Midnight and Moonshine

midnight-and-moonshineMidnight and Moonshine, shortlisted for the 2012 Aurealis Award for Best Collection, by Angela Slatter and Lisa L. Hannett is published by Ticonderoga Publications in Australia and can be ordered as a limited edition hardcover or as a paperback here or in ebook form here. There is an Introduction by Dr Kim Wilkins and the cover was designed by multiple World Fantasy Award finalist Kathleen Jennings.

Midnight and Moonshine is a collection of interconnected tales with links between them as light and strong as spider-silk. From fire giants to whispering halls, disappearing children to evening-wolves, fairy hills to bewitched cypress trees, and talking heads to moonshiners of a special sort, Midnight and Moonshine takes readers on a journey from ninth century Vinland to America’s Deep South in the present day. Hannett and Slatter have created a mosaic novel of moments, story-tiles as strange as witchwood and withywindles.

Midnight and Moonshine is a rich tapestry of dark fantasy, fairy tale and speculation.

Cover blurb:

The gods are dead, but will not be forgotten.

When Mymnir flees the devastation of Ragnarok, she hopes to escape all that bound her to Ásgarðr — a heedless pantheon, a domineering brother, and her neglectful father-master, Óðinn. But the white raven, a being of memory and magic, should know that the past is not so easily left behind. No matter how far she flies, she cannot evade her family…

In planting seeds of the old world in the new, Mymnir becomes queen of a land with as many problems as the one she fled. Her long-lived Fae children ignite and fan feuds that span generations; lives are lost and loves won because of their tampering. Told in thirteen parts, Midnight and Moonshine follows the Beaufort and Laveaux families, part-human, part-Fae, as they battle, thrive and survive in Mymnir’s kingdom.

Reviews:

Publishers Weekly in its starred review wrote ‘Marked by imagery both beautiful and grotesque, and unnerving twists that recall the uncanny horror of original fairy tales, this collection contains a unifying, multilayered plot that draws upon Norse mythology to take the reader on a thrilling, unsettling journey.’

Peter Tennant in Black Static #39 said ‘Hannett and Slatter have each written superb stories in their own right, but working in tandem they have reached new heights. Midnight and Moonshine is a brilliant book, a work rich in ideas and written in beautiful, evocative prose, with a sense of magic (and horror) as inextricably entwined with human existence. It’s a book that I think will reward repeat readings as you stumble across yet more links and allusions, and appreciation grows for what these authors have accomplished.’