Tails of Wonder and Imagination

What is it about the cat that captivates the creative imagination? No other creature has inspired so many authors to take pen to page. Mystery, horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories have all been written about cats.

From legendary editor Ellen Datlow comes Tails of Wonder and Imagination, which collects the best of the last thirty years of science fiction and fantasy stories about cats by some of today’s most popular authors. With uncollected stories by Stephen King, Carol Emshwiller, Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Elizabeth Hand, Dennis Danvers, and Theodora Goss and a previously unpublished story by Susanna Clarke, plus feline-centric fiction by Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, George R. R. Martin, Lucius Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates, Graham Joyce, Catherynne M. Valente, Michael Marshall Smith, and many others.

Tails of Wonder and Imagination features more than 200,000 words of stories in which cats are heroes and stories in which they’re villains; tales of domestic cats, tigers, lions, mythical part-cat beings, people transformed into cats, cats transformed into people. And yes, even a few cute cats.

Edited by Ellen Datlow
Cat stories by:
Lawrence Block
Susanna Clarke
Charles de Lint
Carole Nels on Douglas
Neil Gaiman
Stephen King
Joyce Carol Oates
Kelly Link
George R. R. Martin
Sharyn McCrumb
and many others

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for almost forty years. She was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Sci Fiction and has edited about ninety anthologies. Datlow has also won lifetime achievement awards from three prominent genre organizations, and currently acquires short fiction for Tor.com. She lives in New York City.