Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.

To her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline—not to mention about herself and her father—that she did not expect. And she finds out that some people will stop at nothing to protect their secrets . . .

Acclaimed writer Naomi Kritzer's marvelous tales of science fiction and fantasy are now collected in Cat Pictures and Other Stories. Here are seventeen short stories, including her Hugo Award-winning story Cat Pictures Please, which is about what would happen if artificial intelligence was born out of our search engine history. Two stories are previously unpublished. Kritzer has a gift for telling stories both humorous and tender. Her stories are filled with wit and intelligence, and require thoughtful reading.