Books about Stonebender from Amazon.com

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulars are anything but: time travelers, talking dogs, alcoholic vampires, cybernetic aliens--and a group of people who really, truly care about each other. It's the rare kind of place where bad pun are as appreciated as good conversation.

Time Travelers Strictly Cash is their policy, but then again everybody pays cash at Callahan's. Lay your money on the bar, name your poison, step up to the line drawn on the barroom floor, and after drinking make a toast and throw the glass into the fireplace. It's an odd tradition (don't worry about the cost--Callahan gets the glasses at a bulk discount), but one's that's led to some interesting stories.

Callahan's Secret may be something even the regulars would never guess. then again, it may be as simple as listening to those post-toast stories. After-all, like Callahan says, shared pain is lessened and shared joy in increased--a simple concept that could, after a few drinks, lead to saving the world....

This omnibus edition contains the trio of books that introduced the world to Mike Callahan, Jake Stonebender, Doc Webster, Mickey Finn, Fast Eddie Costigan, Long-Drink McGonnigle, Ralph Won Wau Wau and the rest of the regulars of Callahan's Place in the stories that helped Spider Robinson to win both a John W. Campbell Award and a legion of fans.

The discreet little bar that Jake Stonebender established a few blocks below Duval Street was named simply The Place. There, Fast Eddie Costigan learned to curse back at parrots as he played the house piano; the Reverend Tom Hauptman learned to tend bar bare-chested (without blushing), Long-Drink McGonnigle discovered the margarita and several señoritas, and all the other regulars settled into comfortable subtropical niches of their own. Nobody even noticed them save the universe.

Over time, the twice-transplanted patrons of Callahan’s Place attracted a collection of local zanies so quintessentially Key West pixilated that they made the New York originals seem, well, almost normal. The elfin little Key deer, for instance—with a stevedore’s mouth; or the merman with eczema; or Robert Heinlein’s teleporting cat.

For ten slow, merry years, life was good. The sun shone, the coffee dripped, the breeze blew just strongly enough to dissipate the smell of the puns, and little supergenius Erin grew to the verge of adolescence. Then disaster struck.

Through the gate one sunny day came a malevolent, moronic, mastodon of a Mafioso named Tony Donuts Jr., or Little Nuts (don’t ask). He’d decided to resurrect the classic protection racket in Key West—and guess which tavern he picked to hit first? Then, thanks to very poor accessorizing (she chose the wrong belt—and no, we’re not going to explain that one), Jake’s wife, Zoey, suddenly found herself in a place with no light, no heat, and no air. And no way home. The urgent question was where—precisely where—but that turned out to be a problem so complex that even the entire gang, equipped with teleportation, time travel, and telepathic syntony (you can look it up) might not be able to crack it in time.

And while all this was going on, Death himself walked into The Place. But this time he would not leave alone. . . .