Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

Three outstanding stories from award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Mark Shainblum, collected for the first time!

PLAYING SOLITAIRE
Rachel Steinberg was just a nice Jewish girl from suburban Montreal. She was never really Solitaire. She never asked for superhuman powers, nor the relentless, grinding cycle of violence and alienation that came with them. Rachel allowed herself a glimmer of hope when Carl said he loved her, when he swore up and down that her secrets didn't scare him. But that was before he saw her glowing like the north star, before he ran in terror just like everyone before him.

Probably not the ideal moment for an omnipotent, 3000-year-old evil slumbering under the Island of Montreal to awaken and wonder what it should do first.

THE ART OF SOLITUDE®
Mary-Ann became desperate when her history-player boyfriend took up bartending. Nobody with a scintilla of self-respect drank alcohol anymore, it was just so... so... industrial. Not only was Quent turning their dogs into alcoholics and their apartment into a seedy dive, he was getting in the way of her art. Something had to give, and in this case, it was the laws of physics. Mary-Ann purchased a top-of-the-line Solitude® fold-heart, and retreated to her own private universe to paint in peace. What could possibly disturb her there?

THE BREAK INSPECTOR
Missouri dirt-farmer John Gray had never regretted a kind act in his life, although truth be told, he would have had little enough to regret in any one of his fifty-five years. But oh how he wished the milk of human kindness had been completely drained from him that terrible, cursed night. With every fiber of his being, with every drop of blood in his body, John Gray wished he had never found the mysterious stranger on his prairie.

An unofficial sequel to Mark Twain's "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage," and a top-ten finalist in the International Mark Twain Writing Competition, 2001.

1109677534
Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

Three outstanding stories from award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Mark Shainblum, collected for the first time!

PLAYING SOLITAIRE
Rachel Steinberg was just a nice Jewish girl from suburban Montreal. She was never really Solitaire. She never asked for superhuman powers, nor the relentless, grinding cycle of violence and alienation that came with them. Rachel allowed herself a glimmer of hope when Carl said he loved her, when he swore up and down that her secrets didn't scare him. But that was before he saw her glowing like the north star, before he ran in terror just like everyone before him.

Probably not the ideal moment for an omnipotent, 3000-year-old evil slumbering under the Island of Montreal to awaken and wonder what it should do first.

THE ART OF SOLITUDE®
Mary-Ann became desperate when her history-player boyfriend took up bartending. Nobody with a scintilla of self-respect drank alcohol anymore, it was just so... so... industrial. Not only was Quent turning their dogs into alcoholics and their apartment into a seedy dive, he was getting in the way of her art. Something had to give, and in this case, it was the laws of physics. Mary-Ann purchased a top-of-the-line Solitude® fold-heart, and retreated to her own private universe to paint in peace. What could possibly disturb her there?

THE BREAK INSPECTOR
Missouri dirt-farmer John Gray had never regretted a kind act in his life, although truth be told, he would have had little enough to regret in any one of his fifty-five years. But oh how he wished the milk of human kindness had been completely drained from him that terrible, cursed night. With every fiber of his being, with every drop of blood in his body, John Gray wished he had never found the mysterious stranger on his prairie.

An unofficial sequel to Mark Twain's "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage," and a top-ten finalist in the International Mark Twain Writing Competition, 2001.

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Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

by Mark Shainblum
Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

Playing Solitaire and Other Stories

by Mark Shainblum

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Overview

Three outstanding stories from award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Mark Shainblum, collected for the first time!

PLAYING SOLITAIRE
Rachel Steinberg was just a nice Jewish girl from suburban Montreal. She was never really Solitaire. She never asked for superhuman powers, nor the relentless, grinding cycle of violence and alienation that came with them. Rachel allowed herself a glimmer of hope when Carl said he loved her, when he swore up and down that her secrets didn't scare him. But that was before he saw her glowing like the north star, before he ran in terror just like everyone before him.

Probably not the ideal moment for an omnipotent, 3000-year-old evil slumbering under the Island of Montreal to awaken and wonder what it should do first.

THE ART OF SOLITUDE®
Mary-Ann became desperate when her history-player boyfriend took up bartending. Nobody with a scintilla of self-respect drank alcohol anymore, it was just so... so... industrial. Not only was Quent turning their dogs into alcoholics and their apartment into a seedy dive, he was getting in the way of her art. Something had to give, and in this case, it was the laws of physics. Mary-Ann purchased a top-of-the-line Solitude® fold-heart, and retreated to her own private universe to paint in peace. What could possibly disturb her there?

THE BREAK INSPECTOR
Missouri dirt-farmer John Gray had never regretted a kind act in his life, although truth be told, he would have had little enough to regret in any one of his fifty-five years. But oh how he wished the milk of human kindness had been completely drained from him that terrible, cursed night. With every fiber of his being, with every drop of blood in his body, John Gray wished he had never found the mysterious stranger on his prairie.

An unofficial sequel to Mark Twain's "A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage," and a top-ten finalist in the International Mark Twain Writing Competition, 2001.


Product Details

BN ID: 2940033079919
Publisher: Mark Shainblum
Publication date: 02/26/2012
Sold by: Smashwords
Format: eBook
File size: 273 KB

About the Author

Mark Shainblum is a science fiction, fantasy and graphic novel writer living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His prose fiction has appeared in magazines like On Spec, Would That It Were, Thousand Faces and the anthologies Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic(Vehicle Press, 2003)and Playing Solitaire and Other Stories (Cyber Age 2001). With John Dupuis, he was co-editor of the Aurora Award-winning anthology Arrowdeams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas, published in 1998. In comics he’s best known as the writer and co-creator of Angloman, a parody series published in two bestselling books, and later as a weekly comic strip in the Montreal Gazette. Mark also wrote and co-created the independent comic book series Northguard, and the mystery series The Haunting of MacGrath. Mark is a past-president of SF Canada, Canada’s national association of science fiction authors. He lives in Montreal with his wife Andrea and daughter Maya.

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