Cruel Miracles: Tales of Death, Hope, and Holiness: Book 4 of Maps in a Mirror Audiobook (Free)

This fourth volume in Orson Scott Card’s five-book anthology of short stories features tales with religious themes, exploring the mysteries of ritual, sacrifice, faith, and death.

Mortal GodsIn our mortality is situated our greatness.

Keeping GraceA story of TV faith healers and the ones who stick to them.

Eye for EyeAn abused child has the present of creating illness and loss of life in those he’s angry with. Champion from the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1988.

St. Amy’s TaleA family destroys all technology.

KingsmeatWhen flesh-eating aliens dominate a human colony world, one human forestalls total doom by feeding them non-essential bits of his fellow colonists.

HolyA seemingly pointless mission to create an offering to some other culture’s shrine takes on unexpected meaning.

“I believe that speculative fiction-science fiction in particular-is the last American refuge of religious literature. Real spiritual literature, I believe, explores the type of the universe and discovers the reason behind it.”-Orson Scott Card, from his introduction