This paranormal noir anthology brings you sixteen stories of murder and mayhem, monsters and mysterious femme fatales.

• Lindsy Anderson – The Third Circle
• Chris Bauer – Three Questions and One Troll
• Alan Baxter & Felicity Dowker – Burning, Always Burning
• Jay Caselberg – Blind Pig
• M.L.D. Curelas – Silver Comes the Night
• Karen Dent – A Case to Die For
• Dirk Flinthart – Outlines
• Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter – Prohibition Blues
• Donna Maree Hanson – Sangue Sella Notte
• Rob Hood – Walking the Dead Beat
• Joseph L Kellogg – The Awakened Adventure of Rick Candle
• Pete Kempshall – Sound and Fury
• Chris Large – One Night at the Cherry
• Penelope Love – Be Good Sweet Maid
• Nicole Murphy – The Black Star Killer
• Brian G. Ross – Hard Boiled

Collects 33 stories of horror and dark fantasy that acknowledge the undead as ineradicable members of Australian society. The best selections twine the vampire incursion with Australian history, as in Shona Husk’s “Mutiny on the Scarborough,” whose vampire narrator reveals himself to have been one of the earliest convicts transported Down Under. Angela Slatter’s “Sun Falls,” about a luckless vamp dependent upon his smart-aleck human slave, and “The Tide,” a multi-authored story that charts vampires’ rise from second-class citizen to the nation’s ruling elite, mix horror with humor.

The stories

• “The Tide”, Martin Livings and friends*
• “Mutiny on the Scarborough”, Shona Husk
• “Sun Falls”, Angela Slatter
• “Such is Life”, Jeremy Sadler
• “Apologetoi”, Chris Lawson
• “Punishment of the Sun”, Alan Baxter
• “Red Delicious”, Felicity Dowker
• “Just a Matter of Economics”, Yvonne Eve Walus
• “Quarantine”, Patty Jansen
• “Out of the Grave”, Amanda Pillar
• “Desert Blood”, Marty Young
• “Thin Air”, Simon Brown
• “Kissed by the Sun”, Jodi Cleghorn
• “Bats”, Jane Routley
• “Black Heart”, Joanna Fay
• “Renfield’s Wife”, Damon Cavalchini
• “Listening to Tracy”, Jen White
• “Breaking the Drought”, Jay Caselberg
• “Children of the Cane”, Jason Nahrung
• “The Sea at Night”, Joanne Anderton
• “Sky in the Morning”, Sonia Marcon
• “Taking it for the Team”, Tracie McBride
• “All that Glisters”, Pete Kempshall
• “The Rider”, Martin Livings
• “Vitality”, George Ivanoff
• “Coming Home”, Kathryn Hore
• “The Little Red Man”, Ray Gates
• “Deathborn Light”, Helen Stubbs
• “The Life Stealer”, Donna Maree Hanson
• “Behind the Black Mask”, Jacob Edwards
• “Interview with the Jiangshi”, Anne Mok
• “White and Red in the Black”, Lisa L Hannett
• “Lady Yang’s Lament”, Penelope Love

*Carol Ryles, Lezli Robyn, Kaaron Warren, Patty Jansen, Alan Baxter, Devin Jeythurai, Felicity Dowker, Andrew J McKiernan, Gillian Pollack, Chuck McKenzie

Includes an afterword by Robin Pen and an introduction by Sean Williams and Simon Brown.

Second edition of sold out 1999 collection.

# Foreword: Van Ikin
# “The Lady of Situations”
# “Amendment”
# “Never Seen by Waking Eyes”
# “A Single Shadow”
# “Transit”
# “Double Action”
# “Founding Fathers”
# “Salvation”
# “The Godfather Paradox”
# “A Sort of Walking Miracle”
# “The Vision of a Vanished Good”
# “Bestseller”
# “From Whom All Blessings Flow”