Something Magic This Way Comes ed. Martin Greenberg

Something Magic This Way Comes ed. Martin H. Greenberg.

All of the short stories in this collection have the central theme of magic. Some are haunting, "Still Life, with Cats" (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) and "Houdini's Mirror"(Russell Davis) while others verge on the comical with feminist overtones, "Angel in the Cabbages," (Fran LaPlace).

While the magic isn't new (fairies or parallel universes), the circumstances are contemporary. In the best stories the main characters use magic as a transformative force. A jaded war correspondent gains a new perspective when he has a brush with magic in "Still Life, With Cats." An older man with dementia finds a way to convene with his dead wife in "Houdini's Mirror."

In "Winds of Change," (Linda A.B. Davis) a young girl, whose body has been ravaged by disease, saves the town by exhibiting a rare talent--the power to call the wind. In the short story, "In a DarkWood, Dreaming" (Esther Friesner), a boy saves his brother from gangs by calling upon a hunter god, Oxossi. Unfortunately, the hunter god requires "one life for another life."

In "Something Virtual This Way Comes" (Laura Resnick) a woman, who is frustrated by the gremlins in her computer is suprised to learn they can speak to her.

Less successful offerings are "Tears of Gold"(Paul Crilley), "Star Cats"(Charles Edgar Quinn), and "The Thing in the Woods" (Harry Turtledove).

Secret of Lost Things: a Novel by Sheridan Hay

Review of  The Secret of Lost Things: A Novel by Sheridan Hay.

The Secret of Lost Things is a captivating literary who-done-it. After her mother dies, an eighteen-year-old from Tasmania makes a transformative journey to New York. Rosemary takes a job at the Arcade, a bookstore that sells everything from paperbacks to valuable rare books. At the Arcade she begins her unique education.

The Arcade's employees are each eccentric in their own way. Mr. Pike is extremely parsimonious, Mr. Weiss is an albino, Mr. Mitchell looks like a large Australian bird, Pearl is a opera-singing transvestite, and Oscar is an emotionally-distant man who keeps Rosemary under a Svengali-like thrall. Rosemary, however, feels they each have something to teach her.

Like Ahab in Moby-Dick, each of the characters is obsessed with something. Instead of a whale, all seem to be obsessed with finding a lost Herman Melville manuscript, The Isle of the Cross.
 Each of the characters in the Arcade are objects in a Wunderkammen; in fact, Hays has Rosemary visit Peabody's Wunderkammen. Mr. Weiss views Rosemary as a "curiousity" because she comes from Tasmania and because of her wild, red hair.

In Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Pike, Rosemary tries to imagine a benevolent and stern father. She is herself, like Ishmael of Moby Dick, an orphan searching for her identity.

In a subplot, Hays introduces Lilian and her son Sergio, one of the "lost" from Argentina's dirty war.

At his request, Rosemary begins a strange collusion with Oscar Jarno. She also becomes, against her will, an assistant to Mr. Weiss. In a sense, she is their object to do with what they will; that is, until she breaks free from their spell.

Repressed desire, madness, revenge, embezzlement, betrayal, and the lost manuscript by Herman Melville all play a part in this auspicious literary debut.