Chambers of the Heart: speculative stories

Recommended by Kirkus, BookLife, and others and labeled a 'must-read story collection', reviewers have called Allen's writing 'beautifully crafted', 'gorgeous', 'memorable', 'thoughtful' and 'haunting'.

Hailed as a successor to James Tiptree, B. Morris Allen selects his 16 most moving and heartfelt stories. Drawing on sources as distinct as poet Walt Whitman, the Soviet space program, and red-dirt musician Jimmy Le Fave, these lyrical, poignant stories take the reader on a tour of space, dragons, and deep emotion.

With stories from F&SF, Aurealis, Capricious, Cast of Wonders, and other magazines, this provocative and subtle collection will challenge your view of humanity with intelligent dialogue, quirky settings, and difficult decisions. Some stories will warm your heart, some will break it.

Stories

• Chambers of the Heart - when someone else's heart is your home
• Building on Sand - how to choose between children
• Blush - when everyone else wears a mask, what's it like to bare your face?
• Minstrel Boy Howling at the Moon - magic, music, and ... buffalo?
• Fetch - she may be a simulation, but out on the edge, she's one man's best friend
• The Humblebract Expedition - an uplifting story of a play date for a dying child
• When Dooryards First in the Lilac Bloomed - a doorway to opportunity and change, if only they can understand it
• Some Sun and Delilah - a sunny island, an abandoned temple, and thou
• Crying in the Salt House - the house is built from tears, or so they say
• Full of Stars - jar half empty, jar half full
• Memory and Faded Ink - the aliens are perfectly human ... and just as flawed
• Fountainhead - arranged pairings never work, especially with different species
• Adaptations to Coastal Erosion - what to do when your love literally falls away
• Outburst - Earth is dead, and the rest is up to a handful of teens in a broken orbital
• The Irrigation Ditch - they came to hide, but didn't realize it was from each other
• Dragons I Have Slain - take hope where you find it

Cover art by Bonnie Leeman.