Synopsis: "In a steampunk Wild West, women with nothing left to lose walk into the desert, and emerge soul-bonded to giant robots... A pair of bickering angels try to re-create Heaven in a Tokyo subway station... A woman warrior matches swords and wits with a many-headed demon in mythic India... These stories and more appear in "A Cup of Smoke," a collection of short works by Rachel Manija Brown. It includes her Rhysling Award-winning poem "Nine Views of the Oracle" and her Rhysling nominee poem "Minotaur Noir." Two of the short stories and eleven of the poems are original to this collection. The other stories originally appeared in "Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk I," "Strange Horizons," "Andromeda Spaceways Magazine," and "Cabinet des Fees." All the short stories have all-new afterwords by the author." (source: Smashwords)