Bibliothèque des Refusés
Susan Maxwell
Fluctuation in Disorder
Collected short stories.
An encounter with an alien enemy. A strange epiphany in a fog-bound park. A collector of the names of the dead faces their own death. Rebel divinities respond to the prayers of despairing creation for deliverance. Bureaucrats find their grip on reality dissolving in odd ways.
Hollowmen
The Moufet Institute’s mission is to protect endangered lepidoptera, but its experts are becoming bystanders, sidelined by the ‘Players’ and their pursuit of corporate self-perpetuation. Cuffe, recruited to create the rhetoric to underpin the new corporate vision, finds her initial confidence eroded by the peculiarities of the Institute and its environment.
And the Wildness
Villa Grace is in disgrace. Her expulsion from school has ruined the prospect of a family holiday in imperial Byzantium, where her mother is organising a conference. Two of her three siblings are barely speaking to her, as all four face into a ‘holiday’ sweltering on Cobwell Farm in the back of beyond of drought-stricken Hibernia.
Good Red Herring
(Muinbeo Chronicles #1) Published by Little Island
“Some of these stories really started decades, generations, ago, and now come to their close. New things begin to arise from the past, like phoenix feathers separating from the flame. The winding down of the old stories and the starting of the new arose from a death; a murder, if you will believe such wickedness.”
Fen Maguire has been stabbed and the investigation into her death lifts the lid on more than just the name of her killer…
A Wild Goose Hunt
(Muinbeo Chronicles #2)
As a good Sombrist, Hunter Sessaire is aware that not only lying, but also curiosity, is very much frowned upon by his community. As an apprentice archivist, he cannot resist the temptation to try to puzzle out how a manuscript could have been stolen from the room within the Sombrists' stronghold known as the Labyrinth, which opens only during a planetary alignment. An alignment that had not yet taken place.
Hibernia Altera universe and the Muinbeo Chronicles and Flux Avellana series
My books suitable for younger as well as adult readers are set in an alternative world centred loosely on Ireland and playing with mythological motifs from Irish and other traditions. This world contains both lands (e.g. Muinbeo) which are definitely over the border and whose inhabitants are as likely to be non-human as human, and a heavily re-imagined version of 'our' world (the Outlands). The boundaries between the two are somwhat porous. Books may be loosely connected by their setting, rather than linked by sequence or recurring characters (e.g. And the Wildness, which begins the Flux Avellana series, belongs to the wider Hibernia Altera universe and is set in the Outland, while Good Red Herring is set in Muinbeo and is followed by its sequel, A Wild Goose Hunt, within the Muinbeo Chronicles series).
Short Stories
My short stories are available for purchase individually as well as in collections in book form. Each new story I publish myself will be available as a standalone e-book; once sufficient stories have accumulated to warrant a book, a new collection will be issued in paperback and e-book formats. Collections may also include work published elsewhere, such as in magazines, once the rights have reverted to me.
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