Medicine Show
Subtitle: Vol. 1 of the Liquid Laughter Project
By: Edited by Heidi Lampietti
Edition: First
Publisher: RedJack
Published: November 30, 2006
Place of publication: Bayside, California
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 277
ISBN-13: 9781892619099
Subjects: Alternative History; Anthologies (multiple authors); Fantasy - Historical; Fiction; Fantasy
First sentence: Sully-sur-Loire, France.  May, 1919

"Waaal, son...ya know I hate to say it...but I reckon this pertik'lar show's likely to be a bigger bust that the time that feller Napoleon thought he might take hisself for a stroll through a little place called Waterloo."
Description: Medicine Show is set is Europe in the aftermath of World War I, and follows the adventures of Professor Bernhard Freedomhowler's Internationally Acclaimed Traveling Exhibition of Medicinal Wonderment: a medicine show featuring a highly unusual troupe of players, including Norris the reluctantly heroic Dog-Man; a six-foot-seven, four-hundred-pound horse goddess named Heather; the immortal sharpshooter Dan "Doc" Evans; Grenadine, the medium of questionable ability; and Calliope the Whistle-Pig.  In these twelve chapters, the book's twelve authors have concocted a complex brew of (among other things) firebreathing impresarios, post-war devastation, werewolves, Nordic Gods, bizarre plots, and slapstick comedy.

The Liquid Laughter Project was a collaborative writing project in which twelve authors, given a set of characters and a premise, wrote a full-length novel in the round-robin style, with each author producing one chapter per month. Medicine Show is the first volume of the project, and was written over the time period of May 2005 to May 2006. The second volume,  Freedomhowler, Finchley, and Co., was written from November 2006 to November 2007.
Table of contents: title: Prologue: How to Remember the Past
pagenum: 1; title: The Man With the Hat
pagenum: 5; title: Civitale Sundermine
pagenum: 33; title: Dogs of War
pagenum: 57; title: On the Seventh Day They Fled
pagenum: 77; title: Fistula
pagenum: 109; title: Dining Out in Postwar Europe
pagenum: 129; title: Lily of the Valley
pagenum: 141; title: Intermission: How to Live in the Moment
pagenum: 165; title: Paladin
pagenum: 167; title: How To Be Impotent And Successful For The Heroic Age
pagenum: 193; title: Freedomhowler's Folly
pagenum: 233; title: Dream of a Whistle Pig
pagenum: 245; title: Epilogue: How to See the Future
pagenum: 265