Kirjahaku

Sixteen executions have failed. The seventeenth is about to begin.Beal devoted his life to the study of eliminating convicted felons, but the notorious Don Vashta is the greatest challenge any executioner can face: an immortal criminal who always rises from the dead to sin again. A short story chapbook about a job that turns into a friendship, and a friendship that becomes an obsession.

Hitman Keith Murphy is on the run after a botched job. He's bodypacking a magic bullet, fleeing an apocalyptic cult of necromancers, and wishing like hell his partner Danny Roark hadn't chosen to go AWOL. Flying solo, Keith's left with a single plan that might keep him alive: return to the Gold Coast and do his best to lie low.Keith's not been home for sixteen years, but nobody's pleased to see him. His ex-boss Sabbath wants to torture Keith for leaving, his ex-girlfriend is running the club where local demons and fey trade in dark desires, and his best friend is threatening to break Keith's kneecaps just for crossing the city limits.When a cult sorcerer tracks him down, Keith's forced to cut a desperate deal that buys him a little time--he'll trade his skills as a killer for six months of sanctuary. Problem is, Keith doesn't work alone, and he's always let Danny Roark handle the magic.That means going up against dangerous sorcerers and demons with nothing but guns, gumption, and any reluctant allies Keith can scrape together to back him up.

The twelve stories in this collection touch upon science fiction, horror, and fantasy, but all see people brush against the sublime and discover who they truly are. In "One Saturday Night, With Angel," a young man staffing a convenience store frets as angels hunt his customers. In "Say Zucchini, and Mean It," the world is overrun by a plague that robs us of three very important words. In "Clockwork, Patchwork, and Raven," a clockwork man dreams of a fairy-tale ending while trying to protect those he loves from a dangerous gang of genetically engineered crow boys. In "Dying Young," the psychic son of a lawman must re-evaluate the deals he makes in order to keep his town safe from cybernetic marauders and a dragon seeking justice.Mimes, aliens, and kaiju that only fifty percent of the population can see. Invaders from beyond the stars, empaths on the run, and Astronomer's Royal of England. These are just some of the characters you'll meet in the strange futures presented in this collection, but all are grounded in very human strengths and frailties.

Published here as a stand-alone chapbook, Briar Day is a short, slipstream story about masculinity, fairy tales, and the narratives we tell ourselves. Also available in the collection The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales.Everyone remembers where they were when the briars first choked the city. Everyone celebrates the anniversary of their rescue from the rampaging dragon and the mysterious curse that afflicted Brisbane.But not everybody is in the mood to celebrate the anniversary of Briar Day, and for two old friends with terrible memories of the day, the annual celebrations are nothing but a source of heartbreak.

Cody Jones owes the corp a lot of money. Decanted from a cryotube with a mountain of debt and very few options, Cody works corporate black ops in Downside, home to the gene-freaks, gangs, and dispossessed who don't have a place in the gleaming towers of Helix City.Cody's latest job should be simple: recover a fresh cache of cryogenically frozen citizens from a local gang before they're bartered to the highest bidder. Deliver them back to Bellamy and knock a little more off her debt.Pity the gangs have their own ideas about how this deal needs to go. What should be a simple recovery gig sees Cody and her partner caught in a conflict between the hulking kaiju-gangers and drug-addled zealots, and both sides have plans for the sleepers just might change Cody's world forever.

Years before he built his name as a science fiction and fantasy author, Peter M. Ball was a young poet and member of the Gold Coast's Post Hoc Performing Word collective, building a profile with publications in venerable magazines such as Overland and performances at writer's festivals around Australia. Gold Coast, 2002, collects 24 poems capturing life as a permanent resident of Australia's most notorious tourist destination, bringing them into print for the first time in 20 years.

Peter M. Ball made his debut as a speculative fiction writer in 2007, but he'd already been writing for two decades by the time he turned his attention to producing short stories. This chapbook brings two early, formative short stories back into print, featuring the discontinuous, post-modern grunge-lit of Night, Morning, Story and the crude horror of Impact. The chapbook also includes a short author's note, positioning these early works in the landscape of Ball's later career and his first steps away from writing poetry.Ideal for fans who enjoy not just the deep cuts of an author's back catalogue, but delving all the way back to see early influences and techniques tried out for incorporation into later works.

If you love hard-boiled detectives, dangerous fey, and cold cases that turn hot on a dime, then take this opportunity to introduce yourself to Peter M. Ball's Miriam Aster stories. This omnibus collects the two books in Miriam Aster's case files.HORNAward-winning author Peter M. Ball takes you into the world of exiled fey and dangerous magic in his cult novella Horn.Miriam Aster used to be a homicide cop, but a relationship with the queen of the fey and one too many off-the-books favours saw her drummed out of the force and pushed into private inquiry work. Now she's burned out, barely coping, and all too happy to put her past behind her ... until a late-night phone call pulls her in to consult in a recent murder.The victim is a young girl brutally murdered and infested with fey, and the killer is the one thing Aster knows should never be let loose on the mortal world. There's a unicorn killing young women, and her former colleagues in the police department are ill-equipped to stop it.Unless Aster agrees to step back into the fey world, there's going to be a lot more murders before things really hit the fan.BLEEDMiriam Aster returns in a sequel to the cult hit Horn.Ten years ago, Miriam Aster agreed to kill three men in order to protect the secrets of the fey. It's the greatest mistake of her life, and the reason she's now a drunk PI instead of a homicide cop. As far as she's concerned, the mistakes of her past stay in her past and the fey can go screw themselves.But when an old case comes back to haunt her and the spectres of the past loom in the shadows, Aster must join forces with a desperate stuntwoman and a talking cat to stop the half-breed sorcerer who needs Aster's blood to exact revenge.Turns out there are worse things than committing murder...

The Viking Maiden's crew has received some long-awaited shore leave and all Dana Valkyrie wants to do is kick her heels up, stay out of trouble, and devour the steaks and vegetables you just can't get in the middle of space. She might be the Maiden's champion, the best fighter on the toughest ship to sail the spaceways, but even Dana knows better than to pick a fight in a port as strict as White Harbor. Her plans soon go awry when the local security division sends an agent to tail Dana through her shore leave, one of her subordinates proves determined to get into a brawl, and even her Captain volunteers Dana for a back dock MMA fight with the pride of the ship at stake. Dana knows the smart play is saying no, but as the stakes get higher and the Captain endangers the ship's very livelihood, Dana's got no choice but to put up her dukes and fight... even if it means prison if they're caught. A science fiction MMA novella in the tradition of the great fighting stories of the pulp era, White Harbor War is the first entry in the ongoing saga of a two-fisted engineer, a mysterious Captain, and a crew full of trouble who take pride in being the toughest fighters in the universe.

Vicious storms of red rain sweep across Australia, raising the dead as zombies hungry for human flesh. Fortunately, we've all seen zombie movies and know what comes next, allowing the locals to band togetherand live small, desolate, ordinary livesdespite the ever-present danger.Drawing inspiration from George Romeroand Raymond Carver in equal measure, Peter M. Ball presents six dirty realism tales of quiet desperation and spare, razor-sharp narration in a world overrun by the walking dead.

A desperate future where humanity lives in the ruins of old buildings, avoiding the streets haunted by predatory cars who hunt for sport. Off-duty time travellers stop Viking invasions that interrupt a well-earned night out.A clowder of cats gathers around a mysterious fire to tell stories of what might be, and teenage friends turned bitter rivals compete in a race that sends giant mecha sprinting across a frost-bound colony.A cosplayer turns superhero when aliens invade. A cop makes an ill-advised deal with the devil, and monster hunters looking to make their mark interrupt a demonic wedding.Peter M. Ball returns with his fourth short story collection, bringing together 20 science fiction, fantasy, and horror tales that are often dark, always unexpected, and sure to please long-time fans and new readers alike.

Series fiction has exploded in popularity with the rise of digital publishing, drawing attention from readers and institutions alike.Yet writing series fiction isn't always easy-developing characters and stories capable of iterate through multiple volumes while still engaging readers is a challenge for any author, and our understanding of how series fiction works is still couched in terminology associated with stand-alone titles.Peter M. Ball began researching the poetics of series fiction after writing a sequel and discovering all his storytelling instincts no longer applied. This book is the culmination of culmination of several years of research into why series fiction is different to writing a stand-alone book, and how those differences can be used to generate poetic effects.