October 10, 2024
BOOK RIOT included Lyndsey Croal’s brilliant collection, Limelight and Other Stories, on their list of “8 Outstanding SF&F Short Story Collections”…
“This is the must-read collection of the year, not just for sci-fi fans but for anyone with a heart… Croal is a true visionary, and her vision will destroy you in terrible and beautiful ways.”
—FanFiAddict
Limelight is a collection of over twenty high-concept dark science fiction tales from near and far futures.
The title novelette—about a young woman brought back from near death by experimental tech, only to find her parents had her altered before she woke—anchors this collection which features five new exclusive stories alongside popular past works, including:
Lyndsey's work explores the bright potential and the dark reality of our near and far futures through the lenses of connection and loneliness, love and heartbreak, autonomy and exploitation, desire and greed, wonder and despair. If you've ever imagined alternate futures, craved answers to the mysteries of the universe, or feared what might be lurking just beyond our reach, then you need this collection.
“Croal’s superb story-telling pulls you in with a force as powerful as the rings around Saturn. This is sci-fi with soul: thought-provoking, contemporary in its themes, yet accessible even to a sci-fi virgin like myself. Everyone should read it!”
—Catherine McCarthy, author of Mosaic and The House at the End of Lacelean Street
“A gorgeous illustration of the intersection of science fiction and horror. Croal’s stories are varied in tone and content: body horror, apocalyptic, speculative, grief horror – the whole gamut. Running through each is the author’s distinctive, haunting voice of inevitability coaxing the reader from one horror to the next. Loved it.”
—Laurel Hightower, author of Crossroads and The Day of the Door
“Limelight takes the most recognisable human experiences and asks ‘what if?’. Birth, life, and death, and how familiar states might be altered in SF-style futures: Croal’s short stories are delicately written and emotionally wrenching.”
—Aliya Whiteley, author of Skyward Inn and Three Eight One
“A sharp and incisive collection. A myriad of worlds await…from near-future science fiction and fantastical worlds that show our own world slightly askew, to far-flung futures and the distant reaches of space. Croal guides readers effortlessly through these vistas, showing the darkness beneath the mundane, but also the light and hope in the places that seem darkest.”
—A.C. Wise, author of Wendy, Darling and Hooked
“An impressive collection…from the opening stunner, “Patchwork Girls”…to the titular story “Limelight”, which starts sad and grows increasingly darker and more chilling. This collection is full of sweet and sad, cute and creepy stories, along with a surprising number of pieces that feel just prescient enough to worry about.”
—Rebecca E. Treasure, author and Managing Editor of Apex Magazine
“A beautiful and haunting collection. Croal’s stories tackle the big questions of our technocapitalist age with clarity and compassion.”
—T.L. Huchu, author of the Edinburgh Nights series
“Lyndsey Croal’s LIMELIGHT peels away layers of dreams and insecurities and presents them to the world. Poetic, and devastatingly sad.”
—David Niall Wilson, author of When You Leave I Disappear
Lyndsey Croal is a Scottish author of strange and speculative fiction, with work published or forthcoming in over eighty magazines and anthologies, including Apex Magazine, Flash Fiction Online, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and PseudoPod. She’s a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee, British Fantasy Award Finalist, former Hawthornden Fellow, and a Ladies of Horror Fiction Writers Grant Recipient.
She has two titles with Shortwave Publishing: “Have You Decided on Your Question” (April 2023), a science fiction novelette, and Limelight (Sept 2024), a dark science fiction collection. She also has a number of other longer projects in the works, often at the intersection of science fiction and horror.
