A new collection of fantasy short stories personally selected by bestselling author Stephen R. Donaldson, these are the "strange dreams" that stir the heart and mind, written by authors past and present - from Rudyard Kipling and Franz Kafka to Theodore Sturgeon, John Varley, Harlan Ellison, and Sheri S. Tepper. Here are witches, ghosts, a demon child, a boy who never grows old, a prehistoric monster that never died, a dragon in the snow, a wolfman, an unusual private eye, and a very modern woman swallowed by the past. In Patricia A. McKillip's medieval fantasy, "The Lady of the Skulls," a group of knights enter a forbidden tower to find the most precious treasure contained therein - or die in agony. In "The House of Compassionate Sharers," by Michael Bishop, a human turned into a machine learns to love in a mysterious brothel catering to twisted desires and secret fears.

A new collection of fantasy short stories personally selected by bestselling author Stephen R. Donaldson, these are the "strange dreams" that stir the heart and mind, written by authors past and present - from Rudyard Kipling and Franz Kafka to Theodore Sturgeon, John Varley, Harlan Ellison, and Sheri S. Tepper. Here are witches, ghosts, a demon child, a boy who never grows old, a prehistoric monster that never died, a dragon in the snow, a wolfman, an unusual private eye, and a very modern woman swallowed by the past. In Patricia A. McKillip's medieval fantasy, "The Lady of the Skulls," a group of knights enter a forbidden tower to find the most precious treasure contained therein - or die in agony. In "The House of Compassionate Sharers," by Michael Bishop, a human turned into a machine learns to love in a mysterious brothel catering to twisted desires and secret fears.