Ten Twisted Tales, edited by Bill Glose

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As a kid, I was always fascinated by magic tricks--okay, I admit it; I still am fascinated--even though I never believed in the magic itself. I knew there was a logical reason my father could pull his thumb into two pieces and my sister could tell which card I�d picked from a deck of 52. And that, to me, was better than the trick itself. The mystery behind the trick. I would pester tricksters with my guesses as to how it worked until they grew tired of me and confessed or I figured it out for myself. Nothing beat that thrill of nailing it. But I had to know the reason why. When I watched Scooby Doo cartoons, I would try to figure out who was the bad guy and how were Shaggy and Scooby going to get out of their mess. So, it�s no wonder when I started reading books that I gravitated toward mystery stories. Hardy Boys, Sherlock Holmes, and, yes, even Nancy Drew. I wolfed them down, always trying to figure out whodunit before it was revealed, vibrating with pleasure as the plot wound to the moment of discovery when everything came together and it all made sense. And the biggest thrill of all was when the author fooled me, when he pulled some sort of switcheroo that left me gunning for the wrong bad guy. As I graduated to adult fiction, my love of mystery only grew. I sought out novelists who could think up plot twists that grabbed me by the throat and made me say Wow! And once I found them, I read their entire backlists and everything they came out with from that point on. I held no prejudice to genre either. Whether the stories were of Heinlein�s sci-fi bent, Agatha Christie�s investigational style, or O�Henry�s romantic flavor, as long as the story had an ingenious twist I was satisfied. So, dear reader, dear lover of mysteries, I present to you this collection of Ten Twisted Tales. Sly, seductive, vengeful, sometimes humorous, sometimes macabre, each of them presents its own flavor of mystery, its own devious twist just begging you to figure out. But fear not; you own a backstage pass to this magic show. After the magicians impress you with their tricks, the secrets will be revealed in a moment of clarity that leaves you satisfied. And thrilled. And dying for more. TABLE OF CONTENTS Fall, by Madison Bailey Beneficiary, by Bill Walsh Deadly Game, by Guy Loseg Postcards, by Russ Flynn Jill of All Trades, by Margaret Karmazin Playing the Fool, by Dylan McAneeny Dishonor Among Thieves, by Natasha Morgan A Taste of Power, by Bruno Mackenzie She Rode a Train, by Timothy McCoy A Marriage of Convenience, by John Broussard

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