This sixth volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features over thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including Yoon Ha Lee, James Patrick Kelly, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Lavie Tidhar, Carrie Vaughn, and many others. Selecting the best fiction from Asimov's, Clarkesworld, F&SF, and other top venues, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.

Carrie Vaughn follows up The Ghosts of Sherwood with the charming, fast-paced The Heirs of Locksley, continuing the story of Robin Hood's children. We will hold an archery contest. A simple affair, all in fun, on the tournament grounds. Tomorrow. We will see you there. The latest civil war in England has come and gone, King John is dead, and the nobility of England gathers to see the coronation of his son, thirteen year old King Henry III. The new king is at the center of political rivalries and power struggles, but John of Locksley--son of the legendary Robin Hood and Lady Marian--only sees a lonely boy in need of friends. John and his sisters succeed in befriending Henry, while also inadvertently uncovering a political plot, saving a man's life, and carrying out daring escapes. All in a day's work for the Locksley children...

"It was a dark and stormy knight, and nine dark defenders embarked upon a most perilous quest...."

They're the ultimate defenders of humanity--modern day knights who do dark deeds for all the right reasons. In this all-star collection, nine of today's hottest paranormal authors bring us thrilling, all-new stories of supernatural knights that are brimming with magic mystery and mayhem.

John Marcone sets aside his plans to kill Harry Dresden to go head-to-head with a cantrev lord in Jim Butcher's "Even Hand." Kate Daniels is called upon for bodyguard duty to protect Saimen, a shifter she trusts less than the enemy in Ilona Andrews' "A Questionable Client." Cormac must stop a killer werewolf before it attacks again on the next full moon in Carrie Vaughn's "God's Creatures." And in Vicki Pettersson's "Shifting Star," Skamar gets more than she bargained for when she goes after a creature kidnapping young girls--and enlists the aid of her frustratingly sexy neighbor.""

When everything's on the line, will these knights complete their missions and live to fight again another day? Find out in "Dark and Stormy Knights"

Includes stories from:

Ilona Andrews

Jim Butcher

Shannon K. Butcher

Rachel Caine

P.N. Elrod

Deidre Knight

Vicki Pettersson

Lilith Saintcrow

Carrie Vaughn

Kitty Norville, the country's only celebrity werewolf, thinks she's finally got her life sorted. Her radio show is as popular as ever, and she and her cute lawyer boyfriend are the alpha pair of Denver's werewolf pack. Now she and Ben plan to tie the knot human-style - by eloping to Vegas. And just to make things more fun, she's going to do her midnight radio show live and on television from Vegas. In between getting wed and going live on TV, she's also planning on sipping fru-fru drinks by the pool while she works on her tan. So what can possibly go wrong? Well, their hotel is the venue for a werewolf-hating bounty hunter convention. Elsewhere on the Strip, an old-school magician might just be wielding the real thing. The vampire community is harbouring a dark secret ... and the irresistibly sexy star of a deeply suspicious animal act is determined to seduce Kitty. Sin City has never been so wild, and Kitty has never had to fight harder - to save not only her wedding, but her very life.

Three soldiers recently returned from the war in Afghanistan are in custody at Ft Carson in Colorado Springs. They're werewolves, suffering from post traumatic stress, which has left them unable to control their shapeshifting, unable to interact with people. Kitty agrees to see them; after her own battles in KITTY'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (Kitty #7), she feels a great deal of sympathy for them. The soldiers were part of a unit fighting Taliban insurgents in the remote mountains of Afghanistan. Their captain, the original werewolf, transformed the others; their new-found strengths including the ability to survive untold violence while infiltrating remote enemy positions, made them the perfect soldiers for this mission. But it was the captain who kept the group together and kept them sane; when a particularly potent mortar attack killed the captain, the remaining lycanthrope soldiers grew more and more wild, until the final three survivors were captured and delivered to Dr Shumacher at the Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology for treatment. Kitty tries to bring the men into her own pack, to socialise them back into some kind of normal existence, but the group's sergeant has other plans: he's intent on driving out Kitty and Ben and becoming the leader of a new squad of killers.

There's a hot were-jaguar in town, and Kitty's hungering for his touch . . . Celebrity werewolf and late-night radio host Kitty Norville prefers to be heard and not seen, but when she's invited to testify at a Senate hearing on behalf of the country's supernaturals, her face gets plastered all over national TV. Before long Kitty's inherited a brand-new set of friends and enemies, including the vampire mistress of the city, an uber-hot Brazilian were-jaguar, and a Bible-thumping senator who plans to expose Kitty as the monster he truly believes her to be. Kitty quickly learns that in this city of dirty politicians and backstabbing pundits, everyone's itching for a fight - and she's about to be caught in the middle.

Kitty Norville has been tapped as the keynote speaker for the First International Conference on Paranatural Studies, taking place in London. The conference brings together scientists, activists, protestors, and supernatural beings from all over the world - and Kitty is right in the middle of it. Master vampires from dozens of cities have also gathered in London for a conference of their own, and Kitty gets a glimpse into the power struggle among vampires that has been going on for centuries. But the conference has also attracted some old enemies, who have set their sights on Kitty and her friends. All the world's a stage, and Kitty's just stepped into the spotlight.

Issue #333 of Weird Tales magazine (September-October 2003) presents work by Thomas Ligotti ("The Town Manager"), Tim W. Burke ("Two Shows Daily"), Jamie Ferguson ("Good Neighbors"), Lillian Csernica ("Maeve"), Margaret Carter ("Manila Peril"), Lisa Bayta Feld ("Kaddish"), Marc Schuster ("Leaving the Sasquatch Business"), and Carrie Vaughn ("Kitty Loses Her Faith"). Cover by Jason Van Hollander.

Kitty Norville is back and in more trouble than ever. Her recent run-in with werewolves traumatised by the horrors of war has made her start wondering how long the US government might have been covertly using werewolves in combat. Have any famous names in our own history actually been supernatural? Then an interview with the right vampire puts her on the trail of Wyatt Earp, vampire hunter. But her investigations lead her to a clue about enigmatic vampire Roman and the mysterious Long Game played by vampires through the millennia. That, plus a call for help from a powerful vampire ally in San Francisco, suddenly puts Kitty and her friends on the supernatural chessboard, pieces in dangerously active play. And Kitty Norville is never content to be a pawn ...

Kitty Norville's established herself as a DJ, with her midnight talk show Kitty's Midnight Hour, been forced into revealing herself to the nation as a werewolf and testified to the Senate about the supernatural denizens of the USA, but now it's time to lay low in a remote Colorado cabin and work on her memoirs. Her plans get derailed when sexy werewolf hunter Cormac Bennett shows up with her lawyer, Ben O'Farrell, who's been bitten and is about to turn into a werewolf himself. But Kitty's hideaway is neither as peaceful nor as secret as she hopes, for barbed-wire crosses start showing up all over the place, and, worse, gruesome animal sacrifices are left at her door. Someone wants them gone, and it's up to Kitty and Cormac to find out who's stalking them - before someone gets really hurt ...