The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

by Martin H. Greenberg

  I laughed. I walked her out of the house, and past Maggie, who stopped her and gave her a ferocious hug. No words, just a hug.

  Gran snorted, and lit her pipe; Maggie, unaccompanied by her children, took it in stride.

  And me? I waited. I bit my lip and I waited.

  I walked Gran home. I took her up to the porch. I let her get comfortable in her chair. I even sat on the steps, because I wouldn’t be sitting on them again anytime soon.

  I don’t know when she died. I know that she was talking; that she was telling me all the things that she thought I’d forget. That she also knew that I wouldn’t be forgetting them, now.

  Because I was the crone.

  And she was finished. She could be tired. She could rest. She said as much, and then drifted off into silence, the way she sometimes did when she was satisfied with the state of her garden.

  The silence lingered, grew louder, grew, at last, final.

  And when it had gone on for long enough, I closed her eyes, took her pipe, and emptied it. I kissed her forehead. I would have asked her to hug me, but public displays of affection had always made her uncomfortable. I hugged her only afterward, because it wouldn’t matter to her.

  Then I made my way back to Maggie’s house, carrying Gran’s cane. The light was still on, and two thirds of my self were waiting for me to join them.

  About the Authors

  Kelley Armstrong is the author of the “Women of the Otherworld” paranormal suspense series, the “Darkest Powers” YA urban fantasy trilogy, and the Nadia Stafford crime series. She grew up in Ontario, Canada, where she still lives with her family. A former computer programmer, she’s now escaped her corporate cubicle, and hopes never to return.

  Patricia Briggs is the New York Times best-selling author of the Mercy Thompson series as well as many assorted other books. She lives in Montana with her husband and a menagerie of animals and kids in a house that resembles a zoo crossed with a library. The horses have to stay outside. And people wonder where the ideas for her stories come from.

  The fourth book in Lillian Stewart Carl’s Fairbairn/Cameron mystery series, The Charm Stone, appeared in November 2009, and the fifth, The Blue Hackle, is scheduled for November 2010. Her next short story (co-authored with Sylvia Kelso) will appear in Love and Rockets (December 2010). Eleven stories are collected in Along the Rim of Time and thirteen in The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth. Most of her work, short stories as well as sixteen novels in different genres, is available in various electronic forms, including Fictionwise and Kindle. She is the co-editor (with John Helfers) of The Vorkosigan Companion, a nonfiction hardcover about the SF work of Lois McMaster Bujold. The book was nominated for a Hugo in 2009 and will soon appear in paperback.

  Max Allan Collins has earned an unprecedented fifteen Private Eye Writers of America “Shamus” nominations, winning twice. His graphic novel Road to Perdition is the basis of the Academy Award-winning film starring Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, directed by Sam Mendes. An independent filmmaker in the Midwest, he has had half a dozen feature screenplays produced. His other credits include the New York Times bestsellers Saving Private Ryan and American Gangster. Both Spillane and Collins received the Private Eye Writers life achievement award, the Eye.

  Carole Nelson Douglas’s fifty-some multi-genre novels include mystery and suspense, science fiction, and high fantasy. Most recent is her Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator noir urban fantasy series (Silver Zombie, etc.) The first writer with a female protagonist sleuthing in the Sherlock Holmes world, Carole’s eight-book Irene Adler series debuted with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes. Her twentythree-book Midnight Louie feline PI mystery series blends traditional “cozy” and classic “noir” elements to offer both satire and substance. Set in a slightly surreal Las Vegas, it features four human crime-solvers unknowingly aided by a “Sam Spade with hairballs,” a big black alley cat whose first-person-feline narrations of his own investigations thread through the novels. Her numerous short stories include reprints in seven Year’s Best Mystery anthologies, and her writing has won or been shortlisted for more than fifty awards.

  P. N. Elrod writes and edits, and is best known for The Vampire Files, where Bobbi Smythe hangs out with her undead boyfriend, vampire PI Jack Fleming. Elrod is a hopeless chocolate addict and cheerfully refuses all efforts at intervention. More about her toothy titles may be found at www.VampWriter.com.

  Simon R. Green lives in the small country town of Bradford-on-Avon in England; the last Celtic town to fall to the invading Saxons in 504 AD. He is the New York Times best-selling author of the Nightside series (a private eye who operates in the Twilight Zone, solving cases of the weird and uncanny), and the Secret Histories series (the name’s Bond, Shaman Bond). He also wrote the perennially in-print space opera series, the Deathstalker books. He appears in open air Shakespeare productions, rides motorbikes, and once had a near-death experience quite unlike anyone else’s.

  Nina Kiriki Hoffman has been writing science fiction and fantasy for more than twenty years and has sold more than 250 stories, plus novels and juvenile and media tie-in books. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Sturgeon, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won a Bram Stoker Award, and her short story “Trophy Wives” won a Nebula. Her middle school fantasy novel, Thresholds, will come out in 2010. Nina works does production work for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and teaches short story writing through her local community college. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eugene, Oregon, with several cats, a mannequin, and many strange toys.

  Norman Partridge’s compact thrill-a-minute style has been praised by Stephen King and Peter Straub, and his fiction has received three Bram Stokers and two IHG awards. His first short story appeared in the second issue of Cemetery Dance, and his debut novel, Slippin’ into Darkness, was the first original novel published by CD. Partridge’s chapbook Spyder was one of Subterranean Press’s inaugural titles, while his World Fantasy-nominated collection Bad Intentions was the first hardcover in the Subterranean book line. Since then, Partridge has published pair of critically acclaimed suspense novels featuring ex-boxer Jack Baddalach for Berkley Prime Crime (Saguaro Riptide and The Ten-Ounce Siesta), comics for Mojo and DC, and a series novel (The Crow: Wicked Prayer) which was adapted for the screen. His award-winning collections include Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales and The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists. Partridge’s latest novel, Dark Harvest, was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the 100 Best Books of 2006. A third-generation Californian, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Canadian writer Tia V. Travis.

  Anne Perry’s publishing career began with The Cater Street Hangman. Published in 1979, the first book in the series featured the Victorian policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife Charlotte. This is arguably the longest sustained crime series by a living writer. Buckingham Palace Gardens, the latest in the series, appeared on the New York Times best-seller list in April 2008. In 1990, Anne started a second series of detective novels with The Face of a Stranger. Set about thirty-five years earlier, they features the private detective William Monk and volatile nurse Hester Latterly. The most recent of these (fifteenth in the series) is The Dark Assassin, which appeared in the New York Times best-seller list. Anne won an Edgar award in 2000 with her short story “Heroes.” The main character in the story features in an ambitious five-book series set during the First World War. The last of these was recently published in autumn 2007. None of her books has ever been out of print, and they have received critical acclaim and huge popular success: over twenty million copies of her books are in print worldwide. Her books have appeared on best-seller lists in a number of foreign countries, where she has also had excellent reviews. The Times selected her as one of the “100 Masters of Crime.” Currently Anne is working on more titles in the Pitt and Monk series, and her next published novel will be a stand-
alone epic set in the exotic and dangerous world of the Byzantine Empire.

  Steve Perry has written scores of novels, animated teleplays, short stories, along with a couple of spec movie scripts. A number of his books have appeared on the New York Times best-seller list, and he is the co-author, with Michael Reaves, of the blockbuster Star Wars novel Death Star.

  Melville Davisson Post (1869–1930) was a successful lawyer who turned to writing. He first gained fame with his three books of crime stories about Randolph Mason, a lawyer who used his knowledge to help criminals evade justice. Later, he combined elements of both the mystery and fantasy genres in the tales of Uncle Abner, a highly religious man who battled evil wherever it could be found, but primarily in the Virginia backwoods.

  Laura Resnick is the author of dozens of short stories, as well as such fantasy novels as Disappearing Nightly, In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made the “Year’s Best” lists of Publishers Weekly and Voya. You can find her on the Web at www.LauraResnick.com.

  Mike Resnick is, according to Locus, the all-time leading award winner, living or dead, for short science fiction. He has won five Hugos, plus other major awards in the USA, France, Japan, Spain, Croatia, and Poland, and has been nominated in England, Italy, and Australia. He is the author of sixty-one novels, 250 short stories, and two screenplays, and has edited more than forty anthologies. His work has been translated into twenty-six languages.

  Michael A. Stackpole is an award-winning novelist, graphic novelist, screenwriter, podcaster, game and computer game designer best known for his New York Times best-selling novels I, Jedi, and Rogue Squadron. “If Vanity Doesn’t Kill Me” is the second of seven Trick Malloy stories—most of which are available at his website: www.Stormwolf.com. Mike lives in the Phoenix area and enjoys both swing dancing and indoor soccer in his spare time.

  Elizabeth A. Vaughan writes fantasy romance, and her most recent novel is Destiny’s Star, part of the “Star Series” published by Berkley Sensation. Other Wan Sui Ye stories appear in Furry Fantastic and A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters. Currently she is owned by three incredibly spoiled cats and lives in the Northwest Territory, on the outskirts of the Black Swamp, along Mad Anthony’s Trail on the banks of the Maumee River. You can learn more about her books at www.EAVWrites.com.

  Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance, and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the best-seller lists even in London and have been published in fourteen countries and thirteen different languages. Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award to the John W. Campbell Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo award for editing and a Hugo award for fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in thirteen Year’s Best collections. In 2007, she became one of a handful of writers to twice win the Best Mystery Novel award given for the best mystery published in the Northwest (for her Kris Nelscott books). Her novella, “Diving into the Wreck,” has won the prestigious international UPC award, given in Spain to the best science fiction novella in English, French, Spanish or Catalan. That novella also won the Asimov’s Readers Choice award. She is the former editor of prestigious The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Before that, she and Dean Wesley Smith started and ran Pulphouse Publishing, a science fiction and mystery press in Eugene. She lives and works on the Oregon Coast.

  Michelle writes as both Michelle Sagara and Michelle West; she is also published as Michelle Sagara West. She lives in Toronto with her long-suffering husband and her two children, and to her regret has no dogs. Reading is one of her lifelong passions, and she is sometimes paid for her opinions about what she’s read by the venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. No matter how many bookshelves she buys, there is Never Enough Shelf space. Ever.

  About the Editor

  Martin H. Greenberg is the CEP of Tekno Books and its predecessor companies, now the largest book developer of commercial fiction and nonfiction in the world, with over 2,300 published books that have been translated into 33 languages. He is the recipient of an unprecedented four Lifetime Achievement Awards in the Science Fiction, Mystery, and Supernatural Horror genres—the Milford Award in Science Fiction, the Solstice Award in Science Fiction, the Bram Stoker Award in Horror, and the Ellery Queen Award in Mystery—the only person in publishing history to have received all four awards.