This subversive debut short-fiction collection comes from one of the hottest talents in speculative fiction: 2025 Compton Crook Award and Pushcart Prize nominee Samantha Mills (The Wings Upon Her Back). The central story of the collection is Mills’s pivotal Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon Award–winning story “Rabbit Test,” which interrogates the past, present, and future of abortion rights in America.
A time-traveling fisherwoman keeps landing on the right shore, but at the wrong time. A pair of witches fight over the gate between life and death. A new consciousness, intent upon seeing all the wonders of the universe, visits a floating library. A rock-and-roll legend squares off against a town full of devils. Humanity makes first contact but falters when put in charge of selecting the world’s representatives.
These riveting stories run the gamut of the genre, transitioning from fantasy to contemporary, and then into the farthest reaches of space. They take place in strange and emotional worlds, with stakes ranging from the epic to the personal, with ample room for humor and hope amid tragedy.
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