Kirjahaku

Ask enough questions and you start to realize that most answers are great icebreakers, but seldom go deep enough to thoroughly explore what lies beneath the surface. If you're going to take the conversation to the next level, you'll have to get out of your comfort zone and do some exploring of your own. Join in for deep dives on topics such as inconvenience being the prerequisite to love, culture as a pitstop rather than a destination, and the difference between the best self and authentic self. For a warm-up, how would you rank patience, compromise, and communication?

In an alternate 1800's America, where magic is real and dragons soar through the skies of the American frontier -my name is Topher. I had a good life, mostly. It wasn't great, but what can a young African girl living at the Edge of the World expect? I had a shack that I shared with my Ma, I knew the vendors I could pocket an apple from, and was better than anyone with a spitshot. Then that chucklehead Wasco rolled out of the mountains like a toppled boulder and dragged me into a whole mess I figured if I guided him around town, maybe I could pocket a penny or two from him. Before I knew it we were trompin' around the Blacklands, getting shot at, almost eaten and damn near gutted by some bull-headed dandy All because someone went and took Bella, and Wasco aimed to get her back.Jacob, who was about the handsomest gunfighter a body could imagine, turned out might be some kind of monster. Old Ying was acting like one of them wizards from the storybooks, and Li had a magic sword I had been too stubborn not to follow them. Yeah, it had been a good enough life. I just wasn't sure I was going to make it back to it. Or if I wanted to.

How many ways can the world fall apart? A smug superhero belittles the very people he's supposed to save. An Aztec god escapes the sacking of his city to take refuge in modern-day Manchester. Rebels topple a despotic regime, much to the disappointment of the dictator's body double, and even the penguins decide to rise up against their human captors.Welcome to the unforgettable worlds of Michael Conley: horrific, hilarious, and forever on the brink of collapse. Lives are turned upside-down by ducks, the alphabet attacks every country on the planet, and civil unrest breaks out when we realise that only half of us can see the kraken clinging to the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Sly and silly, chaotic and carnivalesque, often poignant and always unpredictable, Conley's stories shred the thin veil that protects our familiar reality from an apocalypse of the bizarre.