Kij Johnson

A sparkling debut collection from one of the hottest writers in science fiction: her stories have received the Nebula Award the last two years running. These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy. Kij Johnson's stories have won the Sturgeon and World Fantasy awards. She has taught writing; worked at Tor, Dark Horse, and Microsoft; worked as a radio announcer; run bookstores; and waitressed in a strip bar. Contents: The Man Who Bridged the Mist (2011) Wolf Trapping (1989) The Empress Jingu Fishes (2004) The Bitey Cat (2012) Chenting, in the Land of the Dead (1999) My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in my Spouse's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition (2007) Schrödinger's Cathouse (1993) Names for Water (2010) Fox Magic (1993) Spar (2009) The Horse Raiders (2000) 26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss (2008) At the Mouth of the River of Bees (2003) The Evolution of Trickster Stories among the Dogs of North Park after the Change (2007) The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles (2009) Ponies (2010)

Professor Vellitt Boe teaches at the prestigious Ulthar Women’s College. When one of her most gifted students elopes with a dreamer from the waking world, Vellitt must retrieve her. But the journey sends her on a quest across the Dreamlands and into her own mysterious past, where some secrets were never meant to surface.

Yoshifuji is a man fascinated by foxes, a man discontented and troubled by the meaning of life. A misstep at court forces him to retire to his long-deserted country estate, to rethink his plans and contemplate the next move that might return him to favor and guarantee his family's prosperity.Kitsune is a young fox who is fascinated by the large creatures that have suddenly invaded her world. She is drawn to them and to Yoshifuji. She comes to love him and will do anything to become a human woman to be with him.Shikujo is Yoshifuji's wife, ashamed of her husband, yet in love with him and uncertain of her role in his world. She is confused by his fascination with the creatures of the wood, and especially the foxes that she knows in her heart are harbingers of danger. She sees him slipping away and is determined to win him back from the wild ... for all that she has her own fox-related secret.Magic binds them all. And in the making (and breaking) of oaths and honors, the patterns of their lives will be changed forever.

If you want to be friends with TheOtherGirls, you're going to have to give something up; this is the way it's always been, as long as there have been Ponies.

The heroic quest of a single cat. When a fire destroys her home and scatters her colony, Small Cat sets out to find the home of her ancestor, the Cat From the North, and to make her own name along the way.