From Weird and Distant Shores is fantasist Caitlin R. Kiernan

Caitlin R. Kiernan

Caitlín Rebekah Kiernan is the author of many science fiction and dark fantasy works, including seven novels, many comic books, more than one hundred published short stories, novellas, and vignettes, and numerous scientific papers.- Overview :Born in Dublin, Ireland, she moved to the United States...

's second solo short-story collection, released by Subterranean Press

Subterranean Press

Subterranean Press is a small press publisher in Michigan. Subterranean is best known for publishing genre fiction, primarily horror, suspense and dark mystery, fantasy, and science fiction...

 in 2002. As with her first collection, Tales of Pain and Wonder

Tales of Pain and Wonder

Tales of Pain and Wonder is Caitlin R. Kiernan's first short-story collection. The stories are interconnected to varying degrees, and a number of Kiernan's characters reappear throughout the book, particularly Jimmy DeSade and Salmagundi Desvernine...

, interior illustrations were supplied by Canadian artist Richard A. Kirk. The book includes thirteen stories (horror, science fiction, and fantasy), including a collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite

Poppy Z. Brite is an American author. Brite initially achieved notoriety in the gothic horror genre of literature in the early 1990s after publishing a string of successful novels and short story collections...

 and another with Christa Faust

Christa Faust

Christa Faust is an American author who writes original novels, as well as novelizations and media tie-ins. Faust won the 2009 Crimespree Award for Money Shot.-Novels:*Control Freak...

. As Kiernan explains in the collection's introduction, most of these stories were originally written for "'shared world' and 'theme' anthologies," books wherein the authors have been asked to write stories set in the worlds of other authors or stories pertaining to some particular subject, respectively. The collection is notable in that includes Kiernan's earliest published short story, "Persephone." Kiernan provides an afterword for each story.

Contents

†	Appears in the lettered edition only

• • Preface - "Playing God in Other People's Sandboxes"
  • "Escape Artist"
  • "The Comedy of St. Jehanne d' Arc"
  • "Stoker's Mistress"
  • "Emptiness Spoke Eloquent"
  • "Giants in the Earth"
  • "Found Angels" (with Christa Faust)
  • "Two Worlds, and in Between"
  • "The King of Birds"
  • "By Turns"
  • "Persephone"
  • "Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea"
  • "Hoar Isis"
  • "Night Story 1973" (with Poppy Z. Brite)
  • "Rat's Star (A Fragment)" ^†