From a boy witch to a parental cyborg, from a homeless cat to a misunderstood hen, from a girl trapped beneath a building to a lonely empress on a faraway planet-you've never read a collection of stories like this one!

34 STORIES / 124 BELOVED contains the finalists from the 2020 Literary Taxidermy Short Story Competition-a contest that invites aspiring writers to stitch together their own stories using the first and last lines from a classic work of fiction. This year's participants were given two choices: the opening and closing lines of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, or Beloved by Toni Morrison. 34 STORIES contains the Huxley finalists, while 124 BELOVED contains the Morrison finalists-but both collections have been bundled together into a single volume called 34 STORIES / 124 BELOVED.

Yes, that's right-this year's anthology is literally two books in one. Each anthology is rotated 180 relative to the other, then bound together. Known as an "upside-down" or "reversible" book, the tête-bêche format (if you'll pardon our French) has been used for devotional books since the nineteenth century, and more recently for genre paperbacks in the 60s and 70s. Books bound in this way have no back cover, but instead have two front covers; and when you reach the end of the text of one of the anthologies, the next page is the (upside-down) last page of the other.

Mystery, suspense, science fiction, metafiction, historical fiction, horror, poetry, and humor-these literary taxidermy stories are as different from one another as the 20 incredible authors who dreamt them up. Come, meet this year's finalists from around the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand. We're certain you'll enjoy their incredible work!

Learn more about literary taxidermy, as well as future contests, by visiting literarytaxidermy.com.