I am looking for a book that had a collection of science fiction short
stories that I read in the late 70s or early 80s. It had all science
fiction stories that I believe were all written by the same female
author. One of the stories was about an astronaut mission to Mars, one
of the astronauts names was Pugh who died on Mars and was infected
with something that brought him back to life, but he was more like a
zombie. Another short story had something to do with a woman who
killed a man and buried him in her yard. The grass above was very
green and drove her nuts, sort of a "Tell Tale Heart" story-line.
Yet another story-line dealt with druids and the main character being chased.
Not a lot to go on, but I'm hoping for some clues.

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Clarification of Question by drmantsch-ga on 30 Jul 2005 20:27 PDT

Yes, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to recognize the title, maybe the author.
There are 7 - 10 short stories in this collection and there's no way I
could have read them after 1984, so it was certainly published before
1985. I've even been back to the city library I checked it out from
and searched and asked, but couldn't find it.
Yet another story I recall is about a guy who is checking out a high
school classmate's house a number of years after high school. Maybe as
a newspaper writer or building inspector. He finds him at "home" with
a few other family members after going through an elaborately
described entry way. Turns out he was in a sort of time capsule that
kept time from going forward and he was meeting his high school
classmate and a number of generations of his family, all of them
appearing about the same age. His high school graduated maybe two or
three decades earlier, but his classmate appeared to be very young and
his father and grandfather all were there, also appearing very
young...for their age.
Anyway, this newspaper writer or building inspector's account of the
story was being read by someone who found his written story at the
site of the recently demolished, apparently abandoned structure
because it didn't pass building codes. While the building was being
demolished many skeletons were found, seemingly many, many years old.
You're left thinking that all the "skeletons" were alive and well just
moments before the building was demolished and once the time capsule
was broken, then time was able to catch up with the people inside and
they appeared to have been dead and buried for some time.
Anyway, hope this helps a little more. I don't know if I'd be so
desperate as to order 100 books to find it, but after 20 years I
really want to have it.
Thanks.

Do you think you would recognize the author & title if you saw them?
"Sci-fi collection, female author, published before 1985" narrows it
down considerably; I bet there are less than a hundred like that,
shouldn't be too hard to get a complete list.

When the answer is found - I'm sure to read this one :-)