Most Popular Books by Jeffrey Ford

A book of fantastic stories about the hell on earth that is living.

In the land of the Well-Built City, Physiognomist First Class Cley studies the body''s shape to determine character, uncover secrets, even foretell the future. But swirling around him are dark pools of arrogance and corruption, and before long the privileged physiognomist must confront the surprising truth about himself and his profession.

There are worse things than a local gangster’s cronies lurking in New Jersey’s wetlands... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

After surviving a violent crime, a smalltown librarian begins leaving his body—and discovering dark secrets—in the award-winning author’s fantasy thriller. Owen is a creature of habit. Every morning just after seven a.m., he picks up his coffee and sweet roll at the local deli where he would invariably see young Helen Roan behind the counter. Then one morning changes everything for Owen. That morning, he attempts to save Helen from being murdered . . . and fails. Soon Owen discovers just how much the experience has changed him. What had once been routine sleep paralysis begins to transform into something far more disturbing. The trauma, it seems, is driving him out of his own body. The town he knows so well is suddenly revealed to him from a whole new perspective. Secrets are everywhere and demons fester behind closed doors. Worst of all, Owen discovers a serial killer who has been preying on the area for over a century . . . one capable of traveling with him through his dreams.

The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old illegal Mexican immigrant, owes his salvation to master grifter Thomas Schell. Together with Schell''s gruff and powerful partner, they sail comfortably through hard times, scamming New York''s grieving rich with elaborate, ingeniously staged séances -- until an impossible occurrence changes everything. While "communing with spirits," Schell sees an image of a young girl in a pane of glass, silently entreating the con man for help. Though well aware that his otherworldly "powers" are a sham, Schell inexplicably offers his services to help find the lost child -- drawing Diego along with him into a tangled maze of deadly secrets and terrible experimentation. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery and a stunningly evocative portrait of Depression-era New York, The Girl in the Glass is a masterly literary adventure from a writer of exemplary vision and skill.

World Fantasy Award finalist It sounds innocuous. The routine world of college teaching. Quiet evenings on a porch with your wife. And then . . . maybe it’s an unexpected light in a dark and uninhabited house, maybe it’s a drainage tunnel that some poor kid is suddenly compelled to explore. Maybe there’s a monkey in the woods or an angel that you’ll need to fight if you want to gain tenure. Jeffrey Ford''s stunning new collection Big Dark Hole is about those big, dark holes that we find ourselves once in a while and maybe, too, the big dark holes that exist inside of us.

In New York''s Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time is spent in the basement of the family''s modest home, where he and his brother, Jim, have created Botch Town, a detailed cardboard replica of their community, complete with clay figurines representing friends and neighbors. And so the time passes with a not-always-reassuring sameness—until the night a prowler is reported stalking the neighborhood. Appointing themselves ad hoc investigators, the brothers set out to aid the police—while their little sister, Mary, smokes cigarettes, speaks in other voices, inhabits alternate personas . . . and, unbeknownst to her older siblings, moves around the inanimate residents of Botch Town. But ensuing events add a shadowy cast to the boys'' night games: disappearances, deaths, and spectral sightings capped off by the arrival of a sinister man in a long white car trawling the neighborhood after dark. Strangest of all is the inescapable fact that every one of these troubling occurrences seems to correspond directly to the changes little Mary has made to the miniature town in the basement. Not since Ray Bradbury''s classic Dandelion Wine has a novel so richly evoked the dark magic of small-town boyhood. At once a hypnotically compelling mystery, a masterful re-creation of a unique time and place, a celebration of youth, and a poignant and disquieting portrait of home and family—all balancing on a razor''s edge separating reality from the unsettlingly remarkable—The Shadow Year is a monumental new work from one of contemporary fiction''s most fearless and inventive artists.

The World Fantasy Award–winning collection from the architect of the Well-Built City Trilogy No matter how far into the realms of space and fantasy Jeffrey Ford’s stories may venture, they have one trait in common: They’re grounded in the universal. The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, Ford’s debut collection, is no exception. “Creation,” which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story and a nomination for a Nebula Award, relates a boy’s attempts to animate a man made of sticks and pebbles. Even as the creature’s life fades along with the summer, its loneliness and yearning for contact are palpable. Other blends of the worldly and otherworldly are evident in “Bright Morning,” in which a man searches far and wide for a cursed Kafka book, and “At Reparata,” when the grief of a king over the death of his queen takes the form of a destructive moth that could overtake the entire kingdom. The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, its titular story another Nebula Award finalist, reveals Jeffrey Ford at his creative best.

Starting with the Nebula-winning title story, this “outstanding” fantasy collection by the author of Ahab’s Return will have you “entranced and delighted” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Few writers can extract as much enchantment from the mundane as award-winning author Jeffrey Ford. His talent for storytelling is readily evident in The Empire of Ice Cream, his collection of ordinary and extraordinary juxtapositions. The bittersweet Nebula Award–winning title story introduces a composer with synesthesia who finds the sound—and woman—of his dreams through a cup of coffee. Then there are the fairies that inhabit sandcastles in the fleeting moments before the inevitable rise of the tide. Ford populates this charmed collection with stories taken from his own life as well, including “Botch Town,” which finds him as a schoolboy, and “The Trentino Kid,” which recalls his experience digging for clams.

A modern fable based on the labyrinths created by us all Belius has led a peaceful if not uneventful existence until now, as far as minotaurs’ lives go. He mostly keeps to his house, avoiding anyone outside of his family. Despite his human parents’ efforts to shield him from the potential hysteria of the townspeople, Belius hears about something beyond his home’s walls, even beyond the town itself—something called the Wider World. He decides to explore this strange place where the possibilities far outnumber those of the mundane real world. Here, Belius has a chance to be the minotaur he has always wanted to be. He is joined by Vashti the owl and Pezimote the tortoise, creatures that provide the philosophical guidance he will need if he is to complete his physical and metaphysical journey. From World Fantasy Award winner Jeffrey Ford, The Cosmology of the Wider World is about the hopes, dreams, and visions we create for ourselves. This ebook includes an introduction by Jeff VanderMeer.

There is a town that brews a strange intoxicant from a rare fruit called the deathberry—and once a year a handful of citizens are selected to drink it. . . . There is a life lived beneath the water—among rotted buildings and bloated corpses—by those so overburdened by the world''s demands that they simply give up and go under. . . . In this mesmerizing blend of the familiar and the fantastic, multiple award-winning New York Times notable author Jeffrey Ford creates true wonders and infuses the mundane with magic. In tales marked by his distinctive, dark imagery and fluid, exhilarating prose, he conjures up an annual gale that transforms the real into the impossible, invents a strange scribble that secretly unites a significant portion of society, and spins the myriad dreams of a restless astronaut and his alien lover. Bizarre, beautiful, unsettling, and sublime, The Drowned Life showcases the exceptional talents of one of contemporary fiction''s most original artists.

Descend into horror with witches, vampires, haunted houses, and murderous blood copies. Check out excerpts from four short works that will be going bump in the night in Fall 2017. A Long Day in Lychford by Paul Cornell, The Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey Ford, Switchback by Melissa F. Olson, and The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen….A rare and wonderful talent.” —Jonathan Carroll, author of The Wooden Sea Eclectic is certainly an adjective that can be used to describe the work of the phenomenal Jeffrey Ford—along with imaginative, provocative, mesmerizing, and brilliant. His powerful dark fantasy, The Physiognomy, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; his novel, The Girl in the Glass, won the Edgar® Award, mystery and crime fiction’s most prestigious prize. Crackpot Palace is Ford’s fourth superb collection of short fiction, and in it, his prodigious talent shines as brightly as ever. Here are twenty tales both strange and wonderful, filled with mad scientists, vampires, lost souls, and Native American secrets, from an author who has been glowingly compared to Kafka, Dante, and Caleb Carr (The Alienist).

A mysterious and richly evocative novel, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque tells the story of portraitist Piero Piambo, who is offered a commission unlike any other. The client is Mrs. Charbuque, a wealthy and elusive woman who asks Piambo to paint her portrait, though with one bizarre twist: he may question her at length on any topic, but he may not, under any circumstances, see her. So begins an astonishing journey into Mrs. Charbuque''s world and the world of 1893 New York society in this hypnotically compelling literary thriller.

Tor.com Publishing Editorial Spotlight #3 is a curated selection of novellas by editor Ellen Datlow This collection includes: The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle The Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey Ford Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson A cosmic horror is rising in Red Hook, and Black Tom must either stop it or help it grow in Victor LaValle’s award-winning The Ballad of Black Tom. Three friends go looking for treasure and find horror in Jeffrey Ford''s The Twilight Pariah. ("Poignant and punchy." —New York Times). Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella Mapping the Interior. Experience award-winning author Kelly Robson’s Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky, a far-reaching, mind-bending science fiction adventure that uses time travel to merge climate fiction with historical fantasy. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“Jeffrey Ford is one of the few writers who uses wonder instead of ink in his pen.” – Jonathan Carroll A bold and intriguing fabulist novel that reimagines two of the most legendary characters in American literature—Captain Ahab and Ishmael of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick—from the critically acclaimed Edgar and World Fantasy award-winning author of The Girl in the Glass and The Shadow Year. At the end of a long journey, Captain Ahab returns to the mainland to confront the true author of the novel Moby-Dick, his former shipmate, Ishmael. For Ahab was not pulled into the ocean’s depths by a harpoon line, and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his untimely death have caused him grievous harm—after hearing about Ahab’s demise, his wife and child left Nantucket for New York, and now Ahab is on a desperate quest to find them. Ahab’s pursuit leads him to The Gorgon’s Mirror, the sensationalist tabloid newspaper that employed Ishmael as a copy editor while he wrote the harrowing story of the ill-fated Pequod. In the penny press’s office, Ahab meets George Harrow, who makes a deal with the captain: the newspaperman will help Ahab navigate the city in exchange for the exclusive story of his salvation from the mouth of the great white whale. But their investigation—like Ahab’s own story—will take unexpected, dangerous, and ultimately tragic turns. Told with wisdom, suspense, a modicum of dry humor and horror, and a vigorous stretching of the truth, Ahab’s Return charts an inventive and intriguing voyage involving one of the most memorable characters in classic literature, and pays homage to one of the greatest novels ever written.

"Poignant and punchy." —The New York Times Three friends go looking for treasure and find horror in Jeffrey Ford''s The Twilight Pariah. All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation was to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion''s outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child.

The essential collection of beloved ghost stories, compiled by the editor who helped define the genre—including stories from award-winning, bestselling authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay. Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially Ellen Datlow—the most lauded editor in short works of supernatural suspense and dark fantasy. The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories is her definitive collection of ghost stories. These twenty-nine stories, including all new works from New York Times bestselling authors Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay, span from the traditional to the eclectic, from the mainstream to the literary, from pure fantasy to the bizarrely supernatural. Whether you’re reading alone under the covers with a flashlight, or around a campfire with a circle of friends, there’s something here to please—and spook—everyone. Contributors include: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Vincent J. Masterson, A.C. Wise, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Lee Thomas, Alison Littlewood, M.L. Siemienowicz, Richard Kadrey, Indrapramit Das, Richard Bowes, Nick Mamatas, Terry Dowling, Aliette de Bodard, Carole Johnstone, Dale Bailey, Stephen Graham Jones, Bracken MacLeod, Garth Nix, Brian Evenson, Jeffrey Ford, Gemma Files, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Pat Cadigan, John Langan.

"A Terror", by Jeffrey Ford, is a dark fantasy/horror novelette about a strange encounter Miss Emily Dickinson has one early September morning, and the consequences for her and others. "Ford captures the rhythms and attitudes of [Emily Dickinson''s] Victorian times in a manner that is simultaneously vintage and eternal."--Locus At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The Thyme Fiend by Jeffrey Ford is a dark fantasy novelette about a young man who can only prevent seeing visions by eating or smoking thyme. When he finds the skeleton of a missing man the skeleton begins to haunt him. What does it want? "Surely ''The Thyme Fiend'' will enter the annals of essential, classic ghost stories. Rich with the hot, dusty evocations of a simpler, yet no less demanding era—small-town USA circa 1915, quasi-Bradburian."--Locus At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Even time travel can’t unravel love Time-travel is a way for writers to play with history and imagine different futures – for better, or worse. When romance is thrown into the mix, time-travel becomes a passionate tool, or heart-breaking weapon. A time agent in the 22nd century puts their whole mission at risk when they fall in love with the wrong person. No matter which part of history a man visits, he cannot not escape his ex. A woman is desperately in love with the time-space continuum, but it doesn’t love her back. As time passes and falls apart, a time-traveller must say goodbye to their soulmate. With stories from best-selling and award-winning authors such as Seanan McGuire, Alix E. Harrow and Nina Allan, this anthology gives a taste for the rich treasure trove of stories we can imagine with love, loss and reunion across time and space. Including stories by: Alix E. Harrow, Zen Cho, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Gailey, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Allan, Elizabeth Hand, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Catherynne M. Valente, Sam J. Miller, Rowan Coleman, Margo Lanagan, Sameem Siddiqui, Theodora Goss, Carrie Vaughn, Ellen Klages

The story of a secret, privately funded, late 60''s space mission as told by the science fiction writer who was aboard. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

The November/December 2023 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring new fiction by Naomi Kritzer, Jeffrey Ford, Kel Coleman, Cecil Castellucci, Marissa Lingen, Chelsea Sutton, and Ana Hurtado. Essays by John Scalzi, Amanda-Rae Prescott, Paul Cornell, and Lee Mandelo, poetry by Carlie St. George, Tehnuka, Lora Gray, and Angela Liu, interviews with Jeffrey Ford and Marissa lIngen by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Paul Lewin, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas. Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

An all-new anthology of eighteen classic myth retellings featuring an all-star lineup of award-winning and critically acclaimed writers. Madeleine L’Engle once said, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.” The Mythic Dream gathers together eighteen stories that reclaim the myths that shaped our collective past, and use them to explore our present and future. From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations. Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Urusla Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.

Jonathan Strahan, the award-winning and much lauded editor of many of genre’s best known anthologies is back with his 10th volume in this fascinating series, featuring the best science fiction and fantasy from 2015. With established names and new talent this diverse and ground-breaking collection will take the reader to the outer-reaches of space and the inner realms of humanity with stories of fantastical worlds and worlds that may still come to pass. Featuring Paolo Bacigalupi • Elizabeth Bear • Greg Bear • Jeffrey Ford • Neil Gaiman • Nalo Hopkinson • Nisi Shawl • Simon Ings • Gwyneth Jones • Caitlin R. Kiernan • Anne Leckie • Kelly Link • Usman T. Malik • Ian McDonald • Vonda McIntrye • Sam J. Miller • Tamsyn Muir • Robert Reed • Alastair Reynolds • Kim Stanley Robinson • Kelly Robson • Geoff Ryman • Nike Sulway • Catherynne Valente • Genevieve Valentine • Kai Ashante Wilson • Alyssa Wong

Are you sick of counting the hours until retirement-or vacation-or Friday? If this sounds oddly familiar, and you want-or need-more control over your work life, then ask yourself the following questions: Do you want better performance reviews, better job assignments, and bigger raises? Have you just been promoted and you need to improve your on-time performance? Have you just been promoted and you are now managing other people? Do you want to start successfully delivering everything you are supposed to deliver, and do it on time and under budget? In this clear, concise guide, coauthors Jeffrey and Laurie Ford explain how to achieve outstanding work performance. They describe how to avoid the nine reasons that prevent people from being star performers. For those ready to move beyond the obstacles and gain an edge at work, Deadline Busting provides more than eighty proven and easy-to-use tips. The results will be a rapid, stress-free improvement in the quality of your work.

This collection of unabridged, spectacular steampunk speculations includes several classics of the genre. These tales will sweep you away with their amazing automata, daring dirigibles, grinding gears, and scintillating steam as days long gone are infused with tech. In “Smoke City,” by Christopher Barzak, a woman comes to terms with the loss of her family to the child labor mills of the city. A doctor tries to cope with a strange plague terrorizing the citizens of London in Jeffrey Ford’s “Dr. Lash Remembers.” In “Machine Maid,” by Margo Lanagan, a sexually repressed wife gets revenge on her husband through a robot maid. Friedrich Engels strives to spread class revolution as a labor organizer for factory cyborg matchstick girls in Arbeitskraft, by Nick Mamatas. In “Ninety Thousand Horses,” by Sean McMullen, an acclaimed mathematician, with a murky past, is forced to spy for an industrialist prior to becoming Britain’s foremost rocket expert during World War II. An orphan boy builds an automaton, in an aging scientist’s laboratory, that becomes more than an idle companion in Cherie Priest’s “Tanglefoot (A Clockwork Century Story).” In “Clockwork Fairies,” by Cat Rambo, an English aristocrat courts a woman who would rather spend her time in a laboratory than at high society balls. At Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, in 1893, an Algerian bodyguard crosses paths with a disoriented naked man in Chris Roberson’s “Edison’s Frankenstein.”. In “A Serpent in the Gears,” by Margaret Ronald, a dirigible journeys to an isolated land and discovers people and animals merged with machine parts. Radio Jones finds a way to listen in on the Naked Brains, who rule the world, while Rudy the Red fights against the oppressors in “Zeppelin City,” by Michael Swanwick& Eileen Gunn.