We’ve assembled an amazing selection of stories for readers who love variety. First up, five mystery stories: an original set in the glamorous world of film by Elizabeth Elwood (thanks to Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), a gripping pulp thriller by Richard Deming, a moonshine-drenched tale from David Heska Wanbli Weiden (thanks to Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman), and a dark crime story by Donald A. Ranard. And, of course, no issue would be complete without a new solve-it-yourself puzzler ...

Each issue of The Society of Misfit Stories Presents… is a celebration of long-form fiction. These novelettes and novellas will entertain and surprise fans of the form. In this issue: William Suboski, Sarina Dorie, Daniel Foy, Anne Sherman, Gary Battershell, and David Gilman Frederick.A sampling of the stories in this issue:A ghost seeks to convince a scientist to believe in the existence of ghosts in Psychology for the Living Impaired.

COVER ARTSteve HickmanNOVELSThe Purple Sickle Murders, by Freeman Wills CroftsInspector French investigates a deadly scheme—and a girl too scared to stay silent.The Daughter of the Dawn, by William Reginald HodderA lost race. A cursed secret. Who dares awaken the mysteries of Hinauri?SOLVE-IT-YOURSELF MYSTER...

When Megan decided to go on a camping trip with her two college roommates, she had no idea that she would find herself involved in an alien plot to conquer Earth.And she certainly had no idea that a handsome extraterrestrial would find her "enchanting."Can a girl with low self-esteem and no experience with romance save her world and navigate the pitfalls of love with a dashing, but enigmatic alien whose true motivations are impossible to know?

A fantastic tale of swashbuckling adventure set in an alternate universe where fairies roam England and all of Shakespeare's fictional characters are real.Winner of the Mythopoeic AwardA Nebula and World Fantasy Award FinalistWelcome to an alternate civil-war-torn seventeenth-century England—a world where Hamlet once brooded and Othello jealously raged. Here faeries and sprites gambol in English woods, railroads rac...

"[Lisa Goldstein's] magnificent book functions as both an eerie fantasy and an evocative period piece, overlaid with all the thrills of a convoluted conspiracy novel . . . The reader is plunged into a fantasy milieu reminiscent of some of Yeats's Faerie poems, illustrated perhaps by Arthur Rackham." —Paul Di Filippo ( Washington Post)London in the time of Queen Elizabeth I is a bustling place, its streets crowded with vendors selling goods from all over the...

A quest for a priceless element—and revenge—fuels this far-future interstellar adventure that "reads like Moby-Dick at a strobe-light show" ( Time).In 3172, the universe is divided between three political units: the stars and worlds of Draco, with Earth as its power center; the Pleiades Federation, on whose capital world, New Ark, lives the incredibly wealthy Von Ray family, descended from well-heeled merchants whose ancestors made their fortune a...

Nebula Award Finalist: Reality unravels in a Midwestern town in this sci-fi epic by the acclaimed author of Babel-17. Includes a foreword by William Gibson.A young half–Native American known as the Kid has hitchhiked from Mexico to the midwestern city Bellona—only something is wrong there . . . In Bellona, the shattered city, a nameless cataclysm has left reality unhinged. Into this desperate metropolis steps the Kid, his fist wrapped in razor-shar...

Anna Katharine Green (November 11, 1846 – April 11, 1935) was an American poet and novelist. She was one of the first writers of detective fiction in America and distinguished herself by writing well plotted, legally accurate stories. Green has been called "the mother of the detective novel".In a discussion of women writers of detective fiction, scholar Ellen Higgins in 1994 chronicled the work of Green as popularizing the genre a decade before Arthur Conan Doyle br...

To keep the peace in the coal mines, the Pinkerton agency goes to warThe Civil War is over, and the Union is rebuilding using the power of coal—black rock dug from deep beneath the Pennsylvania earth by men from all over the globe who are seeking their fortune in America. In the 1870s, the miners are unionizing to fight for better working conditions, but within their ranks lurks a secret society whose aim is not so pure. It calls itself the Mollie Maguires, and its ...

The Bobbsey Twins are the principal characters of what was, for many years, the Stratemeyer Syndicate's longest-running series of American children's novels, penned under the pseudonym Laura Lee Hope.

The story takes place in a small struggling mining town located in the foothills of the California mountains at the time of the gold rush. The camp is suffering from a long string of bad luck. With only one woman in their midst, it seems as though the miners have no future. However, the tide turns when a small boy is born. Thomas Luck is the first newborn the camp has seen in ages; things are looking up. The miners become cheerful, foliage begins to grow, and there is talk of building a hotel...