"So the actual reason I was calling you is because—get this—I am not going to Prague this summer at all. Surprise! Thanks, Villa. Just ruin my life for me." Villa Grace is in disgrace. Her expulsion from...

An encounter with an alien enemy. A strange epiphany in a fog-bound park. A collector of the names of the dead faces their own death. Rebel divinities respond to the prayers of despairing creation for...

"You did not tell the Abbess a single lie," Diamond said, "but you didn't tell her the truth."As a good Sombrist, Hunter Sessaire is aware that not only lying, but curiosity, is very much frowned upon...

In the beginning was the word, and the word was 'enough'.On a luxury ship sailing across the North Sea, seven people are negotiating key moments in their lives. These moments will dwindle to meaninglessness...

Early one March, a king marched to his sacrificial death on a bog in the middle of Ireland. Thousands of years later, his body is uncovered by an environmentalist volunteering to help re-wet the bog....

No fire, no brimstone, no demons—Libby discovers that what you find in the infernal regions is what you bring to the party. (This story has also been published in the collection Fluctuation in Disorder.)

A specialist thief fulfilling an order for preserved specimens of extinct animals, the narrator is trapped overnight in a museum's taxidermy storage-room. Their confidence in impending rescue is worn...

Rebarbative and foul-mouthed, the Necrologue's peripatetic life has taken them across an unspecified continent in the aftermath of a political and religious collapse. It is only when they face death that...

B takes a short-cut through the Botanic Gardens on her way to the office, in the misty early-morning darkness. She strays from the path, and encounters a work of art that has taken on a form far different...

V finds a frog's corpse while taking a disconcerting walk along the seashore. This discovery proves strangely disruptive to her reliance on work for meaning, as she finds herself diverted into providing...

Cliona is a vampire, though she has adapted to ocean life rather than prey on human blood. Centuries later, she finds that her new home is being destroyed, as humans begin to exploit the power of the...

The depths of winter. Clement and Bosco are underage volunteers in the Resistance, fighting an alien invasion. Bosco is given charge of the 'battle book', a manuscript believed to have protective powers....

Jae receives a summons to the office—does this mean a place on the inside track in an organization where position is everything? Slipstream fiction set in the 'bureaucratic gothic' universe of the novel Hollowmen.This...