Search Worlds Without End

With In the Palace of Repose, her debut collection of mostly unpublished work, Holly Phillips accomplished the improbable. The unknown Canadian author received critical acclaim and numerous honors including the 2006 Sunburst Award and nominations for the World Fantasy and Crawford Awards. Her accomplished prose sang with a unique voice, seamlessly blending emotion, insight, and craft.

Now, At the Edge of Waking presents her latest tales written with even more depth and range-including a new, never-published story. Portraying human reaction to dire change or extreme circumstance, combining the real intruded upon by the fantastic or the fantastic grounded in reality, Phillips describes the world as it is, as it may be, as something impossible yet entirely acceptable, enthralling the reader with her words.

Contents:

• Introduction (At the Edge of Waking) - (2012) - essay by Peter S. Beagle
• Brother of the Moon - (2007) - short story
• Castle Rock - (2012) - short story
• Cold Water Survival - (2009) - short story
• Country Mothers' Sons - (2010) - short story
• Gin - (2006) - short story
• Proving the Rule - (2008) - novella
• Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom - (2007) - short story
• Story Notes (At the Edge of Waking) - (2012) - essay
• The Long, Cold Goodbye - (2009) - novelette
• The Rescue - (2010) - short story
• Three Days of Rain - (2007) - short story
• Virgin of the Sands - (2006) - short story

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Fantasy (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay. It can also be found in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection At the Edge of Waking (2012).

This short story originally appeared in the collection In the Palace of Repose (2005). It can also be found in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2006 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.

'The essential Holly Phillips story begins like this: In a world that felt too little, there lived a girl who saw too much.' - Sean Stewart

In the Palace of Repose is a collection of nine such stories, ranging from the delightfully fantastic 'In the Palace of Repose,' to the delicately horrific 'One of the Hungry Ones,' to the hauntingly literary 'The Other Grace.' Here indeed are young women, and young men, who have seen too much, and who have been abandoned to wrestle alone with the strange, the wonderful, the terrifying. Some triumph, some tragically fail. Most struggle on beyond the boundaries of their stories, carrying their wonders and horrors into their lives, into their worlds-worlds, and lives, startlingly like our own.

Contents:

• Introduction - (2005) - essay by Sean Stewart
• In the Palace of Repose - (2004) - novelette
• The Other Grace - (2005) - novelette
• The New Ecology - (2002) - novelette
• A Woman's Bones - (2005) - short story
• Pen & Ink - (2005) - short story
• One of the Hungry Ones - (2005) - novelette
• By the Light of Tomorrow's Sun - (2005) - short story
• Summer Ice - (2005) - short story
• Variations on a Theme - (2005) - novelette

On release from the hospital, Ryder "Rye" Coleman has inexplicable cuts and scars all over her body that sometimes open when she feels feverish, making her bleed. She also suffers from synesthesia and amnesia. When Rye follows a man home after he saves her life in an alley, he provides her with a fantastic explanation for all the strangeness: a refugee from another world persuaded the two of them to help foil a plot to conquer Earth, then betrayed them. Rye soon discovers that she has the unique power to travel from world to world, though she can't control it--and that makes her valuable to the people in the alley, who kidnap her and her savior, Bardo, an ex-cop with secrets of his own. Rye's fevered, synesthesiac dreams create an internal world as vivid as the book's external world, though it's often hard to tell them apart.

From acclaimed author Holly Phillips comes a major work of visionary fantasy in the vein of Jeff Vandermeer and China Miéville. As richly detailed as it is evocative, the vivid prose of this ambitious novel illuminates a lushly imagined world poised on the brink of revolution.

Lanterns and flickering bulbs light the shadowy world of the rasnan, the island at the edge of a world-spanning ocean that harbors, in its ivory towers and mossy temples, the descendants of men and women who long ago fled a world ruined by magical and technological excess. But not all the island's inhabitants are resigned to exile. A mysterious brotherhood seeks to pry open doors that lead back to their damaged, dangerous homeland. Others risk the even greater danger of flight, seeking new lands and new freedoms in the vast, uncharted sea.

Amid a web of conspiracy and betrayal, three people threaten to shatter this fragile world. Scheming Lord Ghar, faithful to lost gods and forbidden lore, plays an intricate power game; Lady Vashmarna, an iron-willed ruler, conceals a guilty secret behind her noble façade; and Moth, a poor, irreverent novice, holds perhaps the darkest power of all: a mysterious link to a shadowy force that may prove to be humanity's final hope–or its ultimate doom.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2009. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010, edited by Paula Guran, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection At the Edge of Waking (2012).

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #9 June 2007. It can also be found in the anthlogy Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection In the Palace of Repose (2005). The story can also be found in the anthology Horror: The Best of the Year: 2006 Edition, edited by Sean Wallace and John Gregory Betancourt.

This short story originally appeaered in Fantasy Magazine, May 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Fantasy Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2007, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection At the Edge of Waking (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.