Laura Tobin's a private investigator who's summoned to investigate a very peculiar murder —- one that occurs in The City of the Saved-a haven at the end of the Universe, populated by every human being or pseudo-human being who's ever lived. Except that in the City, all murders are literally impossible. But Laura's got a very dead body to prove otherwise. As part of her investigation, Laura will come across the machinations of the various powers within the City, including the Rump Parliament and the City Council and more —- and also perhaps the Secret Archiects who built the City in the first place. And then there's Faction Paradox, a group of time-travelling ritualists, saboteurs and subterfugers—essentially, the criminal-cult to end all criminal-cults. As always, the Faction's trying to subvert history to its own ends, preferably by letting its rivals kill each other off, then swooping in to seize whatever's left—presuming the Universe survives the conflict...

Beyond the end of the universe exists a city the size of a galaxy, packed with every human being that ever lived, from the first Australopithecus to the last posthuman, resurrected in a city in which nobody can die…or rather, that used to be the case. The first ever City of the Saved short story collection, edited by the man who created it for the Faction Paradox 'Book of the War', Philip Purser-Hallard. "The great thing about this volume is that’s there’s plenty more left to explore. I hope that there are more collections set in the City of the Saved to look forward to." - Daniel Tessier, Immaterial blog "probably the best collection of SF stories you’ll read this year." - Andrew Hickey, Justice Leak! blog

‘Once upon a time, the universe ended. And they all lived happily ever after.’ THE CITY OF THE SAVED In a pub on a hill by a bay in the technological utopia beyond the end of the universe, customers gather to tell the stories of their afterlives. An older woman steals intangibly from her boyfriends, while a naive student learns more about her world. A historian and a detective made in a king’s image seek answers to long-standing mysteries. A man-about-town makes a living finding doppelgangers. Another man may be not a storyteller, but a story. These are their tales.

The City of the Saved houses every human being who ever lived… but some of its immortal Citizens need more. For the Remakers, one fiction above all exerts its fascination: a character existing in countless interpretations, many of them now recreated in the flesh and in business together as the Great Detective Agency. These are their tales. In the Agency’s annals, the City’s many Sherlock Holmeses solve the Case of the Pipe Dream, experience the Adventure of the Piltdown Prelate and explore the strangely clichéd Mansion of Doom. A Watson falls in love; a Moriarty goes missing; and Holmes comes face-to-face with his arch-nemesis, the sinister Dr Conan Doyle…

Even the secular afterlife created for humanity by the Secret Architects has its limits – and there will always be those Citizens who chafe against those limits. Environmentally, culturally, biologically, cosmologically, politically, experientially, some will always seek to go further. For instance… A group mind facing the troubling truth of resurrection. A comatose giant with human inhabitants of its own. A civilisation re-enacting an impossible apocalypse. A woman with negligible human ancestry out on the dating scene. A cult who inhabit the deep infrastructure underlying the City. A fictional adventurer starved of the risks his narrative craves. These are their tales.

War has come to the City of the Saved. Once immune from harm, the resurrected Citizens of the universe find themselves once again most terribly fragile – and just as in the universe, too many of them now strive to take advantage of the fact. In this unfamiliar City, the resurrected must revive the long-forgotten skills of their original lives. Knights, courtiers, detectives, killers, nurses, adventurers, spies: the afterlives of all will be irrevocably changed by the Civil War. These are their tales.

The knights hospitaller have just woken to a second life in a City the size of a galaxy. Two strangers from a far-distant future are flung together on Resurrection Day. A window-seller visits a claustrophobic suburb and finds it full of mystery. A Remake gunslinger seeks a new role from the one he was always meant to play… In this, the sixth anthology in the City of the Saved series, we meet a host of human and not-so-human characters getting to grips with life in the afterlife: alien adoptees with no previous experience of human cultures; Citizens permanently missing and not merely misplaced; priestesses of long-forgotten religions; posthumans with their own baffling version of the Civil Tongue; a viral strain of humankind that has never known community… The City is full of strangers and these are their tales.