Coffee Adventures: Quests for the perfect cuppa joe is an anthology of short stories published by Raconteur Press in 2024, edited and illustrated by Cedar Sanderson. Authors include Jesse A. Barrett, J.L. Curtis, Kevin Harris, CE Hughes, Callie Johnson, Christopher Markman, Sherri Mines, J. Kenton Pierce, and Medron Pryde.
What a fun collection of short stories!
I read this anthology because a coworker and friend of mine wrote one of the entries. My understanding is that Raconteur Press is a small publishing operation that accepted submissions with an interesting prompt: choose one of the many blends of coffee served by neighboring business King Harv’s Imperial Coffee and write a story about how it came to be. I may not have the details exactly right, but it was something to that effect.
The results did not disappoint! Not only are there quality stories that were tightly edited here, the editor herself also apparently created custom art for each one, displayed as illustrations at the beginning of each entry. These were just wonderful.
These stories are mainly fantasy or science fiction. With a subject like coffee, many of them fit into the “cozy” subgenre, and most of them are adventurous in nature. Several were quite funny. I was very impressed!
It’s got hyena sorcerers, coffee liches, ghouls, deities, feral space girl scouts, geishas, and more. Including, of course, a whole lot of coffee. What’s not to love?
If you like short stories, fun, and, perhaps most importantly, coffee, you most definitely should give this a read.
Jessica Crawford 