Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation (2017), edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

The Royce family has been a plague on the small, Southern town of Lewis for generations. Caleb has heard rumors about the family his whole life, just like he's heard the rumors about a monstrous creature known as Catfish John living in the swamp.

Nebula Award-nominated Novella

When the Royce house burns down, Caleb's father - Lewis's sheriff - takes in the sole survivor, a young girl named Cere. Caleb quickly learns the truth about Archie Royce and the terrible fate he had planned for his daughter. After a woman is brutally murdered, Cere begins to suspect that not all of her family perished in the fire, and she and Caleb set out to stop her father's dark vision from coming to pass.

Years later, Caleb is the sheriff of Lewis, and the monsters of his childhood return. Now Caleb must fight to protect those he loves from Archie Royce's legacy, and his best hope may be a legend he's almost managed to convince himself never existed - Catfish John.

Excerpts from a Film (1942-1987) by A.C. Wise is a disturbing horror novelette about a young woman, who like many others, goes to Hollywood to become a star and is haunted by the murders of several other aspiring actresses. And of her influence, rippling up through the years, on the man who "discovered" her and on film itself.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Nebula and Sunburst Award-nominated Short Story

This story was originally published in Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2019.

Read this story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, December 2010. The story can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A photographer's obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won't be contained by frames...

This story was originally published on Tor.com's Reactor on 15 March 2023. Read it for free at Tor.com

A lush and elegant collection of tales--many having appeared in various "Best Of" anthologies--teeming with frightful and tragic events, yet profoundly and intimately human. These chilling tales will engross and enthrall.

Table of Contents:

• 11 - How the Trick Is Done
• 35 - The Stories We Tell About Ghosts
• 59 - The Last Sailing of the Henry Charles Morgan in Six Pieces of Scrimshaw
• 67 - Harvest Song, Gathering Song
• 91 - The Secret of Flight
• 113 - Crossing
• 135 - How to Host a Haunted House Murder Mystery Party
• 149 - In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same
• 161 - Exhalation #10
• 189 - Excerpts from a Film
• 219 - Lesser Creek: A Love Story, a Ghost Story
• 235 - I Dress My Lover in Yellow
• 251 - The Nag Bride
• 297 - Tekeli-li, They Cry
• 311 - The Men from Narrow Houses
• 325 - The Ghost Sequences

"Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the Kissing Booth Girl! Lips that beguile. Oh, I promise, the nearest thing to nuzzling an angel can be yours--today!--for a shiny round Seated Liberty I know you carry in your very pockets as I speak." But to mechanically-inclined Beni, is the ethereal girl who fell from the sky a wish come true or false hope for life beyond the confines of the odd carnival called home. Her story--as well as tales of an order of deep-sea diving nuns caring for a sunken chapel and a high school boy asked to prom by the only dead kid he's ever met--can be found in A.C. Wise's newest collection of the fantastical, the weird, the queer and the poignant.

Table of Contents:

• The Poet's Child - (2010) - short story
• Juliet & Juliet(te): A Romance of Alternate Worlds - short story
• And If the Body Were Not the Soul - (2015) - novelette
• The Pornographer's Assistant - (2012) - short fiction
• For the Removal of Unwanted Guests - (2013) - short story
• A Mouse Ran Up the Clock - (2009) - novelette
• Evidence of Things Unseen - (2014) - short story by A. C. Wise
• Sisters of the Blessed Diving Order of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew - (2009) - short story
• The Kissing Booth Girl - novelette
• Final Girl Theory - (2011) - short story
• The Astronaut, Her Lover, the Queen of Faerie, and Their Child - novelette
• The Last Survivor of the Great Sexbot Revolution - (2013) - short story
• After Midnight--A Fairy Tale Noir - (2006) - short story
• It's the End of the World as We Know It - short story

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Four, May-June 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The New Voices of Fantasy (2017), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore (2017), edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

For those that lived there, Neverland was a children's paradise. No rules, no adults, only endless adventure and enchanted forests--all led by the charismatic boy who would never grow old.

But Wendy Darling grew up. She has a husband and a young daughter called Jane, a life in London. But one night, after all these years, Peter Pan returns. Wendy finds him outside her daughter's window, looking to claim a new mother for his Lost Boys. But instead of Wendy, he takes Jane.

Now a grown woman, a mother, a patient and a survivor, Wendy must follow Peter back to Neverland to rescue her daughter and finally face the darkness at the heart of the island...

Once invited, always welcome.
Once invited, never free.

Captain James Hook, the immortal pirate of Neverland, has died a thousand times. Drowned, stabbed by Peter Pan's sword, eaten by the beast swimming below the depths, yet James was resurrected every time by one boy's dark imagination. Until he found a door in the sky, an escape. And he took the chance no matter the cost.

Now in London twenty-two years later, Peter Pan's monster has found Captain Hook again, intent on revenge. But a chance encounter leads James to another survivor of Neverland. Wendy Darling, now a grown woman, is the only one who knows how dark a shadow Neverland casts, no matter how far you run. To vanquish Pan's monster once and for all, Hook must play the villain one last time...