This image is the cover for the book Coyote Road

Coyote Road

Stories of the archetypal Trickster from Michael Cadnum, Charles de Lint, Patricia A. McKillip, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and others.

World Fantasy Award Finalist

The mythic Trickster is both good and bad, wise and witless, sacred and profane. He appears in many different guises in world mythology, taking the form of a god in Greek legend; a coyote, raven, or rabbit in Native American lore; a meddlesome faery in English folktales; a larger-than-life human being in Germany; or the charming, seductive, and deadly kitsune of the Japanese.

In true Trickster fashion, this captivating collection of stories will elicit both laughs and gasps. A Louisiana swamp girl makes a wager with a bon à rien who fiddled the devil out of hell in Delia Sherman’s “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche.” World Fantasy Award winner Patricia A. McKillip introduces a pickpocket who tries to predict the future with stolen cards, but for whom fate has something else in store, in “The Fortune-Teller.” And in “The Dreaming Wind” by Jeffrey Ford, a seasonal gale causes havoc among humans and nature—but nothing compares to what happens when it fails to reappear.

“The anthology features tricksters of many cultures from all over the world. Along with Coyote, there are stories here of Loki, Legba, Hermes, Raven, the Monkey King of China, and the fox spirits of Japan. . . . Windling and Datlow have done their usual excellent job of selecting quality work.” —Strange Horizons

“Sophisticated and well-written.” —Fantasy Literature

Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling, Pat Murphy, Steve Berman, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman, Richard Bowes, Ellen Klages, Patricia A. McKillip, Theodora Goss, Charles de Lint, Katherine Vaz, Caroline Stevermer, Midori Snyder, Michael Cadnum, Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Wein, Jeffrey Ford, Holly Black, Kelly Link, Carol Emshwiller, Jedediah Berry, Will Shetterly, Kim Antieau, Jane Yolen, Kij Johnson, Carolyn Dunn, Elizabeth Gatland

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.  

Open Road Media