Title Crawling Between Heaven and Earth Series --- Author Sarah A. Hoyt Cover Art --- Publisher Baen - 2002 First Printing --- Category Anthology Warnings None Main Characters See below Main Elements See below

• "Elvis Died for Your Sins"
• "Like Dreams of Waking"
• "Ariadne's Skein"
• "Thirst"
• "Dear John"
• "Trafalgar Square"
• "The Green Bay Tree"
• "Another George"
• "Songs"
• "They Vain Worlds"
• "Crawling Between Heaven and Earth"

Eleven previously uncollected fictions. Includes reprints from the pages of Absolute Magnitude, Analog, Dark Regions Magazine, Dreams of Decadence, and Weird Tales, three original stories, plus the novelette "Songs."

I've been reading a fair number of anthologies lately, and this must be one of my favorites. Overall the stories were strong and well written, not a case of a couple good ones and a whole bunch of mediocre ones. And they are all different, from science fiction to fantasy to historical. The one uniting theme being that none of the stories had much of a happy ending, some bittersweet but not outright happy, and several had some interesting twists.

There are several I really enjoyed. Elvis Died for Your Sins because of the unique use of the characters, Like Dreams Waking for the "was it real" aspect, Ariadne's Skein for the sad ending, Thirst for taking place in ancient Rome, Another George for a unique look at dragons, Songs again for the bittersweet ending, Thy Vain Worlds for being just so strange and unexpected.

And of course Crawling Between Heaven and Earth, part of Hoyt's Shakespearean series of which I've read Ill Met By Moonlight and have been trying without much success to get the rest of the series.

This collection used to be available on the Baen Free Library site but it was taken down.