Very pleased to reveal my upcoming short story collection with Subterranean Press.

Isn’t it gorgeous? The title was my choice, as it brings together several of my preoccupations! The cover is by artist and friend Maurizio Manzieri, and the cover design by Gail Cross of Desert Isle Design.

A major first collection from a writer fast becoming one of the stars of the genre… Aliette de Bodard, multiple award winner and author of The Tea Master and the Detective, now brings readers fourteen dazzling tales that showcase the richly textured worldbuilding and beloved characters that have brought her so much acclaim. 

Come discover the breadth and endless invention of her universes, ranging from a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war; to the multiple award-winning Xuya, a far-future space opera inspired by Vietnamese culture where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are part of families. 

In the Nebula award and Locus award winning “Immersion”, a young girl working in a restaurant on a colonized space station crosses paths with an older woman who has cast off her own identity. In the novelette “Children of Thorns, Children of Water”, a shapeshifting dragon infiltrating a ruined mansion finds more than he’s bargained for when his partner is snatched by eerie, child-like creatures. And in the award-winning “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight”, three very different people–a scholar, an engineer and a spaceship–all must deal with the loss of a woman who was the cornerstone of their world. 

This collection includes a never-before seen 20,000-word novella, “Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness”, set in Bodard’s alternative dark Paris.

It will be published in September 2019 in a gorgeous hardback edition, and include my favourite stories from the Hugo-award nominated Universe of Xuya, as well as some Dominion of the Fallen fiction set in my Gothic devastated Paris (the universe of The House of Shattered Wings, The House of Binding Thorns and the forthcoming The House of Sundering Flames).

The original novella, “Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness” is a comedy of manners set in the Dominion of the Fallen universe, where Fallen angel Emmanuelle attempts to throw a relaxing birthday party for her partner, and everything goes wrong in all the worst possible ways. Complete with supernatural fungus in a ballroom, meddling immortals and Emmanuelle desperately trying to keep it all going smoothly in spite of her enemies–and of her friends!

Preorders are now open: Subterranean website | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon FR

This is a limited print run. If you want a copy, now would be a good time: my previous novella for Subterranean Press, the Hugo and Nebula award finalist, The Tea Master and the Detective, went out of print relatively fast.