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Dragons: Fearsome fire-breathing foes, scaled adversaries, legendary lizards, ancient hoarders of priceless treasures, serpentine sages with the ages' wisdom, and winged weapons of war...

Edited by Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Eclipse) and Marianne S. Jablon, Wings of Fire collects the best short stories about dragons. From writhing wyrms to snakelike devourers of heroes; from East to West and everywhere in between, Wings of Fire is sure to please dragon lovers everywhere.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (2010) - essay by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon
• Stable of Dragons (1960) - poem by Peter S. Beagle
• The Rule of Names [Earthsea] (1964) - short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Ice Dragon (1980) - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• Sobek (2010) - short fiction by Holly Black
• King Dragon (2003) - novelette by Michael Swanwick
• The Laily Worm (2004) - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath (1982) - novelette by Patricia A. McKillip
• The Bully and the Beast (1979) - novella by Orson Scott Card
• Concerto Accademico (1992) - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• The Dragon's Boy [Merlin's Booke] (1985) - novelette by Jane Yolen
• The Miracle Aquilina (2010) - short fiction by Margo Lanagan
• Orm the Beautiful (2007) - short story by Elizabeth Bear
• Weyr Search [Pern] (1967) - novella by Anne McCaffrey
• Paper Dragons [Land of Dreams] (1985) - novelette by James P. Blaylock
• Dragon's Gate (2003) - novelette by Pat Murphy
• In Autumn, a White Dragon Looks Over the Wide River [Temeraire] (2009) - short story by Naomi Novik
• St. Dragon and the George [The Dragon Knight] (1957) - novelette by Gordon R. Dickson
• The Silver Dragon (2004) - novelette by Elizabeth A. Lynn
• The Dragons of Summer Gulch (2004) - novelette by Robert Reed
• Berlin [Chronicles of the Borderlands] (1989) - novella by Charles de Lint
• Draco, Draco (1984) - novelette by Tanith Lee
• The Dragon on the Bookshelf (1995) - short story by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg
• Gwydion and the Draogn (1991) - novelette by C. J. Cherryh
• The George Business (1980) - short story by Roger Zelazny
• Dragon's Fin Soup (1995) - novelette by S. P. Somtow
• The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule [Griaule] (1984) - novelette by Lucius Shepard

Charlotte Lewes, a young Briton newly widowed by the Great War, departs for colonial Burma in 1917 to escape the ruins of her life. As a schoolteacher in Rangoon she is rejuvenated by the sensuous Oriental climate, and she meets John Dollar, a sailor who becomes her passionate love and whose ill-fated destiny inextricably binds her to him.

On a festive seafaring expedition, the tightly knit British community confronts disaster in the shape of an earthquake and ensuing tidal wave. Swept overboard, Charlotte, John Dollar, and eight young girls who are Charlotte's pupils awake on a remote island beach. As they struggle to stay alive, their dependence on John overwhelms him, and an atmosphere of menace and doom builds, culminating in shocking and riveting scenes of both death and survival.

When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world - for there is magic in Marianne's blood, and magic in her soul. And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes. Marianne, the Magus and the Manticore is the first volume of Sheri S. Tepper's acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world - for there is magic in Marianne's blood, and magic in her soul. And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes. Marianne, the Madame, and the Momentary Gods is the second volume of Sheri S. Tepper's acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

When Marianne's parents died, leaving control of their fortune to her feared older brother, she struggled to make her way as a student in America - and her old home began to seem as unreal as a fairy tale, her childhood there as distant as a dream . . . Until the Magus came to claim her, and the Black Madame to destroy her, and the Manticore to hunt her down through the streets of another world - for there is magic in Marianne's blood, and magic in her soul. And in a battle fought in an everchanging world of warped time and wicked magic, it is the souls of Marianne and her family that are the ultimate prizes. Marianne, the Matchbox and the Malachite Mouse is the final volume of Sheri S. Tepper's acclaimed Marianne Trilogy.

Nylon Angel introduces a startling new femme fatale and all-around bad girl.

While trying to send her sadistic boss to death row, she finds herself sheltering a suspect in the murder of newsgirl Razz Retribution. In a world run by the media, the truth isn't relevant-it's bad for ratings. Which is why Parrish finds herself tagged for the murder-and up to her tricked-out leather tank top in trouble.

The Tert war is over, and bodyguard Parrish Plessis has gotten a piece of the toxic pie-and the responsibilities that go along with it. To pay off a blood debt to the Cabal Coomera tribe, she must enter the heart of tekno-darkness-the slum town of Dis-to find their missing shamans and to kill her ex-lover Daac. But Parrish still has feelings for Daac-feelings that run as deep as the high-tech parasite he infected her with. Bad blood never boiled like this. REVIEW; The world of Parrish Plessis is complex, frenzied, bloody and improbably dangerous.

Parrish Plessis, sometime coup leader, paid assassin and ex-bodyguard, is finding life tough. Betrayed by the enigmatic Loyl Daac, and still under blood debt to the deadly Cabal Coomera, Parrish is trying to hold together the little empire she's inherited in the Tert, live up to the expectations of the many strays and waifs she's accumulated, and attempt to flush the high-tech parasite from her system before she becomes something so much less than human. Not an ideal lifestyle, Parrish would be the first to admit, but she can make everything alright again if she can manage just one little task. Bring down the media. Just another day for Parrish Plessis …

Virgin Jackson is the senior ranger in Birrimun Park--the world's last natural landscape, overshadowed though it is by a sprawling coastal megacity. She maintains public safety and order in the park, but her bosses have brought out a hotshot cowboy to help her catch some drug runners who are affecting tourism. She senses the company is holding something back from her, and she's not keen on working with an outsider like Nate Sixkiller.

When an imaginary animal from her troubled teenage years reappears, Virgin takes it to mean one of two things: a breakdown (hers!) or a warning. When the dead bodies start piling up around her and Nate, she decides on the latter.

Something terrible is about to happen in the park and Virgin and her new partner are standing in its path...

Virgin's in a tight spot. A murder rap hangs over her head and isn't likely to go away unless she agrees to work for an organisation called GJIC (the Global Joint Intelligence Commission).

Being blackmailed is one thing, discovering that her mother is both alive and the President of GJIC is quite another. Then there's the escalation of Mythos sightings and the bounty on her head.

Oddly, Hamish is the only one she can rely on. Life is complicated.

Burn Bright - Book One of Night Creatures

Retra is a Seal from the city of Grave – sealed minds, sealed community. When her brother Joel runs away to Ixion, the island of ever-night, ever-youth and never-sleep, she is determined to find him.

Retra endures the pain of her obedience strip to escape Grave and stow away on the Ixion barge. But the island is beyond anything she can imagine and she finds herself drawn deep into a intoxicating and dangerous world.

What are the creatures calling to Retra from the shadows? Where is Joel? And why are the young people she meets, vanishing?

Ixion may appear to be a place of bliss, but its secrets are deadly. Will the friends she makes, and the forging of an eternal bond with a Riper, be enough to save her from the darkness?

Angel Arias - Book Two of Night Creatures

Naif – once called Retra – has escaped from Ixion thanks to the pirate, Ruzalia.

But Ruzalia's island is fraught with its own tensions, and Naif knows she cannot bide there for long.

She and Markes have to return to Grave to search for the link between the Ripers and the Elders, and find a way to save her friends back on Ixion from certain death.

But Grave is perhaps the most dangerous place of all for Naif. How can she stay hidden in her bleak birthplace long enough to learn the truth? And what will she do with that truth when she finds it?

Shine Light - Book Three of Night Creatures

Ixion. The island of ever-night and never-sleep.

Naif has learned many of its secrets and she must return to save her friends before the Night Creatures take them.

Despite Ruzalia agreeing to help them, trouble is brewing on Ixion between the Ripers. Lenoir's position has been challenged and he is no longer in control. The Night Creatures are restless, Naif's brother is missing, her friends are scattered and in hiding and she must convince everyone to join her cause.

Can Naif rally the support she needs to bring a new dawn?

The first time Hellevir visited Death, she was ten years old...

Since she was a little girl, Hellevir has been able to raise the dead. Every creature can be saved for a price, a price demanded by the shrouded figure who rules the afterlife, who takes a little more from Hellevir with each soul she resurrects.

Such a gift can rarely remain a secret. When Princess Sullivain, sole heir to the kingdom's throne, is assassinated, the Queen summons Hellevir to demand she bring her granddaughter back to life. But once is not enough; the killers might strike again. The Princess's death would cause a civil war, so the Queen commands that Hellevir remain by her side.

But Sullivain is no easy woman to be bound to, even as Hellevir begins to fall in love with her. With the threat of war looming, Hellevir must trade more and more of herself to keep the Princess alive.

But Death will always take what he is owed.

While drifting in space, lost due to navigational failure, a mineral scout discovers God. When word gets out, academics from the studiums across Orion scramble to gain the Entity’s favor. However, not all the sentients of Orion hold this "god" in awe—some, like the philosophers of Scolar and the Transhumans of Extropy are deeply suspicious. Onto the grand stage of interplanetary academic politics, intellectual conceit, and dubious theology walks Baronessa Mira Fedor. Her planet has been torn apart by the invasion of a race of giant tardigrades. Only the Orion League of Sentient Species can lend aid, but OLOSS is preoccupied with communicating with God. Mira, together with the rowdy, misogynist Jo-Jo Rasterovich, is left to her own resources to find help. In doing so she unmasks a galaxy-sized intrigue. But will she live long enough to tell anyone?

Having fled the invasion on Araldis, Mira Fedor travels to the nearest Orion League planet seeking aid for her devastated world, but the authorities seem more interested in stealing her bio-ship, Insignia, than in rendering help. While Mira flees from world to world, Araldis burns. Why is the initiate Tekton taking such extreme measures just to acquire a mineral alloy? Why do so many of the protagonists in this galaxy-wide drama have links to the Stain Wars? And what part does the Sole Entity—literally, God—have to play?

With her home planet of Araldis under occupation by hostile forces, and with the Orion League of Sentient Species unable--or unwilling to help--Mira Fedor is forced to turn to the mercenary captain, Rast Randall, if she is to save her home. Having Rast on her side means she can thwart political constraints and enact her own game of ruthlessness. As hidden strategies of her allies and enemies alike are revealed, Mira wonders why the philosophers of Scolar have been targeted? And how far does the Extropist influence extend into Orion space? Is everyone set to achieve their separate goals, or has one devastating agenda been set in motion? Mira fears that these puzzling events are all leading toward a single and terrifying conclusion...

Mira Fedor and her friends stand in the eye of the hurricane, and everything in the Orion League remains in flux. She is pregnant, and its gestation is proceeding at an inhuman pace. As she hides out on her bioship, Insignia, it seems clear that the extropist's procedures have had an unforeseen effects--but will her child be more than human? As secrets are revealed and conspiracies exposed about the attack on Araldis, Mira wonders if there is still time to thwart one last master plan? The pieces are all in plan, all that remains is for each side to commit to its endgame. But there's one question nobody has thought to ask: will the Sole Entity...God...play by the rules? It's the epic conclusion to what the Sydney Morning Herald called "Space opera supreme."