“The President was alive. I was alive. No idea what the hell had just happened, other than that I was simply alive, and glad of it.”

Nations of Earth Ambassador Cory Wilson had thought the hardest part of his role would be mastering the many intricacies of gamra pronouns. Then the President is shot in front of him, and all clues point to extraterrestrial agencies.

Only the truth will prevent the conflict escalating, but to find it, Cory has to challenge the very top of the Coldi hierarchy, in a society where the simple act of looking someone in the eye or using the wrong pronouns can mean the difference between life and death.

Ambassador is a science fiction thriller, featuring interplanetary intrigue, unearthly greed, interstellar romance, and an ambassador from New Zealand.

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

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