The Hum and the Shiver

Steampunk is fascinating. There’s something compelling about the shine of clicking brass clockwork and hiss of steam-driven automatons. But until recently, there was something missing.

It was easy to find excellent stories of American and British citizens… but we rarely got to see steampunk from the point of view of the rest of the world. Steampunk World is a showcase for nineteen authors to flip the levers and start the pistons and invite you to experience the entirety of steampunk.

Edited by Sarah Hans, this anthology’s nineteen authors bring us the very best steampunk stories from around the world. The full list of the award-winning authors – including the introduction’s author, Diana M. Pho, founding editor of the oldest-running multicultural blog Beyond Victoriana – can be found below. The cover artwork is by James Ng.

The contributors have won a wide range of awards for their previous work, including the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, Bram Stoker Award, John W. Campbell Award, Steampunk Chronicle Reader’s Choice Awards, SteamCon Airship Award, Octavia E. Butler Scholarship Award, Goodreads Award, Parsec Award, and the Origins Award.

Alex Bledsoe’s was named one of the Best Fiction Books of 2011 by Now with Bledsoe returns to the isolated ridges and hollows of the Smoky Mountains to spin an equally enchanting tale of music and magic older than the hills….

Touched by a very public tragedy, musician Rob Quillen comes to Cloud County, Tennessee, in search of a song that might ease his aching heart. All he knows of the mysterious and reclusive Tufa is what he has read on the internet: they are an enigmatic clan of swarthy, black-haired mountain people whose historical roots are lost in myth and controversy. Some people say that when the first white settlers came to the Appalachians centuries ago, they found the Tufa already there. Others hint that Tufa blood brings special gifts.

Rob finds both music and mystery in the mountains. Close-lipped locals guard their secrets, even as Rob gets caught up in a subtle power struggle he can’t begin to comprehend. A vacationing wife goes missing, raising suspicions of foul play, and a strange feral girl runs wild in the woods, howling in the night like a lost spirit.

Change is coming to Cloud County, and only the night wind knows what part Rob will play when the last leaf falls from the Widow’s Tree… and a timeless curse must be broken at last.

At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.