About this item
In this dark and gritty collection - featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman - nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil..Unfortunately, that's exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.In #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's Cold Case, Molly Carpenter - Harry Dresden's apprentice-turned-Winter Lady - must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you're a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad...New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire's Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything "weird." They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.In New York Times bestselling Kevin J. Anderson's Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble's latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner...And New York Times bestselling author Rob Thurman's infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue - and nightmarish - vengeance involving some quite nasty Impossible Monsters.ALSO INCLUDES STORIES BYTanya Huff * Kat Richardson * Jim C. Hines * Anton Strout * Lucy A. Snyder * Kristine Kathryn Rusch * Erik Scott de Bie *
About the Author
Jim Butcher read his first fantasy novel when he was seven years old--the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. By the time he turned eight, he'd added the rest of the Narnia books, the Prydain Chronicles, every book about Star Wars he could find, a great many Star Trek novels and the Lord of the Rings to his count.So he was pretty much doomed from the start.Love of fantasy, his personal gateway drug, drew him toward a fairly eclectic spread of interests: horseback riding (including trick riding, stunt riding, drill riding, and competitive stunt racing) , archery, martial arts, costuming, music and theater. He played a lot of role-playing games, a lot of fantasy-based tactical computer games, and eventually got into live-action roleplay where players beat each other up with boffer weapons.So, really, he can fly his nerd flag with pretty much anyone, and frequently does.He took up writing to be able to produce fantasy novels with swords and horses in them, and determinedly wrote terrible fantasy books until, just to prove a point to his writing teacher, he decided to take every piece of her advice; fill out outlines and worksheets, and design stories and characters just the way she'd been telling him to do for about three years. He was certain that once she saw what hideous art it produced, she would be proven wrong and repent the error of her ways. The result was the Dresden Files, which sure showed *her*.She has not yet admitted her mistake and recanted her philosophy on writing.Jim has performed in dramas, musicals, and vocal groups in front of live audiences of thousands and on TV. He has performed exhibition riding in multiple arenas, and fallen from running horses a truly ridiculous number of times. He was once cursed by an Amazon witch doctor in rural Brazil, has apparently begun writing about himself in the third person, and is hardly ever sick at sea.He also writes books occasionally.Jim stands accused of writing the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera. He's plead insanity, but the jury is still out on that one. He lives in Missouri with his wife, romantic suspense and paranormal romance writer Shannon K. Butcher (who is really pretty and way out of his league) , his son, and a ferocious guard dog.
