Amaryllis and Other Stories

For more than fifteen years Carrie Vaughn has published short fiction across all genres, through time and space, earning praise from critics and readers for twists and turns, shocks and delights, and emotional heart. This collection brings together alien encounters, classic fantasy creatures, strange magic, historical milieus; stories with heart, of people making their ways in the world the best they can, however strange and hostile those worlds might be; rare, hard-to-find stories that haven't been available in years. All this, now brought together in the first widely-available retrospective collection of Vaughn's work, including her Hugo-nominated, WSFA Small Press Award winning story "Amaryllis," about a post-catastrophe future in which a community struggles to live in balance with the environment and each other.

Cover Art by Elena Vizerskaya

Paperback

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

First printing, August 2016

Distributed by Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
http://www.fairwoodpress.com

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-933846-62-0

Copyright 2016 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

Fairwood Press
21528 104th Street Court East
Bonney Lake, WA 98391
http://www.fairwoodpress.com

Electronic version by Baen Books
https://www.baen.com

PUBLICATION NOTES

“The Best We Can” originally appeared at Tor.com July 2013 | “Strife Lingers in Memory” originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, December 2002 | “A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait” originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, February 2003 | “Sun, Stone, Spear” originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 2015 | “Crows” originally appeared in Talebones, Winter 2006 | “Salvage” originally appeared in Lightspeed: Women Destroy Science Fiction, June 2014 | “Draw They Breath in Pain” original appeared in Paradox, Winter 2005-2006 | “The Girl with the Pre-Raphaelite Hair” originally appeared in Talebones, Fall 1999 | “Game of Chance” originally appeared in Unfettered edited by Shawn Speakman, 2013 | “Roaring Twenties” originally appeared in Rogues, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, 2014 | “A Riddle in Nine Syllables” originally appeared in Talebones, Fall 2000 | “1977” originally appeared in Ravens in the Library, edited by SatyrPhil Brucato and Sandra Buskirk, 2009 | “Danaë at Sea” originally appeared in TEL: Stories, edited by Jay Lake, 2005 | “For Fear of Dragons” originally appeared in Weird Tales, October-November 2006 | “The Art of Homecoming” originally appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2013 | “Astrophilia” originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, July 2012 | “Bannerless” originally appeared in The End Has Come, edited by Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams, 2015 | “Amaryllis” originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, June 2010.