We get a large variety of stories in this collection. We get an amnesia-based version of hell, a story in which people start blinking out of existence, and a story in which a man finds a portal to another world in order to confront his dead wife who was unfaithful to him. There’s a story about a girl trying to reconnect with her zombie brother, another story about a girl trying to bring her vampire brother back to life, and a short story in which a father and son go on a hunting trip (but they’re not hunting deer). Continue reading →

When we first meet Liora, she’s locked in a cage, slave to a reptilian alien who uses her as star of his intergalactic circus. She’s “a trained killer with the beauty of a goddess.” She’s part human, part Damaclan which gives her superpowers like telepathy and super speed. She can share memories with others and even feel their pain for them. With all these awesome powers, I have to wonder how anyone would be able to make her a slave in the first place, let alone keep her locked up. Continue reading →

Ida Mae, an elderly woman living in rural Utah, falls and breaks her foot. Her friends Tansy and Arlette take care of her, but Ida Mae needs something to occupy her time while she recovers. Fortunately, Arlette’s granddaughter Eden needs someone to infiltrate an assisted living community in order to solve a murder. Continue reading →

At first, John Persons seems like a typical chain-smoking, trench coat-wearing private investigator straight out of a noir movie. He refers to women as broads, dames, skirts, and sometimes birds. However, since this story takes place in the present day, people used to talking about bootylicious selfies have no idea what he’s talking about. Continue reading →

Amberlough takes place in an fantasy world roughly equivalent to Weimar era Germany. It’s part John le Carre, part Cabaret. A fascist candidate who isn’t doing well in the polls fixes an election to beat the female candidate who should have won by a landslide. The inhabitants of Amberlough are worried about this since the Ospies intend to outlaw homosexuality, crack down on drug smuggling, and keep anybody from criticizing them, and they’re willing to use violence to get their way. Sure, Amberlough isn’t perfect. There is a lot of corruption on the police force and there’s certain parts of town you don’t want to visit after night, but the Ospies’ solution for this entails eliminating undesirables and taking away everybody’s freedom, so the cure is worse than the disease. Continue reading →