The Most Recent Madame Fortuna

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Carol grew up with the carnival and its attractions. Like the fortune teller: Madame Fortuna. Now Carol runs carnivals and their employees, including Madame Fortuna.

When the screaming begins, Carol doesn't need a fortune teller to predict trouble. She can do that all on her own. Fixing the problem, however, might take a magic touch.

"Rusch hits all the right notes here, delivering character, a strong narrative voice, and a solid story."

—Charles de Lint, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Jul 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536514209

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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The Most Recent Madame Fortuna

THE MOST RECENT MADAME FORTUNA

KRISTINE KATHRYN RUSCH

WMG Publishing, Inc.

CONTENTS

The Most Recent Madame Fortuna

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

THE MOST RECENT MADAME FORTUNA

Ninety frickin’ degrees at nine a.m.—fifteenth scorcher in a row—not that we could do much about it. The sun baked down on the metal, which added heat to the dusty midways. Used to be, we’d add air conditioning to the outdoor rides, pouring cool air down from the tent coverings above, but that ended up making things hotter.

You’d think, after twenty years, I’d be used to the heat, but I wasn’t. Long about now—the first week in August—I started longing for snow-covered peaks, even though I’d never really spent much time on them. Winters I was in Florida, usually, doing repairs, taking stock, and adding up numbers that never really sailed past break even.

I shoulda taken the golden parachute back when my daddy died in 1990. I did sell the entire kit and kaboodle to the Hawsers Corporation, one of those bigger outfits that could handle what carnivals had become now—trolling grounds for losers who wanted to claim back injuries from the Tilt-a-Whirl and predators who felt up little girls behind the cotton candy machines.

I couldn’t handle the lawsuits or the idiots, especially the pervs who thought that a tiny gravel-voiced woman was a victim, not a person in charge of an entire carnival. At some point, I knew one of