BACKSTORY 2:
A few years in the future, the icecaps melts, sea levels rose and southern tectonic plates shifted upward exposing the landmass of the Antarctic.The ocean rise floods vast tracts of land prompting a move to floating cities made from wood. A new icecap forms over Canada. Much of the Mississippi valley is shallow swamp. In an effort to reduce atmospheric CO2, fast growing trees are planted and the wood is converted to boats. Most energy systems are converted to battery and electric motors recharged by non-hydrocarbon fuels.
BACKSTORY 1:
A few years in the future, the icecaps melts, sea levels rose and southern tectonic plates shifted upward exposing the landmass of the Antarctic. Most of the Pacific islands in the South Seas fell below water level. But in Polynesia, specifically the Cook Islands, Tongavera atoll, rises to reveal a small central island surrounded by reef. The sharks have left and been replaced by dolphins.
An overflight finds the new South Pacific Atoll and the US military send geographers and scientists to explore the new atoll. They find the ruins of pyramidal stone buildings with smooth walls and flat roofs. On the east side of the central island there are a a dozen black stone altars with a depression in the anatomically correct outline of a man and on the west side of the island are another dozen black stone altars with dolphin shaped depressions.
There are steles with pictograms reminiscent of Egyptian and Sumerian writing. That puts them circa 2800 BC. Translated they tell the story of a civilization that was destroyed by some extraterrestrial object. No one can complete the translation of the texts. The object is described as the harbinger of death from above. The ancients could see it coming and their shamans and magicians created two islands--one for men and one for women, with sexually distinguishable altars in order to avoid destruction. Sonar locates the second island still at the bottom of the ocean. The Brass and intelligentsia believes that the altars were for sacrifices -- human and dolphin. They also assume that the inhabitants were wiped out in a meteor strike.
All of that is reported back to headquarters. Then the expedition disappears completely. A second group is sent to find out what happened.
A knock on the door provides new insights into the relationship of a "not so nice" friendship between two men and the girl they think they love.
Alms for the poor, alms for the poor. Blood for the Inquisition. 
In a Victorian world of city-states where steam carriages drive through cities lit by gas lamps and enchanted mechanicals guard the estates of the rich, how do diplomats and politicians settle disputes? They devise Rules of Engagement, hire small armies and stage skirmishes between brigades of clockworks, steam power war machines, helium airships. They invoke ghosts, raise the dead and listen to consultants.
Christmas is always bright and cheery, with silver tinsel and red and gold balls and lots of twinkling fairy lights with Cthulhu and a vampire. A time of joy, a time of giving till it hurts, blood that is and human sacrifice. 
On the Vigil of Easter in Rannoch, Scotland in 1155 AD, a flying saucer crashed into the bog near a church and and monks must fight the alien invasion.
Policemen Aidan Cainne and Silvio Ranaldo find a dead body in an old-style diving suit under an abandoned diving platform and before they can summon help, a pirate adds them to his scorecard of bad deeds. As the Bible says, the wages of sin is death; not Miltonian death in some fiery Hades or a Dante-like Inferno, but the Angel of Death incarnate come to deliver judgment. When the entire world holds it breath and Death looks deep into the murderer's heart, what does a man see reflected in Death's eyes?
Ever wonder what the deer thinks about? Well Brant Black and Skeeter Crust find out when their hunting trip is hijacked to another planet. They become the hunted. Do they end up as trophies on the wall or do they survive?
On a world populated by Human-Animal hybrids, a vacationing human is found dead in a hot tub. It is up to seasoned detective, Elias Carson incarnated as a satyr, a green rookie incarnated as a wolf and a prosecutor incarnated as an anteater to solve the world's first murder. What they find is not a Royal conspiracy to cheat death, taxes and society but a cold-blooded, heartless murderer, willing to do anything to keep up appearances.
The Anthology COSMIC CATASTROPHES, edited by Chris Bartholomew
One hundred seventy years in the future, a serial killer comes to the Yukon Territory and an alien bounty hunter (a Sasquatch with telepathic fleas) and a human detective (no fleas, no telepathy, just a college degree) must join forces to find the killer before he kills again.
