According to "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" Miscellany, "Kristine Kathryn Rusch even had one issue of F&SF, June 1996, announced as the 'New Writer Issue, ' in which 7 of its stories, all the fiction pieces, were either first sales or first published stories." "Jonny Punkinhead," which appeared in that issue, was Amy Sterling Casil's first professional science fiction and/or fantasy short fiction sale. It was not her first professional fiction sale, nor first published story, but rather first professional "Science Fiction Sale."

"Jonny Punkinhead" tells the story of Dr. Hedrick Arlan, who is in charge of the Southern California Sherman Institute for Differently-Abled Children, and how hard it is for Dr. Arlan to balance his professional life, family, and trying to cope with the unwanted children who are victims of Human Mutational Virus or "freaks" like Jonny.

"Jonny Punkinhead" is a prequel to "Chromosome Circus," which appeared in a later issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction featuring the little wolf girl Gyla, all grown up. The same characters also appear in Amy Casil's first novel "Imago."

"H.L. Mencken wrote of Mark Twain, 'I believe that he was the true father of our national literature, the first genuinely American artist of the blood royal.' Father, Mark Twain is. And brother, friend, and wise old grandpa. But no offense to Mr. Mencken: Sam'l Clemens is American and there ain't no royalty around here 'ceptin maybe the Duke or some one like that. Unless it's the "Prince and the Pauper" or King Arthur in "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."

"Hank the Yankee asks, 'You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition of epochs -- and bodies?'

"'Wit ye well, "I saw it done.'" Then, after a pause, added: 'I did it myself.'

"Just like Mark Twain -- Samuel Langhorne Clemens."

-- From Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction

"Well, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next mumblety-peg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. . . ."

Huck Finn tells the tale in "Tom Sawyer, Detective" almost plaing the role of a reporter, as he relates what he's witnessed of a strangely peculiar murder, and tells us of Tom Sawyer's scene-stealing exploits in the trial that follows. . . . Many of the characters we all know from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" return in this tale, with delightful results.

"Twain wrote that Huck was based on Tom Blankenship, a poor white boy he knew in Hannibal, MO. But Shelley Fishkin found an 1874 article where Twain spoke of another boy, ten-year old black servant Jerry. Jerry was "the most artless, sociable and exhaustless talker I ever came across," Twain said. He added, "He did not tell me a single remarkable thing, or one that was worth remembering. And yet he was himself so interested in his small marvels, and they flowed so naturally and comfortably from his lips that . . . I listened as one who receives a revelation."

"It doesn't really matter whether or not Huck was black. Jim, Huck Finn's friend, was certainly black, and he is one of the most memorable characters in literature. Jim was sometimes referred to as "nigger Jim." Jim has a minstrel quality, but it's hard not to see the irony in his behavior, especially not when he lectures Huck on behaving like white trash. Mark Twain's writing and characters have influenced countless American writers. And no matter how many book-banning campaigns are launched due to the presence of the word "nigger" in Twain's books, particularly "Huckleberry Finn, " authors as diverse as Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner have cited Twain as influences."

-- from Amy Sterling Casil's Introduction

Twain's story has been adapted and, er, borrowed from so often and so freely that you're probably familiar with it even if you've never read of it: a prince of sixteenth-century England meets his double in the slums of London. The two swap clothes -- and lives. Complications ensue. Tom Canty, the urchin, learns how luxury and power can become the death of a man, while his doppleganger roams his kingdom, learning first hand of the cruelty of the Tudor monarchy. . . .

"Twain was . . . enough of a genius to build his morality into his books, with humor and wit and -- in the case of "The Prince and the Pauper" -- wonderful plotting."

-- E.L. Doctorow

Bram Stoker's classic novel of evil and transcendence, sex and sacrament, terror and yearning -- damnation and redemption.

There's a pig man at your window, and he's hungry.This is the world of Imago.Something has gone very wrong with this world. Changed freaks, victims of the Human Mutational Virus, roam California's streets. DisLex, the entertainment utility, monitors everyone's lives; yet few know that DisLex not only controls life, it has created it: perfect virtual constructs who can never die -- the Imagos.

Three years ago, her husband stood accused of murder -- and the verdict that came in from the jury was the Scottish Verdict, Not Proven. The jury had not evidence enough to convict him -- nor enough to comfortably exonerate him. ustace could not bear the weight of her discovery; he fled to the continent, to live in anonymity. But Valeria knew her husband, and she loved him. She knew he was innocent, too, with the sort of intuition that guides the lucky flawlessly. And she set out to prove it to the world. Valeria Woodville is one of English literature's earliest women detectives -- that makes the novel historically remarkable. But it's also a great fun mystery, full of plot and circumsance, and a rogue's gallery of odd Dickensian characters. The Law and the Lady is as remarkable a novel today as it was when it was first published in 1875.

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote this tale of confused identity and royal intrigue in 1914 and 1915, as World War I was getting ready to happen: it means to be an homage to Anthony Hope's _Prisoner of Zenda._ But, of course, it isn't Hope writing, but Burroughs: the events that led to the war inform the book, and it speaks to the real events happening as Burroughs wrote. That makes it a very different story from Hope's almost-whimsical novel. Part of the reason Burroughs left such a lasting mark on the world is because he was engaged in the events that surrounded him; the news troubled him deeply and personally. As well it might! He was writing, as he always did, on fantastical topics; but it is the fantastic nature of the twentieth century that is the real text of the man's career. The events that shape our own times now inform the work at hand: Edgar Rice Burroughs is generally described as a "Pulp Writer" -- that's code for a successful hack -- but the truth is that he was much, much more.

The Evil Genius is the story of divorce and remarriage, unfaithfulness, but above all, children battered helplessly on the storms of their parents' passions. Kitty is the child of Herbert and Catherine Linley, a spoiled, coddled little girl who is at the same time, in the tradition of all Victorian children, adorable. The Evil Genius begins with the story of the Kitty's ill-fated governess Sydney Westerfield, a girl thrown aside in the grand tradition of Jane Eyre and David Copperfield.

Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha" is deservedly a classic, beautiful as it breathtaking. For those who haven't read it before, they're in for an experience that humbles any ability to describe it.

One of the most popular and influential science fiction tales of all time, The Land That Time Forgot was first published in book form in 1924. Set on the lost island of Caspak in the South Pacific, this novel is a blend of imagination, daring adventure, and intriguing scientific speculation.

The year is 2137. Two hundred years ago -- in our time, more or less -- Eurasia fought a war to end all wars, a war that meant, for all intents and purposes, the end of the Old World. The Americas managed to retain their civilization -- but only by engaging by the most extreme form or isolationism imaginable for two centuries, now, no American has ventured east of the thirtieth parallel. "East for the East . . ." the slogan went, "The West for the West " Until a terrible storm at sea forced American lieutenant Jefferson Turck to disobey the law, seeking safe harbor in England -- where he found that two centuries of isolation have desolated the land. The damaged ship found a Europe that is no longer an enemy -- a ruined land that is utterly unable to be an enemy -- or a friend.

The Necromancers is more than that; there is a real Augustinian terror of the void ? in the absence of God comes real evil. In the book's climax, Maggie's love for Laurie, and a night of sincere prayer draw him back from the brink ? a brink that practical, clear-headed, convent-raised Maggie glimpses in the form of the dark, fiery ?personality? she confronts in the night. This ?personality? can be none other than the Devil himself.

Book 2 in Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar series.

Bram Stoker's classic novel of evil and transcendence, sex and sacrament. (Jacketless library hardcover.)

First book in Edgar Rice Burroughs's Mars series.

"Without Absolution" is the first collection from science-fiction and fantasy writer Amy Sterling Casil. It contains nine stories and four poems in which a new disease causes birth defects; a father clones himself; and a lonely man uploads the personalities of his former wife and his mother, creating a horrifying "motherwife".