Search Worlds Without End

Prolific storyteller Yolen brings together ten of her own stories about Merlin, "Archmage" of Camelot. As befits a "shape-shifter," each story presents a different figure of Merlin, none being definitive. Yolen's "revisionist mythology" includes idiosyncratic versions of Merlin's birth and of the episode of the sword in the stone, as well as an original vision of a community of nuns on a fenland island who forge steel blades for Arthur's knights. In "Epitaph," an archaeological team and the Prince of Wales proclaim the finding of Merlin's body to a roomful of skeptical newspersons. Yolen's limpid prose gains an aura of otherness by her skillful use of archaisms. Arthurian and fantasy collections will welcome Merlin's Booke.

In the Unnatural Quarter, the Plot Thickens... and then runs uncontrollably!

When Howard Phillips Publishing announces the 12 + 1 anniversary edition (due to unavoidable production delays) of the famed Necronomicon--the very book that caused the Big Uneasy in the first place--it takes zombie P.I. Dan Chambeaux, a.k.a. "Shamble," to root out the diabolical schemes surrounding the book, and the fanatics who wish to destroy it.

With enough plot twists to confound a professional contortionist, Dan Shamble doesn't have time for light reading. Along with his ghost girlfriend Sheyenne, his firebrand lawyer partner Robin, his best human friend Officer Toby McGoohan, and his ultra-cute vampire half-daughter Alvina, Dan faces an unnatural caseload.

Entire neighborhoods in the Quarter have simply vanished into thin air.

Rogue werewolf cop Hairy Harry struggles to write and market his memoir.

Customer complaints turn monstrous over an auto-mechanic shop run by gremlins, to whom "repair" is a foreign concept.

And when unnatural doppelgangers appear in the shadowed streets, it does not mean double the fun.

Entangled in it all is the mousy virgin librarian--now turned superstar celebrity--whose blood sacrifice, through an accidental paper cut, brought back all the monsters thirteen years ago.

That anniversary is indeed an unlucky number.