Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Magpie’s Ladder | 2019 | Richard A. Kirk | Buy |
| 2 | The Lost Machine | 2021 | Richard A. Kirk | Buy |
Richard A. Kirk’s shorter works give readers a way into his style without committing to a full novel. Magpie’s Ladder (2019) is an illustrated short story collection published by PS Publishing that gathers several of Kirk’s dark fantasy tales. The stories share his characteristic blend of the eerie and the beautiful, with his own artwork woven throughout.
The Lost Machine is a novella that was first published in 2010 and sits in the same general territory as Kirk’s novel Necessary Monsters, with a world where the line between magic and technology has been blurred by past conflict. Both works are good entry points for readers unfamiliar with Kirk, and they show off his ability to build strange, lived-in worlds in a compact format.