October Publications

In Ghost Writing: Haunted Tales by Contemporary Writers, the paperback edition of last year's hardcover, editor Roger Weingarten presents fantasy by renowned authors, including novelists Louise Erdrich, T. Coraghessan Boyle and John Updike. Nicola Griffith imagines a troll imparting life wisdom to a child in the dark of night; Pamela Painter tells of a man whose wife inexplicably seals off more and more rooms in their big old house. (Invisible Cities [www.invisiblecitiespress.com], $14.95 336p ISBN 0-9679683-3-X)

A ghostly ferry makes passages between coexisting "different Earths"; a 20th-century man describes his impact on the Civil War, brought about by time-machine tricks; and Mozart, Thomas Jefferson and Marie Antoinette end up as employees at an oil refinery in The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century, edited by Harry Turtledove with Martin H. Greenberg. Contributors include Poul Anderson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ward Moore and Susan Shwartz. (Del Rey, $18 448p ISBN 0-345-43990-2)

Here Comes Civilization: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume II, edited by James A. Mann and Mary C. Tabasko, celebrates the achievement of a preeminent SF author of the 1950s. With numerous stories published for the first time since their initial appearance in magazines, the complete body of Tenn's only novel and an analytic essay, this second volume should receive as much praise as the first, Immodest Proposals. (NESFA [PO Box 809 Framingham, Mass. 01701], $29 562p ISBN 1-886778-28-0)

The 41 stories in William F. Nolan's Dark Universe: A Grandmaster of Suspense Collects His Best Stories, prefaced by the author, represent the best of his 175 total horror, SF and mystery short stories (that's not to mention his dozen novels) completed during the past 50 years. In a story from 1956, the last man on Earth fights the little creatures that have been left to rule; in one from 1999, Nolan takes on school shootings and creepy smalltown cults... with an otherworldly twist. (Stealth [www.stealthpress.com], $29.95 496p ISBN 1-58881-035-6)