Finalist in the 2020 International Book Awards! Here are 14 stunningly original, provocative and entertaining stories with meditations on the universe, being, time and space that raises questions about the nature of reality and what it is to be human. A compilation of what seems like ordinary events quickly unfold to reveal possibilities humanity has only ever dared to consider. Imagine you've woken up in a strange place, completely in the dark... or perhaps...Your loved one has a mystical connection with an event 2000 years in the past... or...Only you can release a trapped race of beings from our world... or...Destiny opens up before you one fateful box at a time... or...Your afterlife is not at all what you thought it might be... or...You finally have a chance to return to the past and correct a fateful mistake, but at what cost... or...Only you can see into another person's soul...These are just some of the poignant, thrilling, funny and unusual things happening to the absolutely realistic characters in TALES from the AETHER that could be any one of us. All from the mind of the incomparable Matthew C. Woodruff, Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, this is Woodruff at his best: profound, humorous, sympathetic-revelatory.