The Proper Thing and Other Stories eBook

Cover and interior illustrations by Carla Speed McNeil.

We’re pleased to present The Proper Thing, a huge new short story collection by Seanan McGuire. Carla Speed McNeil has provided a full-color cover and a small pen and ink illustration for the head of each tale.

About the Book:

From the end of the world to the beginning, with a nice charcuterie plate to sustain us on the way, it’s time for another journey through the eccentric, eclectic short fiction of Seanan McGuire. From dangerous holidays to the beauty of the library, from the power of cheese to the power of love, this volume will take you from the past to the future, sometimes on the same page.

Learn about the insecurities of the superheroic world, and how hard some people will work to survive the end of absolutely everything. Discover what everyone knows, and watch what happens when the cultural foundations are pulled from under your favorite cuisine. See what people will do when all else is lost, and watch what happens on the day the music dies.

And when all that is through, visit our magical cheese shop for something truly delicious, impossible and unique. We have a little something for everyone in our box of delights. Don’t be afraid—just reach in, and choose a treat to improve and enhance your day.

We’ve been waiting for another trip to the store on the corner, where they sell Wensleydale and wishes side by side. Come along now, let’s go.

From Publishers Weekly:

“Hugo and Nebula Award winner McGuire’s staggering second limited-edition collection with Subterranean takes a somewhat darker tone than 2019’s Laughter at the Academy, but these 24 stories still offer a sense of twisted whimsy and cautious optimism… A similar folkloric aesthetic and the author’s professed love of cheese come together in the mystical transformations of the delightful title novella, which closes out the collection. It’s easy to sink into the imaginatively unsettling spaces these stories inhabit.”

From Locus:

“The two dozen stories tend toward darkness but, more often than not, offer a spark of hope as well.…In some ways, McGuire is a twenty-first century Ray Bradbury – if Bradbury were a queer woman at­tuned to the dangers of childhood (even fantasy portals cannot provide escape as in the horrify­ing ‘In the Land of Rainbows and Ash’ and Halloween, naturally, can be perilous: ‘Heart of Straw’) as well as pandemics (‘Ratting’; ‘So Sharp, So Bright, So Final’; “Vegetables and Vac­cines’), dystopian futures dominated by mega-corporations (‘File and Forget’), and apocalypse in general (‘Coafield’s Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events’).”

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Coafield’s Catalog of Available Apocalypse Events
• Now Rest, My Dear
• Mother, Mother, Will You Play With Me?
• In the Land of Rainbows and Ash
• Heart of Straw
• The Levee Was Dry
• Fresh as the New-Fallen Snow
• Good Night, Sleep Tight
• Rise Up, Rise Up, You Children of The Moon
• Phantoms of the Midway
• File and Forget
• Under the Sea of Stars
• Vegetables and Vaccines
• Come Marching In
• Foundational Education
• Ratting
• Love in the Last Days of a Doomed World
• What Everyone Knows
• Belief
• So Sharp, So Bright, So Final
• Sweet as Sugar Candy
• On the Side
• Pedestal
• The Proper Thing