The Land at the End of the Working Day

On a windswept corner of Manhattan, just a stone's throw from the weathered facade of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, there's a small two-flight walkdown bar called The Land at the End of the Working Day. Stop in and rest awhile… you'll meet the most fascinating people… There's Jack Fedogan, widowed these past few years and still carrying a torch for his beloved Phyllis while he plays smooth jazz on the barroom's battered PA system. And the wonderful triptych of regular imbibers… Edgar Nornhoevan, Jim Leafman and McCoy Brewer, meeting up to escape the world outside or to have a drink with like-minded souls or maybe just to share a few jokes. And meet one-off visitors. Folks like Gandalph Cohen, the magical caretaker of the City's welfare; Front-Page McGuffin, who, it has to be said, has been in better health; Bernard Boyce Bennington, who carries a torch for a woman who loved him and left him (with a bizarrely magical memento); and Horatio Fortesque and Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat, scholars of the works of the great Jules Verne and hot on the trail to a doorway to another world… a doorway that could just be situated in a backroom of one of Manhattan's strangest watering holes. So do come visit — you'll never want to leave! Each novellete features a separate introduction from Elizabeth Hand, Joe Hill, Ian McDonald, and Lucius Shepherd. Four novelletes told by the master story-teller Peter Crowther; all of them set in — and starring the habituées of — "The Land at the End of the Working Day", the bar in New York’s Chelsea district that needs to exist, if only to make that city an better place.