Jm Landels

Featured author Kelly Robson shows us that wine making is a labour of love, and sometimes hate, in 'Good for Grapes'. Matthew Hughes's magnum opus, What the Wind Brings, debuts aboard the Spanish galleon La Virgen, with an epic struggle brewing on the horizon. Stella Ryman is ready for new adventures in Stella Ryman and the Locked Room Mystery by Mel Anastasiou, while Allaigna must make hasty goodbyes in the final chapter of Allaigna's Song: Aria by JM Landels. It's a dog-eat-dog world -- or wolf-eat-dog world -- in Christian Walter's 'Wolf, Dog, Sun', and Zo Johnson reminds us to take stock of everyday miracles in 'Inherited Love of Unexplainable Things'. Take a draught of heady poetry from Casey Reiland, Raluca Balasa, and Alison Braid. Lena Mahmoud breathes new life into an old Arabian folk tale with 'The Thieving Pot', and Josephine Greenland dissects a Thai myth in the Bumblebee Contest winner, 'Wife Giver'. Deborah L Davitt's protagonists hold out for as long as they can in 'On the Sixth Day'. Come and get the good stuff in Susan Pieters's 'Black Market', and see the dark(er) side of the financial district in Lola Street's 'Wall Street at Night' illustrated by Chaille Stovall. We have the two runners-up of the Surrey International Writers' Conference Storyteller Contest in this issue: 'Biophilia' shows us there's hope in Margot Spronk's post-apocalyptic world, but not necessarily for humans; while Deepthi Atukorala takes us down an emotional rabbit hole with 'White Rabbit'. Great reads for the price of a beer

In this issue: Take a ride down the river with kc dyer on Akem's Seabus. Stop along the way for haunting fiction from Patrick Bollivar, Brandon Crilly, and Erin Kirsh, with a ghost at the end of the bed for Mel Anastasiou's Stella Ryman, and a lighter side of hell from FJ Bergmann. Magpie poetry award winners Oak Morse, Leah Komar, and Glenn Pape take us to three different kinds of hell; Susan Pieters and Rina Piccolo carry us to the stars in the past and future; and Greg Brown brings us back to where the heart is, while the young hero of Allaigna's Song by JM Landels get ever farther from home.