Aliqa's mind has been erased, every memory lost to the endless reticulations of the branes, but for one single word that haunts her- Temetry.

With it comes an abiding hope for salvation, perhaps for the salvation of every single Bell in Subsidence's ancient fleet, but first she must hunt it down, though she doesn't even know what it is.

The Bells of Subsidence tells 9 science fiction short stories that chart the untamed outer fringe of existence, filled with ruined intergalactic civilizations, lonely globe-roaming robots, and a memetic virus locked that could destroy all things.

It features 4 stories previously published in professional magazines: Clarkesworld, Andromeda Spaceways, Quantum Muse, and Apocalypse Fiction.

Includes:

1) The Bells of Subsidence

2) Angel, I

3) The Giant Robot and the Myna Bird

4) Route 66

5) C22

6) Cullsman #9

7) Hunting Ground

8) The Blue Chipset and the Thing

9) Universal Time

Praise:

- ..". the images are striking and euphonious, ... and the story is moving." - Lois Tilton, Locus Mag

- ..". beautifully written ... satisfying ... atmospheric ... emotional ..." - Goodreads reviews

About the Author:

Michael John Grist is a 33-year old British writer, teacher, and ruins photographer who lives in Tokyo, Japan. He runs a website featuring his stories and photographs of ruin exploration- www.michaeljohngrist.com

Excerpt:

The Bell is coming.

It's night, and I'm lying beside Temetry on a cold grey crater of this world's endless desert, listening to the oscillations of the Bell. At times we glimpse its Brilliance, the after-image of its long and branic toll splashing across the plush black firmament like an endless corolla borealis. I imagine it far overhead, arcing through the universe, plancking the anthropic landscape from yoke to clapper, and can think of only one word to describe it.

"Godly," I whisper.

Temetry nods by my side. He doesn't speak, not since the last Bells came when we were babies, but I know what he's thinking. I'm thinking it also.

"How are your non-orientable insects?" I ask.

He shrugs. This shrug means he's had no breakthroughs. I know it, because he'd not be here with me if he had. The men of this world would have taken him for the Gideon heat-sink long ago.

"I won't forget you," I say to him quietly.

He turns to me, and smiles, because he knows I cannot keep that promise. The Bell is coming tonight. His hand worms the grey sand, folds my fingers within his own, and I remember that he is the most beautiful thing I have.

"I love you," I whisper to him. His fingers tighten, rippling over mine in Euclidean gymnastics, until our hands are joined partway between a reticulated conch shell and an intersecting Klein bottle.

I laugh. It is our joke, a vestige of what Subsidence has brought us both. We are only 11, and I love him, because I know in my heart that he will never forget me.

"I'll whisper your name to the branes until I die," I promise him, feeling the urgency of this moment, alone in this crater for the last time.

His smile turns sad. It is the last abiding image I have of him, because then comes the sound of old Ingen, and the moment is lost. She is huffing and panting her rooty head over the crater-lip. This place is no longer special or secret. Temetry's dazzling smile is sad, forever, because I'll never see him again.

When a lowly jeweler in ancient Egypt finds an enormous yellow diamond lodged in the clavicle of a Nile river crocodile, he strikes for riches, selling it to the richest man in Memphis, a living god, the Pharaoh.

Then the Pharaoh demands more. So begins a terrifying descent into greed, madness, and murder, with diamonds for all, and diamonds in all, and the blood-red eye of Ra ascendant.

Bone Diamond is a collection of 9 weird and surreal stories, filled with sky-painting giants, gods of the mud, and a world where East can die. It features 5 stories previously published in pro-level magazines- Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Kaleidotrope, Ideomancer, Podcastle, Something Wicked.

Contents:

1) Bone Diamond

2) Caterpillar Man

3) The Tonsor's Son

4) The Mud Girl

5) Flatland

6) The Orphan Queen

7) Sky Painter

8) Leanna Drew The Moon

9) Death Of East

Praise:

- "The dark insanity in this story develops out of greed and terror and self-loathing, until all healthy logic in one person is destroyed. Human life becomes as expendable as filthy Nile water. A very satisfying ending." - Sherry Decker, Tangent Magazine.

- ..". a beautiful bittersweet fairy tale, set in the modern day." - Sam Tomaino, SF Revu.

- "Wow. Horrifying and compelling and poignant. This one is going to stick with me." - Kim, Ideomancer.

About the author:

Michael John Grist is a 33-year old British writer and ruins photographer who lives in Tokyo, Japan. He writes strange, twisty fiction, in both fantasy and sci-fi genres. See more at www.michaeljohngrist.com.

Excerpt:

I discover the first bone diamond in a hunk of crocodile clavicle, lodged between the foramen and articular process. I had meant to simply facet the bone tip's lamellar weave, that it might, once polished, dove-tail into a brooch that some high lady in the court might wear to the arena flooding.

Rather, I find a diamond, at least thirty carats in size. It is the most extraordinary bright yellow, like amethyst but glowing hot within. Allory would have loved it.

I take it to my lathe and polish it on corundum, brute it with emery, and at last heat it over a sulfur jet as though it were a citrine. Its yellows melt, whirl, and blaze as though afire inside.

I sit atop my cankerous clay rooftop and hold it up beside the sphere of the moon. Of the two, my bone diamond shines the purest, the brightest, as though the sun risen at night over the slums of Memphis.

I do not know then that it will be the end of everything I know.