“Reisman (Substrate Phantoms) showcases her mastery of immersive worldbuilding in these 17 speculative short stories, which range from fable to space opera . . . they all center around a theme of connection, whether between lovers, friends, gods, or animals. Readers will enjoy sinking into the strange and lovely landscapes of this collection.” —Publishers Weekly

“Sensual, dreamy, and teeming with fantastical beings, these stories will take you down rain-kissed alleys and
haunted oceans, searching for answers to the questions you haven’t dared to ask yet.”
—A.M. Dellamonica, author of Child of a Hidden Sea

“The Arcana of Maps should be at the top of everyone’s must-read lists.”
—Richard Klaw, editor of The Apes of Wrath

“Every piece a chorus of fresh voices, charged with authentic joy and beautiful melancholy, the stories of Jessica Reisman have always been ahead of their time.” —Christopher Brown, author of Tropic of Kansas
 

"Aconie's Bees" in the May/June 2022 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact.

            A worker of the Megachile pluto tribe—insecta, hymenoptera, leafcutter, resin bee—rumbled heavily through the air. Biome morning: light stretched thin as a veil of citreous bio-skin on the stone of Aconie’s cliffside cave. The M. pluto, large as Aconie’s hand, burred and buzzed her wings, speaking of loss and darkness at the heart of things. Aconie held an arm out and the worker lit on Aconie’s wrist. The bee’s six legs needled a tattoo of unrest. Aconie studied the M. pluto’s dark body, beetle-like horn mandibles, precise amber furring: she was confused by the giant bee’s strange premonitions of ending. It was a tenor of bee-speech she had never heard. 

"For Successful Haunting" in The Dark, December 2020.

Sin was a summer ghost, born of a death sudden as lightning. They slipped on bare ghost soles down the long corridors of an old inn deep in the forest, drifted and danced in the abandoned heft and dust-limned dim of the inn’s pillared halls.