Search Worlds Without End

Sarah Crowe left Atlanta, and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship, to live alone in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant-a parapsychologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property. And as the gnarled tree takes root in her imagination, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago...

Harlan Ellison's masterwork of myth and terror as he seduces all innocence on a mind-freezing odyssey into the darkest reaches of mortal terror and the most dazzling heights of Olympian hell in his finest collection.

Deathbird Stories is a collection of 19 of Harlan Ellison's best stories, including Edgar and Hugo winners, originally published between 1960 and 1974. The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction.

The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979).

When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction. His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat... as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience. -Gallery

"Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing." -Richmond Times-Dispatch

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Oblations at Alien Altars - essay
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs - (1973) - shortstory
• Along the Scenic Route - (1969) - shortstory
• On the Downhill Side - (1972) - shortstory
• O Ye of Little Faith - (1968) - shortstory
• Neon - (1973) - shortstory
• Basilisk - (1972) - shortstory
• Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes - (1967) - novelette
• Corpse - (1972) - shortstory
• Shattered Like a Glass Goblin - (1968) - shortstory
• Delusion for a Dragon Slayer - (1966) - shortstory
• The Face of Helene Bournouw - (1960) - shortstory
• Bleeding Stones - (1973) - shortstory
• At the Mouse Circus - (1971) - shortstory
• The Place with No Name - (1969) - shortstory
• Paingod - (1964) - shortstory
• Ernest and the Machine God - (1968) - shortstory
• Rock God - (1969) - shortstory
• Adrift Just Off the Islets of Langerhans: Latitude 38° 54' N, Longitude 77° 00' 13" W - (1974) - novelette
• The Deathbird - (1973) - novelette

Orphaned at an early age, DCI Holly Craig grew up in the small Welsh coastal town of Pontyrhudd. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away to London and joined the police. Now, fifteen years later, she's back in her old hometown to investigate what seems at first to be a simple hit-and-run, but which soon escalates into something far deadlier and unexpectedly personal -- something that will take all of her peculiar talents to solve.

Four American Indian men from the Blackfeet Nation, who were childhood friends, find themselves in a desperate struggle for their lives, against an entity that wants to exact revenge upon them for what they did during an elk hunt ten years earlier by killing them, their families, and friends.

Nebula-nominated Novella

From multiple World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award nominated author Mary Rickert comes a gorgeous and terrifying vision of the Mothers of Voorhisville, who love their babies just as intensely as any mother anywhere. Of course they do! And nothing in this world will change that, even if every single one of those tiny babies was born with an even tinier set of wings.

Anthologized in Paula Guran's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.