"Beagle's unicorns have never been more bewitching, impossible, and genuine. I cherished every page." -- Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and After Alice From the acclaimed author of The Last Unicorn comes a new, exquisitely-told fable for the modern age. Claudio Bianchi has lived alone for many years on a hillside in Southern Italy's scenic Calabria. Set in his ways and suspicious of outsiders, Claudio has always resisted change, preferring farming...

"It is a dark and stormy Puget Sound winter--until the arrival of Lioness Lazos. Even the weather takes notice when Lioness appears, as if out of nowhere, waiting tables in a diner. As though compelled, a complicated family brings the young woman into their lives. Energetic Joanna, academic Abe, and lovelorn Lily each fall under Lioness's spell, and she in turn awakens their long-hidden dreams and desires. As an impossibly beautiful spring leads into...

"The Story of Kao Yu" is a new fantasy short story by the legendary Peter S. Beagle which tells of an aging judge traveling through rural China and of a criminal he encounters. Of the story, Beagle says it "comes out of a lifelong fascination with Asian legendry - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Indonesian - all drawn from cultures where storytelling, in one form of another, remains a living art. As a young writer I loved everything from Robert...

The essential first volume of bestselling author Peter S. Beagle's (The Last Unicorn) short stories demonstrates why he is one of America's most influential fantasists. With his celebrated versatility, humor, and grace, Beagle is at home in a dazzling variety of subgenres. Evoking comparison to such iconic authors as Twain, Tolkien, Carroll, L'Engle, and Vonnegut, this career retrospective celebrates Beagle's mastery of the short-story form. "For...

In ancient Persia, magical beasts are nearly extinct. But the unicorns are not yet gone -- not when the terrifying karkadann wields its deadly horn. It will be up to Heydari, tenderhearted son of an elephant driver, to discover more than a monster in a badly-injured beast. Lisa passes her days as a distracted maid who is slow of speech and thought. But Lisa has unique memories: a terrible sorcerer has cursed with his dying spell, taking both her freedom...

"Contains rapidly-rising writers early in their careers; stories are all published after 2010 Authors are internationally-based and encompass a wide variety of multicultural perspectives Features uncollected fiction, including one original story written for the anthology"--

"This volume showcases the nuanced, playful, ever-expanding definitions of the genre and celebrates its current renaissance." -- Washington Post Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres -- they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears....