As a freelance editor, Lyn Worthen has helped indie authors polish over six million words of fiction, and her multi-author anthologies have received awards and acclaim from the League of Utah Writers, the Critters Writing Workshop, and the Horror Writers of America. She is a frequent participant in fiction workshops and conferences, both as a presenter and a student of the craft and business of publishing – and a self-described "caffeine-to-text conversion unit," which explains how she gets so much done. For more information, follow Camden Park Press on Facebook, or visit www.camdenparkpress.com

Street Magic: 1-4 edited by Lyn Worthen

Next time you find yourself walking through the city streets, take a moment to look beyond the crowded sidewalks and honking horns. If you look closely enough, you might catch the whisper of ancient runes painted in UV street art, the shifting geometry of a hidden alleyway, or a dragon's smoke wafting from a sidewalk grate.

With 4 books, 40 authors, and 60 urban fantasy short stories, this ultimate urban fantasy collection invites you to explore the extraordinary realities operating right under our unsuspecting noses. Step out into the flickering neon lights, listen to the siren's song, and prepare to walk with one foot in the ordinary world and one foot in another realm. The boundary separating the mundane from the miraculous is only as solid as you believe it to be.

CURATOR'S NOTE

Lyn Worthen is a marvelous writer, but she's also a marvelous editor. For this Storybundle, she has contributed four anthologies, all part of a series called Street Magic. Volumes III and IV have never appeared anywhere else. So, you'll find sixty urban fantasy stories here by forty different authors. (See why I had difficulty in my original introduction figuring out exactly how many stories/series/authors we have here?)The first Street Magic volume won awards; I suspect the new ones might as well. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 

REVIEWS

  • "A great group of stories. There are colorful characters, interesting settings and tight plots. Short stories at their best."

    – Laura H., Amazon reader

  • "Excellent read with new angles on urban fantasy. Several new takes on the creatures and magic of this fantasy genre. Well worth trying out."

    – Amazon reader

  • Winner, Diamond Quill, 2022 – "Best Book of the Year"

    – League of Utah Writers
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

The Veil between the Ordinary and the Magical

Lyn Worthen

series editor

Have you ever noticed how the city seems to hum just a little louder after midnight? For most people, that hum is easily dismissed as the drone of a distant freeway or the rhythmic thumping of a basement club.

But for those attuned to a different frequency, that hum is the murmur of an incantation. It's the whisper of ancient runes painted in UV-reactive street art, or the shifting geometry of an alleyway that leads somewhere entirely omitted from an online map.

High fantasy asks us to leave this world and escape to another realm entirely, but urban fantasy does something far more intimate: it insists that our world is already full of wonders, if only we know how to look.

As with the previous Street Magic volumes, I asked the authors to create characters grappling with contemporary-style issues in a world where magic might be either a resource or an obstacle. I asked for a sense of wonder and a sense of power. And I asked them to create settings and cultures that were mysterious, arcane, and plausible.

Most of all, I asked them to create worlds our readers would want to stay in or return to, long after the stories were over.

And once again, they delivered. Within these pages, the unforgiving concrete jungle becomes a backdrop for the extraordinary – a gateway to a world existing just an inch to the left of our own reality.

Some of these stories introduce entirely new faces – a mage discovering the power behind his music, a protector watching over a gifted child threatened by an old, malevolent entity – while other tales welcome back familiar faces, caught in entirely new webs of intrigue.

But whether tracking down the fragments of an ensorcelled gemstone, dealing with a bit of dangerous, wild magic on a bridge in London on what should have been a wizard's day off, or traversing a hidden magical market in Bangkok, the magic is rarely neat. It is raw, unpredictable, and often exacts a steep toll from those who wield it.

The stakes in this volume range from the fate of entire hidden communities to the quiet, agonizing choices of individuals simply trying to protect the people they love.

What makes these urban fantasy stories truly resonate is not just the flashy spells or the creatures waiting in the dark, but the deeply human hearts beating beneath the façade. These characters face the same doubts, heartbreaks, and triumphs we all do, making their victories feel intensely personal.

So, pull on your coat, turn up your collar against the evening chill, and step back out onto the pavement with us. Pay close attention to the way the shadows stretch under the streetlights, or the unexpected touch of a warm breeze on a chilly night. The veil between the ordinary world and the magical is thinner than you think.

Open your eyes, and step across the threshold.

Welcome to the street!

– Lyn Worthen

Sandy, Utah

July 15, 2026