The 12 Days Of Deathmas

Stories include: 1st Day, The Tree - Anders swore he'd cut down his own tree this year, even if it killed him. 2nd Day, The Doves - Kelly's abusive husband couldn't tolerate the birds crapping on his car. 3rd Day, The Hens - Eris's mother-in-law offers to make her and Jessup a Christmas Eve meal to remember. 4th Day, The Birds - Mackie assures Gennie that the dead birds the cat was bringing her were meant to be a present. 5th Day, The Rings - Ricky tells his parents a bad Santa came to visit him and demanded the boy give him five gold rings. 6th Day, The Geese - They say geese can be mean-spirited. Daisy discovers why. 7th Day, The Swans - Alice found an old Victrola in her grandparents' attic. It was the music it played that horrified her. 8th Day, The Milk - Dara and her sister wonder why everything has the same expiration date. 9th Day, The Ladies - Careen couldn't figure out why her daughter no longer wanted the "nine dancing ladies" dolls for Christmas. 10th Day, The Leapers - Vina's daughter asks for more salt to finish the ten circles she's pouring in her bedroom. 11th Day, The Pipers - Macy noticed that one of the pipers on display is missing...but not for long. 12th Day, The Drums - Jayne gets to the point where she can no longer stand the relentless pounding in her skull.

THE SEQUEL TO CHANGELING “With Samuel R. Delany and Harlan Ellison, [Roger Zelazny was] a leading and representative figure of the American new wave sf that urged a shift of emphasis from the external world of the hard sciences to the internal worlds explorable through disciplines like psychology, sociology, linguistics, and the like.” —THE SCIENCE FICTION ENCYCLOPEDIA The people had long suffered under Det Morson’s power . . . lived in terror of his dragons and other minions. When, at last, the wizard Mor joined the fight, Det and his infamous Rondoval castle were destroyed. But the victory was not complete, for the conquerors found a baby amidst the rubble: Det’s son, Pol. Unwilling to kill the child, Mor took him to a world where the ways of magic were considered mere legends—a world called Earth. But the laws of symmetry demanded that Mor take a baby from the other world to replace young Pol Detson, and that child would also remain ignorant of his rightful heritage. As the child—Mark Marakson, born Daniel Chain—matured, he displayed a gift for making mechanical gadgets that soon gave way to a variety of unnatural devices that frightened his neighbors . . . On Earth, Pol Detson grew to become Daniel Chain, a nightclub guitarist possessing mental energies he doesn’t understand. But those mental abilities will soon determine his fate in a terrifying clash of power . . . on a world which, as yet, he knows nothing about.

Published on the fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp’s death, Duchamp’s Last Day offers a radical reading of the artist’s final hours. Just moments after Duchamp died, his closest friend Man Ray took a photograph of him. His face is wan; his eyes are closed; he appears calm. Taking this image as a point of departure, Donald Shambroom begins to examine the surrounding context—the dinner with Man Ray and another friend, Robert Lebel, the night Duchamp died, the conversations about his own death at that dinner and elsewhere, and the larger question of whether this radical artist’s death can be read as an extension of his work. Shambroom’s in-depth research into this final night, and his analysis of the photograph, feeds into larger questions about the very nature of artworks and authorship which Duchamp raised in his lifetime. In the case of this mysterious and once long-lost photograph, who is the author? Man Ray or Duchamp? Is it an artwork or merely a record? Has the artist himself turned into one of his own readymades? A fascinating essay that is both intimate and steeped in art history, Duchamp’s Last Day is filled with intricate details from decades of research into this peculiar encounter between art, life, and death. Shambroom’s book is a wonderful study of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

The creator of the Forgotten Realms leads readers through a rollicking fantasy adventure and murder mystery set in the city of Waterdeep Revealed in death to have been Masked Lords, three more citizens had been murdered over the preceding day and night: the Sembian wine-seller and collector Oszbur Malankar; the half-elf sorceress and artisan Dathanscza Meiril; and the moneylender, landlord, and investor Ammasker Gwelt. All of Waterdeep now knew someone was killing the Lords of Waterdeep, one by one. Yet that was about where truth ended and speculation—however plausible—began. The broadsheets were full of wild conjecture. Who's behind this? The ousted Lord Neverember? The Zhentarim, the Cult of the Dragon or some other Outland Power? The Xanathar? Some cabal of guilds or nobles planning a coup? The rumors would rage on, whether the Open Lord Laeral Silverhand did something or not. That was the trouble with rumors; once loosed, they roamed free like snarling, untamed beasts, with no simple way of stopping them. And all rumors aside, Waterdeep has become . . . a City of Murderers. Death Masks is loosely connected to the Elminster series and Sage of Shadowdale series.