Featuring 2007 Hugo and Nebula Award winner “Two Hearts” Washington Science Fiction Small Press Award winner “El Regalo”
The beloved author of The Last Unicorn returns with the signature elegance and originality that has earned him comparisons to J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, and Kurt Vonnegut. Readers seeking magic, wonder, and mystery need look no further than these resonant new stories of bold adventure, sly humor, and resounding depth.
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Limited Hardcover
The beloved author of The Last Unicorn returns with the signature elegance and originality that has earned him comparisons to J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, and Kurt Vonnegut. Readers seeking magic, wonder, and mystery need look no further. In these resonant new stories, some appearing for the first time, you will find bold adventure, sly humor, and resounding depth.
In the thrilling and beautiful “Two Hearts,” return to the extraordinary world of The Last Unicorn. Observe the World’s Most Annoying Eight-Year-Old bend time, fate, and household chores to his sorcerous will. Learn how Soukyan met the Fox, and why a stolen dream might be more dangerous than an unstoppable assassin. Discover the price of a merman’s treasure, match wits with the man who saw right through Sherlock Holmes, and redefine feline style with Gordon, the self-made cat.
The Line Between is a captivating blend of traditional and contemporary fantasy, crafted by the field’s most remarkable imagination. It is a collection you will return to again and again and treasure forever.
“For all their variety—‘Four Fables,’ a children’s story for all ages, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, an old tar’s tall tale, a sequel to one novel (The Last Unicorn) and a prequel to another (The Innkeeper’s Song, 1993), and the germ of a prospective witch novel—all ten stories in this book are lucid and refreshing as spring water, full of amusement, humanity, and wisdom.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Delicate shadings and subtle prose.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Each one of the stories gathered here is aimed directly at the heart….”
—SF Site
“His third and best collection…a cornucopia of delights; mark this as a major contender for Collection of the Year.”
—Locus
“At his best, Peter S. Beagle outshines the moon, the sun, the stars, the entire galaxy.”
—Seattle Times
“Everything here is quite wonderful.”
—Green Man Review
“A wonderful collection…. Each story is a gem…. Read it for any reason you can find, but read it.”
—SFRevu
“Everything Beagle writes is a pleasure to read.”
—Denver Post
“Peter S. Beagle has both opulence of imagination and mastery of style.”
—New York Times Book Review
Peter S. Beagle is the best-selling author of The Last Unicorn, which has sold a reported five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His other novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has been collected in four volumes by Tachyon Publications, including The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, The Line Between, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Sleight of Hand. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Praise for Peter S. Beagle
“[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely—and triumphantly—on his own feet.”
—The Saturday Review
“… One of my favorite writers.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness
“The only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”
—Booklist
“Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”
—Tad Williams, author of The Dragonbone Chair and The Very Best of Tad Williams
“It’s a fully rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle’s imagination…an originality…that is wholly his own.”
—Kirkus
“Not only does Peter Beagle make his fantasy worlds come vividly, beautifully alive; he does it for the people who enter them.”
—Poul Anderson, author of The High Crusade
“Peter S. Beagle is the magician we all apprenticed ourselves to. Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured.”
—Lisa Goldstein, author of The Red Magician and The Uncertain Places
“Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century’s great writers in any arena he chose; we readers must feel blessed that Beagle picked fantasy as a homeland. Magic pumps like blood through the veins of his stories. Imparting passionately breathing, singing, laughing reality to the marvelous is his great gift to us all.”
—Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar
Praise for Sleight of Hand
“Short story and fantasy lovers will devour these tasty tidbits that whet the appetite for more.”
—Library Journal
“Wise, warm, and deep.”
—New York Times
“Multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Beagle opens readers’ eyes to wonder with his latest collection of 13 short stories. Each piece bridges the rich intersection of fantasy and fairy tale, reality and possibility, exploring predestination, fate, and the power of love through characters that come to vivid, three-dimensional life within a few short pages. Beagle’s lyrical writing is set in a wide range of landscapes both familiar and fresh, with twists on Jack and the Beanstalk, monsters and dragons, a singing enchantress, ghostly photographs, and a modern werewolf tale. ‘The Bridge Partner’ is more noir than fantasy yet fits within the collection quite well, as does the deeply chilling, experimental, and dark ‘Dirae.’ ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon’ features two lost children and an encounter with an early version of Schmendrick the Magician from his classic novel, The Last Unicorn. Each story is introduced with some background about its origin.”
—Library Journal
“Satisfying.”
—Washington Post Book World
“This 13-story anthology will entice even the most jaded reader to read long hours into the night…. Sleight of Hand will beguile and enchant.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Beagle still has the power to surprise…a new collection of stories by one of the all-time greats.”
—The Guardian
“Sleight of Hand is a strong collection by an author whose skill has only improved with time…a must-have.” —Tor.com
“Few can match [Beagle] when it comes to a particular mix of the fantastic and the ordinary, with a tinge of nostalgia. As one character observes, the magic is in the telling, always.”
—Interzone
“After reading Sleight of Hand, I know exactly why Beagle has this mythic reputation as one of the best of the best in fantasy and science-fiction literary circles. The man is amazing. Nearly every story in this collection was like a spell.”
—Drunken Zombie
“Demonstrates yet again why [Beagle’s] perhaps the finest fantasy writer at short lengths working today”
—Locus
“…not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Marquez, Allende, and even Borges.”
—The American Culture
“Engaging and wide-ranging selection of fantasies…the perfect book.”
—Strange Horizons
“There’s quiet power here, and delicate craftsmanship, and, most of all, a genuine emotional response that few short-story collections can generate.”
—Green Man Review
Praise for A Fine & Private Place
“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places…told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Both sepulchral and oddly appealing…. [Beagle’s] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm.”
—TIME Magazine
“A Fine & Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition…. [I]t’s a great book in a lovely affordable package.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Delightful!”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death and love…a book that has endured for a reason.”
—The Agony Column
“A wonderful work of literature…a gem of a novel.”
—BookLoons
“Over a cold beverage and a hot bowl of chili, Peter Beagle recently told me how he came to write A Fine and & Private Place. He was just 19 years old at the time, the length of time that Mr. Rebeck spent in that cemetery. He was working as a counselor at a boys’ summer camp. Once the campers were settled for the night there wasn’t much for the counselors to do. Those who had sweethearts at the girls’ camp across the lake would borrow canoes and paddle across to see them. Peter had no such luck, he told me, so he warmed up his rattly little portable typewriter, cracked open a ream of paper, and starting writing a book. We are all incredibly lucky that Peter had no girlfriend that summer.”
—Dick Lupoff, SF Site
“One of the great fantasy novels of all time.”
—ICCFA Magazine
“An amazing read…. If fantastically developed characters trapped between love and death appeal to you, this is a nearly perfect book.”
—Paperblog
A Dance With Emilia
El Regalo
Four Fables:
The Fable of the Moth,
The Fable of the Octopus,
The Fable of the Ostrich,
The Fable of the Tyrannosaurus Rex
Gordon, the Self-Made Cat
Mr. Sigerson
Quarry
Salt Wine
Two Hearts
The Line Between
Peter S. Beagle
2007 Mythopoeic Award nominee
Featuring
2007 Hugo and Nebula Award winner “Two Hearts”
Washington Science Fiction Small Press Award winner “El Regalo”
The beloved author of The Last Unicorn returns with the signature elegance and originality that has earned him comparisons to J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, and Kurt Vonnegut. Readers seeking magic, wonder, and mystery need look no further than these resonant new stories of bold adventure, sly humor, and resounding depth.
The Line Between
by Peter S. Beagle
ISBN: 9781892391360
Published: 2006
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Limited Hardcover
The beloved author of The Last Unicorn returns with the signature elegance and originality that has earned him comparisons to J. R. R. Tolkien, Fritz Leiber, and Kurt Vonnegut. Readers seeking magic, wonder, and mystery need look no further. In these resonant new stories, some appearing for the first time, you will find bold adventure, sly humor, and resounding depth.
In the thrilling and beautiful “Two Hearts,” return to the extraordinary world of The Last Unicorn. Observe the World’s Most Annoying Eight-Year-Old bend time, fate, and household chores to his sorcerous will. Learn how Soukyan met the Fox, and why a stolen dream might be more dangerous than an unstoppable assassin. Discover the price of a merman’s treasure, match wits with the man who saw right through Sherlock Holmes, and redefine feline style with Gordon, the self-made cat.
The Line Between is a captivating blend of traditional and contemporary fantasy, crafted by the field’s most remarkable imagination. It is a collection you will return to again and again and treasure forever.
“For all their variety—‘Four Fables,’ a children’s story for all ages, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, an old tar’s tall tale, a sequel to one novel (The Last Unicorn) and a prequel to another (The Innkeeper’s Song, 1993), and the germ of a prospective witch novel—all ten stories in this book are lucid and refreshing as spring water, full of amusement, humanity, and wisdom.”
—Booklist, starred review
“Delicate shadings and subtle prose.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Each one of the stories gathered here is aimed directly at the heart….”
—SF Site
“His third and best collection…a cornucopia of delights; mark this as a major contender for Collection of the Year.”
—Locus
“At his best, Peter S. Beagle outshines the moon, the sun, the stars, the entire galaxy.”
—Seattle Times
“Everything here is quite wonderful.”
—Green Man Review
“A wonderful collection…. Each story is a gem…. Read it for any reason you can find, but read it.”
—SFRevu
“Everything Beagle writes is a pleasure to read.”
—Denver Post
“Peter S. Beagle has both opulence of imagination and mastery of style.”
—New York Times Book Review
Peter S. Beagle is the best-selling author of The Last Unicorn, which has sold a reported five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His other novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has been collected in four volumes by Tachyon Publications, including The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, The Line Between, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Sleight of Hand. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Praise for Peter S. Beagle
“[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely—and triumphantly—on his own feet.”
—The Saturday Review
“… One of my favorite writers.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness
“The only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”
—Booklist
“Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”
—Tad Williams, author of The Dragonbone Chair and The Very Best of Tad Williams
“It’s a fully rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle’s imagination…an originality…that is wholly his own.”
—Kirkus
“Not only does Peter Beagle make his fantasy worlds come vividly, beautifully alive; he does it for the people who enter them.”
—Poul Anderson, author of The High Crusade
“Peter S. Beagle is the magician we all apprenticed ourselves to. Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured.”
—Lisa Goldstein, author of The Red Magician and The Uncertain Places
“Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century’s great writers in any arena he chose; we readers must feel blessed that Beagle picked fantasy as a homeland. Magic pumps like blood through the veins of his stories. Imparting passionately breathing, singing, laughing reality to the marvelous is his great gift to us all.”
—Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar
Praise for Sleight of Hand
“Short story and fantasy lovers will devour these tasty tidbits that whet the appetite for more.”
—Library Journal
“Wise, warm, and deep.”
—New York Times
“Multiple Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Beagle opens readers’ eyes to wonder with his latest collection of 13 short stories. Each piece bridges the rich intersection of fantasy and fairy tale, reality and possibility, exploring predestination, fate, and the power of love through characters that come to vivid, three-dimensional life within a few short pages. Beagle’s lyrical writing is set in a wide range of landscapes both familiar and fresh, with twists on Jack and the Beanstalk, monsters and dragons, a singing enchantress, ghostly photographs, and a modern werewolf tale. ‘The Bridge Partner’ is more noir than fantasy yet fits within the collection quite well, as does the deeply chilling, experimental, and dark ‘Dirae.’ ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon’ features two lost children and an encounter with an early version of Schmendrick the Magician from his classic novel, The Last Unicorn. Each story is introduced with some background about its origin.”
—Library Journal
“Satisfying.”
—Washington Post Book World
“This 13-story anthology will entice even the most jaded reader to read long hours into the night…. Sleight of Hand will beguile and enchant.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Beagle still has the power to surprise…a new collection of stories by one of the all-time greats.”
—The Guardian
“Sleight of Hand is a strong collection by an author whose skill has only improved with time…a must-have.” —Tor.com
“Few can match [Beagle] when it comes to a particular mix of the fantastic and the ordinary, with a tinge of nostalgia. As one character observes, the magic is in the telling, always.”
—Interzone
“After reading Sleight of Hand, I know exactly why Beagle has this mythic reputation as one of the best of the best in fantasy and science-fiction literary circles. The man is amazing. Nearly every story in this collection was like a spell.”
—Drunken Zombie
“Demonstrates yet again why [Beagle’s] perhaps the finest fantasy writer at short lengths working today”
—Locus
“…not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Marquez, Allende, and even Borges.”
—The American Culture
“Engaging and wide-ranging selection of fantasies…the perfect book.”
—Strange Horizons
“There’s quiet power here, and delicate craftsmanship, and, most of all, a genuine emotional response that few short-story collections can generate.”
—Green Man Review
Praise for A Fine & Private Place
“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places…told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Both sepulchral and oddly appealing…. [Beagle’s] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm.”
—TIME Magazine
“A Fine & Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition…. [I]t’s a great book in a lovely affordable package.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Delightful!”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death and love…a book that has endured for a reason.”
—The Agony Column
“A wonderful work of literature…a gem of a novel.”
—BookLoons
“Over a cold beverage and a hot bowl of chili, Peter Beagle recently told me how he came to write A Fine and & Private Place. He was just 19 years old at the time, the length of time that Mr. Rebeck spent in that cemetery. He was working as a counselor at a boys’ summer camp. Once the campers were settled for the night there wasn’t much for the counselors to do. Those who had sweethearts at the girls’ camp across the lake would borrow canoes and paddle across to see them. Peter had no such luck, he told me, so he warmed up his rattly little portable typewriter, cracked open a ream of paper, and starting writing a book. We are all incredibly lucky that Peter had no girlfriend that summer.”
—Dick Lupoff, SF Site
“One of the great fantasy novels of all time.”
—ICCFA Magazine
“An amazing read…. If fantastically developed characters trapped between love and death appeal to you, this is a nearly perfect book.”
—Paperblog
Visit the Peter S. Beagle website.
Introduction
A Dance With Emilia
El Regalo
Four Fables:
The Fable of the Moth,
The Fable of the Octopus,
The Fable of the Ostrich,
The Fable of the Tyrannosaurus Rex
Gordon, the Self-Made Cat
Mr. Sigerson
Quarry
Salt Wine
Two Hearts
Other books by this author…
The Urban Fantasy Anthology
Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, eds.
$15.95 Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product pageWe Never Talk About My Brother
Peter S. Beagle
$14.95 Add to cartSleight of Hand
Peter S. Beagle
$14.95 Read moreA Fine & Private Place
Peter S. Beagle
$14.95 Add to cartThe Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche and Other Odd Acquaintances
Peter S. Beagle
$14.95 Add to cartThe Secret History of Fantasy
Peter S. Beagle, ed.
$15.95 Read more