Curiosity Quills Presents: Darkscapes

Curiosity Quills Press explores yearning, regret, and fear with the Darkscapes Anthology — a spellbinding collection of dark fantasy, sci-fi, cyberpunk, horror, and detective fiction.

Delve into worlds of terrible family secrets, unexpected doppelgängers, a home invasion on an alien planet, androids and assassins, places and people who aren’t as stable as they seem, frustrated musicians going to desperate lengths — and more.

EXLEY AVENUE: In 1920s upstate New York, a tormented girl learns that her family’s new stone castle was built on a former cemetery, and in 2014, a former police detective uncovers horrible secrets.

LENA’S SONG: In the near future, two frustrated musicians and creative partners get in on the ground floor of neural firestreaming — but an old guitar creates an unexpected effect.

SORRY FOR THE MOUSE: A veteran back from Afghanistan develops a strange hobby to stay sane — but it doesn’t work as well as he had hoped.

SKELETON JIM: A skeleton detective who leads a double life as an Internet sensation takes a beautiful woman on as a client — and gets more than he bargained for.

OF LUSHER AND SLEEP: In this modern, alternative imagining of Romeo and Juliet, a veteran from an old-money family returns to London for his mother’s funeral and is confronted with a toxic history of two warring families — and a lost love.

ROOMIES: Housemates experience something deeply unsettling during an earthquake.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SONG: An American’s car is rear-ended by a lost Muslim traveler with diplomatic immunity; the traveler sings in the American’s place at his daughter’s school recital — with surprising results.

THE GIOVANNI EFFECT: A man who lives alone with his family on a terraformed wind turbine farm receives a disturbing visitor.

FOUR HUNDRED EYES, SIXTY-FOUR HUNDRED TEETH: An existentially anxious former star of a London goth rock band, missing fame and creativity, regains something he thought was lost.

CIRCULAR ARGUMENT: A severely dehydrated man is trapped in an endless loop on an external tram-shuttle around his base — and his patience with the on-board AI is fraying.

MOSES AND THE TALKING BUSH THAT WAS INCONVENIENTLY ON FIRE: An exhausted Moses herds sheep for his father-in-law until a burning bush gives him a holy quest he’s rather reluctant to do.

FAIL HOUSE: On the night the Chinese land the first mission to Mars, unemployed roommates in a crumbling American city navigate through riots to their government-subsidized housing — but is it the safe place they thought it would be?

ICU: A workaholic lawyer wakes up in an intensive care unit with painful regrets.

BOOTHEEL: An aged German soldier returns to the Missouri Bootheel where he picked cotton as a POW, digs up an old mirror — and dares to look at his reflection.

SECOND SENTIENCE: In this New Weird goat fantasy, two caprifauns explore a lost city — and their possible past lives.

LANDING A JOB IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR: When an Imperial assassin’s Keeper betrays the Empire, the assassin goes off-planet — to transition out of government work as fast as possible.

TRAPPED: A woman is trapped inside a body with Alzheimer’s disease.

OUT OF SIGHT: Unwanted kids wake up in an escape pod after years in stasis, and an AI bracelet is their only chance to make sense of a wild uncharted planet.

A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN: A processing plant worker on a cattle farming planet boards an interstellar ship to bring back a wife — and learns a hard lesson.

THE ONE YOU FEED: A wolf hunter offers his services to a professional steer roper, hoping the cowboy will be his champion at the right time.

HEART OF THE HARVESTER: A boy’s father sends him to a dangerous city populated with machines in order to bring back the heart of a harvester — but will the boy pass his test and become a man?