Heart of the Leopard

A mentally ill man buys an old lamp from a Middle Eastern man and finds it to contain a djinni--or is it just a hallucination? French scientists experimenting with antimatter manage to blow a 200-mile wide crater in the surface of the Earth, with all sorts of dire consequences, and now some other nations want some payback... A young American traveler in Egypt comes across a strange man who offers him a unique opportunity for time travel, but how to count its costs? Herein you will find...
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A mentally ill man buys an old lamp from a Middle Eastern man and finds it to contain a djinni--or is it just a hallucination? French scientists experimenting with antimatter manage to blow a 200-mile wide crater in the surface of the Earth, with all sorts of dire consequences, and now some other nations want some payback... A young American traveler in Egypt comes across a strange man who offers him a unique opportunity for time travel, but how to count its costs? Herein you will find sixteen short stories ranging from near-future sci-fi stories to contemporary fantasies to a ghost story. The characters are middle-class children, Yemeni villagers, American high school students, ancient Anasazi Indians, and Middle Eastern terrorists, but they share in common that odd things are happening, and they must take action. Some of the stories have happy endings, some are more troubled, and a few take a dim view of the human (and godly) condition. Read this collection for sixteen needle-sharp readings of modern speculative fiction, and characters who live and breathe even as they sweat in apprehension of what Fate has brought their way...