Demons to Doughnuts

DEMONS TO DOUGHNUTS joins two novellas as different as a cold December moon and strawberry pudding. THE TIPTOP JELLY DOUGHNUT, all warm sunshine and good eats, will delight dreamers and lovers of jelly doughnuts from eight to 108. It is set in a lovely land called the Kids' Republic where nobody over ten is allowed. Here the government is run (quite well) by babies. At the helm is President Baby Bumkey, seventeen months old and a born leader. For diplomatic reasons it is urgent that the baker of certain sublime jelly doughnuts be found so he can supply them for a vital state banquet. But the baker of these glorious doughnuts, having reached the age of ten, has been obliged to leave the comfort and safety of the Kids' Republic. Three children and a Six O'Clock Cat are chosen to make the perilous journey Somewhere Out There to find him. Will they succeed?

In contrast, THE LUCIFER GYPSIES is a haunting chiller set in nineteenth-century New England. In this dark and fascinating tale a casket-maker inadvertently insults a band of gypsies who happen to be wards of the Devil. In their fury they inflict on the poor shopkeeper a fiendishly cunning curse which he must somehow overcome to survive.