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What might have happened had Alexander not marched into India, but turned back west? This is the question posed in Ms. Scott's alternate history. Yet another revolt in Greece (even more serious than the historical revolt of King Agis of Sparta) forces Alexander to turn around and march back home. Having been thwarted then in his bid for India, he turns his interest west instead, to Rome and Carthage.

Governed by two political rulers, the planet Burning Bright is the location of the biggest virtual reality game in the universe. Quinn Lioe is tangled in a web of love and suspense when she becomes determined to play at the center of the virtual reality world and gets stuck in the war between the two empires. This science fiction adventure is one of Scott's best and the complex futuristic world is unforgettable.

Persephone is a planet wracked by class struggle and economic and political upheaval. Celinde Fortune is an entertainer, an illusionist who makes good money but plays the Empire theater, a venue prone to bomb threats. When she combines two advanced computer chips in a new way to sophisticate her act, the resulting form of computer life seems awfully like a true artificial intelligence. And this is beyond controversial--it could get her killed.

Dreamships is the story of a freelance space pilot and her crew, who are hired by a rich corporate owner to track down her crazy brother--who just may have created the first sentient Artificial Intelligence. Social texture and a tough, cyberpunk attitude make this an exceptionally intense read.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED--HIRE IT DONE!

What does a big corporation do when a job is too dirty and dangerous for its own employees? Why hire a freelancer, of course. That's how salvage operators Gwynne Heikki and her sidekick Sten Djuro find themselves commissioned to make their way to the surface of an undeveloped planet where they are to find and return a lost cargo.

Dangerous, maybe, and dirty certainly, but the job seemed simple enough--with just enough complication to make it "interesting": the fact that the cargo locators had failed in the crash; that the place swarmed with dangerous animals; that the worst of those animals was of almost human intelligence and more than human ferocity...

But there were a few problems that the company didn't tell them about... It was almost as if their employers wanted them to fail--and to die in the process.

Melissa Scott's award-winning work is known for its vividly imagined settings that explore humanity's far future. IN NIGHT SKY MINE, young Ista Kelly is a foundling, the only survivor of a pirate raid on an asteroid mine. In a future where one cannot live without an official identity, this is the story of Ista's harrowing journey back to the asteroid to find her true identity.

In the far future, human culture has developed five distinctive genders due to the effects of a drug easing sickness from faster-than-light travel. But on the planet Hara, where society is increasingly instability, caught between hard-liner traditions and the realities of life, only male and female genders are legal, and the ''odd-bodied'' population are forced to pass as one or the other. Warreven Stiller, a lawyer and an intersexed person, is an advocate for those who have violated Haran taboos. When Hara regains contact with the Concord worlds, Warreven finds a larger role in breaking the long-standing role society has forced on ''him,'' but the search for personal identity becomes a battleground of political intrigue and cultural clash.

GOD SAVE THE KING OF SCOTLAND

The heavy summer air of 1593 is full of portents for Elizabeth, England's Queen, and James VI, King of Scotland. A coven of witches secretly controlled by the Wizard Earl of Bothwell has summoned a storm to sink the ship that bears James' bride to Scotland. Though the ship made port, the success of their summoning has emboldened them; the coven is now launching wizardly attacks on the King himself -- and James is terrified.

FROM SATAN'S WIZARD EARL

The King has protectors -- not least the Queen of England herself -- but not even Elizabeth's secret service and her champion, the redoubtable Sir Philip Sidney, can be on watch every instant. Eventually a trap is sprung, and King James is at the mercy of the satanic Bothwell's deadly spells...

A star-flung empire the prize - in a deadly war of succession.

Melissa Scott, winner of the John W. Campbell Award, twice winner of the Lambda Award for best novel, and author of the cyberpunk classic, Trouble and Her Friends, returns with a hip novel of the media-dominated future, when the internet is filled with Jazz: intentional misinformation and bewildering disinformation that are both an artform and a business.

Tin Lizzy, a respected Jazz artist with a checkered past, is a theatrical Web site designer who does backgrounds for Jazz productions. When a nifty new script shows up on the web, Lizzy is surprised to learn it came from a teenage boy named Keyz. It turns out Keyz used his parents' access codes to borrow a Hollywood studio's editing program- the true, hidden source of the studio's success. Now the studio head wants to lock him in jail and throw away the key.

So Lizzy rescues him and takes him on the road, across the altered landscape of twenty-first century USA, trying to stay one step ahead of the police... . and the vengeance of a megalomaniac CEO.

The Jazz is a road chase novel of the future, filled with shady characters, close calls, and colorful neat ideas.

Orestes was a cruel world, cold and inhospitable. Its first colonists were castaways from a crash landing, clinging to survival through the institution of strict socio-political controls. Over the generations life grew somewhat easier, but the code of honour remained. Misdeeds - and errors - were paid for with blood. At one time all miscreants were executed. Now a social death is imposed. Every Oresteian city has a colony of "ghosts": ostracised citizens who must survive, somehow, without help from the living. But galactic civilisation is spreading - and Orestes is in its path. The old ways are under scrutiny. And though the Oresteian aristocracy will fight for the status quo, they have not reckoned on the power of a thousand ghosts.

In The Shapes of Their Hearts, a computer tape of the brain of a religious prophet has been allowed to merge with an AI; the result is both a religious icon on the planet Idun and a powerful terrorist. Anton Tso must come up with a way to stop the terrorism without killing God.

India Carless, alias Trouble, managed to stay one step ahead of the feds until she retired from life as a hacker and settled down to run a small network for an artist's co-op.

Now someone has stolen her pseudonym and begun to use it for criminal hacking. So Trouble returns. Once the fastest gun on the electronic frontier, she has been called out of retirement for one last fight. And it's a killer.

Less than a hundred years from now, the forces of law and order crack down on the world of the internet. It is the closing of the frontier. The hip, noir adventurers who got by on wit, bravado, and drugs, who haunt the virtual worlds of the shadows of cyberspace are up against the edges of civilization. It's time to adapt or die.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Other Half of the Sky (2013), edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Garder Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology To Shape the Dark (2016), edited by Athena Andreadis. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Cassilde Sam is a barely solvent salvage operator, hunting for relics in the ruins left by the mysterious Ancestors--particularly the color-coded Elements that power most of humanity's current technology, including the ability to navigate through hyperspace. Cassilde is also steadily fading under the onslaught of Lightman's, an incurable, inevitably fatal disease. She needs one last find big enough to leave a legacy for her partner and fellow salvor Dai Winter.

When their lover and former colleague Summerlad Ashe reappears, offering them a chance to salvage part of an orbiting palace that he claims contains potentially immense riches, Cassilde is desperate enough to take the gamble, even though Ashe had left them both to fight on the opposite side of the interplanetary war that only ended seven years ago. The find is everything Ashe promised. But when pirates attack the claim, Cassilde receives the rarest of the Ancestors' Gifts: a change to her biochemistry that confers near-instant healing and seems to promise immortality.

But the change also drags her into an underworld where Gifts are traded in blood, and powerful Gifts bring equally powerful enemies. Hunted for her Gift and determined to find Gifts for her lovers, Cassilde discovers that an old enemy is searching for the greatest of the Ancestral artifacts: the power that the Ancestors created and were able to barely contain after it almost destroyed them, plunging humanity into the first Long Dark. Haunted by dream-visions of this power whispering its own version of what happened, Cassilde must find it first, before her enemy frees it to destroy her own civilization.

His practice newly established, metaphysician Ned Mathey can't afford to turn away any clients. But the latest Londoner to seek Ned's magical aid gives him pause: Mr Edgar Nevett, an arrogant banker, is the father of the bully who made Ned's life hell at boarding school. Nevertheless, Ned accepts the commission to ensure the Nevett family silver bears no ancient or modern curses, and then prepares to banish the Nevett family to unpleasant memory again. Until Edgar Nevett is killed by an enchanted silver candlestick one of the pieces Ned declared magically harmless.

Calling on his old school friend Julian Lynes--private detective and another victim of the younger Nevett--Ned races to solve the murder, clear the stain on his professional reputation, and lay to rest the ghosts of his past. Assisted by Ned's able secretary Miss Frost, who has unexpected metaphysical skills of her own, Ned and Julian explore London's criminal underworld and sodomitical demimonde, uncover secrets and scandals, confront the unexpected murderer and the mysteries of their own relationship.

In Death by Silver veteran authors Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold introduce a Victorian London where magic works, influencing every aspect of civilized life, and two very appealing detectives.

In the sequel to Lambda Literary Award-winning Death by Silver, metaphysician Ned Mathey and private detective Julian Lynes again challenge magical and murderous threats in a Victorian London not quite the city in our history books.

Mathey is recruited by Scotland Yard to assist the new Metaphysical Crimes Squad in the case of a literally heartless corpse. Mathey soon discovers that the magic used to rob the man of his heart and life does not conform to the laws of modern metaphysics and then a second victim turns up. Meanwhile, a minor poet hires Lynes to track down and stop the blackmailer threatening to reveal him as the pseudonymous author of popular romances. When another target of the same blackmailer, a friend of Mathey's assistant Miss Frost, appeals for aid, Lynes and Mathey begin to suspect murders and blackmail are connected.

Digging deep into the clandestine worlds of lawless antique magic and the gay demimonde, Mathey and Lynes must uncover the source and nature of a heart-stealing supernatural creature before it can kill them too, even as they face the scandal of exposing themselves as sodomites in order to close the case.

In 1929 archeologists began draining Lake Nemi in search of the mysterious ships that have been glimpsed beneath its waters since the reign of Claudius. What they awakened had been drowned for two thousand years. For a very good reason.

Veteran aviator Lewis Segura has been drifting since the Great War ended, fetched up at last at the small company run by fellow veterans and pilots Alma Gilchrist and Mitchell Sorley, assisted by their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard, an archeologist who lost his career when he lost part of his leg. It's a living, and if it's not quite what any of them had dreamed of, it's better than much that they've already survived. But Lewis has always dreamed true, and what he sees in his dreams will take them on a dangerous chase from Hollywood to New York to an airship over the Atlantic, and finally to the Groves of Diana Herself....

The world is full of lost treasures. Some of them are better off not found.

In this sequel to Lost Things, when the Gilchrist Aviation team tries to win the money to keep the business going by placing first in a coast-to-coast air race, things get complicated! A stolen necklace, a runaway Russian countess, and a century-old curse seem like trouble enough, but then there's New Orleans, and the unsolved murders of the New Orleans Axeman. But what if the murderer is one of them?

A series of mysterious plane crashes in the Rocky Mountains in the midst of a Depression winter call Air Corps reservists Mitch Sorley and Lewis Segura out to fly search and rescue, but it's more than just a simple navigational hazard. Fortunately Mitch and Lewis are more than just pilots. With Lewis' wife Alma and their old friend Dr. Jerry Ballard they're members of an esoteric Lodge dedicated to the protection of the world.

The Silver Bullet Mine is haunted -- or is it? Can ghosts bring down aircraft? And are the small-time crooks who are interested in the Mine simply looking to make a buck -- or the vanguard of something more evil and deadly? Aided by their former con artist office manager Stasi Rostov, they've got to get to the bottom of what's happening at the Silver Bullet Mine before more lives are lost.

It may be that Jerry holds the key not only to Silver Bullet, but to an even more dangerous secret, one that men have killed to gain for two thousand years. The Lodge is in deep, and there is only one man who can help them, the legendary scientist Nikola Tesla!

Melissa Scott and Jo Graham tell yet another gripping story, and with their intense detail and snappy dialogue it is an adventure on the page. -- Historical Novel Society Review on Silver Bullet

It's the summer of 1935, and Gilchrist Aviation's owner Alma Gilchrist Segura has brokered a deal that will take herself and fellow pilots Lewis Segura and Mitchell Sorley to Honolulu to test a new seaplane. It pays well enough to take their families along for a working vacation - including the children of the company's part time handyman, whose father has abandoned them. Better still, archeologist Jerry Ballard is already there supervising a dig investigating whether Hawaii was actually discovered by the Chinese. It's a crackpot idea, but it's his only chance to prove that he can still handle field work after losing his leg at the end of the Great War, and he's determined to restart his career.

However, not all is as it seems. The dig is funded by anonymous sources who seem to have far too much influence on its management, including the hiring of German archaeologist Willi Radke, and who seem to know exactly what they want to find. The seaplane's testing is plagued by mysterious mechanical problems - and rumors of a curse spread through the hangar. Can you murder someone by magic? And who would want to kill a middle aged Army officer who belongs to an allied lodge? Alma, Jerry, Mitch, Lewis and Stasi are determined to defend themselves, but the power arrayed against them is greater than they imagined. It will take everything they have - as flyers, scholars, and magicians - to survive this deadly paradise.

Aces high...

As the threat of European war looms, the Kingdom of Ethiopia is one of the first to come under attack from the Fascist powers. When Dr. Jerry Ballard's long-anticipated dig in Alexandria is interrupted by the arrival of his old friend Iskinder on a secret mission for the Ethiopian Emperor, Jerry has to make a stand -- even if it means delaying his dream of finding the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. Fortunately, the rest of the Lodge, Alma, Lewis, Mitch, and Stasi are in Sicily showing the Catalina flying boat at a prestigious European air show. Bound by oaths and friendship, they undertake a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean and into the heart of a battle where they will be tested as never before.

Nicolas Rathe is a pointsman, a dedicated watchman in the great city of Astreiant. During the annual trade fair, with a city filled with travelers and merchants, someone is stealing children. The populace is getting angry and frightened and convinced that a foreigner must be to blame. Rathe calls on the aid of both an out-of-work soldier, the handsome Philip Eslingen, and the necromancer Istre b'Estorr.

The art of astrology is a very real power in the kingdom and plays as much a role in politics as greed and intrigue. Rathe finds himself struggling to find the children before a major astrological event brings about catastrophe. The first in a series of fantasy novels filled with adventure, intrigue and gay romance.

The city of Astreiant has gone crazy with enthusiasm for a new play, "The Drowned Island," a lurid farrago of melodrama and innuendo. Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is not amused, however, at a real dead body on stage and must investigate. A string of murders follow, perhaps related to the politically important masque that is to play on that same stage. Rathe must once again recruit the help of his lover, former soldier Philip Eslingen, whose knowledge of actors and the stage, and of the depths of human perversity and violence, blends well with Rathe's own hard-won experience with human greed and magical mayhem.

Their task is complicated by the season, for it is the time of year when the spirits of the dead haunt the city and influence everyone, and also by the change in their relationship when the loss of Philip's job forces him to move in with Nicolas. Mystery, political intrigue, floral magic, astrology, and romance--both theatrical and personal-- combine to make this a compelling read.

A winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Speculative Fiction!

A welcome return to the vividly realized city of Asteiant with its intricate magics and deadly politics. Point of Knives takes place in the interval between the widely praised earlier novels Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams. A fantastical mystery and a rousing adventure, Point of Knives also reveals for the first time the beginning of the romance between Adjunct Point Nicolas Rathe and ex-soldier Philip Eslingen.

The events of Midsummer have hardly been forgotten by the Fall Balance, and Nicolas Rathe can hardly complain that they've done any harm to his reputation, or to the reputation of the Points in general. However, it has meant that he's more in demand as an investigator, and the increased recognition and workload has made it hard to pursue friendship, or anything more, with Philip Eslingen, his comrade in the rescue of the stolen children. Eslingen is still Hanselin Caiazzo's bodyguard and Caiazzo is involved in any number of questionably legal ventures, and it does neither of them any good to be seen too often in each other's company. When a father and son who are both rumored to have been pirates are murdered on the same night, and Rathe finds Eslingen standing over the son's body, Eslingen proves his innocence easily enough, though he refuses to say exactly what errand he's running for Caiazzo at that hour of the morning. But when the old man's grandson and the son's self-proclaimed wife quarrel over the son's meager belongings, and Caiazzo dispatches Eslingen to represent his interests in the investigation, Rathe begins to wonder if their friendship is going to survive. Or whether they'll survive at all.

During Dog Moon, the chief entertainment in the great city of Astreiant, for nobles and commons alike, is the basket-terrier races at New Fair. This year, with spectacularly bad timing, the massive and suspicious bankruptcy of a young nobleman has convulsed the city, leading to suicides, widespread loss of employment, and inconvenient new laws around the universal practice of betting on the races. As well, a rash of mysterious burglaries seems to suggest a magistical conspiracy.

Pointsman Nicolas Rathe is naturally in the midst of all these disturbances--as is his lover, foreign former mercenary Philip Eslingen. When Eslingen receives a basket-terrier puppy in the redistribution of the bankrupt's household goods, he makes the best of it by having the pup trained for the races, an action that draws him and Rathe deeper into the coils of a mystery somehow involving New Fair's dog races, bookies and bettors, the bankruptcy and its causes and fallout, burglaries, and a new uncanny form of murder.

Fourth in the Astreiant series, Fairs' Point once again demonstrates Melissa Scott's mastery of fantasy world building, detective-story plotting, and the provision of sheer delight.

Autumn downpours soak the city of Astreiant and cast a gloomy pall over its streets, while storms at sea have delayed merchant ships bearing important cargoes from distant lands. For Philip Eslingen, whose stars are bad for water, the season adds damp misery to the complications of organizing the new and controversial City Guard.

The murder of a tea captain brings to a head the rivalry between Point of Sighs, where the crime took place, and Point of Dreams, where Eslingen's lover, Adjunt Point Nicolas Rathe, doubts the evidence against the son of a prominent Dreams merchant house. As extortion against traders by the dockers of Point of Sighs and corruption among the district pointsmen come to light, the mystery deepens, but nothing can prepare Rathe and Eslingen for the return of a legend and the revival of a savage cult.

Centuries ago the hungry spirit that haunted the River Sier was propitiated by the ritual sacrifice of handsome young man, but the Riverdeme has long been bound by the city's bridges. Now the river seethes with vicious dogfish, mauled corpses are pulled from the water, and Eslingen--peculiarly at risk from any watery threat--and Rathe must uncover the person who seeks to unleash an ancient evil.

THE MAGI HAD MASTERED THE NEW PHYSICS and harnessed the newly discovered power of the elemental harmonies--Alchemy. In doing so, they changed the facr of technology for all time. But it was pilots like Silence Leigh who conquered the starlanes. Silence herself dreamed of a ship--a ship of her own and a destiny removed from the Hegemony's oppression. But not untill she joined the crew of the Sun Treader did the dream take on reality...and a destiny never imagined became Silence's own as well.

In Five-Twelfths of Heaven, Silence Leigh discovered that she was not only unusual, as a female pilot, but that impossible thing, a female magus. Her unique abilities make her the only person capable of reaching Earth, humanity's original home, now sealed behind a mysterious barrier — but first she must learn to use her new-found talents. As the Hegemon's men close in on her and her husbands and teacher, she must make a dangerous bargain: undertake an impossible rescue mission in exchange for a vital map. If she succeeds, she may be able to save Earth. If she fails…

Silence Leigh now faces the ultimate test of her skills as a pilot and of her powers as a sage.

The free flow of traffic to the Gamma Quadrant is vital to the recovery and survival of the planet Bajor and to Federation interests as well. When a mysterious cloaked ship begins raiding wormhole shipping, cleaning out holds and killing entire crews, Commander Benjamin Sisko of Deep Space Nine acts at once to stop the menace.

Commander Sisko has unexpected aid: the cloaked vessel has been striking Cardassian ships as well, and the Cardassian commander Gul Dukat intends to destroy the ship at all costs. Their unlikely alliance works well -- until two of Sisko's crewmen are captured by the raiders. Gul Dukat will stop at nothing to gain his victory; now Sisko must locate the predator ship, hold off the Cardassians long enough to rescue his people -- and prevent an interstellar war!

Desperately in need of vital nutritional supplies, the crew of the USS Voyager must risk dealing with an enigmatic race known as the Kirse, legendary for the bountiful crops of their world - and for their secretive ways. Despite Neelix's warnings, Captain Janeway leads an Away Team to the Kirse homeworld. But when the hostile Andirrim attack the Kirse, Janeway finds herself caught in a deadly situation. Forced to fight alongside the Kirse, Janeway and her crew can only hope that their strange, new allies are not more dangerous than their common foe.

The first of a six book series set after the end of Stargate Atlantis's final season.

Homecoming sees Atlantis return to the Pegasus Galaxy. But the situation in Pegasus has changed. The Wraith are on the verge of unification under the new and powerful Queen Death. She stages a daring raid with one goal: the capture of the only man able to give their ships hyperdrive and lead them to Earth ? Dr. Rodney McKay.

Enemies and friends Reeling from the shocking discovery of Rodney McKay's fate, Colonel Sheppard and his team retreat to Atlantis to regroup. With Rodney not only in the hands of the Wraith, but apparently working for them, Atlantis faces a new danger - their own man, turned against them. While Zelenka and Colonel Carter work frantically to crack the security protocols McKay embedded in Atlantis's computer system, Ronan revisits his past and finds much is changing on Sateda. Meanwhile, Queen Death prepares to make use of her most valuable prisoner; with Rodney still unaware of his true identity, the fate of Atlantis hangs in the balance...

Set after the TV series' exciting finale, STARGATE ATLANTIS: Allegiance is book three of the gripping new Legacy series.

Old secrets, new truths... It is the aftermath of battle. Scattered and struggling to regroup, Colonel Sheppard's team face their darkest days yet in the war against the Wraith Queen, Death. Continuing her perilous masquerade as Queen Steelflower, Teyla Emmagan's friendship with Guide grows stronger. With his help she must journey into the Wraith's distant past to uncover the shocking truth about their origin - and the key to Queen Death's defeat. Meanwhile, Rodney McKay has a different battle to fight as he struggles to regain his humanity in the face of the atrocity the Wraith have committed against him. With his life hanging in the balance, will Rodney be forced to do the unthinkable in order to survive...?

End game The battle lines are drawn.

Queen Death is mustering her fleet. But who will stand against her? As conflicts and betrayal threaten to shatter Atlantis's fragile alliances with Guide's Wraith and the Genii, humanity's only hope of survival rests on the fate of an Ancient device - a weapon too terrible to use but too powerful to cast aside. A weapon capable of exterminating every Wraith in the galaxy, and with them every human carrying Wraith DNA... With Queen Death's fleet fast approaching, Colonel Sheppard and his team must make their final choice.

In the sixth and concluding installment of the STARGATE ATLANTIS Legacy series, the future of Atlantis will be decided - and more than one of her crew will be called upon to sacrifice everything in the fight for her survival...

Elizabeth Weir and Ronon are prisoners of the Vanir whose damaged ship is plummeting into the mountains of Sateda. Meanwhile, Atlantis is in lockdown, infected by a virulent contagion, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. And time is running out...

Helped by Daniel Jackson, Colonel Shepherd's team fight not only to save their city and free their friends but ultimately to save an entire species from extinction. As tensions rise between the Wraith, Travelers and Lanteans, old enemies - and long lost friends - must unite to walk a third path if the fragile peace in the Pegasus galaxy is to hold.

In this riveting conclusion to the Legacy series, the destiny of Atlantis and her people will be decided.

PAST IMPERFECT Stranded in Ancient Egypt at the end of the STARGATE SG-1 episode Moebius, Jack O'Neill, Sam Carter, Teal'c and Daniel Jackson are enjoying the simple lives they've forged in the years since Ra was driven from Earth. But life never stays simple for long... Back in the twenty-first century, trouble strikes the SGC. With one of their own people snatched by renegade Tok'ra, Colonel Cameron Mitchell leads the new SG-1 on a chase through time to rescue their friend - and to protect their future. But for Carter, Daniel and Teal'c, the greatest challenge is encountering themselves - and coming to terms with the consequences of their own choices.

Old friends, new enemies When Dr Daniel Jackson discovers the location of a lost Ancient laboratory, the temptation to investigate proves impossible to resist... In the lab, he uncovers a powerful device - a prototype technology designed by the Ancient inventor, Janus, to supersede the Stargate network. But when the Ouroborus device accidentally activates, it strands General O'Neill and his team on a dangerous new world where friends are not always friends and a terrible enemy is stirring. Now all SG-1 have to do is survive long enough to find their way home...

Another thrilling adventure from Melissa Scott, co-author of the hit Stargate Atlantis Legacy series.

A book such as this spins not only words but also whole worlds: eighteen of them, representing the best lesbian-themed stories of the fantastic or futuristic published the prior year: An artisan who tests the skills and wares of her friends in the hope of finding the ideal housing for an idealized love. A shape-shifting sidekick ensures that the heroine, who might not even be aware of her, saves the day. The device on a young girl's wrist that counts down the years until she will meet her soul mate poses the ultimate challenge of delayed gratification. A daydreamer wonders how she will face the coming Stone Moon and its gathering when her culture demands fertility yet her heart belongs to her best friend, who is not only female but of a higher caste. The women to be met in these pages will find themselves tested not because of their sexual identity but rather the identity they have composed, constructed, and spun.

Table of Contents:

• "The Gold Mask's Menagerie" by Chante McCoy
• "Counting Down the Seconds" by Lexy Wealleans
• "The Other Bridge" by Alex Jeffers
• "Love Over Glass, Skin Under Glass" by Penny Stirling
• "Hungry" by Robert E. Stutts
• "Liquid Loyalty" by Redfern Jon Barrett
• "Her Infinite Variety" by Sacchi Green
• "The Coffinmaker's Love" by Alberto Yanez
• "Terminal City" by Zoe Blade
• "The Bride in Furs" by Layla Lawlor
• "Your Figure Will Assume Beautiful Outlines" by Claire Humphrey
• "Blood, Stone, Water" by A.J. Fitzwater
• "Vector" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• "Of Selkies, Disco Balls, and Anna Plane" by Cat Rambo
• "Selected Program Notes from the Retro-spective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer" by Kenneth Schneyer
• "Difference of Opinion" by Meda Kahn
• "Boat in Shadows, Crossing" by Tori Truslow
• "The Raven and Her Victory" by Tansy Rayner Roberts