Cirrus@Austlit

'The Fortunate Isles collects fourteen tales of salt-crusted weirdness from the rugged, cold-clime harbour village of Barradoon...

'Barradoon: the limit of worldly navigation; stronghold of sea-myths and ancient forces; a place of simmering tension and ruthless vengeance meted out by human and inhuman alike.

'These densely wrought, boundlessly inventive stories form, in their totality, a singularly strange mosaic novel of sorts - ever twisting and writhing like a storm-charged ocean. Yet they are never out of the meticulous control of Lisa Hannett's masterly storytelling.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'With a twang in its heart and a song for luck on its tongue, Songs for Dark Seasons takes readers back to the lonesome dream counties introduced in the World Fantasy Award-nominated collection, Bluegrass Symphony.

'Trailer parks and graves are only temporary homes for souls in these tales, where gods dwell in churches and parking lot groves. Friday night football stars mingle with sirens; hunters’ wives help their kids not to shoot, but to fly; Chanticleers spar their way into local government; and rash-afflicted men take dryads for lovers. In backwater towns, some witches have the know-how to pin pageant queens pretty, while others relieve girls of highfalutin aspirations. Local crow-boys and bloodthirsty Ursines are the best miners around.

'In these thirteen stories, forests are imbued with the deepest, saddest strains of country music, cornfield horizons stretch as long as a lone fiddle’s wail, and distant hills make mandolin promises: sweet and catchy and short-lived.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.