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WFA nominated short story.

Lillian is an orphan who lives with her aunt on a homestead miles from anyone, surrounded by uncharted forest. She wanders the woods, chasing squirrels and rabbits and climbing trees. Free-spirited and independent Lillian is a kindred spirit to the many wild cats who gather around the ancient beech tree. One day, while she is under the beech, Lillian is bitten by a poisonous snake. The cats refuse to let her die, and use their magic to turn her into one of their own. How she becomes a girl again is a lyrical, original folktale.

Set in the countryside north of de Lint's fictional Newford, with some of the same characters as the duo's recent, acclaimed Seven Wild Sisters, A Circle of Cats is the long-awaited first picture book by long-time friends Charles de Lint and Charles Vess, whose masterful art is as magical as the story.

Illustrations by Charles Vess.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1992. The story is included in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993) and The Newford Stories (1999).

A Novelette set in De Lint's Newford setting. It was originally published as a chapbook by Subterranean Press and later reprintend Subterrranean Press Magazine. It can also be found in the collection Newford Stories: Crow Girls (2015).

Read the full story for free at Subterrranean Press Magazine.

WFA nominated novella in De Lint's Newford setting. It was reprinted in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifth Annual Collection (1992), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It is included in the collection Dreams Underfoot (1993).

WFA nominated novelette.

Set in Newford and featuring musician Geordie Riddell, this novella about a homeless man called Paperjack is classic de Lint--a poignant, mysterious tale about love, loss and learning how to move on. A finalist for the World Fantasy Award, Paperjack is a standalone story, but picks up some of the threads of a previous tale called "Timeskip."

Paperjack originally appeared as a limmited edition chapbook and was reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1993. The story can also be found in the anthology Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993) and The Newford Stories (1999).

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Ultimate Frankenstein (1991), edited by Megan Miller, David Keller, Byron Preiss and John Betancourt. The story can also be found in the anthology Northern Stars: The Anthology of Canadian Science Fiction (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993) and The Newford Stories (1999).

WFA nominated novella.

Subterranean Press is proud to announce a brand new, exclusive -- ours is the only edition -- novella/short novel by Charles de Lint. Seven Wild Sisters will be a modern fairy tale about seven sisters growing up in backwoods hill country, and how one of them finds a mystery in the forest that both endangers and will save them all.

Note: This novella was later expanded to a full novel with the same title.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien (1991), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. The story can also be found in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993), The Newford Stories (1999) and The Very Best of Charles de Lint (2010).

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Snow White, Blood Red (1993), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and was reprinted in Realms of Fantasy, February 1995. It can also be found in the anthology Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold (2016), edited by Paula Guran. The story is included in the colletions Dreams Underfoot (1993), The Newford Stories (1999) and The Very Best of Charles de Lint (2010).

This story was originally published in the anthology Single White Vampire Seeks Same (2001) edited by Brittiany A. Koren and Martin H. Greenberg. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Fifteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and the collection Tapping the Dream Tree (2002).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

When she was younger, Ellen had seen them all the time, bouncing in the wind like tumbleweeds. She called them the Balloon Men. Now she wonders if they really exist...

Reece knows he can see things other people can't, and he's running from a nightmare that menaces people with barracuda teeth...

Somewhere between Ellen's doubts and Reece's certainties lies Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair. Laced with parables, this Nebula nominated story has much to say about the nature of Magic.

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1987. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (1988), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It is included in the collections Dreams Underfoot (1993) and The Newford Stories (1999).

A charming novella about one of Newford's best-loved characters: artist and dreamer Sophie Etoile.

Lured by mystical Native American flute-player Kokopelli, Sophie opens a door in her dreams only to find herself in the wild Sonoran desert, her way back vanished. In her quest to return she gets sidetracked by Coyote, up to his usual mischief. A poignant tale touching on loss, hope and community.

First published in Worlds of Fantasy and Horror #2, Fall, 1994.

A young woman locked in rage yet seeking magic, Ash is drawn into a wondrous Otherworld of totems and dryads, living tarots and mystic charms. At the same time, Ash's cousin Nina is stalked by an Otherworld demon-a manitou who can force her mind and soul into the bodies of beasts. Ash must find the strength to overcome her own anger, learn the full power of magic, and save Nina before she becomes the manitou's weapon, turning the faerie realm into an arctic wasteland. De Lint fans will relish this urban and otherworldly fantasy, partially set in the author's trademark Newford.

Welcome to Newford. . . .

Welcome to the music clubs, the waterfront, the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the grey harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song.

Like Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale and John Crowley's Little, Big, Dreams Underfoot is a must-read book not only for fans of urban fantasy but for all who seek magic in everyday life.

Isabelle Copley's visionary art frees ancient spirits. As the young student of the cruel, brilliant artist Vincent Rushkin, she discovered she could paint images so vividly real they brought her wildest fantasies to life. But when the forces she unleashed brought tragedy to those she loved, she turned her back on her talent - and on her dreams.

Now, twenty years later, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams and bring the magic back to life.

Among Charles de Lint's most beloved creations is the northern city of Newford, a place touched by deep magic--and the setting for novels like The Onion Girl and story collections like Dreams Underfoot. Now, with the Orb publication of The Ivory and the Horn, all four of the Newford story collections are returned to print. Here, on the streets of Newford, is the magic that hovers at the edge of everyday life.

A novel of loss, identity, and, in the strangest of places, hope.

Leonard Trader is a luthier, a maker of guitars. Johnny Devlin is chronically unemployed. Leonard is solitary, quiet, responsible. Johnny is a lady-killer, a drunk, a charming loser.

When they inexplicably wake up in each other's bodies, Johnny gleefully moves into Leonard's comfortable and stable existence, leaving Leonard to pick up the pieces of a life he had no part in breaking.

Penniless, friendless, homeless, Leonard begins a journey that will take him beyond the streets of the city to an otherworld of dreams and spirits, where he must confront both the unscrupulous Johnny Devlin and his own deepest fears.

Lily is a photojournalist in search of the "animal people" who supposedly haunt the city's darkest slums. Hank is a slumdweller who knows the bad streets all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their two lives collide--uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants.

For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own.

Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city's soul, nothing is quite as it appears.

Familiar to Charles de Lint's ever-growing audience as the setting of the novels Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and many others, Newford is the quintessential North American city, tough and streetwise on the surface and rich with hidden magic for those who can see.

In the World Fantasy Award-winning Moonlight and Vines, de Lint returns to this extraordinary city for another volume of stories set there, featuring the intertwined lives of many characters from the novels. Here is enchantment under a streetlamp: the landscape of our lives as only Charles de Lint can show it.

In the Old Country, they called them the Gentry: ancient spirits of the land, magical, amoral, and dangerous. When the Irish emigrated to North America, some of the Gentry followed...only to find that the New World already had spirits of its own, called manitou and other such names by the Native tribes.

Now generations have passed, and the Irish have made homes in the new land, but the Gentry still wander homeless on the city streets. Gathering in the city shadows, they bide their time and dream of power. As their dreams grow harder, darker, fiercer, so do the Gentry themselves--appearing, to those with the sight to see them, as hard and dangerous men, invariably dressed in black.

Bettina can see the Gentry, and knows them for what they are. Part Indian, part Mexican, she was raised by her grandmother to understand the spirit world. Now she lives in Kellygnow, a massive old house run as an arts colony on the outskirts of Newford, a world away from the Southwestern desert of her youth. Outsider her nighttime window, she often spies the dark men, squatting in the snow, smoking, brooding, waiting. She calls them los lobos, the wolves, and stays clear of them--until the night one follows her to the woods, and takes her hand....

Ellie, an independent young sculptor, is another with magic in her blood, but she refuses to believe it, even though she, too, sees the dark men. A strange old woman has summoned Ellie to Kellygnow to create a mask for her based on an ancient Celtic artifact. It is the mask of the mythic Summer King--another thing Ellie does not believe in. Yet lack of belief won't dim the power of the mast, or its dreadful intent.

Donal, Ellie's former lover, comes from an Irish family and knows the truth at the heart of the old myths. He thinks he can use the mask and the "hard men" for his own purposes. And Donal's sister, Miki, a punk accordion player, stands on the other side of the Gentry's battle with the Native spirits of the land. She knows that more than her brother's soul is at stake. All of Newford is threatened, human and mythic beings alike.

Once again Charles de Lint weaves the mythic traditions of many cultures into a seamless cloth, bringing folklore, music, and unforgettable characters to life on modern city streets.

In novel after novel, and story after story, Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life. Newford: where magic lights dark streets; where myths walk clothed in modern shapes; where a broad cast of extraordinary and affecting people work to keep the whole world turning.

At the center of all the entwined lives in Newford stands a young artist named Jilly Coppercorn, with her tangled hair, her paint-splattered jeans, a smile perpetually on her lips--Jilly, whose paintings capture the hidden beings that dwell in the city's shadows. Now, at last, de Lint tells Jilly's own story...for behind the painter's fey charm lies a dark secret and a past she's labored to forget. And that past is coming to claim her now.

"I'm the onion girl," Jilly Coppercorn says. "Pull back the layers of my life, and you won't find anything at the core. Just a broken child. A hollow girl." She's very, very good at running. But life has just forced Jilly to stop.

The city of Newford could be any contemporary North American city...except that magic lurks in its music, in its art, in the shadows of its grittiest streets, where mythic beings walk disguised. And its people are like you and me, each looking for a bit of magic to shape their lives and transform their fate.

Here are a bluesman hiding from the devil; a Buffalo Man at the edge of death; a murderous ghost looking for revenge; a wolf man on his first blind date; and many more. We're reunited with Jilly, Geordie, Sophie, the Crow Girls, and other characters whose lives have become part of the great Newford myth. And beyond Newford's streets, de Lint takes us to the pastoral hills north of the city, where magic and music have a flavor different but powerful still.

Table of Contents:

• Author's Note - essay by Charles de Lint
• Ten for the Devil - (1998) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Wingless Angels - (2000) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• The Words That Remain - (2000) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Many Worlds Are Born Tonight - (2000) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• The Buffalo Man - (1999) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Second Chances - (1998) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Forest of Stone - (1999) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Embracing the Mystery - (2000) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Masking Indian - (2000) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Granny Weather - (2000) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• The Witching Hour - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Pixel Pixies - (1999) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Café - (2001) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Making a Noise in This World - (2000) - novelette by Charles de Lint
• Freak - (2001) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Big City Littles - (2000) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Sign Here - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• Seven Wild Sisters - (2002) - novella by Charles de Lint

At a popular Newford online research and library Web site called the Wordwood, a mysterious crash occurs. Everyone visiting the site at the moment of the crash vanishes from where they were sitting in front of their computers. Christy Ridding's girldfriend Saskia disappears right before his eyes, along with countless others.

To rescue their missing friends, Christy and his companions must journey into Newford's otherworld, where the Wordwood, it transpires, has a physical presence of its own...

Marking the return of the mischievous, red-headed Dillard twins, this bewitching fantasy entangles the lovely sisters in a 100-year wager in the Native American spirit world. Laurel and Bess are touring bluegrass musicians who encounter two mysterious strangers with a powerful secret in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to their animal natures, Jim Changing Dog and Alice Corn Hair have been given human forms by the powerful Coyote Woman, but in return they must both find their true human loves in 100 years or be exiled into the animal world alone. Although Alice has found her love, trickster Jim hasn't been able to commit to one woman until he sets eyes on free-spirited Bess, just before the deadline. Battling time and a meddling motorcycle seductress, the two new lovers must risk intimacy and loss in their quest for love.

Seventeen-year-old Imogene's rebellious nature has caused her more harm than good-so when her family moves to Newford, she decides to reinvent herself. She won't lose her punk/thrift-shop look, but she'll try to avoid the gangs, work a little harder at school, and maybe even stay out of trouble for a change. But trouble shows up anyway. Imogene quickly catches the eye of Redding High's bullies, as well as the school's resident teenage ghost. Then she gets on the wrong side of a gang of malicious fairies. When her old imaginary childhood friend, Pelly, actually manifests, Imogene realizes that the impossible is all too real. And it's dangerous. If she wants to survive high school-not to mention stay alive-she has to fall back on the skills she picked up in her hometown, running with a gang. Even with her new friend Maxine and some unexpected allies by her side, will she be able to make it?

Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell. Since they were introduced in the first Newford story, "Timeskip," back in 1989, their friends and readers alike have been waiting for them to realize what everybody else already knows: that they belong together. But they've been more clueless about how they feel for each other than the characters in When Harry Met Sally. Now in Widdershins, a stand-alone novel of fairy courts set in shopping malls and the Bohemian street scene of Newford's Crowsea area, Jilly and Geordie's story is finally being told.

Before it's over, we'll find ourselves plunged into the rancorous and sometimes violent conflict between the magical North American "animal people" and the more newly-arrived fairy folk. We'll watch as Jilly is held captive in a sinister world based on her own worst memories--and Geordie, attempting to help, is sent someplace even worse. And we'll be captivated by the power of love and determination to redeem ancient hatreds and heal old magics gone sour.

To walk "widdershins" is to walk counterclockwise or backwards around something. It's a classic pathway into the fairy realm. It's also the way people often back slowly into the relationships that matter, the real ones that make for a life. In Widdershins Charles de Lint has delivered one of his most accessible and moving works of his career.

With the help of a mentor and an anonymous benefactor, Jilly Coppercorn has overcome abuse, addiction, and a stint in juvie. Though she still struggles to stay clean, she has found safety and love in a newly formed family that includes her loyal best friend, a lovely artist, and her caseworker. Temptation comes knocking, however, when her best friend from the bad old days rides in on a motorcycle and takes Jilly to a beautiful, mysterious city full of wonderful opportunities. It seems perfect at first, until Jilly discovers that it was a one-way trip-and she still has unfinished business in Newford. At turns playful and serious, this urban fantasy introduces de Lint's most enduring character and grapples with the realities of life-changing choices.

When fourteen-year-old TJ and her family are forced to move from their farm to the suburbs, she has to give up her beloved horse, Red-but she makes a surprising new friend. Elizabeth is a "Little," a six-inch-high punked-out teen with an attitude, who has run away from home to make her way in the world. TJ and Elizabeth-the Big and the Little-soon become friends, but each quickly finds herself in a truly life-threatening situation, and they are unable to help each other.Little (Grrl) Lost is a delightful combination of realism, magic, humor, and hope, and is sure to win Charles de Lint many new teen and adult fans.

High school senior Miguel's life is turned upside down when he meets new girl Lainey, whose family has just moved from Australia. With her tumbled red-gold hair, her instant understanding of who he is, and her unusual dog--a real Australian dingo--she's unforgettable. And, as he quickly learns, she is on the run from an ancient bargain made by her ancestors. There's no question that Miguel will do whatever he can to help her--but what price will each of them have to pay?

Dingo is quintessential Charles de Lint, set close to his beloved, invented city of Newford--a mixture of darkness and hope, humor and mystery, and the friendship within love.

From the master of contemporary urban fantasy, a new collection of "Newford" stories

The city of Newford could be any city in North America, bursting with music, commerce, art, love, hate, and, of course magic. Magic in the sidewalk cracks, myth at the foundations of its great buildings, enchantment in the spaces between its people.

In novels like Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and The Mystery of Grace, and in a series of story collections, urban fantasy master Charles de Lint has explored that magic and those spaces, bringing to life a tapestry of people from all walks of life, each looking for a spark of the miraculous to shape their lives and transform their fate.

Here, in the fifth of the story collections, we reencounter old friends such as Jilly, Sophie, and the Crow Girls. We breathe in intimations of the world beyond death, and of magic beyond time. Longtime readers and newcomers alike will find themselves under Charles de Lint's unique spell.

Charles de Lint's readers have been asking him to put together story collections featuring their favourite Newford characters. The crow girls are among his best-loved characters, so de Lint obliged by gathering their stories all under one roof, so to speak. Some other members of the Newford repertory company show up here, but at the forefront of each story are these two little wild girls with their big personalities.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Joanne Harris
• Crow Girls - (1995) - shortstory
• Twa Corbies - (1998) - shortstory
• The Buffalo Man - (1999) - novelette
• A Crow Girls' Christmas - (2001) - shortstory with MaryAnn Harris
• Make a Joyful Noise - (2005) - novelette
• Afterword - essay
• Someplace to Be Flying (excerpt) - shortfiction

De Lint's first adult fantasy novel in 8 years weaves a rich tapestry of story with classic CdL elegance.

Young Thomas Corn Eyes sees into the otherworld, but all he wants to do is get off the rez. Steve Cole escaped from his rock star life to disappear into the desert and mountains. Fifteen-year-old barrio kid Sadie Higgins has been discarded once too often. Blogger Leah Hardin needs to leave Newford, come to terms with the loss of her best friend, and actually engage with her life. When these lives collide in the Hierro Maderas Mountains, they must struggle to escape their messy pasts and find a way to carve a future for themselves.

They don't just have to learn how to survive. They have to learn how to fly.