The Sleeping Life

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings.

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

A dragon. A scholar. A very short story about death.

For centuries the Seleighe have kept imprisoned a nameless, monstrous God. But the seal is failing, and Veresan of the Summer Fire must travel far beyond his own land to prevent disaster.

When a motionless woman dressed in white appears in the village of Falk, Kendall Stockton has no inkling that the strange apparition will soon leave her homeless, and tangled in the affairs of mages and monsters. For the white figure is the first sign of a spell which will shatter cities, and make the caster as powerful as the gods.

Saved by a stranger who claims her goal is to stop the woman, Kendall is torn between admiring the mage Rennyn Claire’s strength, and doubting her methods. What is Rennyn willing to do to win? Do the best of intentions justify pragmatic sacrifice, or is Rennyn Claire no better than the monster she is trying to stop?

One does not simply walk onto another planet. At least not without the help of a daughter who has developed unlikely powers, fought an intra-dimensional war, and then arranged for a family relocation to a futuristic clone of Earth. Laura Devlin would gladly have paid any price to have her daughter back, so living in a techno-paradise with spaceship views is merely an added bonus. And a dream come true.

But Arcadian paradises do not come without complications. Laura’s include a plethora of psychic grandchildren. Interplanetary diplomacy. Her daughter’s immense fame. And KOTIS, the military watchdog that seems to consider Laura’s entire family government property.

Forewarned by her daughter’s experiences, Laura had anticipated as many problems as she could, and didn’t doubt her ability to cope with the rest. But she had not planned on Gidds Selkie, a military officer and not at all the sort of man lifelong geek Laura had ever imagined would find her interesting.

Burned in the past, Laura is surprised to find herself tempted. Is this a new start to go with a new world? Or a mismatch doomed to failure?