The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Award-winning Jonathan Strahan and Night Shade Books have released volume seven of their Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year ($19.99). In this hefty tome you’ll find 32 stories selected from 2012. Here are the contents – surely enough to whet your appetite:

• “The Contrary Gardener” by Christopher Rowe
• “The Woman Who Fooled Death Five Times” by Eleanor Arnason
• “Close Encounters” by Andy Duncan
• “Great Grandmother in the Cellar" by Peter S. Beagle
• “The Easthound” by Nalo Hopkinson
• “Goggles (c 1910)″ by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• “Bricks, Sticks, Straw” by Gwyneth Jones
• “A Bead of Jasper, Four Small Stones” by Genevieve Valentine
• “The Grinnell Method” by Molly Gloss
• “Beautiful Boys” by Theodora Goss
• “The Education of a Witch” by Ellen Klages
• “Macy Minnot’s Last Christmas on Dione" by Paul McAuley
• “What Did Tessimond Tell You?” by Adam Roberts
• “Adventure Story” by Neil Gaiman
• “Katabasis” by Robert Reed
• “Troll Blood” by Peter Dickinson
• “The Color Least Used by Nature" by Ted Kosmatka
• “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls" by Rachel Pollack
• “Two Houses” by Kelly Link
• “Blood Drive” by Jeffrey Ford
• “Mantis Wives” by Kij Johnson
• “Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard
• “About Fairies” by Pat Murphy
• “Let Maps to Others” by K.J. Parker
• “Joke in Four Panels” by Robert Shearman
• “Reindeer Mountain” by Karin Tidbeck
• “Domestic Magic" by Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem
• “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” by Megan McCarron
• “Nahiku West” by Linda Nagata
• “Fade to White” by Catherynne M. Valente
• “Significant Dust” by Margo Lanagan
• “Mono No Aware” by Ken Liu

Night Shade Titles

While browsing the Night Shade Books' website, I note that they are about to publish volume 5 of the Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson. This will be a 500 page hardcover, selling for $35, which isn't bad for this type of book.

NSB are also publishing five volumes of the collected fantasies of Clarke Ashton Smith. Volume 4 is due in April, and like the Hodgson this is a hardcover edition. The Red World of Polaris by Smith is another NSB hardcover -- a reprint of a difficult-to-find book.

And in a similar vein -- NSB also have Manly Wade Wellman's short stories collected into five volumes, plus some other of his titles.

All these volumes would be excellent and welcome additions to my book shelves. Maybe Sir Fred could pass onto me some of his millions...

And just in case you are wondering, Night Shade Books are not paying me for this publicity.

The Mall of Cthulhu

I quote: "When Ted stumbles onto a group of Cthulhu cultists planning to awaken the Old Ones through mystic incantations culled from the fabled Necronomicon, calling forth eldritch horrors into an unsuspecting world, he and Laura must spring into action, traveling from Boston to the seemingly-peaceful suburbs of Providence and beyond, all the way to the sanity-shattering non-Euclidian alleyways and towers of dread R'lyeh itself, in order to prevent an innocent shopping center from turning into... The Mall of Cthulhu."

Well, with such bumf, it's got to be a book worth a look ... I imagine! Check out further details on the NSB website.