The Stone Maiden and Other Tales: from sorcerers to space captains, from common criminals to common housewives, this collection contains the stories of a variety of characters from a diversity of genres. Fans of adventure, suspense, humor, horror, fantasy, and science fiction will find tales to treasure. Every story invites the reader into a world where things are not always what they seem, where events do not always turn out as one expects.
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*The Stone Maiden
“a creature protected beyond use.”
“I remember the days when I did things.”
*Gilbames the Unwise
“Came the Dark One, the Great Troll from the Northern Waste,”
*Acantha
“Why did you not take his foot like you took her arm?”
*The Hand of Darden
“Apprentice, heed my direction, walk carefully away from the light.”
*I Would Have My Bones in the Earth Facing North
“slain him, butchered him, and preserved him for later meals.”
*Nothing to Lose is Nearly Enough
“It takes ten days in the chamber to turn a physically fit man who is willing to give up the possibility of procreation into a steel-skinned warrior.”
*The Three Epiphanies of Seqeranc
“That is what the stones tell me. Be on your way.”
*A Fifty-Five Gallon Drum
“By the brilliant point of light coming from the tip of the welder, she saw a tiny, rotund form working away at some concave contraption.”
*Tell Me Your Dreams
“You murder me so gently.”
*The Fortunate Few
“You can’t escape the Dead King,” She clucked comfortingly to him as she dragged him into a dank, dark, stinking room.
Orphaned by a brutal raid on a colony ship, young Kylee is alone in the universe. But she finds a new family in the form of a professional bounty hunter, a psychopathic alien, a professional duelist, and a big game hunter, his wife and their twin sons. They’re an odd mix…but family is what you make it. And when one man’s greed threatens the entire Frontier, Kylee and her new family stand in his way. Helped by a smuggler-turned-gambling magnate and the surviving members of the Fifth Acadian Militia, they’re about to teach a few lessons about whit it means to be free, and maybe get a little payback along the way. Doc Smith style space opera with a sizable helping of H. Rider Haggard, Calamity’s Child delivers larger-than-life characters, exotic settings from deep space to the veldt of a new Africa, and enough action to satisfy a two-ton homicidal alien.
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