination of one of the most distinctive writers of his generation. W. H. Pugmire (1951-2019) was the author of Weird Inhabitants of Sesqua Valley (2009), The Tangled Muse (2011), An Ecstasy of Fear (2019), and many other volumes. He lived for most of his life in Seattle, Washington.