Search Worlds Without End

Enter a world where terrible secrets are hidden in a wind chime's song
Where crippled witches build magic from scrap
And the beautiful dead dance for eternity

The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories collects the finest science fiction and horror short stories from award-winning writer Joanne Anderton. From mechanical spells scavenging a derelict starship to outback zombies and floating gardens of bone, these stories blur the lines between genres. A mix of freakish horror, dark visions of the future and the just plain weird, Anderton's tales will draw you in--but never let you get comfortable.

Contents:

• Introduction -- Kaaron Warren
• The Bone Chime Song
• Mah Song (original to the collection)
• Shadow of Drought
• Sanaa's Army
• From the Dry Heart to the Sea
• Always a Price
• Out Hunting for Teeth
• Death Masque
• Flowers in the shadow of the Garden
• A Memory Trapped in Light
• Trail of Dead
• Fence Lines (original to the collection)
• Tied to the Waste

Lieutenant Donal Connor has been given the most bizarre of new cases. Four famous stage performers have died in recent months, thee of them in state capitals within Transifica, the fourth in far Zurinam. And now the idolised diva Maria deLivnova is coming to Tristopolis. Donal's boss is determined that nothing like this is ever to happen in his city. Connor is to have anything he needs, as long the diva lives.

And so begins a dark investigation through a world where corpses give up their pyschic energy in the massive necroflux generators which power the city, where gargoyles talk, where wraiths work in slavery, a world of the dead where corruption is alive.

This is an extraordinary SF novel set in alternate universe quite unlike any imagined in SF before; a universe where magic and the supernatural and the undead are given a scientific rationale and hoorfyingly plausible rationale.

The novel's setting, Tristopolis, is the ultimate noir city; an immense baroque creation of haunted stone skyscrapers, black metal and city-wide catacombs. Its hero Donal Connor is immensely likeable and easy to identify with. Even once he's dead.

Police officer Donal Riordan, killed and brought back to life with the heart of his undead lover beating in his chest, is getting used to a bizarre and frightening new existence. As one of the undead the living citizens of Tristopolis distrust and fear him. But death has its advantages. He can sense the presence, the thoughts the feelings of his fellow zombies, he is tireless, he can see better, hear more acutely.

But none of this will necessarily save him as he begins to investigate who is behind a plot to ensorcel the entire population of Tristopolis. The plot goes right to the top and anyway who gets in the way will be killed again.

And all the time the members of the Unity party are stoking the fires of hatred towards the undead.