Unexpected Places to Fall From, Unexpected Places to Land
Malcolm Devlin

'Malcolm Devlin dissects our everyday decisions, our individual tragedies, and summons the haunted feeling that our other selves are out there living alternate lives, and in doing so he offers the reader an unexpected and surreal consolation.'
– Anne Charnock, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Dreams Before the Start of Time and Bridge 108

‘Devlin writes intelligent, profound and perfect short stories. A brilliant collection.’
– Aliya Whiteley, author of The Beauty, Greensmith and many more

‘Acutely strange yet deeply humane, Devlin’s stories are slippery in all the best ways. This collection is a perfect demonstration of his range, wit and skill.’
– Matt Hill, author of Lamb and Wrecks

‘I’ve been an admirer of Malcolm Devlin’s fiction for years. He writes with compassion, intelligence and precision, not just crossing but obliterating genre lines with joyful abandonment. His newest collection moved me deeply with its imagination, lyricism, and gorgeous prose—a terrific book to knock you off your jaded feet before landing you in all sorts of unexpected places.’
– Usman Malik, author of Midnight Doorways

‘Themes of fate and free will, choice and contingency thread through these twelve luminous and lyrical stories. Frequently, as I was reading, I had to stop, my breath taken away at the sheer quality of the writing, the ease and craft with which the narratives unfolded, the compassion brought to each individual character, the strange beauty found in the everyday. Malcolm Devlin is one of our most gifted and perceptive writers.’
– Una McCormack, New York Times-bestselling author

An acclaimed master of weird fiction spins a dazzling web of interconnected stories across parallel worlds, where one impossible event reverberates through countless lives, timelines, and realities.

In the exact same moment, all possible versions of Prentis O’Rourke will cease to exist. By accident, by malice, by conflict, by illness—Prentis will not simply die. He will go extinct. These are the stories of the journeys we take and the journeys we wish we’d taken.

Malcolm Devlin’s second short story collection ranges from science fiction to folk horror as Prentis O’Rourke’s demise echoes across the dimensions. Scientists, artists, ex-nuns, taxi drivers, time travelers and aliens—the same people living varied lives in subtly different worlds. Something unprecedented will happen, and it will color them all.

Crossing multiple realities, countless versions of ourselves, and shifting backwards and forwards through time, these are stories of forking paths and unexpected destinations—of flying and falling and getting up to try again.

About the Author

Malcolm Devlin is the author of And Then I Woke Up (2022), Engines Beneath Us (2019) and the collections You Will Grow Into Them (2017) and Unexpected Places to Fall From (2026). His short fiction has been published in Interzone, Black Static and Shadows and Tall Trees. He currently lives in Brisbane, Australia.

Paperback ISBN: 9798895152782

Publication date: January 2026

Formats: Paperback