The Best of Elizabeth Bear contains 27 stories and novellas, many never before collected, that encompass a range of themes, settings, ideas and emotions. The collection opens with “Covenant,” a tale of serial murder, and closes with “Erase, Erase, Erase,” a surrealist story in which the unnamed narrator, a former cult member, reflects on her life, her nebulous but guilty past, and her constantly diminishing sense of self.

• “Tideline” tells the story of Chalcedony, a former “war machine” determined to preserve the memories of her dead human companions.
• “Shoggoths in Bloom” offers a take on H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos, setting the action in a pre-WWII world marked by racism and anti-Semitism.
• “Faster Gun” is a tale of the Old West in which Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo encounter an alien artefact.
• “In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns” takes place in Bangalore, India fifty years from now and tells the story of a murder in which the victim’s body is turned inside out.
• “Sonny Liston Takes The Fall” presents an understanding of one of the iconic moments of boxing history.