Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the Beneath the Rising series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. She is represented by Michael Curry of DMLA.

And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed

Winner of the 2022 Nebula Award and World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

In a far future city, where you can fall to a government cull for a single mistake, And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed tells the story of Jewel, established courtesan in a luxurious House. Jewel's world is shaken when her friend is murdered by a client, but somehow comes back to life. To get revenge, they will both have to confront the limits of loyalty, guilt, and justice.

CURATOR'S NOTE

I love Premee's writing, and this tale of greed and murder in a far future dystopia should be a good introduction to this major new voice in speculative fiction! – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "And What Can We Offer You Tonight is a deep dive into sacred revenge, a vivid, devastating and exquisite story of love and loyalty, among three friends who can ill afford such luxuries."

    – L.X. Beckett, author of Gamechanger and Dealbreaker

  • "A dazzling look at death, revenge and survival in a drowning future. Stunning from first word to last. I didn't want it to end."

    – Eboni Dunbar, author of Stone and Steel

  • "Sometimes your own justice is the only kind you can get. Jewel lives in a future of luxury, spectacle, and wealth, but the rot doesn't even bother to try to hide itself. Reveling in the disparity is the point, for the elite who come to the House of Bicchieri for the pleasure of doing anything they want. What follows after a client does just that is Jewel's story to tell in the admiration-soaked narration of The Great Gatsby, if Gatsby rose from her coffin in her most elegant gown and avenged herself. And What Can We Offer You Tonight questions the notion that we must be better victims than the villains who don't care how they hurt us—and then shows us how it feels when justice rings true."

    – C.L. Polk, author of The Midnight Bargain

  • "Moody and atmospheric, this dystopian novella from Mohamed (A Broken Darkness) skillfully turns a murder mystery into a scathing examination of what life might be like in even later stage capitalism."

    – Publishers Weekly
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The dead girl woke and asked for her perfume and we gave it to her and she slept again.

And when she did so I felt glad I had not let anyone rifle through her things as often happened before the funeral. Someone might have been wearing her scent at the ceremony but no one was.

So now she lies on my bed with her bluewhite hand curled around the glowing vial. The one thing she wanted.

Nero sniffs, leans a shoulder gingerly against the doorway, avoiding his newly-implanted wings. "They do that with dinoflagellates, you know. It's nothing special."

"Don't be jealous," I tell him. Of course he cannot help it, he is very young, and anyway we are all of us a little rattled right now, I would say that none of us are really acting like ourselves, not really.

Someone needs to tell, someone whispers just outside the cracked door of my room, and someone whispers back Shhh! What is wrong with you? and someone else adds What the fuck is wrong with you?

For now I think the secret is safe. But the owners of our House will find out at some point. Not from me and not from my fellow courtesans, and need has nothing to do with what we do anyway. Does it. Ever. Has it. Ever.

Nero gets up to stand watch in the hallway and that leaves me in here with the dead girl who is not dead.