Connie Willis

"When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate's UFO-themed wedding-complete with a true-believer bridegroom-she can't help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don't exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one"--

Pop culture, chaos theory, and matters of the heart collide in this unique novella from the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Doomsday Book. Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennett O'Reilly works with monkey-group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep....

For Jeff Johnston, a young historical researcher for a Civil War novelist, reality is redefined on a bitter cold night near the close of a lingering winter. He meets Annie, an intense and lovely young woman suffering from vivid, intense nightmares. Haunted by the dreamer and her unrelenting dreams, Jeff leads Annie on an emotional odyssey through the heartland of the Civil War in search of a cure. On long-silenced battlefields their relationship blossoms-two...

A psychologist specializing in near-death experiences, Dr. Joanna Lander has spent two years recording the experiences of those who have been declared clinically dead and lived to tell about it. A new doctor has arrived at Mercy General, one with the power to give Joanna the chance to get as close to death as anyone can. A brilliant young neurologist, Dr. Richard Wright has come up with a way to manufacture the near-death experience using a psychoactive...

'Connie Willis deploys the apparatus of science fiction to illuminate character and relationships, and her writing is fresh, subtle, and deeply moving.'-The New York Times Book Review Findriddy and Carson are two explorers sent to Boohte to survey the ridges and scrub-covered hills of the planet. Back home, their adventures are followed by countless breathless fans, but the reality is far less romantic as they deal with dust, nitpicking regulations,...

"Ori's holidays are an endless series of elaborately awful meals cooked by her one-time stepfather Dave's latest bride. Attended by a loose assemblage of family, Ori particularly dreads Grandma Elving, grandmother of Dave's fourth wife, and her rhapsodizing about the Christmas she worked at Woolworth's in the 1950s. And, of course, she hates being condescended to by beautiful, popular Sloane and her latest handsome pre-med or pre-law boyfriend. But...

Collects twelve Christmas tales with a speculative twist, in an expanded edition of the author's "Miracle and Other Christmas Stories." --Publisher