The Arrival of Missives

Description

From the award-winning author of The Beauty, Aliya Whiteley, comes a genre-defying story of fate, free-will and the choices we make in life. In the aftermath of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural England, where life is as predictable as the changing of the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr. Tiller, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields of France, brings with him a message: part prophecy, part warning. Will it prevent her mastering her own destiny? As the village prepares for the annual May Day celebrations, where a new queen will be crowned and the future will be reborn again, Shirley must choose: change or renewal? 'One of the most original and haunting stories I have read in recent years.' - Nina Allan, author of The Rift

Aliya Whiteley's is the author of The Beauty, The Loosening Skin, Skein Island, From the Neck Up, The Arrival of Missives and more. Her novels and novellas have been shortlisted for multiple awards including the Arthur C Clarke award, British Fantasy award, British Science Fiction award and a Shirley Jackson award. Her short fiction has appeared in Interzone, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney's Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories' This Dreaming Isle and 2084 and Lonely Planet's Better than Fiction. She also writes a regular non-fiction column for Interzone magazine.

'This is a tremendous story - the kind that wins Pulitzers, like Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres - with haunting and heart-rending women's issues that are sure to draw comparisons to Margaret Atwood.' - Carol Kean, Perihelion Science Fiction 'Thanks to the poetic simplicity of Whiteley's prose, it is more intimate and more thematically textured than many novels four times that length... an intriguing "what if?" of a tale, one that keeps us transfixed and wondering right up to the final pages and with an ending that won't easily be forgotten.'- Starburst 'An incredible talent, Aliya Whiteley continues to astound and delight, and The Arrival of Missives confirms what anyone who read The Beauty already knew: these books, and this writer, are not to be missed, under any circumstances.'- Reader Dad 'Because this isn't just about the plot, it's about science fiction as a genre too: if old white men think they can make the future without a place in it for everyone but themselves, then . . . no. There are other, better futures.'- Strange Horizons 'If you've ever any read stories by such authors as Nina Allan, Douglas Thompson, David Rix and Allen Ashley, you'll love The Arrival of Missives, because it equals everything that these authors have ever written. I think that we can expect great things from Aliya Whiteley. '- Rising Shadow "serves to prove the British writer is just as skilled working in longer form" - Barnes & Noble SFF Blog "has a Shirley Jackson-esque style that leaves the reader quickly turning pages and hoping for the best and realizing the worst may be coming" - Fangirl Nation "author has a poetic way of telling her stories" - Book Referees "I really loved this volume, not only for the wildly entertaining plots but also for the penetrating insight into the importance of female characters wresting their own agency in the face of all odds. More please, Ms Whiteley" - The Frumious Consortium