The Land at the End of the Working Day

Introductions by Ian McDonald, Joe Hill, Elizabeth Hand and Lucius Shepard.

On a windswept corner of Manhattan, just a stone's throw from the weathered facade of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, there's a small two-flight walkdown bar called The Land at the End of the Working Day. Stop in and rest awhile… you'll meet the most fascinating people…

There's Jack Fedogan, widowed these past few years and still carrying a torch for his beloved Phyllis while he plays smooth jazz on the barroom's battered PA system. And the wonderful triptych of regular imbibers… Edgar Nornhoevan, Jim Leafman and McCoy Brewer, meeting up to escape the world outside or to have a drink with like-minded souls or maybe just to share a few jokes.

And meet one-off visitors. Folks like Gandalph Cohen, the magical caretaker of the City's welfare; Front-Page McGuffin, who, it has to be said, has been in better health; Bernard Boyce Bennington, who carries a torch for a woman who loved him and left him (with a bizarrely magical memento); and Horatio Fortesque and Meredith Lidenbrook Greenblat, scholars of the works of the great Jules Verne and hot on the trail to a doorway to another world… a doorway that could just be situated in a backroom of one of Manhattan's strangest watering holes.

So do come visit — you'll never want to leave!

Each novellete features a separate introduction from Elizabeth Hand, Joe Hill, Ian McDonald, and Lucius Shepherd.

Four novelletes told by the master story-teller Peter Crowther; all of them set in — and starring the habituées of — "The Land at the End of the Working Day", the bar in New York’s Chelsea district that needs to exist, if only to make that city an better place:

Gandalph Cohen and the Land at the End of the Working Day, Bernard Boyce Bennington and the American Dream, Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told, Cliff Rhodes and the Most Important Journey.

Praise:

"Certain profound spiritual and emotional needs can’t be met by lovers, religious institutions, psychiatrists or English cocker spaniels, even — especially — in a place like New York City. That’s why God invented bars. And that’s why Pete Crowther invented The Land at the End of the Working Day." — Elizabeth Hand; from her introduction

"The Land at the End of the Working Day is a place of beautiful melancholy and small joys. It’s that great New York bar where everyone knows your name. Of course it’s downstairs. People wear hats. There’s beer by the pitcher and martinis so dry on the vermouth they’re homeopathic. There’s soft jazz on the PA system and in the corner Tom Waits is practising scales." — Ian McDonald; from his introduction.

"["Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told"] is a study in simple, unpretentious, straight-forward storytelling. Which is to say there’s almost nothing simple or straight-forward about it. Like great jazz, the simpler it seems, the harder it is to do. Those looking for post-modern irony or literary stunts have come to the wrong bar — they don’t have that on tap in The Land." — Joe Hill; from his introduction.

"Pete orchestrates the interweaving of the stories (ghost stories, moral tales, reminiscences, et al) with such consummate deftness that, when you’ve done reading, you feel a bit wobbly. It’s as if you’ve downed more than a few beers in The Land at the End of The Working Day and, kibitzing from a nearby booth, have eavesdropped on the many voices of the tale, themselves given order and measure by the soft and subtle inventions of Dave Brubeck. This is all managed with such apparent effortlessness and naturalness, you suspect that as outstanding a writer as he is, Pete Crowther might make an even better bartender." — Lucius Shepherd; from his introduction.

Contents:

• Gandalph Cohen and the Land at the End of the Working Day
• Bernard Boyce Bennington and the American Dream
• Front-Page McGuffin and the Greatest Story Never Told
• Cliff Rhodes and the Most Important Journey