Beyond the Latch and Lever

<p>Doorways can be a bridge to another world a portal to a bygone era or a crossroads between two cultures-or two lives. Sometimes a doorway is a ledge between the racist past and a robotic future. A passageway leading to celestial spirits or earthbound souls-to a crumbling castle adrift in time.</p><p><br></p><p>Doorways are the ferries that usher us through beginnings and endings steering us into possibility and misfortune alike. Some doors protect us and give us privacy while others keep us isolated and confined. Some doors trap people inside their haunted minds.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>In this book you will find eleven doors. </em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Eleven stories waiting to be opened. </em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Each one a passageway into the unknown.</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p><em>Beyond the Latch and Lever</em> is an anthology of speculative literary fiction with stories from emerging authors with ties to the Pacific Northwest.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Esterbell </em>by Elle Blackwood:</strong> An old woman returns to the crumbling French ch��teau where she spent her childhood to say goodbye to the keeper of her past.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>The Two Lives of Agapito Cortez</em> by Carlos Joaquin Gonzalez:</strong> A wounded Mexican-born Union soldier awakens to find the world isn't the same as he remembers.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>The Third Quirk</em> by Karin Larsen: </strong>An alien retrieves their dead brother's spaceship and comes to terms with their grief.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Home to Skjolden</em> by Erik Amundsen:</strong> When a man returns to Northern Norway to sell his family's farm a curious encounter unearths the past and makes him question his legacy.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Flight of the Bumblebee </em>by Susanna Skarland: </strong>A young couple in the near future struggle to survive in a world where the natural pollinators have died off and corporate robotics serve as their replacement.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Liminality</em> by R. L. Castle:</strong> An elderly doormaker seeks comfort in the doors of his past.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Between Hell and Fire</em> by Bobbie Peyton:</strong> A young Filipina farmworker must navigate the haunting nature of racism on an asparagus farm in 1960s California.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>The Pantry Ghost</em> by H. K. Porter:</strong> Trapped inside an unfamiliar pantry a young woman struggles to piece together the string of events that led to her isolation.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>Rabbit's Key</em> by Steve Garriott:</strong> When a physics major agrees to an adventure with an eccentric young man they stumble upon a scientific discovery that alters their reality and their futures.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>The Last Door in the Hilbert Hotel</em> by Evvan Land:</strong> A man must complete a test to find the exit from his own personal hell.</p><p><br></p><p><strong><em>The Wending Way</em> by J. S. Artz:</strong> A celestial being sent to Earth must decide whether to stay and help or leave humankind to their own destruction.</p>