The Dinosaur Tourist

Dust jacket illustration by Ray Troll.

Almost nothing is only what it seems to be at first glance. Appearances can be deceiving and first impressions often lead us disastrously astray. If we're not careful, assumption and expectation can betray us all the way to madness and death and damnation. In The Dinosaur Tourist, Caitlín R. Kiernan's fifteenth collection of short fiction, nineteen tales of the unexpected and the uncanny explore that treacherous gulf between what we suppose the world to be and what might actually be waiting out beyond the edges of our day-to-day experience. A mirror may be a window into another time. A cat may be our salvation. Your lover may be a fabulous being. And a hitchhiker may turn out to be anyone at all.

Contents:

• The Beginning of the Year Without a Summer
• Far From Any Shore
• The Cats of River Street (1925)
• Elegy for a Suicide
• The Road of Needles
• Whilst the Night Rejoices Profound and Still
• Ballad of an Echo Whisperer
• The Cripple and the Starfish
• Fake Plastic Trees
• Whisper Road (Murder Ballad No. 9)
• Animals Pull the Night Around Their Shoulders
• Untitled Psychiatrist No. 2
• Excerpts from An Eschatology Quadrille
• Ballad of a Catamite Revolver
• Untitled Psychiatrist No. 3
• Albatross (1994)
• Fairy Tale of Wood Street
• The Dinosaur Tourist (Murder Ballad No. 11)
• Objects in the Mirror