Short Story Collections
Simpson will do anything for his art. In a quest to truly understand color, Simpson buys the Alter Ego of a blind man, and begins to explore. Soft yellows, rich reds, decadent browns, and black: every color and no color all at once. But the deeper he delves into feeling color through the sightless Alter Ego, the closer he comes to losing himself. If he hasn’t lost already. Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark. —the London Times International bestselling writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch has won two Hugo awards, a World Fantasy Award, and six Asimov’s Readers Choice Awards. Her latest science fiction novel is Blowback: A Retrieval Artist Novel. She also writes as Kris Nelscott in mystery and Kristine Grayson in romance. For more information about her work, please go to kristinekathrynrusch.com.
Winner of science fiction’s prestigious Hugo Award. From the moment of her birth, Brooke Cross was a loser. Conceived to win a First Baby of the Millennium contest, Brooke came five minutes late. Her mother never let her forget it. So Brooke, estranged from her mother, became a history professor and tries to live in obscurity. Until Professor Eldon Franke recruits her for a study of Millennium Babies, a study that will change her life. Winner of science fiction’s prestigious Hugo Award. “Never one for melodrama or overwrought prose, Rusch concentrates instead on the slow and deliberate amassing of insightful, low-keyed incidents and details to serve as the foundation for some neat stefnal conceits.” —Asimov’s SF Magazine “This is science fiction writing at its best.” —EssentialWriters.com
Eleven of the author's short stories portray the harsh realities of life and society, including "The Gallery of His Dreams," "Echea," and "Milennium Barbies."
2001, hardcover edition, Five Star, Waterville, ME. 222 pages. Collection of mystery short stories. Fantastic, very personal introduction by the author, 7 pages. 7 total stories, all of them in the mystery-suspense line. Very nicely printed.
The acclaimed short story that inspired the award-winning novel, The Enemy Within. February, 1964: Two men die in a squalid alley in a bad neighborhood. New York Homicide Detective Seamus O’Reilly receives the shock of his life when he looks at the men’s identification: J. Edgar Hoover, the famous, tyrannical director of the FBI, and his number one assistant, Clyde Tolson. O’Reilly teams up with FBI agent Frank Bryce to solve the high-level assassination before the murders unleash even greater consequences. In our world, Hoover kept his secrets until long after his death. In Seamus O’Reilly’s world, Hoover’s secrets get him killed. Two different best of the year collections, including the prestigious Best American Mystery Stories , chose “G-Men” as one of the best stories of the year. Nominated for the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History. New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver says of “G-Men,” “If you liked E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime or the writing of Caleb Carr (The Alienist), you’ll enjoy this. Part police procedural, part political thriller, this clever tale features real life characters interacting with fictional ones.”
In a world where Apollo 8 veered tragically off course, the event sent the astronauts, and the space program, hurtling into space, lost and helpless. The tragedy so affected eight-year-old Richard Johansenn that he dedicates his life—and the fortune he amasses along the way—to recovering the capsule. But Richard’s quest proves more complicated than a simple recovery mission, causing him to question the meaning of life, the meaning of death and the heroisms in between. “This is a thoughtful, introspective piece that speaks to themes of hope, doubt, perseverance, and obsession.” —Tangent Online “There is very little of this sort of science fiction published nowadays—the real thing, the exploration of Earth's solar system, without the slightest concession to the fantastic. Rusch celebrates the spirit of exploration, the adventure into the great unknown. … this tribute to humanity's first ventures into space is Recommended.” —The Internet Review of Science Fiction
The five magical stories in this short collection include stories of fairies and shapeshifters and magic shops. In this collection, you’ll find the heartwarming “Flower Fairies,” the whimsical “The Poop Thief,” the outrageous “Say Hello To My Little Friend,” the political vampire tale, “Victims,” and a tale of high school gone wrong, “Domestic Magic.”
Five of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s most popular cat stories. They run the gamut from the award-winning “The Secret Lives of Cats” to the whimsical “The Poop Thief.” Other stories in the collection include reader favorite “What Fluffy Knew,” the short mystery “Scrawny Pete,” and the Fey prequel “Destiny.”
Oregon provides the setting for all five stories in this collection. The stories range from the whimsical “The One That Got Away” to the moving “Patriotic Gestures.” The collection also includes “The Amazing Quizmo,” “Going Native,” which was a finalist for the Best Fiction Maggie Award given by the Western Publications Association, and “The Moorhead House,” which was chosen as one of the top ten stories of the year by the readers of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
Christmas stories abound, but hardly anyone writes stories based on Thanksgiving or New Year’s Day. This collection of five stories has two Christmas stories, “Boz” and “Loop,” but it also has a Thanksgiving story, “Pudgygate,” a post-Christmas story, “Disaster Relief,” and a New Year’s story, “Millennium Babies.” The stories run the gauntlet of genres, from fantasy to mystery to humor to science fiction. The collection also features a Hugo-award winner and two of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s most popular recurring characters.
Think about it: Santa sneaks in during the dead of night. He steals cookies, drinks some milk, maybe tracks ashes all over the living room. Yeah, he leaves presents, but maybe that’s just a cover for more nefarious behavior. Who knows…besides Santa himself? The darker side of Santa shows up in two of the Christmas stories in this collection, “Doubting Thomas” and “Rehabilitation.” Real criminals—the scary kind—make an appearance in “Snow Angels” and “Substitutions.” And just to add a bit of the proper Christmas sentiment, “Nutball Season” closes the volume—with a not-so-sinister Santa, a little boy, and a cop stamping his feet in the snow on Christmas Eve. “Rusch is a great storyteller.” —Romantic Times “[Rusch’s] short fiction is golden.” —The Kansas City Star
These ten stories all appeared at Christmas time. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, called one of the best short story writers of her generation, has compiled ten of her best favorite Christmas stories into one volume. These stories run through a variety of genres from fantasy (“Nutball Season,” “Doubting Thomas,” “Substitutions”) to mainstream (“Stille Nacht”) to science fiction (“Boz,” “Loop,” and “A Taste of Miracles” to mystery (“Rehabilitation,” “Snow Angels,” “The Moorhead House”). Some are dark, some are funny, and all touch upon the holidays in one way or another.
Detectives come in all shapes and sizes—and in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s five-story collection, they work the mean streets everywhere from a science fiction convention to the Moon to a world filled with dragons. Stories included are “Blind” (a Seavy Village story), “Discovery” (a Shamus Award nominee), “Stomping Mad” (a Spade story), “Dragon Slayer” (a fantastic tale), and “The Retrieval Artist” (a Hugo Award nominee).
Readers know Hugo-award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch for her serious, deeply thought-out science fiction. But the former editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction also has a silly side, one in evidence in the five stories in this collection. Only one story, “Paparazzi of Dreams,” is at all serious, although it has a very skewed perspective of the world. “Going Native,” pretends to seriousness, like so many news stories do. In “Advisors at Naptime,” a child saves the world only because she wants a nap. In “The One That Got Away,” poker players thwart an alien invasion, and in Rusch’s popular “What Fluffy Knew,” a cat does. Rusch takes her chosen genre seriously most of the time. But fortunately for readers, she doesn’t take it seriously all of the time.
The ten stories in this collection revolve around secrets, lies—and crime. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, called one of the best short story writers of her generation, has compiled ten of her best mystery stories into one volume. Here you’ll find cats who watch corpses decompose, a woman juror who has secrets of her own, a futuristic detective who lies for a living, and half a dozen others whose lives get touched by a mystery. Included are four stories considered among the best in their year of publication, “Patriotic Gestures,” “G-Men,” “The Perfect Man,” and “Jury Duty”; Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice winners, “Details,” and “The Secret Lives of Cats”; Shamus nominee “Discovery”; Hugo nominee, “The Retrieval Artist”; and Edgar nominees “Cowboy Grace” and “Spinning.” “Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s crime stories are exceptional, both in plot and in style.” —Mystery Scene Magazine “Rusch is a great storyteller.” —Romantic Times “[Rusch’s] short fiction is golden.” —The Kansas City Star
The entire world convulsed in the middle of the 20th century. Everything changed—even the magical universe. From faerie to mages, from wizards to war criminals, the Second World War touched every single life. The War and After explores the effect of the Second World War on the magical world in five different stories spanning thirty years—from the 1920s as the war glimmered in the distance to the 1950s when it had just barely passed. Included are “Corpse Vision,” “Dark Corners,” “Subtle Interpretations,” “Judgment,” and “The Thrill of the Hunt.” “Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark.” —the London Times
Sarah finds herself faced with a terrible decision. Her dying mother insists that if she goes to the extended care facility, they will kill her. She wants to go home with Sarah. But Sarah, a single mother with her own children to care for, can’t afford to care for her mother, too. And no one would kill the elderly just to save resources. Or would they? “…what a writer [Rusch] is. Her subject matter may cover the normal topics of science fiction and other genres, but the main memory you take away is the way she approaches the story and her unique vision for the characters.” —The Baryon Review
Five different women—a CPA, a lawyer, an Internet service provider, a bookstore owner, and a crime scene investigator—find themselves in the middle of crimes, crimes so personal that they threaten the women’s lives. These five acclaimed stories include Edgar nominees “Cowboy Grace” and “Spinning” and Shamus nominee “Discovery” as well as two stories considered among the best in their year of publication, “Patriotic Gestures” and “Jury Duty.”
Kristine Kathryn Rusch, famous for her range as a writer, shows her amazing diversity in this collection of short mystery stories. From the examination of a crime scene in “The Moorhead House” to “Pudgygate,” a cat cozy set in Princess Diana’s England, the stories in Five Mystery Stories cover everything from thrillers to private detectives, from lighthearted to extremely serious. Rusch introduces her beloved Spade in “Stomping Mad,” shows off her political and historical background in “G-Men,” and touches the heart with “Scrawny Pete.” “Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s crime stories are exceptional, both in plot and in style.” —Mystery Scene Magazine “Rusch is a great storyteller.” —Romantic Times “[Rusch’s] short fiction is golden.” —The Kansas City Star
California, a land of mystery, a land of magic. Assassins walk the streets alongside angels. Romance blossoms in the City by the Bay, while death stalks a Los Angeles science fiction convention. In this collection, find the first story featuring Rusch’s popular character Spade, “Stomping Mad,” as well as four standalone tales: “Ghosts,” “The Perfect Man,” “Monuments To The Dead,” and “Spirit Guides.” “…the always impressive Rusch can successfully tackle any genre she sets her sights on.” —Barnes & Noble.com “Rusch is a great storyteller.” —Romantic Times “[Rusch’s] short fiction is golden.” —The Kansas City Star “Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark.” —the Times of London
Kessa possesses only small magic. But her skills allow her to help those who wield bigger magic. Her latest job takes her deep into the bowels of New York City’s subway system, hunting for bits of history long since forgotten. And what she finds deep down in the dark will both threaten her life and change it forever. “Rusch is a great storyteller.” —RT Book Reviews
When Lyssa Buckingham left her hometown of Anchor Bay, Oregon, she never planned to return. She thought she could escape her family’s legacy. She thought wrong. To help Lyssa’s daughter, 10-year-old Emily, Lyssa must rejoin her family and come to terms with its magical heritage. Now Lyssa fears she and Emily might pay the greatest price of them all. To quell the coming storm and save the lives of everyone in Seavy County, Lyssa must uncover the truth about her family’s past—even if it changes her daughter’s future forever. FantasyLife and Other Stories pierces the thin veil between the magical world and the human one to reveal the darkness and sacrifice that holds them together. Also includes a special introduction by the author, as well as the Seavy County stories “The Women of Whale Rock,” “Strange Creatures,” and “The Light in Whale Cove.” “Rusch does her usual artful job with [FantasyLife], mixing light contemporary fantasy with suspense and even a tinge of horror.” —Science Fiction Chronicle “Welcome to a world brimming with mermaids, sirens, selkies and all the fantastical creatures one can imagine. [FantasyLife] by Kristine Kathryn Rusch is not only a richly woven fantasy novel, but also the story of one woman coming to terms with her own destiny.” —Romance Review Today “FantasyLife is a triumph, and a work of magic in its own right.” —Wigglefish.com