Games Creatures Play

Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner are your announcers for this all-new story collection of the most peculiar plays ever made…
Sports fans live and die by their teams’ successes and failures—though not literally. But these fourteen authors have written spirited—in more ways than one—new tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched.
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris’s “The Blue Hereafter,” Manfred Bernardo learns about softball from a certain blond barmaid in Louisiana.
Life-and-death stakes make the competition get serious in New York Times bestseller William Kent Krueger’s “Hide and Seek.”
New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey’s “False Knight on the Road” features a high-stakes drag race on a foggy mountain road between a clever young bootlegger and a mysterious stranger.
In New York Times bestselling author Laura Lippman’s “Ice,” a young girl learns the true story behind a bit of neighborhood folklore.
New York Times bestseller Seanan McGuire presents “Jammed,” in which a chimera loose during the Roller Derby makes it anyone’s guess as to who will still be skating by the time the buzzer sounds.
In #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson’s “Dreamer,” a game of cops and robbers is a new challenge when the players are able to switch bodies at will.
"During the long drive of the day before, Manfred Bernardo had had plenty of time to reflect on the fact that he would stick out like a sore thumb in a small town. In fact, he’d been rather proud of that certainty. He’d argued mentally with Xylda the whole way from Tennessee to Louisiana. Since Xylda had died the previous winter, that was the only way Manfred could talk to her, but Xylda herself was not so limited. She played games with her grandson, in his dreams. Sending him to Bon Temps, Louisiana, seemed to be the opening move in a new one.
On this sunny, cool afternoon in spring, Manfred scanned the locals around him in the crowded stands, confident in his own street cred. To his chagrin, Manfred observed several people decorated with as much ink as he was, and several more who had facial piercings. Maybe none of them had gone to the same lengths as Manfred, but two or three were in the same
ballpark. The comparison made Manfred smile, because he was actually in a ballpark for a fast-pitch softball tournament. According to the schedule a buxom brunette softball mom had sold him when he was paying his entrance fee (and she’d been wearing a T-shirt that read Softball Mom!), he
was sitting in the stands of Field One to watch the opening game of a two- day tournament."