I don't read much fantasy, but I picked up this month's Realms of Fantasy because it had stories by three people I know:

"Fable From a Cage" by Tim Pratt

"Return Stores" by Karen Traviss

and

"Here After Life" by Devon Monk

I met both Tim and Devon at this year's WorldCon, which was a lot of fun. They're both extremely nice people and extremely good writers. Devon, like me, was a workshop moderator.

And Karen was a Clarion 2000 classmate. She's sold a number of stories recently, and she's got a series of novels coming out from HarperCollins starting next year. She appeared in Asimov's earlier this year in an issue with Mike Jasper, too.

Anyway, it's cool to see friends and acquaintances having some success.

I just read Tim's story, and it's pretty cool, centering around a thief who unwantingly gets paired with a "Fair Folk", who makes him eat an owl, among other things. Anyway, it's a lot of fun, with a couple of neat twists and turns.

Karen's story I had critiqued in draft form, and it's cool to see the story in print. The art on the stories is also especially cool. The artwork is higher quality than I've seen on many books.

So if you're in the bookstore, pick up a copy (it's the one with the big-ass pic of Legolas on the cover) and have a look.