The Museum of Forgotten Toys

"It wasn't entirely clear what the furry purple... creature... was supposed to be. Even before it lost one eye, most of one arm and had half its polyester body melted into a black sheen of carbon, it could either be a bear, a marsupial, or some sort of shrew. Its paper toe tag bore only the inscription "Aleppo, Feb 2019." 48 more emissions from the hyperactive imagination of Gavin Boyter, these unpredictable tales transport you to peculiar Parisian junk stores, post-apocalyptic Mongolian steppes, and deep space, where the world's only sentient AI falls in love with its human companion. In other tales in the collection... -A stained glass window provides a stuffy academic with the clue to an ancient crime in a quiet English village...

-A spectral mischief maker haunts an Edinburgh bookshop, turning it into a library of impossible texts...

-A father hands his quadriplegic son one final gift as the world comes to a shattering conclusion...

-And in the title story, a Belgian couple accidentally create a popular museum dedicated to the child victims of war and disaster. "Gavin Boyter's fiction brings the reader into another place and time. It is a rare writer who can make a situation far away seem real and relatable and Gavin's story does just this." LISA C TAYLOR, FICTION EDITOR, WORDPEACE. "Gavin Boyter's work exhibits a unique mastery of whimsy. His words gratify the reader's familiarity, even when the subject matter is otherworldly." PHILLIPE M. CHATELAIN, EDITOR, IN PARENTHESIS. "Boyter's stories work within mysterious settings, taking the reader into places that are both familiar and uncomfortable, revealing the psychological depths of their characters. These stories investigate the principal questions of humanity: growth, progress, change, decay." DANIEL MORGAN, EDITOR, THE CLOSED EYE OPEN.