FP201207 July 2012 Fairwood Press Books

Permeable Borders

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

The Best of Talebones

edited by Patrick Swenson

Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Strange Journeys

by Ken Scholes

Diving Mimes, Weeping Czars and Other Unusual Suspects

by Ken Scholes

The Ultra Big Sleep

by Patrick Swenson

Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg

by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro & Robert Silverberg

Slightly Ruby

by Patrick Swenson

On the Eyeball Floor and Other Stories

by Tina Connolly

Amaryllis and Other Stories

by Carrie Vaughn

There’s magic in the forest and it sings . . .

Truman Starkey heard it once, there in the ancient rain forest. A song that could raise the dead, a song that could bend time to its will. A song that might finally solve the puzzle of what Truman has lost—his ability to compose music.

But every magic needs fuel, and this magic, this song, demands a soul, a heart, or the most dangerous drug ever invented: Moss.

Kat Gregory is a bar singer who hopes there’s no such thing as destiny, because if she can’t change hers, someone’s going to die. She knows. It's happened before. Kat must risk her mind and soul on Moss, and on a man she’s never met.

Joel Hines knows he can thwart his destiny if he can just bring his mother back from the dead. To do it, he needs more of the Moss that has warped him into a mage of terrifying power. That means hunting down Kat. He’ll torture and kill anyone who gets in his way.

What Truman doesn’t know is that the mysterious song in the rain found him for a reason. His true destiny is to compose the music that will defeat the mage.

If only Kat can find him.
If only Hines doesn’t find them first.
If only Truman trusts in destiny . . .

A Union of Worlds Story

A man is found murdered and brutally impaled near the Seattle waterfront, and during the investigation, private detectives Dave Crowell and Alan Brindos come face to face with an alien drug known as RuBy. It’s a dangerous prototype that’s bound to cause problems for the eight worlds of the Union. The murder case itself would be easy enough to solve—that is, if the suspects weren’t already dead, and the Seattle Authority cop sharing the case wasn’t Crowell’s disgruntled ex-partner.

A prequel to The Ultra Thin Man, this novelette features Crowell and Brindos before their Network Intelligence Organization contract, scraping out a living in a city—and on a world—the Union is quickly forgetting.

Dave Crowell is a hero of the eight worlds of the Union, but he doesn’t want fame or fortune. These days he just wants to run his private detective business with his partner and forget about the Ultras, the insidious aliens that attacked the Union, then vanished. But a client turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, and Crowell knows the Ultras have not gone away. With the help of a beautiful alien, he uncovers fragments of memory that might lead to his missing father. When it becomes clear that Crowell’s past also contains the information he needs to save the Union, he is caught up in a conspiracy beyond his understanding and pulled into an underworld drug war on a hostile planet. With the crisis deepening, Crowell must learn the answer to the biggest question of all: Where are the Ultras?

Book Two of the Union of Worlds



Dave Crowell is a hero of the eight worlds of the Union, but he doesn’t want fame or fortune. These days he just wants to run his private detective business with his alien partner Tem Forno and forget about the Ultras, the mysterious aliens that attacked the Union, then vanished.



But when a client’s husband turns up dead under mysterious circumstances, Crowell knows the Ultras have not gone away. With the help of an alien who shows him the concept of shared memory, he uncovers fragments of his past life that might lead to his missing father. When it becomes clear that Crowell’s past also contains the information he needs to save the Union, he and his partner are caught up in a conspiracy beyond understanding and pulled into an underworld drug war spanning multiple worlds.



With the crisis deepening, Crowell must learn the answer to the biggest question of all: Where are the Ultras?

Book Three of the Union of Worlds

In this conclusion to the Union of Worlds trilogy, one detective embarks on an unprecedented journey to be reunited with family, understand his identity, and perhaps put to rest the enigma of the Ultras.

Dave Crowell and his partner Tem Forno take on a case to help a retired Envoy find an infamous veteran of the Ultra scares. The connection to Crowell’s past dealings with the enigmatic aliens makes the case extremely important, but the results could create political unrest on several of the eight worlds of the Union. Crowell is asked to not only find this veteran, but to bring him death.

With the help of Dorie Senall—now governor of the domed city of New Venasaille on the colony planet Ribon—and an incomplete but unusual set of Tarot cards, they travel through the jump slot to Barnard's Star and come across a shocking discovery. When Crowell realizes that newly gleaned information could aid in the previously impossible search for his dad, who is stranded on a far-off Ultra world, he considers making an ill-advised, sideways run at an antimatter universe.

With time running out and the consequences of traveling in and out of the Union of Worlds building, Crowell must answer the ultimate question: Can he finally make peace with the Ultras?

Book One of the Union of Worlds

​In the twenty-second century, when mortaline wire controls the weather on the settled planets and entire refugee camps drowse in drug-induced slumber, no one—alive or dead, human or alien—is quite what they seem. When terrorists crash Coral, the moon, into its home planet, it's up to Dave Crowell and Alan Brindos, contract detectives for the Network Intelligence Organization, to solve a case of interplanetary consequences. Crowell's and Brindos's investigation plunges them into a conspiracy much more dangerous than anything they could have imagined.

The two detectives soon find themselves separated, chasing opposite leads: Brindos has to hunt down the massive Helk alien Terl Plenko, shadow leader of the terrorist Movement of Worlds. Crowell, meanwhile, runs into something far more sinister—an elaborate frame job that puts our heroes on the hook for treason.

Crowell and Brindos are forced to fight through the intrigue to discover the depths of an interstellar conspiracy. And to answer the all-important question: Who, and what, is the Ultra Thin Man?