A Book to Live By: Stories from a Different World

What connects these twenty-four stories is an exploration of place. It can be a location nearby like in Boardwalk Oracle where a clanging candy dispensing machine plays matchmaker in a story that flirts with magical realism. Or the depth of a glacier on a faraway planet in Icebound, where science fiction turns into crime fiction. Or a tourist destination with dark ancient roots in Where the Gods Live.

The collection opens with A Book to Live By, a dystopian tale of love and childhood preserved, fragments that ache to be knitted together. It closes with Willowmore, part fantasy, part mystery, and a salute to book collectors who know better than anybody what secrets are hidden between the pages.

In this book, M.E. Proctor plays with characters and settings, and blurs the boundaries of genre. Why couldn’t vampires be love starved? Why couldn’t demons be summoned to dispense justice? And if the world has ended, can’t our memories rebuild it?