A major first collection from a writer fast becoming one of the stars of the genre... Aliette de Bodard, multiple award winner and author of The Tea Master and the Detective, now brings readers fourteen dazzling tales that showcase the richly textured worldbuilding and beloved characters that have brought her so much acclaim.

Come discover the breadth and endless invention of her universes, ranging from a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war; to the multiple award-winning Xuya, a far-future space opera inspired by Vietnamese culture where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are part of families.

In the Nebula award and Locus award winning "Immersion", a young girl working in a restaurant on a colonized space station crosses paths with an older woman who has cast off her own identity. In the novelette "Children of Thorns, Children of Water", a shapeshifting dragon infiltrating a ruined mansion finds more than he's bargained for when his partner is snatched by eerie, child-like creatures. And in the award-winning "Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight", three very different people--a scholar, an engineer, and a spaceship--all must deal with the loss of a woman who was the cornerstone of their world.

This collection includes a never-before seen 20,000-word novella, "Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness", set in Bodard's alternative dark Paris.

Limited: 1250 signed numbered hardcover copies

Table of Contents:

Introduction
The Shipmaker
The Jaguar House, in Shadow
Scattered Along the River of Heaven
Immersion June
The Waiting Stars
Memorials
The Breath of War
The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile
The Dust Queen
Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight
A Salvaging of Ghosts
Pearl
Children of Thorns, Children of Water
Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness (original novella)
Story Notes