The Best of Kage Baker

Kage Baker's death in 2010 silenced one of the most distinctive, consistently engaging voices in contemporary fiction. A late starter, Baker published her first short stories in 1997, at the age of forty-five. From then until the end of her life, she wrote prolifically and well, leaving an astonishing body of work behind.

The Best of Kage Baker is a treasure trove that gathers together twenty stories and novellas, eleven of which have never been collected anywhere. The volume is bookended by a pair of tales from her best known and best loved The Company. In "Noble Mold," Mendoza the botanist and Joseph, the ancient "facilitator," find themselves in nineteenth century California, where a straightforward acquisition grows unexpectedly complex. In "The Carpet Beds of Sutro Park," an autistic Company operative named Ezra encounters a lost soul named Kristy Ann, and finds a way to give her back the world that she has lost.

Among the volume's many other highlights are a pair of brilliant Company the Hugo Award-nominated "Son, Observe the Time" and "Welcome to Olympos, Mr. Hearst," a tour de force set in the Hollywood of the 1930s. There is also a generous assortment of equally brilliant standalone tales.

These are only a few of the pleasures waiting within this book. The Best of Kage Baker is exactly what the title the best short work of a gifted and irreplaceable writer. Anyone with an interest in first-rate imaginative fiction—anyone with an interest in lovingly crafted fiction of any kind—needs to listen to this book.