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Wonderland

Page 28

by Marie O'Regan


  George Mann is a Sunday Times-bestselling novelist and scriptwriter. He’s the author of the Newbury & Hobbes Victorian mystery series, as well as four novels about a 1920s vigilante known as The Ghost. He’s also written a Star Wars book, Doctor Who novels, new adventures for Sherlock Holmes and the supernatural crime series, Wychwood. His comic writing includes extensive work on Doctor Who, Dark Souls, Warhammer 40,000, and Newbury & Hobbes, as well Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for younger readers. He’s written audio scripts for Doctor Who, Blake’s 7, Sherlock Holmes, Warhammer 40,000, and more. As editor he’s assembled four anthologies of original Sherlock Holmes fiction, as well as multiple volumes of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and The Solaris Book of New Fantasy.

  Angela Slatter is the author of the novels Vigil, Corpselight, and Restoration, as well as eight short-story collections, including The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings and A Feast of Sorrows: Stories. She’s won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar Award, an Australian Shadows Award, and six Aurealis Awards; Vigil was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. Her work has been translated into French, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and Bulgarian. She is working on a novel set in the fairy-tale world of the Sourdough and Bitterwood collections, Blackwater.

  Rio Youers is the British Fantasy Award-nominated author of Westlake Soul and Halcyon. His short fiction has been published in many notable anthologies, and his novel, The Forgotten Girl, was a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. Rio lives in Canada with his wife and their two children.

  Catriona Ward was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her debut, Rawblood (W&N, 2015), won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards and was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. Her second novel, Little Eve (W&N), was a Guardian best book of 2018. She lives in Devon.

  Laura Mauro was born and raised in London and now lives in Essex under extreme duress. Her short story “Looking for Laika” won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 2018. Her debut collection Sing Your Sadness Deep is out now from Undertow Books. She blogs sporadically at lauramauro.com.

  Leatrice “Elle” McKinney, writing as L.L. McKinney, is a poet and active member of the kidlit community. She’s an advocate for equality and inclusion in publishing, and the creator of the hashtag #WhatWoCWritersHear. Elle’s also a gamer, Blerd, and adamant Hei Hei stan living in Kansas City. She spends her free time plagued by her cat Sir Chester Fluffmire Boopsnoot Purrington Wigglebottom Flooferson III, esquire, Baron o’Butterscotch or #SirChester. Random fact: Chester is a huge BTS fan, Elle has video proof. A Blade So Black is her debut novel, released fall 2018, with the highly anticipated sequel, A Dream So Dark, out now.

  James Lovegrove is the author of more than fifty books, including The Hope, Days, Untied Kingdom, Provender Gleed, the New York Times-bestselling Pantheon series, the Redlaw novels, and the Dev Harmer Missions. He has produced five Sherlock Holmes novels and a Holmes/Lovecraft mashup trilogy, Cthulhu Casebooks: The Shadwell Shadows, The Miskatonic Monstrosities, and The Sussex Sea-devils. He has also written tie-in novels for the TV show Firefly. James has sold well over fifty short stories and published two collections, Imagined Slights and Diversifications. He has produced a dozen short books for readers with reading difficulties, and a four-volume fantasy saga for teenagers, The Clouded World, under the pseudonym Jay Amory. James has been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the British Fantasy Society Award, and the Manchester Book Award. His short story “Carry The Moon In My Pocket” won the 2011 Seiun Award in Japan for Best Translated Short Story. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and his journalism has appeared in periodicals as diverse as Literary Review, Interzone, BBC MindGames, All About History, and Comic Heroes. He reviews fiction regularly for the Financial Times and lives with his wife, two sons and tiny dog in Eastbourne, not far from the site of the “small farm upon the South Downs” to which Sherlock Holmes retired.

  Lilith Saintcrow lives in Washington State with her children, dogs, cats, and assorted other strays, including a library for wayward texts. Visit her website at www.lilithsaintcrow.com.

  Alison Littlewood’s latest novel is The Crow Garden, a tale of obsession set amidst Victorian asylums and séance rooms. It follows The Hidden People, a Victorian tale about the murder of a young girl suspected of being a fairy changeling. Her other novels include A Cold Season, Path of Needles, and The Unquiet House. Alison’s short stories have been picked for several year’s-best anthologies and published in her collections Quieter Paths and Five Feathered Tales. She has won the Shirley Jackson Award for Short Fiction. Alison lives in Yorkshire, England, in a house of creaking doors and crooked walls. She has a growing collection of fountain pens, loves folklore and weird history, and enjoys exploring the hills and dales with her two hugely enthusiastic Dalmatians. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

  Cat Rambo lives, writes, and teaches somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Her 200+ fiction publications include stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She is an Endeavour, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee. Her most recent works include Hearts of Tabat (novel, WordFire Press), Neither Here Nor There (collection, Hydra House Books), and Moving From Idea to Finished Draft (non-fiction, Plunkett Press). She is the current president of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). For more about her, as well as links to her fiction and her popular online school, The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, see www.kittywumpus.net.

  A two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, Mark Chadbourn is a Times bestseller. His Age of Misrule fantasy sequence has sold around the world and has been translated into many languages. Formerly working as a national newspaper journalist, he is also a screenwriter with many hours of work shown on BBC1. Mark is currently creating new shows for broadcasters in the UK and US while writing historical fiction under his pseudonym James Wilde.

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  Marie O’Regan is a three-time British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor, based in Derbyshire. Her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published in 2006 by Rainfall Books; her second, In Times of Want, came out in September 2016 from Hersham Horror Books. Her third, The Last Ghost and Other Stories, was published by Luna Press earlier this year. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of genre magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy, and Germany, including Best British Horror 2014, Great British Horror: Dark Satanic Mills (2017), and The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories. Her novella, Bury Them Deep, was published by Hersham Horror Books in September 2017. She was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Short Story in 2006, and Best Anthology in 2010 (Hellbound Hearts) and 2012 (Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women). Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines like The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book with prominent figures from the horror genre, Voices in the Dark, was released in 2011. An essay on “The Changeling” was published in PS Publishing’s award-winning Cinema Macabre, edited by Mark Morris and introduced by Jonathan Ross. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror, A Carnivàle of Horror—Dark Tales from the Fairground, and Exit Wounds, plus editor of bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. She is co-chair of the UK chapter of the Horror Writers Association, and is currently organising StokerCon UK, which will take place in Scarborough in April 2020. Marie is represented by Jamie Cowen of The Ampersand Agency and her website can be found at www.marieoregan.net.

  Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over ninety books—including the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sell-out Hooded Man omnibus, revolving around a pos
t-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, Hellbound Hearts, The Mammoth Book of Body Horror, and Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue, and DeathRay. He has been a guest at Alt.Fiction five times, was a guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in 2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival and Off the Shelf in 2012, Monster Mash and Event Horizon in 2013, Edge-Lit in 2014 and 2018, HorrorCon, HorrorFest and Grimm Up North in 2015, The Dublin Ghost Story Festival and Sledge-Lit in 2016, IMATS Olympia and Celluloid Screams in 2017, plus Black Library Live in 2019, as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival. A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he is currently serving as co-chair for the UK chapter of the Horror Writers Association. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network prime-time television, and his audio work includes the full-cast drama adaptation of The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Tom Meeten (The Ghoul), Neve McIntosh (Doctor Who) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV narrated by Ian Ogilvy (Return of the Saint). Paul’s latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film), the YA story The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane), the sequels to RED—Blood RED & Deep RED— the award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell, Before (an Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller) and Arcana. He lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan and his family. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured guest writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Robert Kirkman, Dean Koontz, and Guillermo del Toro.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To begin with, thanks are due to all the authors who kindly contributed to this anthology. Our thanks also to Ella Chappell for taking on this project, Cat Camacho for all her hard work on it and the whole team at Titan Books. Thanks to Jamie Cowen and, as always, our family for all their help and support in bringing Wonderland into being. This book wouldn’t exist without you.

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  INTRODUCTION copyright © 2019 Marie O’Regan & Paul Kane

  ALICE IN ARMOR copyright © 2019 Jane Yolen

  WONDERS NEVER CEASE copyright © 2019 Robert Shearman

  THERE WERE NO BIRDS TO FLY copyright © 2019 M.R. Carey

  THE WHITE QUEEN’S PAWN copyright © 2019 Genevieve Cogman

  DREAM GIRL copyright © 2019 Cavan Scott

  GOOD DOG, ALICE! copyright © 2019 Juliet Marillier

  THE HUNTING OF THE JABBERWOCK copyright © 2019 Jonathan Green

  ABOUT TIME copyright © 2019 George Mann

  SMOKE ’EM IF YOU GOT ’EM copyright © Angela Slatter 2019

  VANISHED SUMMER GLORY copyright © 2019 Rio Youers

  BLACK KITTY copyright © 2019 Catriona Ward

  THE NIGHT PARADE copyright © 2019 Laura Mauro

  WHAT MAKES A MONSTER copyright © 2019 L.L. McKinney

  THE WHITE QUEEN’S DICTUM copyright © 2019 James Lovegrove

  TEMP WORK copyright © 2019 Lilith Saintcrow

  EAT ME, DRINK ME copyright © 2019 Alison Littlewood

  HOW I COMES TO BE THE TREACLE QUEEN copyright © 2019 Cat Rambo

  SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS copyright © 2019 Mark Chadbourn

  REVOLUTION IN WONDER copyright © 2019 Jane Yolen

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  Here in this book you’ll find unique twists on the fairy tale conceit of the curse, from the more traditional to the modern – giving us brand new mythologies as well as new approaches to well-loved fables. Some might shock you, some might make you laugh, but they will all impress you with their originality.

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  The brightest names in horror showcase a ghastly collection of eighteen ghost stories that will have you watching over your shoulder, heart racing at every bump in the night. These unsettling tales will send a chill down your spine like someone has walked over your grave… or perhaps just woken up in their own.

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