Books
The Meaning Wars Complete Omnibus:
A Queer Space Opera
Two best friends looking for love.
An oppressive interstellar government.
Adulthood has never been so stressful...
For the first time, all five books in The Meaning Wars are united as a complete collection. In this queer space opera featuring a diverse cast, a found family navigates the politics of revolution and freedom.
Join Crystal, a wormhole engineer, and Sarah, an English Literature graduate with a chip on her shoulder, as they try to find romance and friendship - while an oppressive interstellar government watches their every move.
As Crystal deals with her faltering marriage, Sarah makes risky career decisions - by doing what's morally right. Running from the surveillance state of the Human Conglomerate, will the Interfederation's multi-species alliance prove their salvation? A crew of old friends and a union of renegade space pirates may be their way out. But first, they have to save rebel icon Patience Ngouabi from arrest and certain torture - and make sure they all get out alive.
Fans of Ruthanna Emrys' A Half-Built Garden and Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series will love the cosy yet intense adventures of this crew of misfits fighting for political and social justice.
The Underlighters
(The Nightmare Cycle #1)
Nightmares are bleeding into her waking world.
Children are going missing.
She doesn’t know whether the horrors in the shadows are real...or if she is going mad.
18-year-old Janelle Cohen is an electrician in an underground city. The world above has been swallowed by mind-destroying Dust, but her girlfriend and friends make things as normal as they can be. Her small life changes forever when a dragon attacks her on the way home from work.
Her friends worry that she has the Fever, Dust-induced insanity. A terrifying trip to the surface of the world, the ancient and abandoned Up, may offer answers. But below the surface, the city boils with tension, and children are going missing
Fans of The City of Ember and Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, as well as the Fallout video game series, will love this genre-crossing dark fantasy tale.
After The Garden
(The Memory Bearers #1)
Memories of another life and lover guide her, but are they even hers?
She is a Bearer—keeper of past lifetimes and gifted with strange talents. Ember must find her answers away from safe Longquan Village, snared instead in the sensuality and dangers of The City. Hidden among spider farmers and slaves, prostitutes and weavers, a nest of people like her are waiting. A powerful man outside The City raises his forces, determined to hunt down the ‘demons’ who could taint his followers. Threatened from without and within, can the Bearers even trust each other? Powers will rise and alliances will be forged in a dark new world. The Memory Bearers are coming.
This book includes violent and mature content. Reader discretion is advised.
The Loved, The Lost, The Dreaming
Nightmares bleed into the waking world.
A city of shadows lurks underground.
Restless ghosts, eerie dolls, and spiteful stepmothers.
Haunting stories of love, madness, and small disasters.
Featuring a full-length novel and eleven stand-alone short stories, this collection blends fairy tales, horror, and science fiction. The Underlighters is a dystopian horror coming-of-age adventure that follows the life of Janelle Cohen from insignificance to bitter-sweet triumph. Footsteps in the Snow is a Lovecraftian nightmare set in a Canadian winter. A Shot of Vodka, a darkly realistic exploration of life after trauma, rounds out the collection. More and stranger stories fill in the gaps.
Gender and sexual mores are rewritten, primal fears take physical form, and dreams and reality merge. Prepare yourself: nothing is safe.
Bad Things That Happen To Girls
Fairy tales are metaphors...but sometimes the monsters are real.
Tanis and Lila have learned to keep their heads down, follow their Mother's rules, and get good grades. Then Lila does the stupidest thing possible: she falls in love. The romance sparks an explosion within their tightly-controlled Catholic family. As Tanis watches her family shatter, she tries to help her sister's fledgling romance survive...but maybe some things are meant to be broken.
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And The Stars Will Sing
(The Meaning Wars #1)
It's her first job...and it's already going wrong.
Freshly graduated from university with a degree in engineering, Crystal approaches her placement on the wormhole-constructive ship Crossing Paths with nothing but enthusiasm. But while Crystal gets used to the ins and outs of a multispecies, multicultural ship, tension brews both at work and back home.
Not murdering her coworker Jai is hard enough; the last thing she needs are the terrifying errors cropping up on her maps. Reality and space are either tearing themselves apart - or someone else is attacking them. With conspiracies lurking everywhere, friendship won't be enough to see her through these dangerous new problems...
Fans of Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series will enjoy this sometimes joyful, sometimes dark personal adventure set in a world of politics, bureaucracy - and piracy.
The Stolen: Two Short Stories
(The Meaning Wars #2)
Refugees and renegades vie for survival and joy...
In "The Fields," a strict Caste system rules dry, distant Indus. Bold rebellions against social norms have set Clarice apart, but the Behavioural Corrections Centre has finally caught her in its dusty claws. Clarice is unprepared for the cruelty of her captors, and how far they will go to make the inmates conform.
In "The Wordthieves," the city of Corinth is beautiful, clean - and uptight, and boring. It's exactly the wrong place for Sarah Jean White, but they were hiring English majors, and she needed a job. But scraping the life and colour out of books is no way to make a living, and Sarah has more than a few private qualms.
When a familiar face reenters her life, she's overjoyed at the disruption - and totally unprepared for the chances to come. She's been able to endure the Human Conglomerate's creeping, oppressive politics by flouting the small rules - but everything has a price, and catches up to you eventually...
Fans of Becky Chambers' The Wayfarers will enjoy this both grim and hopeful patchwork tale of people doing the best they can.
The Meaning Wars
(The Meaning Wars #3)
Worlds collide and peace shatters in Book 3 of The Meaning Wars…
On the way to a new wormhole-building gig, Crystal and her husband Jai fight over the future of their family. But the safe haven of their base is paradise compared to Pluto. Recovering from her imprisonment, Sarah and her cousin Toby try to scrape their lives back together and stay out of trouble on the icy planetoid. Rebel leader Patience Ngouabi's actions have triggered a growing insurrection on the colony planet of Indus, and the shock waves have reached even the Solar system's worlds. Both Crystal and Sarah will have to decide between uneasy peace and constant danger - if they get to choose at all.
Content advisory: this book contains references to abuse, sexual scenes, torture, and mental health issues. Reader discretion is advised.
Poe's Outlaws
(The Meaning Wars #4)
A new start, new loves - and old problems...
Leaving her abusive husband, Crystal finds herself desperately in need of a vacation. She heads off to Nirvana, a resort planet far from the Solar System. Craving company, she invites Sarah, her cousin Toby, and Sarah's mentor Paulo to join her. Paulo calls on a former partner, but his arrival - and the job he offers - throw Crystal and Sarah's new lives into chaos. Temptation and a stunning revelation bewilder Crystal. Meanwhile, Sarah decides on a risky rescue mission that puts her ideals to the test. It's time to put up or shut up - because a revolutionary icon needs their help.
Fans of Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series will love this emotional, descriptive adventure.
A Jade's Trick
(The Meaning Wars #5)
Outgunned. Outmanned. Outnumbered.
But out of luck? Not yet...
Crystal has left her abusive husband, and Sarah and her crew have successfully rescued rebel leader Patience Ngouabi. As Patience and Sarah connect, they begin to see a life beyond their struggles in the rebellion. Now this queer found-family crew just has to fight the tyrannical Human Conglomerate into submission. But fighting an interstellar empire is going to take more than big guns. They need funding and allies. Could a renegade - but unionized - group of pirates be their unlikely saviours? A sinister, shadowy political figure back on Ganymede may also be willing to help - and that means going right back to danger's heart.
Fans of Ruthanna Emrys' A Half Built Garden and Becky Chambers' Wayfarers series will enjoy this emotional, high-risk finale to the Meaning Wars series.