Considering the late John D. MacDonald’s obvious love for boating and the sea, it’s surprising that so few of his short stories had nautical backgrounds. This one, published in a yachting magazine just a few months after his death, makes fine use of that background while reaffirming MacDonald’s position as one of the leading American mystery writers.

She waited on tables as usual that day, her twentieth birthday. She always worked Fridays, but if things had gone according to plan on that particular Friday, she would have had the night off.

One rainy Tokyo night, a waitress’s uneventful twentieth birthday takes a strange and fateful turn when she’s asked to deliver dinner to the restaurant’s reclusive owner.

Birthday Girl is a beguiling, exquisitely satisfying taste of master storytelling, published to celebrate Murakami’s 70th birthday.

Enterprise and resourcefulness — two great assets when dealing with the east.

Jeff has a secret he keeps from everyone, especially his wife.

Jeff likes to spend time… special time… with women he meets on the streets.

But Jeff’s secrets have a way of bleeding into his personal life and his sanity begins to peel as the truth insists on being confronted.

I live in a tin can out on the edge of sector eight. Not much is supposed to happen here. Ships are supposed to fly by at twenty times the speed of light. My beacon is supposed to keep them safe.Things don’t always go like they’re supposed to.

The bugs eat metal and leave people and animals alone—unless you crush one, and then they’ll swarm and destroy everything they touch. When Kimball comes upon twelve-year-old Thayet, she’s been stuck on a rock in a river of bugs for two days, no food, no water, and no way back.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Copyright © 2009 Steven Gould

With a little work I could take care of Barrow’s boat — or his wife...

A man-eater champ — an out-of-the-hinterlands challenger — a fight where hate rides every punch — and only sudden death can name the winner!

“By the Waters of Babylon” is a post-apocalyptic short story by Stephen Vincent Benét first published July 31, 1937, in The Saturday Evening Post as “The Place of the Gods”. It was republished in 1943 in The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, and was adapted in 1971 into a one-act play by Brainerd Duffield.

They were four glory-starved ball-toters who’d lost their way — till they found it in the other guys’ backfield!