I offered to show you the afterlife. It's not something everyone's invited to see.Senator Mienz is ready to celebrate passing the bill his donors demanded. As he's leaving his office building, the elevator malfunctions, trapping him with a page whose long hair betrays him as hopelessly unsophisticated……if he really is a page…A re-envisioned Christmas Carol for our time.

Only one will leave the game...alive.Wild Bill Hickok, alive again in the graveyard in Deadwood on a cold October night, has an irresistible compulsion to go to Atlantic City. There, in the mysterious and magical Black Queen casino, he joins a rogue's gallery of resurrected scoundrels, all gamblers who were murdered like himself.Will the father of organized crime revert to his bad habits and attempt to take over the Queen? Will Wild Bill finally find out if those a...

From the dark depths of the past to the bright hopes of the future, Pati Nagle's stories range across the palette of human emotion. Named for her Theodore Sturgeon Award Finalist story, Coyote Ugly includes fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, romance, mystery, and a few surprises. The rhythms, colors, and flavors of New Mexico enrich many of the stories. Curl up with this collection and your favorite hot cuppa, and prepare to escape the ordinary.

"I never should have let them talk me into giving blood."When Manda notices a creepy white-haired goth watching her donate blood, her best friend Lenore panics and drags her to a tiny New Mexico village where she learns the horrible truth—The goth is a vampire...and she's the target.Hiding out in the village with Len's gorgeous boyfriend, Manda meets several of his kindred, strangely beautiful men who call themselves ælven. She is drawn to Savhoran, who is ...

Can a lowly gumpaw hope for love with a girl who rides in a jewel-encrusted carrier?Feline investigator Leon, with opposable thumbs and the ability to talk, is possibly the most dangerous cat in the galaxy. Indentured to the Security department of Gamma Station until the cost of his creation is paid off, Leon alternates between harassing his human partner/roommate Devin and fighting sleazoid criminals, yet still finds time to flirt with the lovely Leila, an exotic Burmese ...

What do you do if the most gorgeous guy you've ever seen walks up to you and asks for your help?No brainer. Len Whiting is smitten from the minute she sees the stranger's amazing eyes. She agrees to help Caeran find the healer he's been seeking in rural New Mexico. What Len doesn't know is that neither Caeran nor the healer is human: they're immortal ælven, and they're locked in an ancient struggle with the vampires who are their kin. Len wants Caeran's love, and wants to ...

The tale of the ælven's struggle against their kindred foes, the vampiric alben, continues...Eliani and Turisan, mindspeakers separated by duty the day after their handfasting, yearn to be reunited as they aid in the fight to hold onto Fireshore. The capital city of that realm has been captured by the alben leader, Shalár, and along with it, Fireshore's governor and Eliani's beloved cousin!Shalár now has her eye on Woodrun, the center of Fireshore's darkwood produc...

A story of miracles and visions in the fertile, endangered Rio Grande Valley.Rosa Marquez and Sean Carpenter have two things in common: they're both native New Mexicans, and they're both seeing visions. Rosa encounters the mythical flute-playing hunchback Kokopelli on a hike in Albuquerque's Petroglyph National Monument. Sean sees the Virgin of Guadalupe in the dry, barren bed of the Santa Fe River.Both give cryptic messages that lead Rosa and Sean to join a fight ...

Midwinter, a time of darkness, a time to release past sorrows.Lord Paethor, young and haunted, accepts a mission from his king: to retrieve the enchanted sword Farslayer - or die in the attempt."Glad Yule," a fantasy novella, first appeared in the anthology An Armory of Swords, edited by Fred Saberhagen and set in his Swords of Power universe."Nagle's 'Glad Yule' and Walker's 'Stealth and the Lady' would be worthy additions to any anthology."—Pu...

The immortal ælven were forever divided when one clan began a forbidden practice: the drinking of blood.Clan Darkshore was cast out of the ælven, named "alben," and driven west of the mountains into exile, their protests—that they must drink blood or perish—ignored. Centuries later, Darkshore's leader, Shalár, burns with anger at the memory of the war against her clan, and weaves a plan to reclaim her former home and make the ælven accept the truth about her people.

The campus killer is back......and this time bright, sensitive Steve Harrison finds the mutilated corpse. When he realizes the cops suspect him of the brutal murders, he calls a friend for support and is drawn into a secret world of magic, wonder, and dread. A circle of impossibly beautiful men guards the campus against vicious, inhuman hunters. Steve's education, his love life, even his survival is at stake once he learns what the police don't know:

Vonda N. McIntyre preferred to keep her author's biography short and sweet: "Vonda N. McIntyre writes science fiction." While true, this modest claim conceals accomplishments that earned her multiple accolades and an enduring place among the most influential fantasy and science fiction writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.Even more important to the authors of this tribute anthology, McIntyre was a kind and generous supporter of other writers. In Bright Morning, eleven career writ...