The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories
by A.C. Wise
"Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you the Kissing Booth Girl! Lips that beguile. Oh, I promise, the nearest thing to nuzzling an angel can be yours—today!—for a shiny round Seated Liberty I know you carry in your very pockets as I speak." But to mechanically-inclined Beni, is the ethereal girl who fell from the sky a wish come true or false hope for life beyond the confines of the odd carnival called home. Her story--as well as tales of an order of deep-sea diving nuns caring for a sunken chapel and a high school boy asked to prom by the only dead kid he's ever met--can be found in A.C. Wise's newest collection of the fantastical, the weird, the queer and the poignant.
A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Fantasy/Science-fiction/Horror!
Table of Contents:
"The Poet’s Child"
"Juliet & Juliet(te): A Romance of Alternate Worlds
"And If the Body Were Not the Soul"
"The Pornographer’s Assistant"
"The Last Survivor of the Great Sexbot Revolution
"For the Removal of Unwanted Guests"
"A Mouse Ran Up the Clock"
"Evidence of Things Unseen"
"After Midnight – A Fairy Tale Noir"
"Sisters of the Blessed Diving Order of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew"
"The Kissing Booth Girl"
"Final Girl Theory"
"The Astronaut, Her Lover, the Queen of Faerie, and Their Child"
"It’s the End of the World as We Know It"
A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area.
"A.C. Wise pulls marvel after marvel out of her bag of tricks, and it still seems bottomless. Her stories are filled with wonder and magic. This is one kissing booth you’ll want to buy a whole roll of tickets for. " - Michael Thomas Ford, award-winning author of Lily, Suicide Notes, Jane Bites Back, What We Remember, and The Road Home
"Wise’s work brings literary together with genre, with the added bonus of well-writ gay, straight, bi, and asexual characters--The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories is achingly smart, sad, and weird in equal measure. A pleasure to inhabit, one distinct universe at a time." - Sara Rauch for Lambda Literary Foundation
When the world is endangered, there's no point in sparing the spangles, spilling the drinks, or withholding the glitter. In this collection of whimsical stories of fierce femmes and brave butches, the Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron is a phone call away.
"A.C. Wise’s The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again is as beautifully, sparklingly camp as the title suggests, mixing elements from raygun sci fi with a drag aesthetic. Whether drag queens, trans women, or cis-gendered women, the heroines in Wise’s novel are FIERCE. Whether fighting homophobia and misogyny at home or amongst the stars, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron challenges assumptions and pushes for change. These characters are complex, powerful, and absolutely fabulous! " - Speculating Canada
To read the first story in the book, click here.