ARTIFICIAL HEARTS is a bewitching collection of young adult short stories, ranging from science fiction to fantasy, all featuring a lesbian heroine. This collection is part of Project Unicorn, a fiction project that seeks to address the near nonexistence of lesbian main characters in young adult fiction by giving them their own stories.
This collection contains:
- Nickel Pony (Magic Realism)
As a little girl, Helena thought the nickel pony outside of the dollar store gave her good luck: then it went away, and took her good luck with it. Now, when her world is slowly crumbling again, a girl in an arcade brings back unexpected magic.
- The Ember Heart (Fantasy)
At the Festival of Stars, Alethia carries a heart in a lantern, moving with the others in an ancient ritual of love.
- Flotsam (Science Fiction)
Chris, and her little brother Raz, live in the Broken Streets down by the dock–where the dead bodies of Chematech’s imperfect clones are flushed out. Every day, Chris and Raz pick over the bodies for parts they can sell…until Chris finds a body unlike the others. A girl who’s alive.
- Anchor Me (Fantasy [Steampunk])
Isadora has the extreme fortune of inheriting her grandfather’s airship containing an automaton navigation system named Rosie, who happens to be much more to Isadora than a Steampunk GPS.
- Violina (Science Fiction)
Built to be a living work of art, Violina is the most beautiful Musiton--a musical instrument automaton--to have ever been created. But when a deadly virus begins to wipe out humankind, she can no longer find the golddust that powers her, and is in danger of extinction, too.
- For I am Fearless (Horror)
An orphan girl wakes to find she is no longer herself but a stitched-together monster. As she remembers the events that brought her to this moment, she fans a flame of courage within her new heart.
- Perfect (Science Fiction)
Bonnie has everything a modern girl could ask for: a nice house, friends, and genetically engineered perfection. But then she meets Sylvia, and she begins to realize that perfect is only ever an illusion. Love, though, is always real.
- Lullaby (Science Fiction)
Buried far beneath the earth, a mechanical girl struggles to hold onto the memories of her years in the sun–and of the young woman she loved more than words, Milla.
- Mary A through Z (Science Fiction)
Mary Q has grown up on a scientific compound surrounded by twenty-five girls who look exactly like her. They may share her face, but Mary Q isn't certain that they all share her secret longing to escape and experience the strangeness of the world.
- The Whole Beautiful World (Fantasy)
Selby has never been given a gift in her life. She's either stolen what she wanted or worked for it, because that's how life is: hard and stingy. But everything she believes is reshaped, sculpted into something softer, more beautiful, when she meets the old witch man and his Dream come true.
