Cirrus@Austlit

'Somewhere something is waiting inside a stone. Somewhere several somebodies are looking for it. Somewhere a particular someone is waiting for it to be found so he can be released into a cataclysmic future. And somewhere else again, unreliable psychic Avril Audette and disaffected occult investigator Rupert Firth are joining a group attempting to validate the supernatural. This optimistic enterprise will lead the pair into a complex game of chance, skill and manipulation played by a coterie of otherworldly beings who rewrite the rules of reality on an hourly basis. Before they know what’s what (not something for which either has a natural talent), Avril and Rupert become involved in a scramble for the cryptic crystal known as First Frost, the possession of which will decide the destinies of worlds. In doing so, they are forced to cope with distractingly high levels of mutual attraction and the intermingling of their fates with those of a telekinetic amnesiac, a punk Valkyrie, a retired stuntman and his deceased relatives, the only living Elvish spin doctor, NASA, the staff of a very nice Indian restaurant, and the would-be assassins of a fellow traveller named Pherel. And then things get a bit complicated for everybody. For everybody, that is, except a something that somewhere waits inside a stone.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'It’s a strange world out there. But it’s stranger still a few blocks away in 'A Dimension Down the Road Everything is more numinous, more elusive, more … well, more sort of wibbly. Collected here for the first time are five glimpses into the said Dimension, lovingly carved into fun-sized chunks by William Tevelein, acclaimed creator of The Casting of the Golden Dice, for connoisseurs of the ethereal, the phantasmagorical and the very slightly silly. In the first glimpse into this unknown realm, William Blake’s inquiry into the early years of a well-known Messiah is answered, once and for all. In the second, a ghost of the living proves to be much more trouble than the common-or-garden dead variety. The third glimpse hangs around in a pub for a while and catches its breath, before the fourth pits ogres against nuns in a life-or-death struggle over tea and biscuits. The final piece acquaints us with the creator of the universe (well, one of them), and at absolutely no added cost, the nature of reality is conclusively established. There’s a bit of magic in everything, but there’s absolutely oodles of the stuff in 'A Dimension Down the Road'.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.