Maxima Library

An anthology of stories edited by John Joseph Adams.

From

Dracula

to

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

; from

Castlevania

to

Tru Blood

, the romance between popular culture and vampires hearkens back to humanity’s darkest, deepest fears, flowing through our very blood, fears of death, and life, and insatiable hunger. And yet, there is an attraction, undeniable, to the vampire archetype, whether the pale European count, impeccably dressed and coldly masculine, yet strangely ambiguous, ready to sink his sharp teeth deep into his victims’ necks, draining or converting them, or the vamp, the count’s feminine counterpart, villain and victim in one, using her wiles and icy sexuality to corrupt man and woman alike… Edited by John Joseph Adams (

Wastelands

,

The Living Dead

),

By Blood We Live

gathers together the best vampire literature of the last three decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror.

Brand-new stories by: Ace Atkins, Laura Lippman, Patty Friedmann, Barbara Hambly, Tim McLoughlin, Olympia Vernon, David Fulmer, Jervey Tervalon, James Nolan, Kalamu ya Salaam, Maureen Tan, Thomas Adcock, Jeri Cain Rossi, Christine Wiltz, Greg Herren, Julie Smith, Eric Overmyer, and Ted O’Brien.

[A portion of the profits from New Orleans Noir will be donated to Katrina KARES, a hurricane relief program sponsored by the New Orleans Institute that awards grants to writers affected by the hurricane.]

New Orleans is a third world country in itself, a Latin, African, European (and often amoral) culture trapped in a Puritan nation. It’s everyone’s seamy underside, the city where respectable citizens go to get drunk, puke in the gutter, dance on tabletops, and go home with strangers, all without guilt. It’s the metropolitan equivalent of eating standing up — if it happened in New Orleans, it doesn’t count.

The city was always the home of the lovable rogue, the poison magnolia, the bent politico, the sociopathic street thug, and, especially, the heartless con artist — but in post-Katrina times it struggles against... well, the same old problems, just writ large and with a new breed of carpetbagger thrown in. Combine all that with a brilliant literary tradition and you have New Orleans Noir, a sparkling collection of tales exploring the city’s wasted, gutted neighborhoods, its outwardly gleaming “sliver by the river,” its still-raunchy French Quarter, and other hoods so far from the Quarter they might as well be on another continent. It also looks back into the past, from that recent innocent time known in contemporary New Orleans as “pre-K,” to the mid-nineteenth century, the other time the city was mostly swampland.

An anthology of stories

Sherlock Holmes is back!

Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first-and most famous-consulting detective, came to the world’s attention more than 120 years ago through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and stories. But Conan Doyle didn’t reveal all of the Great Detective’s adventures…

Here are some of the best Holmes pastiches of the last 30 years, twenty-eight tales of mystery and the imagination detailing Holmes’s further exploits, as told by many of today’s greatest storytellers, including Stephen King, Anne Perry, Anthony Burgess, Neil Gaiman, Naomi Novik, Stephen Baxter, Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, and many more.

These are the improbable adventures of Sherlock Holmes, where nothing is impossible, and nothing can be ruled out. In these cases, Holmes investigates ghosts, curses, aliens, dinosaurs, shapeshifters, and evil gods. But is it the supernatural, or is there a perfectly rational explanation?

You won’t be sure, and neither will Holmes and Watson as they match wits with pirates, assassins, con artists, and criminal masterminds of all stripes, including some familiar foes, such as their old nemesis, Professor Moriarty.

In these pages you’ll also find our heroes crossing paths with H. G. Wells, Lewis Carroll, and even Arthur Conan Doyle himself, and you’ll be astounded to learn the truth behind cases previously alluded to by Watson but never before documented until now. These are tales that take us from the familiar quarters at 221B Baker Street to alternate realities, from the gaslit streets of London to the far future and beyond.

Whether it’s mystery, fantasy, horror, or science fiction, no puzzle is too challenging for the Great Detective. The game is afoot!