Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle

Dust jacket by Michael Wm Kaluta

When New York Times Bestselling writer Tad Williams described Peter S.Beagle as a 'bandit prince out to steal reader's hearts' he touched ona truth that readers have known for fifty years. Beagle, whose workhas touched generations of readers around the world, has spun rich,romantic and very funny tales that have beguiled and enchanted readersof all ages.

Undeniably, his most famous work is the much loved classic, The LastUnicorn, which tells of unicorn who sets off on quest to discoverwhether she is the last of her kind, and of the people she meets onher journey. Never prolific, The Last Unicorn is one of only fivenovels Beagle has published since A Fine and Private Place appeared in1960, and was followed by The Folk of the Air, The Innkeeper's Song,and Tamsin.

During the first forty years of his career Beagle also wrote a smallhandful, scarcely a dozen, short stories. Classics like 'Come LadyDeath', 'Lila and the Werewolf', 'Julie's Unicorn', 'ProfessorGottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros', and the tales that make up GiantBones. And then, starting just five years ago, he turned hisattention to short fiction in earnest, and produced a stunning arrayof new stories including the Hugo and Nebula Award winning follow upto The Last Unicorn, 'Two Hearts', WSFA Small Press Award winner 'ElRegalo', and wonderful stories like the surrealist 'The Last andOnly', the haunting 'The Rabbi's Hobby' and others.

Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle collects the very best ofthese stories, over 200,000 words worth, ranging across 45 years of his career from earlystories to freshly minted tales that will surprise and amaze readers.It's a book which shows, more than any other, just how successful thisbandit prince from the streets of New York has been at stealing ourhearts and underscores how much we hope he'll keep on doing so.

Limited: 250 signed numbered copies
Trade: Fully cloth-bound hardcover copies

Table of Contents:

• Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros
• The Last and Only
• Come Lady Death
• El Regalo
• Julie's Unicorn
• The Last Song of Sirit Byar
• Lila the Werewolf
• What Tune the Enchantress Plays
• Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel
• Salt Wine
• Two Hearts
• Giant Bones
• King Pelles the Sure
• Vanishing
• The Tale of Junko and Sayuri
• The Rock in the Park
• We Never Talk About My Brother
• The Rabbi's Hobby

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):
'Beagle plays on the heartstrings like a master musician, and this definitive collection, a magnificent grand tour of his many created worlds, will thrill his legion of fans.'

From Booklist:
''What Tune the Enchantress Plays' is the irritable dramatic monologue, delivered to a demon, of a woman tricked out of the love of her life and her subsequent vengeance; it's utterly convincing, for Beagle catches precisely the voice of just such a not-in-this-world character. 'Vanishing' is a ghost story about atonement and, just possibly, redemptive change by a man who let a moment of horror at the Berlin wall in 1963 ruin his life. The autobiographically tinted 'The Rock in the Park' and 'The Rabbi's Hobby' are about, respectively, a boy's run-ins with centaurs (in Central Park, yet) and the ghost of someone who never lived. They're superb and in superb company.'

From SF Site:
'Mirror Kingdoms contains eighteen stories by Beagle that run a gamut of styles and venues, but have a tendency to look at recurring themes through different lenses. Readers who are only familiar with Beagle's The Last Unicorn will be rewarded with the follow-up tale of Schmendrick and Molly while they also have the opportunity to read more of Beagle's stories and discover how broad his talent is. The stories in Mirror Kingdoms are drawn from a broad variety of sources, many of which may have eluded Beagle's readers, meaning the stories collected, which range from 1963 through 2009 for their initial publications, are almost sure to offer something new to all readers.'

From Green Man Review:
'So I read , making happy blissy little meep! noises all the way through. True, some of the noises were blissier than others, but only because I hadn't read those particular lovelies before, and they were new, and therefore intense in the bliss-inducing department.'