Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions is a collection of short stories

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 and poems by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...

. It was first published in the US

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1998, and in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 in 1999.

Many of the stories in this book are reprints from other sources, such as magazine

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

s, anthologies

Anthology

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...

, and collections (including ten stories and poems from Gaiman's earlier small press miscellany Angels and Visitations

Angels and Visitations

Angels and Visitations is a collection of short fiction and nonfiction by Neil Gaiman. It was first published in the US in 1993 by DreamHaven Books.It is illustrated by Steve Bissette, Randy Broecker, Dave McKean, P...

).

Contents

The included stories and poems are different between some of the editions. The US, UK, and eBook editions have some differences in the stories they contain (see table to right):

†	Not in US print version
‡	Not in eBook version
*	Appears in eBook version as Apple

• Reading the Entrails: A Rondel
  Rondel (poem)
  A rondel is a verse form originating in French lyrical poetry, later used in the verse of other languages as well, such as English and Romanian. It is a variation of the rondeau consisting of two quatrains followed by a quintet or a sestet...
  
  
• The Wedding Present (in the introduction)
• Chivalry
• Nicholas Was...
• The Price
• Troll Bridge
• Don't Ask Jack
• The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories
• Eaten (Scenes from a Moving picture) ^†
• The White Road
• Queen of Knives (for Eric Stern's opera of the same name see Queen of Knives
  Queen of Knives
  Queen of Knives is an opera in two acts by the American composer Eric Stern. The English libretto was written by the composer. The opera premiered in Portland, Oregon on May 7, 2010 at the Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center...
  
  )
• The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch ^†‡
• Changes
• The Daughter of Owls
• Shoggoth's Old Peculiar
• Virus
• Looking for the Girl
• Only the End of the World Again
• Bay Wolf
• Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot ^†
• We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
  We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
  "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" is a short story by Neil Gaiman written in 1989. The story was first published in the British magazine Knave, and has also been included in his short story collections Angels and Visitations and Smoke and Mirrors , and in the anthology Bangs & Whimpers: Stories...
  
  
• One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock
• Cold Colours
• The Sweeper of Dreams
• Foreign Parts
• Vampire Sestina
• Mouse
• The Sea Change
• How Do You Think It Feels? ^†‡
• When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11¼
• Desert Wind
• Tastings
• In the End ^†*
• Babycakes
• Murder Mysteries
  Murder Mysteries
  "Murder Mysteries" is a fantasy short story by Neil Gaiman later collected in his collection Smoke and Mirrors. The bulk of the story is an account of the first murder in the history of the universe, before even Cain and Abel, recounted in first-person hardboiled detective fiction style by Raguel,...
  
  
• Snow, Glass, Apples
  Snow, Glass, Apples
  "Snow, Glass, Apples" is a 1994 short story written by Neil Gaiman. It was originally released as a benefit book for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and was reprinted in the anthology Love in Vein II, edited by Poppy Z...
  
  

Translations

• Dym i lustra (Polish
  Polish language
  Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
  
  ), ISBN 83-87968-54-4

• Fumaça e Espelhos (Portuguese
  Portuguese language
  Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
  
  ), ISBN 8586932620

• Tükör és Füst (Hungarian
  Hungarian language
  Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
  
  ), ISBN 963-85914-9-8

• Die Messerkönigin (German
  German language
  German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
  
  ), ISBN 3-453-17798-3 (named after the translated title of the included short story Queen of Knives); also released a 3-disc audio-book of the same title (containing 6 of the short stories), ISBN 978-3-7857-3746-0