Taste: Speculative Stories to Devour & Relish (Beyond and Within)

Award-winning author Ida Keogh brings together a unique combination of speculative stories and delicious recipes in a fascinating collection exploring our personal and cultural relationship with food.

In this collection of science fiction, fantasy and hopepunk, BSFA Award- and British Fantasy Award-winning author Ida Keogh explores our shared experiences of feast and famine. Ranging from cosy to dystopian, these tales imagine the price of immortality in a food-scarce 2050s London, parallel universes where coffee doesn’t exist, galactic restaurants celebrating extinction events, and a goblin cocktail bar where drinks are paid for with memories. Alongside this smorgasbord of stories are recipes to tempt and delight, derived from childhood and travel, gifted by lovers, or drawn straight from the imagination. Each recipe either inspired or was inspired by the story it accompanies. Through the lens of our eating habits and rituals, and with influences from Christina Rossetti to Douglas Adams, these tales consider not only our relationship with food but also with loss, and how we find ourselves again.

The Flame Tree Beyond and Within short story collections bring together tales of myth and imagination by modern and contemporary writers, carefully selected by anthologists, and sometimes featuring short stories from a single author. Overall, the series presents a wide range of diverse and inclusive voices with myth, folkloric-inflected short fiction, and an emphasis on the supernatural, science fiction, the mysterious and the speculative. The books themselves are gorgeous, with foiled covers, printed edges and published only in hardcover editions, offering a lifetime of reading pleasure.