Alex Irvine Short Stories/Novellas
From the astonishing imagination of Alex Mystery Hill, a gonzo SF novella in the tradition of Henry Kuttner and Paul Di Filippo . . . REVEIWS Irvine’s novels have been described “Wonderful” – Eric Brown “Imbued with the magic of life.” – Jeffrey Ford “Highly enjoyable and gut-smart” – Alvaro Zinos-Amaro SUMMARY In his three decades of running Mystery Hill, a roadside attraction where water famously flows upwards, Vietnam veteran Ken Kassarjian believes he's seen it conspiracy theorists who think he's a shape-shifting alien, crusading debunkers who think he's a fraud, stoned local teenagers who plague his minigolf course after hours. And as if the business of operating a tourist trap isn't weird enough, there are the strange critters running around in the woods, and the malevolent doings of the neighbours, the Boswells, Boozy by name and decidedly boozy by nature. Their latest alien tea, anyone? Whatever precarious equilibrium Ken might have found in his oasis of gravitational eccentricity goes out the window with the appearance of Fara Oussemitski, a physics professor with her own ideas about what makes Mystery Hill tick. When she turns up one morning with a van full of instruments, Ken starts to discover that not only is Mystery Hill stranger than he had imagined, it's stranger than he could have imagined. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex Irvine's most recent novels are Buyout, The Narrows, Exiles, The Seal of Karga Kul, and the novelization of The Adventures of Tintin. He also wrote the social RPG/strategy game Avengers Alliance. His comics work includes Iron Rapture, Daredevil Noir, and Hellstorm, Son of Equinox for Marvel, and the Vertigo Encyclopedia for DC. His short fiction is collected in Unintended Consequences and Pictures from an Expedition. Alex lives in Maine.
The continent of Borea prospers and suffers in harmony with the authority and strength of The Fells, its greatest city. And The Fells rises and falls as the balance of power shifts between the Keep of its king, the Agate Tower of its wizards, and the Jingle of its brokers who grow fat on the trade in magic. In The Fells live: a soldier violating the tomb of a dead sorcerer-king; a would-be regicide changed into a dog as an act of mercy; a killer of dragons (and children); a lover of a queen and of a peasant; an officer in the guard of the Keep; a traveller to the farthest northern reaches of his land; a survivor, a buyer of magic and seller of his own sword; and an amnesiac murderer whose brother was a blind jester.
In a dark future America where consumerism and gun culture are unchecked, a young family teams up to celebrate the first shopping day of the Christmas season in the most patriotic way possible ... in Alex Irvine's Tor.com Original short story, Black Friday. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.