Forget what you thought you knew about the universe and enter the fantastic world of master storyteller Alan Dean Foster . . . OPERATOR ASSISTED CALLS ARE CHARGED AT A HIGHER RATE. Mr. Parkworthy had a score to settle with the telephone company, and he was a man used to getting his own way. But he should have remembered that it is not polite to be rude to a lady . . . especially when the lady is Ma Bell.THE METROGNOME. Charlie Dimsdale was only a little man in the company that ran New York City's subways . . . until some odd little denizens of the city's subterranean tunnels showed him who was really in charge!THE TESSELATED TETRAHEXAHEDRAL YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS. Country people in America are a fair but mighty independent bunch. So when some government scientists rudely demanded that the Shattucks turn over the UFO that crashed on their Texas ranch, the Shattucks became a bit obstinate. Besides, the shining little spacecraft looked real cute hanging on the barn with the Christmas decorations.COLLECTIBLE. When young Pearl's life was collapsing around her, she could always find comfort in her extensive collection of dragon memorabilia -- but some youngsters are more fragile than others, and dragons can be deadly.Plus eleven more stories!**

In sixteen stories, T.C. Boyle tears through the walls of contemporary society to reveal a world at once comic and tragic, droll and horrific. Boyle introduces us to a death-defying stuntman who rides across the country strapped to the axle of a Peterbilt, and to a retired primatologist who can't adjust to the "civilized" world. He chronicles the state of romance that requires full-body protection in a disease-conscious age and depicts with aching tenderness the relationship between a young boy and his alcoholic father. These magical and provocative stories mark yet another virtuoso performance from one of America's most supple and electric literary inventors.

HE WAS THE SEXIEST GUY SHE'D EVER MET.And that was about all Jess Baxter knew about her newest tenant. Rob Carpenter was a master at dodging questions...and igniting her desires. With just one of his searing kisses, Jess was hotter than the Florida sun. Then the murders started--all women who looked like her. And the profile of the killer matched Rob.... Was he an innocent victim--or had his burning kisses only been a smoke screen? One thing was certain: Rob Carpenter was no ordinary man.

An exquisitely written novel about the delicate balance between loss and desire, abandonment and renewal, and the fragility of relationships.

The Case of the Lucky Loser (1957) – Mason defends a man previously convicted of killing a man with an automobile while intoxicated. When the body is found to have been killed with a gun, Mason argues double jeopardy as a plea, but eventually clears his client of all crimes.The voice on the phone was young and silky. The woman it belonged to touched something soft in Perry Mason's cool, legalistic mind. The offer she made was too intriguing to pass up. But what began as a request for a simple courtroom visit turned into an intrigue of baffling complexity -- as well as one of the most cleverly rigged frame-ups of Perry's career. Its a case of a family blessed with millions and, riddled with scandal, a case of accidental manslaughter that explodes into a charge of airtight murder, a case of a corpse dying not once, but twice. To save his client, Perry will have to break all the rules-and more than one law.

A RANDOM SERIES OF MURDERS IS ONLY a succession of headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle for investigator Sharon McCone until one of her legal co-op's clients becomes a victim. Perry Hilderly had been a founder of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s. Although he had settled down and drawn up a proper will several years earlier, a holograph document was found among his possessions ... the new will disinherits his children and leaves his considerable estate to four unknowns.As Sharon tries to track down this strange quartet, she wonders what connection they had had with the dead man. One is a popular news anchor, one is a successful divorce attorney, one runs a Marin County horse stable, and the fourth is an alcoholic oysterman. Before long, Sharon notices a pattern--a tangled pattern of involvement leading back to the Vietnam War.When the random killer starts to strike closer to home, the facts behind Hilderly's death become less abstract. Never before has Sharon become so personally involved in a case--and faced so squarely the brutal consequences of murderous rage.

From Mi Jian, the highly acclaimed Chinese dissident, comes a satirical novel about the absurdities of life in a post-Tiananmen China. Two men meet for dinner each week. Over the course of one of these drunken evenings, the writer recounts the stories he would write, had he the courage: a young man buys an old kiln and opens a private crematorium, delighting in his ability to harass the corpses of police officers and Party secretaries, while swooning to banned Western music; a heartbroken actress performs a public suicide by stepping into the jaws of a wild tiger, watched nonchalantly by her ex-lover. Extraordinary characters inspire him, their lives pulled and pummeled by fate and politics, as if they are balls of dough in the hands of an all-powerful noodle maker. Ma Jian's satirical masterpiece allows us a humorous, yet profound, glimpse of those struggling to survive under a system that dictates their every move.

A scion in a long line of legendary warriors, the teenage Ari Hanavi is thrown into a last-ditch campaign to break the deadlock of the endless war. Ari is in top fighting condition, having reached the end of his critical battle training--the only trouble is that Ari is scared that everyone will find out he's a coward.

ContentsJACK McDEVITT To Hell with the StarsMICHAEL SWANWICK A Midwinter’s TaleISAAC ASIMOV Christmas on GanymedeBARRY N. MALZBERG The Falcon and the FalconeerJOHN CHRISTOPHER Christmas RosesFREDERIK POHL Happy Birthday, Dear JesusGENE WOLFE The War Beneath the TreeFRANK M. ROBINSON The Santa Claus PlanetCONNIE WILLIS The PonyROBERT F. YOUNG O Little Town of Bethlehem IIGORDON R. DICKSON The Christmas PresentPOUL ANDERSON The Season of ForgivenessISAAC ASIMOV Christmas without RodneyJAMES WHITE Christmas Treason

Charles II is restored to the English throne, and his court is lively and even scandalous. The country is eager for succession to be clear and certain: The next king will be the son of Charles II and his queen, Catherine of Braganza. Yet Catherine, daughter of the king of Portugal and a Catholic, has never been popular with the English people. She is also having great difficulty conceiving an heir, even as many of Charles’s well-known mistresses are bearing his children with ease. Catherine is aware that courtiers close to Charles are asking him to divorce her and take another wife—yet she is determined to hold her title in the face of all odds. The ninth novel in the beloved Queens of England series, The Merry Monarch’s Wife brings Catherine of Braganza to life and plunges readers into the tumultuous world of Restoration England.

A hundred years after the sinking of the Titanic, two of the world’s most powerful corporations race to find a way to raise and preserve the doomed luxury liner. The quest to uncover the secrets of the wreck and reclaim her becomes an obsession… and for some, a fatal one.

When you are an ex-cop and an ex-doper scratching a living as a private investigator in the unromantic streets of south London, you take what you can get. Even a dreary little debt collection job for some toe-rag of a used-car dealer. But when Nick Sharman collects the money due on a classic Bentley he finds himself stepping into another world. A world where a reclusive rock musician in a secluded mansion, complete with its own recording studio – and firing range – broods on the royalties stolen from him by a crooked management – and decides Sharman is just the guy to get them back. Taking the job could be the worst decision of Sharman’s disaster-ridden life. And when rock’n’roll’s godfathers take on the mafia, south London explodes in a maelstrom of violence. Rome’s Tune is an uncompromising thriller from London’s answer to Elmore Leonard.

She feels God nudging her toward ministry, but what options are there for a young single woman? Emily Evans has a hard time getting herself to class on time, much less figuring out God's will for her life. Then, to her surprise, she feels that God is calling her into full-time Christian service. She expects the Lord will also provide her with a companion to share her life and ministry, but Emily does not want to marry any of the available young men. She squares her shoulders and decides she will accept the task of opening a new church in a pioneer community--alone.When Emily arrives at her new assignment, she is disappointed to find the church building in disrepair. After many days of hard work fixing it up, she announces her first service and is once again disappointed, this time in the size of her congregation. Is her faith strong enough to stand against the local doubters and myriad challenges that will test her calling?

Clara Christopher had met Lord Allingcote several years previously at a houseparty, when he had chosen her as his flirt. But he’d disappeared from her life, and now reappeared escorting the outrageously beautiful Nel Muldoon to a wedding for his cousin. Though his lordship still had eyes for Clara, she had no intention of ignoring the troublesome Nel. Regency romance by Joan Smith; originally published by Fawcett Crest