Search Worlds Without End

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Shadows & Tall Trees, Spring 2014. It was reprinted in Nightmare Magazine, April 2016. The story can also be found in the anthology Focus 2014: Highlights of Australian Short Fiction (2015), edited by Tehani Wessely.

Read the full story for free at Nightmare Magazine.

In this gothic-styled ghost story that simmers with strange, Warren shows once again her flair for exploring the mundane--themes of love, loss, grief, and guilt manifest in a way that is both hauntingly familiar and eerily askew.

People come to The Angelsea, a rooming house near the beach, for many reasons. Some come to get some sleep, because here, you sleep like the dead. Dora arrives seeking solitude and escape from reality. Instead, she finds a place haunted by the drowned and desperate, who speak through the sleeping inhabitants. She fears sleep herself, terrified that the ghosts of her daughters will tell her "it's all your fault we're dead." At the same time, she'd give anything to hear them one more time.

Marvo is a stage magician. His magic is real.

Marvo grows up without knowing his parents, without knowing his heritage, without knowing much about life.

The magicians have always been with us, since the beginning of civilisation. They fill our heads with the mist, keeping us from witnessing the stark reality of existence. But are things so bad that Marvo will bring it down on all of us, forever?

Marvo begins to understand those around him, and his place in the world; he discovers that his remarkable powers can be put to good, or to evil.

He only has to choose...

Aurealis, Ditmar and Shirley Jackson Award winning, and World Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection Through Splintered Walls (2012).

Stevie is a killer. When she kills people she asks them: "WHAT DO YOU SEE?" She's about to find out...

After an accident in which her mother dies, Stevie has a near-death experience, and finds herself in a room full of people -- everyone she's ever pissed off. They clutch at her, scratch and tear at her. But she finds herself drawn back to this place, again and again, determined to unlock its secrets. Which means she has to die, again and again. And she starts to wonder whether other people see the same room when they die.

The most disturbing novel of 2009. Read it if you dare.

There are many grief holes. There's the grief hole you fall into when a loved one dies. There's another grief hole in all of us; small or large, it determines how much we want to live. And there are the places, the physical grief holes, which attract suicides to their centre. Sol Evictus, a powerful, charismatic singer, sends a young artist into The Grief Hole to capture the faces of the teenagers dying there. When she inevitably dies herself, her cousin Theresa resolves to stop this man so many love. Theresa sees ghosts; she knows how you'll die by the spirits haunting you. If you'll drown, she'll see drowned people. Most often she sees battered women, because she works to find emergency housing for abused women. She sees no ghosts around Sol Evictus but she doesn't let that stop her. Her passion to help, to be a saint, drives her to find a way to destroy him.

The Time-Ball Tower of Tempuston houses the worst criminals in history.

Given the option of the death penalty or eternal life, they chose eternal life.

They have a long time to regret that choice.

Botanica is an island, but almost all of the island is taken up by the Tree.

Little knowing how they came to be here, small communities live around the coast line. The Tree provides them shelter, kindling, medicine – and a place of legends, for there are ghosts within the trees who snatch children and the dying.

Lillah has come of age and is now ready to leave her community and walk the tree for five years, learning all Botanica has to teach her. Before setting off, Lillah is asked by the dying mother of a young boy to take him with her. In a country where a plague killed half the population, Morace will otherwise be killed in case he has the same disease. But can Lillah keep the boy's secret, or will she have to resort to breaking the oldest taboo on Botanica?

Another astonishingly imaginative novel from the acclaimed author of Slights.

From Bram Stoker Award nominee Kaaron Warren, comes Book 6 in the Twelve Planets collection series including the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award winning novella "Sky".

Country road, city street, mountain, creek. These are stories inspired by the beauty, the danger, the cruelty, emptiness, loneliness and perfection of the Australian landscape.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Gemma Files
• Mountain
• Creek
• Road
• Sky