Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales

The seventeen stories in Of Starfish Tides and Other Tales take place at the edges of this world, some veering more deeply into it, others towards worlds on the other side. With elements of fairy tales and folklore, and occasional forays into dystopian futures, its constant theme is a search for home and belonging, and the darkness at the heart of that search. Women stalk through these pages looking for the keeper of human hearts and a cruel map that will answer only to its true owner. Faeries are more likely to seek revenge or a human soul than they are to grant wishes. A man washes up on a pebbled beach, his only means of communication being the haunting songs he plays on an old piano. Elsewhere, music is the language of love and sorrow and, sometimes, a weapon. Stay awhile, here, and learn the secrets of a city built for a long-gone lover and how to find the land of the dead. Learn what it means to chart stories on human skin. But remember that, between these covers, getting what one needs is often different from what one wants. “Suzanne J. Willis is a chronicler of note, a documenter of the glorious strange, a creator of such wonders and horrors as might make a heart sing or the blood curdle.” -from the introduction by Angela Slatter