History Literature / BruceCovillesBookOf

* PortalDoor: The door in ''One Chance'', allowing access to another world.

** The title character of ''The Teacher Who Could Hear'' with a form of [[MySignificanceSenseIsTingling clairvoyance]] who can hear things, including people's deaths [[spoiler:including her own. Her successor in the classroom has a different version, and is able to see ghosts.]]

* DreamWeaver: Weztix, the Lord of Nightmares in ''There's Nothing Under the Bed'', weaves bad dreams and transfers them into the head of one of his delivery boys, who then rises up underneath someone's bed and whispers the contents of the nightmare to the sleeper.

* AcroFatic: "The Fat Man." The title character is surprisingly spry and agile for such a morbidly obese guy.

* AndIMustScream: At the end of "Soul Survivor," the baseball player who was sharing his body with a ghost has his own soul pushed into the mind of a dolphin in an aquarium. He spends the rest of his life trapped, unable to communicate that he's actually a person, and desperately trying to free himself.
* BadassNormal: "The Tenant Who Frightened a Ghost" is about a young woman who moves into her first apartment, only to discover that it's haunted by a gentleman. Rather than panic or flee, she instead claims that ''she'' is a ghost, too--and an absolutely horrible one, who shrieks and groans and causes all manner of horrible apparitions. The current ghost, terrified at the thought of sharing the space with such a wicked spirit, promptly leaves, and the woman happily settles in.
* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: This occurs in "Soul Survivor," where the ghostly narrator and the man who initially allowed him to stay begin fighting for total control of "their" body.
* BodySurf: "Soul Survivor" is about a ghost who discovers that he can jump into any living person (and even some animals), a power that all spirits possess. It's PlayedForDrama when he forms a partnership with a baseball player who, unlike his previous hosts, is aware of his presence and initially agrees to share his body. Things take a turn for the worse after the baseball player tells the world about the situation, is deemed insane, comes to believe that his psychiatrists are right, and attempts to force the ghost out.
* DownerEnding: In "Soul Survivor," the possessing ghost expels the soul of the man he's been possessing into a dolphin at an aquarium...only to discover that his host can't swim. The former human is trapped in the dolphin's body, and the ghost escapes to find another permanent host--the reader.
** "A Cry in the Night" has the main character being successfully tricked into entering the lair of a ghost who has been consuming children and stealing their voices to lure other kids into his clutches for decades. The story's end has that boy's voice being used to ensnare two new victims.
* EnfantTerrible: The titular spook in "George Pinkerton and the Bedtime Ghost" is a little girl, no older than seven, who throws massive tantrums whenever a family that recently moved into "her" house tries to put their daughter to sleep. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that she's been stuck in limbo for decades and furthermore, since she died right before she went to bed, she's been exhausted and cranky for all of that time.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: In "George Pinkerton and the Bedtime Ghost," a family reveals that they're being haunted by a shrieking spirit whenever they try to tuck their daughter in at night. As they first explain the scenario, their little girl chimes in with one phrase--"No story"--meaning that she didn't get her usual book read to her at night. That turns out to be the key to the whole problem: the ghost died before her own parents could finish reading her ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', and now any attempt to read aloud in her room ends with a tantrum.
* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Early in "Soul Survivor," the narrator--a ghost--remarks that the odd passing thoughts that people occasionally have are actually spirits passing through their bodies. It takes a turn for the serious when, at the end of the story, the ghost reveals that he has already taken up residence inside the reader's form, and is just waiting for the right time to push them out so he can wrest total control...
* GhostlyGoals: [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in "George Pinkerton and the Bedtime Ghost." The titular character and his (self-appointed) assistant decide that the mysterious child spirit haunting a family's house must have some form of unfinished business, but they can't imagine what a small girl could possibly want so much that she won't move on. It turns out that she died before her parents could finish reading her ''Literature/TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'', and she refuses to enter the next life until she finds out what happens.
** "Call Me Ghost" is about a spirit who can't remember what happened to him. With some help from the owner of the house he haunts and the woman's niece, they eventually discover that he suffocated to death in an unfinished secret room in the basement. Finding his bones and laying them to rest is the key to freeing him from the earthly plane.
* GuileHero: The title character in "The Tenant Who Frightened a Ghost" is a human woman who, through BlatantLies, convinces the spirit haunting her apartment that ''she herself'' is a horrid, nasty, wailing specter that will never give him a moment's peace. The real ghost falls for the lies and promptly leaves.
* HauntedTechnology: The title character in "Call Me Ghost" can possess a computer to type his thoughts in a word processing program.
* HereWeGoAgain: "A Cry in the Night" ends with two young sisters falling for the same trick that a horrific ghost initially used to capture and kill the protagonist.
* ImpossiblyDeliciousFood: ''Biscuits of Glory'' features biscuits that are "heavenly" in a near-literal sense. In a normal person, this causes levitation. [[spoiler:When given to a ghost, it "feels like it went to heaven," and is exorcised.]] This is ultimately a negative effect, because nothing else can compare to the taste of the biscuits.
* PungeonMaster: In "Call Me Ghost," the titular spirit jokes that he's a real-life "ghost writer" when he discovers he has the power to type stories on a computer.

* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: In "Call Me Ghost," an author buys an old home and comes face-to-face with the titular spirit. She's not fazed at all, remarking that she was warned about the place being haunted when she purchased it, and promises that if he doesn't bother her, she won't bother him. They proceed to get along great.

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: In "The Elevator," the villain isn't a frightening beast or nightmarish creature (at least [[AmbiguouslyHuman that we know of)--it's just a tall, fat woman who rides an elevator with the protagonist, staring at him silently.

* YouHaveToBelieveMe: In ''The Elevator'', Martin desperately tries to convince his parents, and particularly his father, about the evil nature of the large woman who has been riding the elevator with him and staring him down. Naturally, they just think he's being a baby.

* EnfantTerrible: The titular spook in "George Pinkerton and the Bedtime Ghost" is a little girl, no older than seven, who throws massive tantrums whenever a family that recently moved into "her" house tries to put their daughter to sleep. [[JustifiedTrope Justified] in that she's been stuck in limbo for decades and furthermore, since she died right before she went to bed, she's been exhausted and cranky for all of that time.

** [[spoiler: Mr. Alfmordorschen and Timor devour Timor’s entire class at the end of ''Timor and the Furnace Troll''.]]

* ForgetfulJones: Duffy from ''Duffy's Jacket'' tends to forget about everyday things, which his aunt claims is because he’s too busy being brilliant inside his own head. His cousin Andrew thinks otherwise. [[spoiler:It’s cured by the events of the story.]]

* IncrediblyLameFun: In ''Momster in the Closet'', the narrator and Kenny’s father is mentioned to enjoy watching the flag waving on the screen while the national anthem plays as a TV station goes off for the night.

* LiteralGenie: The sword Arthur gets in ''Merlin’s Knight School''. He wishes he could fight something with it… and a monster promptly appears for him to fight. (Luckily, a second wish enables him to actually ''beat'' the monster.)

* MissingMom: Dum Pling’s mother, who is implied to have not survived her trip to the human world and back.

* OhNoNotAgain: The protagonist’s reaction at the end of ''Personality Problem'' when he realizes his psychiatrist, like so many other people, is trying to kill him via burning him alive, just because he's a monster.
* ParodyMagicSpell: In ''The Thing That Goes Burp in the Night'', John Thomas reads a bunch of terms out of an index in one of his father’s medical books, making it sound like he's doing a spell that will conjure up a monster to come and get his brother.
* RatedMForManly: Andrew (the narrator)'s mother and aunt in ''Duffy's Jacket'' think they need to do things that are this (such as camping) with their sons from time to time so the boys don’t turn out weird. Andrew's reaction to this is "You can take him camping all you want. It ain't gonna make Duffy normal."

* TentacledTerror: ''Merlin’s Knight School'' sees [[Myth/KingArthur Cai and Arthur]] battling an octopus-like creature after it attacks them.

* WhoNamesTheirKidDude: In ''My Little Brother is a Monster'', the poorly spelled note with the titular character called him "my little Dum Pling" (resulting in Jason and his mother calling him "Little Dumpling"). Turns out that part wasn't a misspelling, and Dum Pling is his real name. Upon learning this, Jason’s reaction is to ask "You name your kids things like ''dumb''?" Keegle Farzym has to explain to him that in the secret language of monsters, "Dum" means "Prince", and "Dum Pling" translates roughly into "Prince Albert".

* AbusiveAlienParents: On Nnnnnn's planet in ''I, Earthling'', children mature quickly and are pretty much kept out of sight by their nurses and teachers until they’re ready to join adult society - the parents have almost nothing to do with raising them.

* GrandTheftMe: Splortch and Miglick from ''Brian and the Aliens'' do this with Brian and his dog, switching bodies so they can go look around and determine if Earth’s residents are really people. Then Brian and Lucky accidentally do the same thing to a couple of police.

* ImaginationBasedSuperpower: The protagonists of ''Pirates'' all seem to have this, which makes the events of their game come to life. [[spoiler:Up to and including them all being blown up when one of the kids self-destructs their spaceship, ending his turn. The next turn begins with one of the girls saying “Pretend we exist.”]]

* MonsterIsAMommy: The protagonist of ''How I Maybe Saved the World Last Tuesday Before Breakfast'' sees a couple of giant aliens wandering around by the lake down the street, and initially suspects them of being invaders out to conquer Earth. Then he figures out they’re just looking for their child, whom his little sister had found [[ImTakingHerHomeWithMe and brought back home with her]], and returns the baby to the parents.

* PhlebotinumPills: The methane-breathing Veeblezanians from ''Brian and the Aliens'' had to take oxygen-breathing pills to survive in Earth’s environment, but they don’t last very long, which becomes a problem when they start to wear off.

* TwistEnding: ''Curing the Bozos'' features a boy who’s seen an alien spaceship near his house for the past few weeks, and invites his adoptive sister to watch for it with him that night. The ship never shows, and he finally goes to bed… [[spoiler:then it turns out his sister is one of many aliens who’ve been chosen to visit different planets, find potential leaders like her adoptive brother, and encourage them so their kind can one day join the civilized races among the stars; the ship is the one she makes her weekly report to.]]

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: The goal of ''Mrs. Ambroseworthy'', who can’t quite make it on her own until she hears a high enough note from one of the choir members she taught.

** ''The Pooka'' is being sought by a ghost who can only pass on, along with the Pooka itself, if he can make a wild boar take off the chains around its neck. [[spoiler:[[Myth/KingArthur Arthur and Cai]], whose family crest is that of a wild boar, are the ones whom he’s been looking for all this time.]]

* DeadlyPrank: ''The Secret of City Cemetery'' features the bullying Willard Armbruster, who hides in an open grave in the cemetery on Halloween, intending to scare a bunch of kids that pass by. [[spoiler:He makes the mistake of using one that’s due to be used in its normal way that day; when he yells at the gravekeepers that he’s in there, they’re startled and drop the coffin, knocking him cold and resulting in his being BuriedAlive when their boss doesn’t realize he’s down there.]]
* EnemiesWithDeath: Alex in ''Not From Detroit'', who chases down and fights Death to get his wife’s soul back. In the end though, while he successfully gets Margie’s soul back, he can’t stop Death from taking her for good, and the two settle their differences, Alex choosing to let Death take him early so he won’t have to outlive his wife.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: The titular character of ''Jasper's Ghost'' is the ghost of someone who’s still living, and wants to keep him from carrying out the act that will result in his death.

* TogetherInDeath: Variant with ''Not From Detroit'' - Alex refuses to let his wife die before him, but Death insists it’s her time; he finally talks Death into taking him early so he won’t have to live without Margie.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: Nessie Crackman in ''Master of the Hunt'' is three hundred pounds and has warts and a hairy lip. No wonder [[Myth/KingArthur Merlin]] doesn’t want anything to do with her.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: [[spoiler: ''The Baby-Sitter'' features “Them”, a mysterious force that lurks in the house where the Mitchell family lives, but they have a special protection ritual that, done once a night, keeps “Them” from harming the person who does it. When the titular babysitter is confronted and chased down the hall by a burglar one night, he fails to do the ritual, and “They” attack and eliminate him.]]

** Variant in ''Drawing the Moon'' - the victims aren’t dead, they were stolen by the moon. When Andrew goes to the Moon to get them back, the Moon agrees to return them, but she needs two others in their place. [[spoiler:She winds up taking the mugger who attacked them, and Andrew himself.]]
** Inverted in ''Death's Door'' - Death is trying to collect a bunch of kids ahead of time, and they have to figure out a way to keep it from happening. And it’s implied that he’ll keep doing it until he succeeds.

** David’s older cousin Harold in ''There's Nothing Under the Bed''.
** Jimmy’s brother Richard in ''The Hand''.

* BodySurf: Variant in ''Give a Puppet a Hand'', as the living puppet Mr. Punkerino just takes over someone’s hand if they tell his current bearer to “Give him to me”.

** David in ''There's Nothing Under the Bed'' insists there’s something weird going on under his bed. His parents refuse to believe him because the nothingness under there disappears when adults are around. By the time they find out the truth, it’s too late.
** ''The Boy Who Cried Dragon'' ends with the protagonist being arrested for burglary, and claiming he was chased out of the house by a dragon. Naturally, the police ''don’t'' believe him, since all they see is the owner’s cat.
* ChainedToARailway: In ''Death's Door'', Death tricks his way into acting as a substitute bus driver, then parks the bus on a set of train tracks, seals the doors and waits for the train to hit it, killing everyone aboard. They’re saved when they remember the bus has kick-out windshields as an emergency backup.
* CrammingTheCoffin: Variant in ''The Cat Came Back'' - Brutus the dog comes over to dig at the grave of Bootsie the cat, whom he’d killed a day before. When Bootsie’s owners find the disturbed grave, they find a dead Brutus trapped under the sod, [[spoiler:because Bootsie had come back to life long enough to catch him and kill him in revenge.]]

* DreamWeaver: Weztix, the Lord of Nightmares in ''There's Nothing Under the Bed'', weaves bad dreams and transfers them into the head of one of his delivery boys, who then rises up underneath someone’s bed and whispers the contents of the nightmare to the sleeper.
* FatBastard: The title character of ''The Fat Man'' [[spoiler:subverts half of it - he’s still a bastard, but the “fat” part is just a MobileSuitHuman being piloted by an ugly, non-fat monster.]]

* InsistentTerminology: Andrew in ''Drawing the Moon'' insists that his parents aren’t dead, they were ''stolen''. And you can get stolen things back. [[spoiler:His sister is the same way when he gets his parents back but is one of the two people taken in their place.]]

* LifeDrinker: ''Toll Call'' features a variant - immortals sustain themselves by asking for a few minutes of someone’s time. If the person says yes, the immortal thanks them, and the person who was asked suddenly feels just a little bit older.

* PerversePuppet: Mr. Punkerino in ''Give a Puppet a Hand'', an obnoxious living puppet who takes over the hand of whomever wants him, and can’t be removed until someone else asks for him. [[spoiler:Jeremy still feels sorry for him when he ends up on the hand of one of the meanest people Jeremy knows.]]
* SadistTeacher: Miss Wockenfuss in ''Give a Puppet a Hand'', and she knows it. It’s even lampshaded when she tries to punish Jeremy for being happy at one point, claiming that nobody has a good time in her class.

* StandYourGround: [[Myth/KingArthur Arthur and Cai]] do so when faced with Gwynn ap Nudd and his hounds in ''Master of the Hunt'', which turns out to be the right thing to do. As Merlin explains later, if you have courage and stand your ground, even the lord of the dead can’t force you into the netherworld - you have to go of your own free will (even if that choice is brought on by being terrified out of your wits).

** The dragon of ''The Boy Who Cried Dragon'', who tells Jimmy, as he’s being taken away by the police, that he’ll pursue him to the end of his days, and that he never forgets a smell.
** Brutus the dog in ''The Cat Came Back'', who continually pursues any of the neighborhood cats, and kept going after Bootsie until age slowed the cat down enough for Brutus to catch and kill him. Taken to extremes in that even after Bootsie dies, Brutus won’t leave him alone and comes over to dig at his grave… which proves a fatal mistake.

* CassandraTruth: In ''Campfire'', young Danny tells his fellow campers about the devil having a secret name, and he’ll come for you when you [[SpeakOfTheDevil say it aloud]]. He shares it with TheBully at the camp, who soon after gets taken away by the devil. Danny laments that his parents didn’t believe him about it either.

* DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: The protagonist of ''The Thing in Auntie Alma's Pond'' does this near the end when she’s forced to confront the truth about herself.
* DrivenToSuicide: The captain of the ''Jenny Nettles''. [[spoiler:His death is what triggers the wind to return so the ship can get back to port… and it’s implied to be because he was the one who killed Jenny Frasier, the woman whom the ship had originally been named after before its third owner got a hold of it, and who’d been haunting it effectively since its construction.]]
* EpistolaryNovel: ''Letters From Camp'' is exactly what it sounds like, with the narrator’s letters to his parents. The final letter is from the camp staff, informing them of the conclusion of their son’s stay at camp.

* ItOnlyWorksOnce: The gate in ''One Chance'' only works once for each person; if they don’t go through, they can never summon it again.
* MakeAWish: Miranda Alice gets three wishes from a snail (and promptly wishes for a thousand more) in ''Those Three Wishes''. [[spoiler:Unfortunately, she wasn’t [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor careful what she said]] and, after realizing she’d forgotten to study for a test, unwittingly wished to be dead.]]

* OceanMadness: The crew of the ''Jenny Nettles'' experience this when they’re stuck at sea, with no wind and all their fresh water gone. The experience leads to most of them quitting the sea for good after the voyage.

** One advertises its services in ''Vampire For Hire'', offering to take care of your problems. Its idea of doing so is to turn the person who sent for it ''into'' a vampire, and it doesn’t necessarily have to feed on you to do so. And if the protagonist is anything to go by, it’s not harmed by sunlight.

* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: ''What's a Little Fur Among Friends?'' features a line of werewolves who start to change around puberty (but the curse only hits every other generation) and can freely change back and forth as long as the moon is full, though older ones can’t change as often as younger ones. They’re also allergic to silver.

** The title character of ''The Teacher Who Could Hear'' with a form of [[MySignificanceSenseIsTingling clairvoyance]] who can hear things, including people’s deaths [[spoiler:including her own. Her successor in the classroom has a different version, and is able to see ghosts.]]

* SummerCampy: Camp Ultima in ''Letters From Camp'', which is basically where parents send their troublemaking sons to get killed off (and they’re opening a new one for girls the next year).

* TitleDrop: ''What’s A Little Fur Among Friends?'' is the title of a story. ''What’s a little fur among friends?'' is part of a line of dialogue near its end.
* TorchesAndPitchforks: The werewolf in ''What’s A Little Fur Among Friends?'' mentions that members of her family were chased out of their homes by former friends wielding these when they discovered the family members were werewolves.

* AntiMagic: The protagonist in ''Questing Magic'' negates magic, including being able to see through glamours. This turns out to be useful when he’s needed to break a spell keeping [[Myth/KingArthur King Arthur]] away from the [[ExcaliburInTheStone stone where Excalibur is stuck]] (fortunately, Merlin is able to use a time machine, which is science instead of magic, to get him there).

* BodyToJewel: Variant in ''Wizard's Boy'' - the Black Stone of Borea isn’t exactly a jewel, but it ''was'' the heart of the greatest wizard who ever lived, until it was turned to stone.
* BornUnlucky: Jana in ''The Wonderworm'' feels that she’s this way. Her grandmother thinks otherwise.

* TheCallPutMeOnHold: Aaron is Bellenmore’s apprentice in ''Wizard's Boy'', but he can’t tap the High or Low Magic until it’s finally awakened after [[spoiler:he gets hold of the Black Stone of Borea, allowing him to defeat Malefestra]].
* DealWithTheDevil: Lesser version in ''Wizard's Boy'' - Bellenmore agrees to work with Dark Anne to deal with Malefestra. When they’re defeated, Bellenmore winds up paying the price and, even after the demon sorcerer’s defeat, is trapped away for a time due to this deal.
* DisappearedDad: The protagonist’s father in ''Phoenix Farm'', who ran off a week before the events of the story because he couldn’t find work. [[spoiler:He comes back in the end when he’s finally got a new job and has found where his wife and kids moved to after the fire that destroyed their home at the start of the story.]]

* EmbarrassingFirstName: Phoebe Byrd in ''Byrd Song'' hates that she was named after her father’s favorite bird, since it makes her a prime target for mocking.

* ThePowerOfLove: This is what allowed the Rukh bird to gain the titular character in ''The Wonderworm'', as it drove her to make the long and hard journey to the home of Asmodai, the King of Demons, who possessed the Wonderworm and, seeing what drove her, respected her mother’s love.
* {{Prequel}}: ''Wizard's Boy'' is actually one to Coville’s earlier story ''[[Literature/MagicShop Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher]]'' - that book tells, briefly, of how the wizard Bellenmore was the one who helped send the dragons to their new world, and his apprentice Aaron, the title character of this story, is the one who figured out how to save the species by bringing their eggs back to Earth so they could be hatched and then sent to the other world again once they were old enough. This story takes place before those events.
* ReadTheFreakingManual: The protagonist of ''Watch Out!'' didn’t read the full manual for his latest trick (in part because his mother interrupted him before he could finish), a cave-like toy which makes things disappear (but cannot return them), which gets him in trouble when he makes his father’s watch disappear and can’t get it back. The gnome that the “disappearing” objects are sent to notes that nine out of ten people who use it are the same way.
* SapientEatSapient: Attempted during Malefestra’s party in ''Wizard's Boy'', when some of the ogres attending decide they'd prefer some fresh dwarf to the food being served. The wicked dwarves who were invited naturally think this is a bad idea.

* TogetherInDeath: ''Bear at the Gate'' has a teddy bear named Henry who, having unknowingly earned a soul when his former owner was a boy, goes to Heaven and, once St. Peter determines that he really does have one and how he’d earned it, is allowed in to reunite with his former owner.

* TheDreaded: The title character of ''The Spook Man'', to the point where everyone hides inside while he’s in town, no matter what.
* EatenAlive: Implied to have happened to a couple of the protagonist’s classmates in ''The First Excuse'', who fell victim to a monster masquerading as a school bus.

* SeaMonster: The title character of ''Sea Dragon of Fife''. There’s also one in ''Trouble Afoot''.
* SuperPersistentPredator: The monster in ''Trouble Afoot'', which will do anything to keep its existence a secret, and won’t stop following anyone who finds out about it.
* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: ''Vend U.'' has Jocelyn, a girl who’s always tormenting her classmates and causing trouble at her school, who gets eaten by a living vending machine. Then she somehow overcomes it from the inside and out and [[MesACrowd makes copies of herself]], allowing her clones to keep tormenting her classmates.

** The aliens in ''George Pinkerton and the Space Waffles'' are checking out Earth to see if it’s suitable for invading and colonizing.

* EnragedByIdiocy: The alien teacher in ''Field Trip'' gets infuriated when the students at the human school he’s taken his class to spend more time cracking jokes than trying to spread knowledge, and finally decides to take his students and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leave]].
* FishOutOfTemporalWater: Becky in ''Fine or Superfine'', who’s from so far in the past that she doesn’t know what her fellow captive is talking about when he talks about television.

* LivingShip: Veeplex’s ship in ''The Very Long Distance Wrong Number''. He gives the protagonists a baby drive-beast as thanks for helping him.

* TomatoSurprise: [[spoiler:''Abduction'' revolves around a boy who thinks he’s been abducted by aliens. Then it turns out he ''is'' one, who just thought he was human as a result of his parents, also aliens, disguising him as human his whole life.]]
* TrackingChip: Scientists implant these in a bear in ''Hunters''. And it’s heavily implied that the human kid they find, who’s recently suffered from an AlienAbduction, has one implanted by the aliens.

* YouAreNotAlone: ''Alien Promises'' ends with this; so many people have learned about the aliens and kept their promises to meet up with them when they return. There’s too many of them for the aliens to take… but the aliens point out that they’re all connected now because of this experience. After that night, the humans who were all there talk and agree to do what they can to create a ship so they can go out into space one day.

* AbusiveParents: In ''The Elevator'', Martin’s father is emotionally abusive, always berating his son for being weak and timid.
* BalancingDeathsBooks: ''All in Good Time'' has a girl try to stop Death (herein called “the Boneman”) from taking her grandfather. Consequently, other people start to suffer near-fatal accidents until she finally lets Death into the house to take her grandfather, resulting in the other people getting better.
* CliffHanger: ''The Elevator'' ends on one - [[spoiler:What happens to poor Martin, now that he’s trapped in the elevator with the big mysterious woman, who’s stopped the elevator and is turning to face him?]]
* GoOutWithASmile: The protagonist of [[spoiler:''The Instrument'', who finally gets their prized unidentified string instrument all fixed up, and starts playing, feeling it’s worth more than her whole life; she is found soon after, dead, with a smile on her face]].

* ParanoiaGambit: In ''The Elevator'', Martin suspects, the second time he sees the strange woman in the elevator, that she’s trying to make him scared… and it’s working.
* RealAfterAll: [[spoiler: ''The Ragmore Beast'' revolves around a boy named Ricky who is tricked into going into Ragmore Woods, supposedly home to a ferocious beast. As Ricky’s running away from the supposed beast, he hears the other two boys laughing to themselves about the prank they just pulled on him (they don’t realize he’s still in hearing range)... except then, before Ricky can leave in disgust, the ''real'' Ragmore Beast shows up and tears the two pranksters to pieces.]]
* TimeAndRelativeDimensionsInSpace: The time machine in ''Same Time Next Year'' drops you off exactly where you started… except Earth and the entire solar system has moved on. Which is why the time travelers can’t get back - they’re dropped off in space and promptly suffocate to death.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Brought up in ''The World Where Wishes Worked''. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help a certain fool.
* TheCallPutMeOnHold: ''Transitions'' follows a family who eventually develop powers when they’re around fourteen. At least a few of them developed later than usual, such as oldest sister Opal, who went through transition at sixteen.

* HouseFey: In ''Clean as a Whistle'', Jamie Carhart gets a brownie, a small humanoid creature who's been bound to her mother's line for generations, as a caretaker for her room. She’s not amused by this, since her room is naturally messy and she likes it that way.
* InvoluntaryDance: As long as someone is wearing the titular ''Blue Suede Shoes'', they can’t stop dancing, and they won’t let the wearer dance what ''they'' want. Eventually, the protagonist figures out a solution to the overwhelming effects - he and his partner must wear one shoe each.

* TheMagicGoesAway: ''The World Where Wishes Worked'' features a world where everyone has everything because they can just wish for it. It also has a fool who can’t help but make foolish wishes with bad consequences. In the end, he decides there’s no way for him to fit the system… so he destroys it by wishing that wishes no longer automatically came true, resulting in this trope.

* NeatFreak: The brownie in ''Clean as a Whistle'', who works to keep Jamie Carhart’s room spic-and-span, against her will.

* PentupPowerPeril: In ''Transitions'', if you don’t use your power, it gets twisted up inside you and you get sick. This happened to one woman who refused to use her power of cursing people, resulting in her dying of cancer.
* TrashOfTheTitans: Jamie Carhart’s room in ''Clean as a Whistle'' is a disaster area. When her grandmother sends the family brownie to take up the job of cleaning it, Jamie is not amused, and does her best to ''keep'' the room a mess. They eventually compromise.
* TrickedOutShoes: The titular ''Blue Suede Shoes'', which know all the old dances and will help the wearer dance them perfectly. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of effort for the shoes to learn any ''new'' dances, and they also have something of an effect on the wearer’s personality.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: ''Merlin’s Knight School'' sees [[Myth/KingArthur Cai and Arthur]] battling an octopus-like creature.

* AbusiveAlienParents: On Nnnnnn’s planet in ''I, Earthling'', children mature quickly and are pretty much kept out of sight by their nurses and teachers until they’re ready to join adult society - the parents have almost nothing to do with raising them.

* TooSpicyForYogSogoth: ''Vend U.'' has Jocelyn, a girl who’s always tormenting her classmates and causing trouble at her school, who gets eaten by a living vending machine. Then she somehow overcomes it from the inside and out and [[MesACrowd makes copies of herself]], allowing her clones to keep tormenting her classmates.

* FracturedFairyTale: ''The Cinders Case'' sets up fairy godmothers and bad fairies and the like as part of the same organization, and is told from the point of view of a fairy godmother explaining why she wants a transfer to the curses department; namely, her last case, which was the straw that broke the unicorn's back. It sounds like a pretty standard Cinderella story; girl wants to go to ball, stepmother said no, fairy godmother is thus determined to see that she does, in fact, go. The problems start from square one: Cindy is tall, gangly, big-footed and not the prettiest thing ever. Her stepsister is the gorgeous waif the godmother has come to expect her clients to be, and is helpful, sympathetic, and wants nothing more than for Cindy to be happy. Then it turns out "Cinders" was the client's idea in the first place, and it's a stage name. She's not interested in the prince, she wants to play the fiddle as a musician at the ball. The godmother makes the best of things (she manages to save Cindy from getting roped into a "standard 10-percent contract" with a talent agent who looks like an encroaching mushroom and, when he's too drunk to lie, shamelessly admits that it means she forks over all but 10 percent of whatever she earns), but she's pretty despondent by the time the night's out (not least because the not-remotely-ugly stepsister does end up in the prince's arms) and after a case like that, her superiors will probably understand if she wants to transfer.

* CassandraTruth: In ''Campfire'', young Danny tells his fellow campers about the devil having a secret name, and he’ll come for you when you [[SpeakOfTheDevil say it aloud]]. He shares it with TheBully at the camp, who soon after gets taken away by the devil. Then Danny reveals that his parents didn’t believe him about it either.

* MonsterIsAMommy: The protagonist of ''How I Maybe Saved the World Last Tuesday Before Breakfast'' sees a couple of giant aliens wandering around by the lake down the street, and initially suspects them of being invaders out to conquer Earth. Then he figures out they’re just looking for their child, whom his little sister had found and brought back home with her, and returns the baby to the parents.

* CassandraTruth: In ''Zero Hour'', a daughter tells her mother about the upcoming alien invasion and all the promises the Martians made the children in exchange for help. The mother brushes it off as a new game until it's too late.

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: The trolls from ''Timor and the Furnace Troll'' are basically tall, hairy humanoids, mostly covered with soft black fur (except for the occasional tuft of orange hair) and with a pair of sharp tusks. [[spoiler:They also eat elves.]]

* RatedMForManly: The narrator’s mother and aunt in ''Duffy's Jacket'' think they need to do things that are this (such as camping) with their sons from time to time so the boys don’t turn out weird.

* MonsterIsAMommy: The protagonist of ''How I Maybe Saved the World Last Tuesday Before Breakfast'' sees a couple of giant aliens wandering around by the lake down the street, and initially suspects them of being aliens. Then he figures out they’re just looking for their child, whom his little sister had found and brought back home with her, and returns the baby to the parents.

** ''Ghost Stories'' by Lawrence Watt-Evans features an inversion: a ghost of a seafarer who simply could not stop wandering the world, much to the annoyance of his wife. Since she was a witch, she put a curse on him, that his ghost would only rest once man had walked on the moon, and he was told about it. However, he's not in much of a hurry to move on, as he's found a young boy who's eager to hear his stories (and the boy's friend almost spills the beans before he knows that).

* AdaptationExpansion: Three of Coville's short stories (and one by another author) collected in this series have been expanded into full books by Coville himself.

* TorchesAndPitchforks: The werewolf in ''What’s A Little Fur Among Friends?'' mentions that members of her family were chased out of their homes by former friends when they discovered the family members were werewolves.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: ''Merlin’s Knight School'' sees Cai and Arthur battling an octopus-like creature.

** ''The Pooka'' is being sought by a ghost who can only pass on, along with the Pooka itself, if he can make a wild boar take off the chains around its neck. [[spoiler:Arthur and Cai, whose family crest is that of a wild boar, are the ones whom he’s been looking for all this time.]]

* AbhorrentAdmirer: Nessie Crackman in ''Master of the Hunt'' is three hundred pounds and has warts and a hairy lip. No wonder Merlin doesn’t want anything to do with her.

* BalefulPolymorph: Cai is turned into a slug and later a toad in ''Master of the Hunt''.

* {{Invisibility}}: Merlin uses this to avoid his AbhorrentAdmirer in ''Master of the Hunt''. Later, Cai and Arthur use his disappearing powder so they can sneak up on a stag, but they wind up getting chased by the Wild Hunt, which mistakes them for ghosts. Merlin, incidentally, can see them just fine when they return and try to get his reappearing powder.

* StandYourGround: Arthur and Cai do so when faced with Gwynn ap Nudd and his hounds in ''Master of the Hunt'', which turns out to be the right thing to do. As Merlin explains later, if you have courage and stand your ground, even the lord of the dead can’t force you into the netherworld - you have to go of your own free will (even if that choice is brought on by being terrified out of your wits).

* AntiMagic: The protagonist in ''Questing Magic'' negates magic, including being able to see through glamours. This turns out to be useful when he’s needed to break a spell keeping King Arthur away from the [[ExcaliburInTheStone stone where Excalibur is stuck]] (fortunately, Merlin is able to use a time machine, which is science instead of magic, to get him there).

* EntropyAndChaosMagic: ''The Wizard of Chaos'' involves Cai and Arthur finding a wizard gifted with chaos magic, causing seemingly random effects.

* DisappearedDad: The protagonist’s father in ''Phoenix Farm'', who ran off a week before the events of the story because he couldn’t find work. [[spoiler:He comes back in the end when he’s finally got one and has found where his wife and kids moved to after the fire that destroyed their home at the start of the story.]]

* AbusiveAlienParents: On Nnnnnn’s planet, children mature quickly and are pretty much kept out of sight by their nurses and teachers until they’re ready to join adult society - the parents have almost nothing to do with raising them.

* {{Prequel}}: ''Wizard's Boy'' is actually one to Coville’s earlier story ''[[Literature/MagicShop Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher]]'' - the wizard Bellenmore was the one who helped send the dragons to their new world, and his apprentice Aaron, the title character of this story, is the one who figured out how to save the species by bringing their eggs back to Earth so they could be hatched and then sent to the other world again once they were old enough.

** ''Uncle Joshua and the Grooglemen'' (from ''Book of Monsters''), by [[CreatorCouple husband and wife team Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald]], was later expanded into ''Groogleman'' (1996).