The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales

If you love your fiction weird, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, take this opportunity to introduce yourself to the short stories of Peter M. Ball.

This debut collection of fantasy tales will take you on strange and wonderful journeys that contrast the sublime and the everyday, introducing you to unforgettable characters and unexpected landscapes. Walk beside an executioner tasked with killing a criminal who cannot be killed, a young man learning to love while there’s a birdcage where his heart should be, and a frustrated public servant trying to deal with unruly wizard determined to prove magic exists.

Watch a relationship unravel as former lovers are revealed to be creatures of myth, reminisce with the residents of a city overrun with giant thorns, and visit Isla Tortuga’s last, great house of ill repute where no-one is exactly what they seem on the surface.

Follow a man named rate down a staircase that never ends, watch as Copenhagen is invaded by the war machines of angry merfolk, and despair as a musician with a grudge upsets the delicate balance of a very unusual seaside town.

You may never be sure if these tales are leading you down a path towards joy or sorrow, but the route will always be touched with moments of wonder and unexpected pleasure. The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales collects twelve weird and unusual fantasy stories from award-winning Australian fantasist Peter M Ball.

PRAISE FOR PETER M BALL

"Only Peter M. Ball's fiction makes falling down the rabbit hole feel like flying. Funny and surprising, with moments of extraordinary grace." Angela Slatter, Author of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

TABLE OF CONTENTS

- The Last, Great House of Isla Tortuga
- On the Destruction of Copenhagen By the War-Machines of the Merfolk
- The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta
- It’s Not A Bad Job, Really
- The Dragonkeeper’s Wife
- On the Finding Of Photographs Of My Former Loves
- The Clockwork Goat & The Smokestack Magus
- The Birdcage Heart
- On the Cliffs, By The Sea
- Briar Day
- L’esprit de L’escalier
- On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V—