A novelette of 16,000 words, sequel to Hambly’s Darwath series. The wizards at the distant Keep of Black Rock have disappeared. Warrior woman Gil Patterson, the wizard Ingold Inglorion, and Ingold’s pupil Rudy Solis set out to learn what happened to them – but only Gil manages to arrive at Black Rock Keep. Something caused the mages of Black Rock – and Ingold and Rudy, when they drew near to the half-ruined Keep – to lose their magic, before they disappeared, and Gil senses that something deeper and stranger still is going on. But whatever it is, she has to figure it out alone.

A novelette of 10,000 words. The Keep of Dare is an enclosed fortress: no one knows all its secrets and corners. When people start disappearing, the Archmage Ingold Inglorion and his two Californian companions—warrior Gil Patterson and novice wizard Rudy Solis—are faced with the possibility that some deadly entity is hiding in the darkness of the Keep. And the situation is not improved when Ingold himself disappears.

A novelette of 14,000 words. The teleporter is due to open between the Keep of Dare and an unknown Keep, lost for three thousand years - and Archmage Ingold Inglorion is snowed in fifty miles away and unable to be there to deal with whatever might be on the other side of that teleporter. California warrior-woman Gil Patterson, and California mage-in-training Rudy Solis, have to explore the unknown Keep on their own: to interpret its secrets, to prevent whatever might lurk there from following them back to the last Keep of humankind... and to destroy it when, in spite of their efforts, it does.

A transport corporation in another dimension has run a trans-dimensional transport corridor through Los Angeles, and is powering it by draining the psychic energy of the population in its path, driving large numbers of people temporarily insane. Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his partner, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, attempt to put a stop to this by hacking into the corridor itself with a combination of computer technology and magic, assisted by a renegade mage from Antryg’s own world.

Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his partner, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, discover that a trans-dimensional monster is hiding somewhere in the vicinity of Los Angeles. They track it down to the now-deserted luxury “ranch” of a deceased 1970s glam-rock star known as The Daemon (real name Harold Nedwick), only to discover that the creature has been there much longer than anyone suspected, hidden in the maze at the center of the property—and that it is about to spawn.

A novelette of 14,000. Antryg Windrose, exiled Archmage from another universe, is called upon by a Los Angeles biker who claims that his girlfriend has been abducted by shadowy beings from across the Void. Antryg and his companion, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, go in quest of the missing woman, and find that other people, in other universes, are being inexplicably kidnapped, too. The quest leads to a ghastly secret, and a battle with dark magic and death.

A novelette of 15,000 words. When the head of a Los Angeles criminal gang seeks out exiled wizard Antryg Windrose for some wizardly advice about his love-life, Antryg suspects trouble. He's right: the gang-lord's girlfriend is a lamia, a trans-dimensional soul-drinker whose victims become addicted to the process of having their souls slowly drained. Though the crook wants his freedom, he also doesn't want to give her up—and in the meantime, she is absorbing cunning, ruthlessness, and criminal intent... and is hunting others...

The Personal Paradise Secure Community Corporation specializes in producing tiny enclave universes as vacation homes for the rich and famous. Unfortunately, something goes wrong with their Void technology and all these enclaves—and everyone in them—lose touch with the corporation’s central control. Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his partner, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, are hired to find out what the problem is, and to bring the enclaves back, before the enclaves themselves collapse (killing everyone in them). And Joanna suspects that the corporate representatives have not told her and Antryg the whole truth of what the enclaves are, or how the problem appeared.

Computer programmer Joanna Sheraton’s hippie mother asks the help of her daughter’s partner—exiled wizard Antryg Windrose— in getting rid of a spectre which seems to be haunting the New Age Consciousness-Raising Center in Bayou Chien Mort, Louisiana. Upon arrival, Antryg and Joanna begin to suspect that there is a lot more going on than anyone is willing to admit, with results potentially more deadly than noises in the night and a little blood on the walls.

A novelette of 14,000 words - A Las Vegas hotel is haunted by a trans-dimensional being which has started killing the hotel's guests. Exiled wizard Antryg Windrose and his partner, computer programmer Joanna Sheraton, are hired to investigate, and discover not one trans-dimensional being, but two: one of them criminal, the other insane.

A novelette of 12,000. When a visiting wizard calls at Alyn Hold with the news that the region is about to be attacked by a horrible monster, John Aversin, Dragonsbane and Thane of the Winterlands, and his wizardly partner Jenny Waynest, are much less upset than the Silver Mage thinks they should be. The Silver Mage demands that the whole countryside turn out to kill the Kraken once and for all. John points out that it would involve far fewer casualties if everyone simply moves out of its way for the three days (out of a hundred and fifty years) during which it comes ashore, easily determined by the behavior of the matriarch pig Damselblossom. When the Silver Mage insists upon a showdown, John begins to suspect his motives.

A novelette of 15,000. When a gnome wizard is murdered by what is thought to be a demon, the other gnome mages call on the human witch Jenny Waynest for aid. Unfortunately, Jenny is away. Her non-wizard partner, the scholarly Dragonsbane John Aversin, steps in to help solve the crime.

A novelette of 12,000 words. John Aversin, Dragonsbane and Thane of the Winterlands, and his partner the witch Jenny Waynest, are hired by a dragon to rescue a princess... who had originally made a deal with the dragon to carry her off and split her father's treasure. But the plan went amiss, and now the Princess needs rescuing from entities that the dragon doesn't want to tangle with.

A novelette of 15,000 words. Everyone knows that when the faerie-folk of the marshes kidnap a human child, they replace it with a changeling, a shadow-baby. When John Aversin, Dragonsbane and Thane of the Winterlands, hears that the inhabitants of a local village are accusing a changeling child of murdering its human foster-mother, he is alarmed and appalled. He knows that changelings don't kill their foster parents—and that if the villagers harm the changeling, the shadowy faeries are capable of taking horrible revenge.

A novelette of 15,000 words. Former barbarian mercenary Sun Wolf re-visits the ruined fortress of the Wizard-King, hoping to find the books of magic that the dead sorcerer hoarded. He finds, instead, that a) the defenses and curses that Wizard-King set on his fortress are still very much active and b) there are other mages, as inexperienced as himself, in quest of those books: mages who will stop at nothing to get to them first.

While her wizard partner Sun Wolf is away, warrior woman Starhawk gets a message from the band of mercenaries which Sun Wolf used to lead, and to which Starhawk once belonged. The mercenaries are beseiging a city, and are being attacked by a creature they’re pretty sure is magic—despite the fact that nearly every wizard in the world was killed a century ago. Sun Wolf, born with the powers of a wizard, doesn’t know how to use them. Starhawk is torn between finding a wizard to instruct him, and saving the lives of her former friends.

As Princess Tinomiel’s wedding to a charming prince approaches, she falls prey to what her parents are pretty sure is a curse: she falls asleep constantly, and sleeps for longer and longer. They hire former mercenary captain—now turned wizard—Sun Wolf, and his warrior partner Starhawk, to find the malignant Night Queen who is believed to have placed the curse. But Sun Wolf and Starhawk find that they may be in as much danger from the three Good Fairies who supposedly blessed the Princess at her birth.

In his quest for a wizard to teach him to use his powers, ex-mercenary captain Sun Wolf thinks he may have finally found one. Unfortunately, it looks like that wizard, whoever it is, has summoned a dragon to destroy an innocent town—and it’s the second dragon to afflict the town in two years. Yet the only wizard in the town itself is an untaught—and very pretty—little hedge-witch who sells perfumes and illusions, leaving Sun Wolf and his warrior partner Starhawk to hunt for the greater and more dangerous mage unaided.

A novelette of 10,000 words. When the lovely Mira visits the hermitage of the local wizard, the former barbarian mercenary Sun Wolf, to beg his help in rescuing her sweetheart from a traveling mage, Sun Wolf suspects that this is a trap set for him. The challenge is to rescue the young lovers from death and peril without using magic, by which his own soul might be trapped.

A Sherlock Holmes short story of 7,300 words, narrated by Dr. Watson. Holmes and Watson are in San Francisco, and find themselves defending a Chinese magician accused of kidnapping a little girl. Someone obviously intends for the magician to be lynched, and Holmes calls upon the aid of another magician, renowned prestidigitator and aeronaut Oscar Zoroaster Diggs—otherwise known as the Great and Powerful Oz.

A Sherlock Holmes fantasy novelette of 9,000 words, narrated by Mrs. Watson. As a child, Mary Watson had an imaginary friend: Peter Pan. When Peter is blamed for the disappearance of a nobleman’s young heir, Mrs. Watson, now all grown up, discovers that her husband’s friend Sherlock Holmes also knows Peter, and has agreed to help Peter Pan locate the Lost Boy in the Neverlands, and find who carried him off, before the King of Dreams closes the gates of the Neverlands against all children, forever.

A Sherlock Holmes tale narrated by Mrs. John H. Watson. While Sherlock Holmes deals with what appears to be a straightforward case of a missing wife, Watson's wife Mary is confronted by reports of a mysterious stranger who has been drugging poor women on London's poverty-stricken East End... and then neither robbing them nor doing them any harm. No crime has been committed, yet Mary is certain that evil of some kind is being prepared.

A Sherlock Holmes novelette of 10,000 words, set in the universe of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, narrated by Dr. Watson. Holmes and Watson start out investigating the mysterious behavior of the inhabitants of the sinister Depewatch Priory—and then find themselves up against forces more monstrous than they'd originally bargained for. Are there worshippers of Cthulhu?

A novelette of 13,000. Benjamin January is out of town again, and his wife Rose attends a party with her obnoxious mother-in-law, at a plantation owned by a free colored relative. When the white mistress of the neighboring plantation is murdered, and the house burned, it seems obvious that one of the household slaves committed the crime—but Rose seeks to prove differently.

In pre-Civil-War New Orleans, musician Benjamin January is tasked by his obnoxious mother to find the missing daughter of one of the city's free colored demi-monde—who may or may not have disappeared voluntarily. But if she was kidnapped, who did it, and how can she be rescued?

Short story of 5,000 words. It's astonishing enough to everyone who knows New Orleans saloon-keeper Kentucky Williams that she owns a Bible... but someone is willing to do murder to steal it. Benjamin January and his worthless white sidekick Hannibal Sefton attempt to figure out who—and why.

A short story of 8,699 words. Rose Janvier, Benjamin's wife, is left at home in pre-Civil-War New Orleans when Benjamin goes off to solve a crime in another city. When the high-living brother of one of her neighbors is murdered, Rose uses her own detective skills to track down the killer, despite the fact that the white City Guards have arrested her and everyone else on the street as suspects.

A novelette of 12,000. All of New Orleans is agog over Professor Tixall’s telescope, which can reportedly see life on the Moon. Rose Janvier is convinced that it’s a hoax, and a harmless one (though profitable for Professor Tixall), until one of her servants, looking through the telescope after hours, sees one of the “bat-people” of the Moon murder another one. Rose knows that murder has been done, but how do you prove it when the events supposedly took place on another planet?

A novelette of 15,000 words. It is April of 1924. Colossus Films (of the novel Bride of the Rat-God) is shooting in Reno, because their male star, Tor Westlake, is getting his fifth divorce in order to marry Chrysanda (Christine) Flamande, the studio’s #1 starlet. They are filming at the supposedly-haunted castle on the outskirts of town, built by a Gold Rush millionaire, and sharing the sets with a black film company from Chicago, whose female star is also getting a divorce from her abusive husband. Tor wants to hold a séance in the haunted castle, but Norah—Christine’s sister-in-law and dog-minder—is uneasy. Christine’s dogs are conscious of supernatural activity, and there’s something about their reactions to the castle that doesn’t seem right to her.

A novelette of 16,000 words, the follow-on to the Asher and Ysidro vampire series. Recently arrived in New York in the closing years of World War One, Lydia Asher and her friend, the "recovering" vampire Don Simon Ysidro, attempt to solve a puzzle that begins with a fraudulent seance, and rapidly veers into revolution and murder.

A vampire novelette of 9,000 words. The evil vampire Lord Napier Sandridge seeks to flee the vengeful sister of his most recent victim. He chooses to travel to America aboard the safest and most luxurious vessel he can find: the RMS Titanic. Since vampires lose their powers on running water, he feels that an "unsinkable" craft is safe. The ship loads in twilight, and even when the ship strikes an iceberg, he reasons that rescue must come before dawn breaks and the sunlight ignites him in unquenchable flames... What could possibly go wrong?

A short-short story of 1800 words. What goes on in the Character's Locker Room before the story starts? How DO characters audition for Hero of the Book?