Title: In the stone house
First published: 2000
Description: Welcome to the bizarre mind of Barry N. Malzberg, where unreality and history convolute into a strange blend of horror, fantasy and science-fiction. In The Stone House is the capstone of a prolific writing career—24 memorable stories that will impact readers with sledge-hammer force—the author's personal favorites from the last two decades.

Malzberg's cast of characters include heroes and villains like composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, explorer Christopher Columbus, mystery writers Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammet, Emily Dickinson, dictator Adolph Hitler, Tchaikovski, talk show hosts, killers, spies, the age of dinosaurs, and people caught in webs of deceit, destruction and violence, trapped in time-warps and other dimensions, in ways you never imagined.

Included is the Nebula and Hugo awards nominated story "Understanding Entropy," and "Darwinian Facts," which one critic said is "a dark and powerful and mesmerizing work." Also three powerful stories from the author's alternate histories of the lives of the Kennedy family—"Heavy Metal" (perhaps the author's finest story), "All Assassins," and the title story, "In the Stone House," (also a Hugo nomineee), which explores who really killed President John F. Kennedy, a story so powerful that it will keep you glued to the edge of your seat.

In The Stone House is an unusual, intense, almost poetic literary feast from a master storyteller who has few peers.
LC classification: PS3563.A434 I5 2000