Drastic Measures

There was a definite bulge in the area he’d pointed to and, the girl pondered, if it were really a knife, it was a large one. She pulled on the door handle only to realize it was locked and she jiggled it as nonchalantly as possible, but was too afraid to make any other move, fearing more than that would provoke an attack. As if he were a hungry animal in the woods and she a helpless mouse that had stumbled unluckily across his path. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves. So the girl concentrated on breathing, steadying her pulse, which had become rapid, and focusing on the signs they drove past. She tried to remember each street name and turn they took. Tried to create a sort of map in her mind because that’s what a news program had taught her once, years ago, to do when you’re being kidnapped.

--From Melissa Lyon's Snow

DRASTIC MEASURES are tales of where the human mind goes when it's cornered. New discovery MELISSA LYONS is the most powerful new voice in suspense since Dean Koontz with her story, "Snow."

Editor BEN PARRIS adds two stories of his own edited by Fantasy & Science Fiction contributor KEN ALTABEF. In "Murder in Songjiang": All Brian wanted to do was teach English in China. All the U.S. State Department wanted of the CIA was a quiet investigation of how Brian got killed there. Espionage trainee Mike Spoto stood in the middle and cared about his training case too much for his own good.

ROBERT HORSEMAN presents "Déjà vu": There are two kinds of déjà vu: The kind where you remember things that never happened, and the kind Daniel has; BRAD POST gives us "The Trees": Sharon had second thoughts about her new husband Johnny. Her father detested the man, and the trees didn't like either of them.

Those tales and more by new discoveries SUSAN DAVID, CATHY DOUGLAS, KATE LARKINDALE, MICHELLE D KEYES, and GERALD VINCENT. (Note that the deluxe print edition of Drastic Measures contains a bonus story by George Clayton Johnson.)

"I found Drastic Measures to be an invigorating voyage into the macabre and mysterious, and certainly with a variety of tastes to touch one’s appetite."

--The Amazing Kreskin (July 2012)

DAVID MACK (The 4400), who wrote the foreword for this volume, says, "You're in for a wild ride."