Search Worlds Without End

Angela Pendergast, escapee from the Australian bush, grew up with the smell of hot mutton fat in her hair, the thought of her teeth crunching a cold Tim Tam chocolate biscuit-the height of decadent frivolity.

Now, though her tastes have grown and she knows absolutely what she wants, her life is embarrassingly stuck. So when the Devil drops into her bedroom in her sharehouse in inner-city Sydney with a contract in hand, she signs. He's got only a Hell's week to fulfil his side, but in the meantime he must chaperone her -- or is it the other way around?

Elation, compulsion, exploration, love and exquisitely timed bullying, a lascivious oyster, a man called Eggplant, the dangers of smelling like honey pudding, the enticement of innocent toadlets, the unending day of deadness. The daughter of a part-time magician and a Las Vegas showgirl turns to science, destiny points a young man to brassiere design, suddenly orphaned siblings try to protect their most vulnerable, fortunes craze in neighbourhoods living cheek-by-jowl. Unintendeds abound, as life cavorts in all its unclassifiable contrariness.

Table of Contents:

• What I Don't Know and Do About Anna Tambour - (2015) - essay by Jeffrey Ford
• The Oyster and Alice O. - (2011) - short story
• Lab Dancer - (2015) - short fiction
• Strange Incidents in Foreign Parts - (2005) - short story
• Marks and Coconuts - (2013) - short fiction
• The Walking-Stick Forest - (2014) - short story
• The Jeweller of Second-Hand Roe - (2007) - short story
• High Life - (2015) - short fiction
• Baad-hin'jan and the Chickpea - (2015) - short story
• The Eye of Nostradamus Summit - (2010) - short story
• The Old Testacles - (2014) - short story
• Rocket Fantazyor - (2015) - short fiction
• Sincerely, Petrified - (2009) - short fiction
• The Dog Who Wished He'd Never Heard of Lovecraft - (2012) - short story
• Bufo of Oahu: Ukulele Ululatress - (2015) - short story
• How Galligaskins Sloughed the Scourge - (2010) - short story
• There Is No Rice Pudding in the Sea - (2006) - short story
• Dreadnought Neptune - (2010) - short story
• The Shoe in SHOES' Window - (2007) - short story
• The Emperor's Backscratcher - (2005) - short story
• King Wolf - (2012) - short story
• Gladiolus Exposed - (2008) - short story
• Pococurante - (2007) - short story
• The Age of Fish, Post-Flowers - (2008) - short story
• Tap - (2015) - short story
• Bowfin Island - (2013) - short story

The Walking-Stick Forest, by Anna Tambour, is a dark fantasy about a recluse who creates collectible walking sticks in post WWI Scotland by manipulating the woods somewhat like bonsais. He refuses a commission from a very rich, powerful man, never considering or caring about the consequences.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In a medieval cookbook in a special-collections library, near-future London, jaded food and drink authority Nick Kippax finds an alluring stain next to a recipe for the mythical crandolin. He tastes it, ravishing the page. Then he disappears... So begins an 'adwentour' that quantum-leapfrogs from Central Asia in the Middle Ages to Russia under Gorbachev, from the secrets of confectionery to the agonies of making a truly great moustache, from maidens in towers to tiffs between cosmic forces. Food, music, science, fruitloopery, superstition, railways, bladder-pipes and birth-marked Soviet statesmen; all are present in an extraordinary novel that is truly 'for the adwentoursomme'.