Introduction by Jack Dann

Winner of the Aurealis Award

A stunning, emotional and eclectic collection of fantasy and dark tales. These are the stories told to warn children, entertain adults and beguile all.

210 pages

Bluebeard
The Living Book
The Jacaranda Wife
Red Skein
The Chrysanthemum Bride
Frozen
The Hummingbird Heart
Words
The Little Match Girl
The Juniper Tree
Skin
The Bone Mother
The Dead Ones Don’t Hurt You
Light As Mist, Heavy As Hope
Dresses, Three
The Girl With No Hands

Cover design by Lisa L. Hannett

Introduction by Lucius Shepard

Over 110,000 words of fiction from talented, award-winning writer Kaaron Warren. Includes the Aurealis Award-winning “The Grinding House”, “Fresh Young Widow” and “A Positive”. Twenty-six powerful tales that will amaze any fan of the fantastic.

Polish
Woman Train
Doll Money
State of Oblivion
Guarding the Mound
The Gibbet bell
Dead Sea Fruit
In the Drawback
Down to the Silver Spirits
The Softening
His Lipstick Minx
Coalescence
Cooling the Crows
Sins of the Ancestors
The Coral Gatherer
Ghost Jail
Bone Dog
A Positive
The Grinding House
Fresh Young Widow
The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall
Green
Edge of a Thing
The Census-Taker’s Tale
Buster and Corky
The Capture Diamonds

A collection of paranormal romance with bite.

On the menu is a tasty selection of heroines and heroes: time travellers, vampires, zombies, ghosts, witches, trapped spirits, dragons, wizards, monsters, even cartoons. From sweet to sexy, these stories will seduce.

208 pages

Contents
“The Anstruther Woman”, Nicole R. Murphy
“Fade Away”, Ian Nichols
“Bread and Circuses”, Felicity Dowker
“Black Widow”, Shona Husk
“The February Dragon”, Angela Slatter and Lisa L. Hannett
“Growing Silence”, Matt Tighe
“The Hidden One”, Astrid Cooper
“A Darker Shade of Pale”, David Bofinger
“The Valley”, Martin Livings
“Cursebreaker: the Welsh Widow and the Wandering Wooer”, Kyla Ward
“Heat”, Donna Maree Hanson
“Phaedra”, Bruce Golden
“Date with a Vampire”, Annette Backshall
“Pride and Tentacles”, D C White

23 tales of interstellar wanderers, migrants, colonists, zombie refugees, interplanetary poets, fallen angels, storytellers, neighbours, first peoples, last peoples, lost peoples… people searching for a place where they belong.

113,000 words of original fiction from around the world. Australia, Canada, Argentina, United Kingdom, U.S.A. and Belgium.

• “Border Crossing”, Penelope Love
• “Mrs Estahazi”, Barbara Robson
• “Norumbega”, Linda L. Donahue
• “Ice”, Zdravka Evtimova
• “United”. Jennifer Moore
• “Rekindle the Sun”, Mary E. Lowd
• “The Gift”, Barry Rosenberg
• “Prisoner of the Faceless”, Kurt Bachard
• “Merpeople”, Gwen Veazey
• “Feather-light”, George Ivanoff
• “Speaking English”, Stephanie Burgis
• “Green, Green Grass of Homeworld”, Donna Maree Hanson
• “I Belong to this Red Land”, Edwina Harvey
• “All Tales Must End”, Michelle Muenzler
• “Namug”, Gustavo Bondoni
• “Song of the Blackbird”, Sarah Totton
• “A Friendly Gesture”, Chet Gottfried
• “Initiation”, Sonia Helbig
• “Slow Cookin'”, Angela Rega
• “The Ballad of P’toresk”, Simon Petrie
• “The Hollow Ones”, Kylie Seluka
• “Trassi Udang”, Patty Jansen
• “Deeper than Flesh and Closer”, Carol Ryles

Australian musician Lisa Sheehan has got life sussed, but then, one-by-one, her fans start to turn up dead, their bodies hideously mutilated, and Lisa is haunted by memories that are not her own. Can these 20th-century murders be linked to events in Stuart England?