As seen on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was described as "gloriously unsettling ... evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson," and already one of the years most widely acclaimed novels:. "Helen Oyeyemi has fully transformed from a literary prodigy into a powerful, distinctive storyteller ... Transfixing and surprising." - Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A) . "I dont care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest in the land ... daring and unnerving ... Under Oyeyemis spell, the fairy-tale conceit makes a brilliant setting in which to explore the alchemy of racism, the weird ways in which identity can be transmuted in an instant - from beauty to beast or vice versa." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post. From the prizewinning author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant recasting of the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity.In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life shes left behind in New York. She marries Arturo Whitman, a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow.. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined shed become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boys daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. And even as Boy, Snow, and Bird are divided, their estrangement is complicated by an insistent curiosity about one another. In seeking an understanding that is separate from the image each presents to the world, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. . Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.
Publisher: n/a
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9781594631399
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Hardcover
After Alice
By Maguire, Gregory
From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis's Carroll's beloved classic.When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings - and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll's enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late - and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is "After Alice."
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9780060548957
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Hardcover
Bitter Greens
By Forsyth, Kate
A Library Journal Best Book of 2014: Historical FictionThe amazing power and truth of the Rapunzel fairy tale comes alive for the first time in this breathtaking tale of desire, black magic and the redemptive power of loveFrench novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.Award-winning author Kate Forsyth braids together the stories of Margherita, Selena, and Charlotte-Rose, the woman who penned Rapunzel as we now know it, to create what is a sumptuous historical novel, an enchanting fairy tale retelling, and a loving tribute to the imagination of one remarkable woman.
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9781250047533
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Hardcover
Charlie Glass's Slippers
By Mcqueen, Holly
In this delightful, clever spin on Cinderella, Charlie Glassa heroine as loveable as Cannie Shapiro and Bridget Jonesinherits her fathers shoe empire and snatches up a drop-dead-gorgeous, multi-millionaire Prince Charming. But is he truly the key to her happily ever after When Charlies beloved father, iconic shoe designer Elroy Glass, dies after a long illness, everyone expects that hell leave his business to his glamorous wife and eldest daughters. After all, theyve been running the company for years. But Elroy surprises everyone from beyond the grave at the will reading, its announced that his fashion empire has been left to Charlie, his youngestand plumpestdaughter. Before she can run the company, Charlie decides she needs to make a few changes in her life.
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9781476727059
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Book
Circe
By Miller, Madeline
"A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller "manages to be both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times) . In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
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9780316556347
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Paperback
Cursed
By Marie, O'regan,
Fairy tales take a weird twist in this anthology compiling stories from an all-star cast of fantasy writers, including stories from Neil Gaiman, Charlie Jane Anders and Alison Littlewood. Here in this book you'll find unique twists on the fairy tale conceit of the curse, from the more traditional to the modern - giving us brand new mythologies as well as new approaches to well-loved fables. Some might shock you, some might make you laugh, but they will all impress you with their originality.
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9781789091502
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Dreamer's Pool
By Marillier, Juliet
Award-winning author Juliet Marillier "weaves magic, mythology, and folklore into every sentence on the page" (The Book Smugglers) . Now she begins an all-new and enchanting series that will transport readers to a magical vision of ancient Ireland.... In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she'll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help. Oran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais.
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9780451466990
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Hardcover
The Emerald Circus
By Yolen, Jane
Publisher: n/a
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9781982679279
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Audiobook
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned
By Schultz, Gretchen
The wolf is tricked by Red Riding Hood into strangling her grandmother and is subsequently arrested. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella do not live happily ever after. And the fairies are saucy, angry, and capricious. Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned collects thirty-six tales, many newly translated, by writers associated with the decadent literary movement, which flourished in France in the late nineteenth century. Written by such creative luminaries as Charles Baudelaire, Anatole France, and Guillaume Apollinaire, these enchanting yet troubling stories reflect the concerns and fascinations of a time of great political, social, and cultural change. Recasting well-known favorites from classic French fairy tales, as well as Arthurian legends and English and German tales, the updated interpretations in this collection allow for more perverse settings and disillusioned perspectives--a trademark style and ethos of the decadent tradition.
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9780691161655
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Hardcover
Ferryman institute
By Gigl, Colin
In this stunning, fantastical debut novel from a bold new voice in the bestselling traditions of Christopher Moore and Jasper Fforde, a ferryman for the dead finds his existence unraveling after making either the best decision or the biggest mistake of his immortal life.Ferryman Charlie Dawson saves dead people - somebody has to convince them to move on to the afterlife, after all. Having never failed a single assignment, he's acquired a reputation for success that's as legendary as it is unwanted. It turns out that serving as a Ferryman is causing Charlie to slowly lose his mind. Deemed too valuable by the Ferryman Institute to be let go and too stubborn to just give up in his own right, Charlie's pretty much abandoned all hope of escaping his grim existence. Or he had, anyway, until he saved Alice Spiegel. To be fair, Charlie never planned on stopping Alice from taking her own life - that sort of thing is strictly forbidden by the Institute - but he never planned on the President secretly giving him the choice to, either. Charlie's not quite sure what to make of it, but Alice is alive, and it's the first time he's felt right in more than two hundred years. When word of the incident reaches Inspector Javrouche, the Ferryman Institute's resident internal affairs liaison, Charlie finds he's in a world of trouble. But Charlie's not about to lose the only living, breathing person he's ever saved without a fight. He's ready to protect her from Javrouche and save Alice from herself, and he's willing to put the entire continued existence of mankind at risk to do it. Written in the same vein as bestselling modern classics such as The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, The Ferryman Institute is a thrilling supernatural adventure packed with wit and humor.
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9781501125324
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Print book
Full Throttle
By Hill, Joe
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including "In The Tall Grass," one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in "Faun." A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in "Late Returns." In "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain," two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water's edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water's shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in "Throttle," co-written with Stephen King.Featuring two previously unpublished stories, and a brace of shocking chillers, Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062200679
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Hardcover
The Girl in Red
By Henry, Christina
From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a postapocalyptic take on the perennial classic "Little Red Riding Hood"...about a woman who isn't as defenseless as she seems.It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....
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9780451492289
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Paperback
Helen of Troy
By George, Margaret
A lush, seductive novel of the legendary beauty whose face "launched a thousand ships" Daughter of a god, wife of a king, prize of antiquity's bloodiest war, Helen of Troy has inspired artists for millennia. Now Margaret George, the highly acclaimed bestselling historical novelist, has turned her intelligent, perceptive eye to the myth that is Helen of Troy. Margaret George breathes new life into the great Homeric tale by having Helen narrate her own story. Through her eyes and in her voice, we experience the young Helen's discovery of her divine origin and her terrifying beauty. While hardly more than a girl, Helen married the remote Spartan king Menelaus and bore him a daughter. By the age of twenty, the world's most beautiful woman was resigned to a passionless marriage - until she encountered the handsome Trojan prince Paris. And once the lovers flee to Troy, war, murder, and tragedy become inevitable. In Helen of Troy, Margaret George has captured a timeless legend in a mesmerizing tale of a woman whose life was destined to create strife - and destroy civilizations.
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9780670037780
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Book
Hiddensee
By Maguire, Gregory
From the author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Wicked, the magical story of a toymaker, a nutcracker, and a legend remade . . .Gregory Maguire returns with an inventive novel inspired by a timeless holiday legend, intertwining the story of the famous Nutcracker with the life of the mysterious toy maker named Drosselmeier who carves him.Hiddensee: An island of white sandy beaches, salt marshes, steep cliffs, and pine forests north of Berlin in the Baltic Sea, an island that is an enchanting bohemian retreat and home to a large artists' colony-- a wellspring of inspiration for the Romantic imagination . . .Having brought his legions of devoted readers to Oz in Wicked and to Wonderland in After Alice, Maguire now takes us to the realms of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffmann-- the enchanted Black Forest of Bavaria and the salons of Munich. Hiddensee imagines the backstory of the Nutcracker, revealing how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how he guided an ailing girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a Christmas Eve. At the heart of Hoffmann's mysterious tale hovers Godfather Drosselmeier-- the ominous, canny, one-eyed toy maker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky's fairy tale ballet-- who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter. But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism ties to Hellenic mystery-cults-- a fascination with death and the afterlife-- and ponders a profound question: How can a person who is abused by life, shortchanged and challenged, nevertheless access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless? Ultimately, Hiddensee offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress on a dark winter evening, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized, has something precious to share.
Publisher: n/a
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9780062684387
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Hardcover
House of Names
By Toibin, Colm
From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tibn comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra - spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling - and her children."I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed in the dark and could kill; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal - his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. In House of Names, Colm Tibn brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myth's most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes' story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother's lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.
Publisher: n/a
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9781501140211
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Hardcover
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale
By Yolen, Jane
"[Yolen is] the Aesop of the twentieth century" -- The New York TimesFantasy legend Jane Yolen (The Emerald CircusThe Devil's Arithmetic) , adored by generations of readers of all ages, delights with these effortlessly wide-ranging fairy tales, myths, and legends. She fractures the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets, holding them to the light and presenting them transformed: a spinner of straw as a falsely-accused moneylender, a philosophical bridge who longs for its troll, and the villainous wolf retiring to a nursing home. Each offering features an intimate author note and poem, allowing readers to discover stories old, new, and refined for the world we live in -- or a much better version of it.
Publisher: n/a
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9781616963064
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Paperback
Ithaca
By Dillon, Patrick
In the tumultuous aftermath of the Trojan War, a young man battles to save his home and his inheritance. Setting out to find his father, he ends up discovering himself. Telemachus's father, Odysseus, went off to war before he was born ... and never came back. Aged sixteen, Telemachus finds himself abandoned, his father's house overrun with men pursuing his beautiful mother, Penelope, and devouring the family's wealth. He determines to leave Ithaca, his island home, and find the truth. What really happened to his father? Was Odysseus killed on his journey home from the war? Or might he, one day, return to take his revenge? Telemachus's journey takes him across the landscape of bronze-age Greece in the aftermath of the great Trojan war. Veterans hide out in the hills. Chieftains, scarred by war, hoard their treasure in luxurious palaces. Ithaca re-tells Homer's famous poem, The Odyssey, from the point of view of Odysseus' resourceful and troubled son, describing Odysseus's extraordinary voyage from Troy to the gates of hell, and Telemachus's own journey from boyhood to the desperate struggle that wins back his home ... and his father.
Publisher: n/a
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9781681771557
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Hardcover
Kill the Farm Boy
By Hearne, Kevin
In an irreverent new series in the tradition of Terry Pratchett novels and The Princess Bride, the New York Times bestselling authors of the Iron Druid Chronicles and Star Wars: Phasma reinvent fantasy, fairy tales, and floridly overwritten feast scenes. Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told. This is not that fairy tale. There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened. And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell. There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar "happily ever after" that ever once-upon-a-timed.
Publisher: n/a
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9781524797744
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Hardcover
Letters to Zell
By Griep, Camille
Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella) , Bianca (Snow White) , and Rory (Sleeping Beauty) - until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell's best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined "happily ever afters," regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca's wedding approaches, can they escape their fates - and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn't write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.
Publisher: n/a
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9781477829622
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Paperback
A Lion Among Men
By Maguire, Gregory
This is the Limited and Signed First Edition, specially bound and produced by the publisher, 2008, first printing, 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, SIGNED by the author on a special page provided by the publisher for this issue, a new, unread, unworn, unopened, otherwise unmarked hardcover, with an equally fine unclipped ($26.95 top, 1006 bottom, front flap) dust jacket, from Morrow, with a gold sticker on the front stating: Signed First Edition. By Gregory Maguire, previously author of the bestselling WICKED. ISBN 978-0-06-054892-6. In this much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion - the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked. While civil war looms, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr - the Cowardly Lion - arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle demands some answers of her own. Brrr surrenders his story: abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his lifes path is no Yellow Brick Road. A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald Citys approaching armies. At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguires new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.
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9780060548926
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Hardcover
The Merry Spinster
By Ortberg, Mallory
A collection of darkly playful stories based on classic folk and fairy tales (but with a feminist spin) that find the sinister in the familiar and the familiar in the alien -- from Mallory Ortberg, author of Texts From Jane Eyre.From Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from her beloved "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series, "The Merry Spinster" takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to readers of both The Toast and her best-selling debut Texts From Jane Eyre. The feature has become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Ortberg's eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief. Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Ortberg's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Ortberg's oeuvre will delight in her unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface. Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night. Bed time will never be the same.
Publisher: n/a
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9781250113429
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Paperback
Mirror Mirror
By Maguire, Gregory
"A brilliant achievement." - Boston Herald "Entertaining ... profound ... .A novel for adults that unearths our buried fascination with the primal fears and truths fairy tales contain." - Christian Science Monitor Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Land of Oz in his New York Times bestselling series The Wicked Years, offers a brilliant reinvention of the timeless Snow White fairy tale: Mirror Mirror. Setting his story amid the cultural, political and artistic whirlwind of Renaissance Italy - and casting the notorious Lucrezia Borgia as the Evil Queen - Maguire and Mirror Mirror will enthrall a wide array of book lovers ranging from adult fans of Harry Potter to readers of the sophisticated stories of Angela Carter.
Publisher: n/a
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9780060393847
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Hardcover
Mythic Journeys
By Guran, Paula
Award-winning editor Paula Guran presents a diverse reprint anthology collecting classic myths and legends, retold by today's top fantasy writers. Myths and legends are the oldest of stories, part of our collective consciousness, and the source from which all fiction flows. Full of magic, supernatural powers, monsters, heroes, epic journeys, strange worlds, and vast imagination, they are fantasies so compelling we want to believe them true. The authors of fantastic literature create new mythologies, heroes, and monsters. Retelling, reinventing, mixing the old with new insight and meaning. Their stories, like the ancient tales, entertain and often offer readers new ways to interpret and understand the world. Drawn from diverse cultures, modern legends and mythic tales are told in a variety of ways - amiable or acerbic, rollicking or reflective, charming or chilling - as they take us on new journeys along paths both fresh and familiar. This new anthology compiles some of the best modern short mythic retellings and reinvention of legend from award-winning and bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers, and exciting new talents in a captivating collection. Adventure with us on these Mythic Journeys ... TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction: A Map or Maybe Not"Lost Lake" - Emma Straub and Peter Straub "White Lines on a Green Field" - Catherynne M. Valente "Trickster" - Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" - Brooke Bolander "A Memory of Wind" - Rachel Swirsky "Leda" - M. Rickert "Chivalry" - Neil Gaiman "The God of Au" - Ann Leckie "Faint Voices, Increasingly Desperate" - Anya Johanna DeNiro "Ogres of East Africa" - Sofia Samatar "Ys" - Aliette de Bodard "The Gorgon" - Tanith Lee "Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood" - Charles de Lint "Calypso in Berlin" - Elizabeth Hand "Seeds" - Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter "Wonder-Worker-of-the-World" - Nisi Shawl "Thesea and Astaurius" - Priya Sharma "Foxfire, Foxfire" - Yoon Ha Lee "Owl vs. the Neighborhood Watch" - Darcie Little Badger "How to Survive an Epic Journey" - Tansy Rayner Roberts "Simargl and the Rowan Tree" - Ekaterina Sedia "The Ten Suns" - Ken Liu "Armless Maidens of the American West" - Genevieve Valentine "Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream" - Maria Dahvana Headley "Zhyuin" - John Shirley "Immortal Snake" - Rachel Pollack "A Wolf in Iceland Is the Child of a Lie" - Sonya TaaffeAbout the AuthorsAbout the EditorAcknowledgements
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9781597809580
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Paperback
No Country for Old Gnomes
By Dawson, Delilah S.
Go big or go gnome. The New York Times bestselling authors of Kill the Farm Boy welcome you to the world of Pell, the irreverent fantasy universe that recalls Monty Python and Terry Pratchett. War is coming, and it's gonna be Pell. On one side stand the gnomes: smol, cheerful, possessing tidy cardigans and no taste for cruelty.On the other side sit the halflings, proudly astride their war alpacas, carrying bags of grenades and hungry for a fight. And pretty much anything else. It takes only one halfling bomb and Offi Numminen's world is turned upside down - or downside up, really, since he lives in a hole in the ground. His goth cardigans and aggressive melancholy set him apart from the other gnomes, as does his decision to fight back against their halfling oppressors. Suddenly Offi is the leader of a band of lovable misfits and outcasts - from a gryphon who would literally kill for omelets to a young dwarf herbalist who is better with bees than with his cudgel to an assertive and cheerful teen witch with a beard as long as her book of curses - all on a journey to the Toot Towers to confront the dastardly villain intent on tearing Pell asunder. These adventurers never fit in anywhere else, but as they become friends, fight mermaids, and get really angry at this one raccoon, they learn that there's nothing more heroic than being yourself. In No Country for Old Gnomes, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne lovingly tweak the tropes of fantasy and fairy tales. Here you'll find goofy jokes and whimsical puns, but you'll also find a diverse, feminist, and lighthearted approach to fantasy that will bring a smile to your face and many fine cheeses to your plate.
Publisher: n/a
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9781524797775
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Hardcover
Norse Mythology
By Gaiman, Neil
Introducing an instant classic -- master storyteller Neil Gaiman presents a dazzling version of the great Norse myths.Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales.In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki -- son of a giant -- blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Once, when Thor's hammer is stolen, Thor must disguise himself as a woman -- difficult with his beard and huge appetite -- to steal it back. More poignant is the tale in which the blood of Kvasir -- the most sagacious of gods -- is turned into a mead that infuses drinkers with poetry. The work culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and rebirth of a new time and people.Through Gaiman's deft and witty prose emerge these gods with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again.
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9780393609097
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Hardcover
Northwood
By Meijer, Maryse
"Northwood's mesmerizing alchemy is this: pain desire the deep, dark woods = a book so addictive you will inhale it in one breath. Meijer has made her own form, something new and wide-open, something as blissful and broken as the language of lovesickness itself." -- Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark "This strange and beautiful novelal has everything I want: formal play, myths and fairy tales, the politics of art-making, the all-obliterating power and complexity of desire, a cabin in the woods. I can't wait to see what Maryse Meijer does next." -- Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre-breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages.
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9781948226011
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Hardcover
One Good Knight
By Lackey, Mercedes
Another story sparkling with wit and humor from New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey. Traditionally, marauding dragons are soothed only by a virgin sacrifice. And so practical-minded Princess Andromeda -- with the encouragement of her mother's court -- reluctantly volunteers to do her duty, asking only for a sword to defend herself. Well, her offer is accepted, but the weapon isn't forthcoming, and so Andromeda faces the dragon alone. Until a Champion arrives to save her -- sort of. Sir George doesn't quite defeat the dragon, but as Andromeda finishes rescuing herself she discovers that beneath the Good Knight's well-meaning though inexperienced heroics lies a further tale . . . Still, Andromeda can't leave her seacoast country in further jeopardy from the dragon's return, and so she and .
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9780373802173
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Hardcover
From a High Tower
By Lackey, Mercedes
From a High Tower is newest adventure in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, featuring a retelling of Rapunzel's not-so-happily-ever-after ending.
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9780756408985
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Hardcover
Fortune's Fool
By Lackey, Mercedes
The seventh daughter of the Sea King, Ekaterina is more than a pampered princess-she's also the family spy. Which makes her the perfect emissary to check out interesting happenings in the neighboring kingdom…and nothing interests her more than Sasha, the seventh son of the king of Belrus. Ekaterina suspects he's far from the fool people think him. But before she can find out what lies beneath his facade, she is kidnapped!Trapped in a castle at the mercy of a possessive Jinn, Ekaterina knows her chances of being found are slim. Now fortune, a fool and a paper bird are the only things she can count on-along with her own clever mind and intrepid heart.…
--This text refers to the
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
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9780373802661
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Hardcover
The Snow Queen
By Lackey, Mercedes
Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is mysterious, beautiful, and widely known to have a heart of ice. No one would seek her wisdom except as a last resort. But when shes falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes theres an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be. And when a young warrior following the Tradition disappears, leaving his sweetheart and mother to fear the worst, Aleksias powers are needed as never before.Now, on a journey through a realm of perpetual winter, it will take all her skills, a mothers faith and a little magic to face down an enemy more formidable than any she has ever known....
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9780373802654
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Audiobook
Out of Oz
By Maguire, Gregory
The stunning conclusion to the smash New York Times bestselling series the Wicked Years. Hailed as bewitching, remarkable, extraordinary, engrossing, amazing, and delicious, Gregory Maguires Wicked Years seriesa sophisticated fantasy cycle inspired by the classic childrens novel The Wizard of Ozbecame national bestsellers and the basis for a hit Tony-winning Broadway musical. Now, Maguire returns with the final installment in his transformative work, a thrilling and compulsively readable saga in which the fate of Oz is decided at last. . . . Once peaceful and prosperous, the spectacular Land of Oz is knotted with social unrest The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law.
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9780060548940
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Hardcover
The Overneath
By Beagle, Peter S
An odd couple patrols a county full of mythological beasts and ornery locals. A familiar youngster from the world of The Last Unicorn is gifted in magic but terrible at spell-casting. A seemingly incorruptible judge meets his match in a mysterious thief who steals his heart. Two old friends discover that the Overneath goes anywhere, including locations better left unvisited. Lyrical, witty, and insightful, The Overneath is Peter S. Beagle's much-anticipated return to the short form. In these uniquely beautiful and wholly original tales, with new and uncollected work, Beagle once again proves himself a master of the imagination.
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9781616962692
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Paperback
Path of Needles
By Littlewood, Alison
When an expert on fairy tales is called in to consult on the investigation of bizarre murders, her premonition and insight causes suspicion she must solve the case--and fast--to prove her innocence.Alice Hyland is an expert on fairy tales--lecturing on the well-known stories and their lesser-known variants--and the natural choice for Police Constable Cate Corbin to consult when a dead girl is found in the woods dressed up as Snow White. Especially when the girls grieving mother receives a parcel containing a glass bottle of blood stoppered with the dead girls toe. Cates boss, Detective Superintendent Heath, isnt convinced of the connection to folklore until a second girl is found, this time dressed as Red Riding Hood and with claw marks gouged into her flesh, like a wolf had been at her.
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9781623658557
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Hardcover
Path of Needles
By Littlewood, Alison
When an expert on fairy tales is called in to consult on the investigation of bizarre murders, her premonition and insight causes suspicion she must solve the case--and fast--to prove her innocence.Alice Hyland is an expert on fairy tales--lecturing on the well-known stories and their lesser-known variants--and the natural choice for Police Constable Cate Corbin to consult when a dead girl is found in the woods dressed up as Snow White. Especially when the girls grieving mother receives a parcel containing a glass bottle of blood stoppered with the dead girls toe. Cates boss, Detective Superintendent Heath, isnt convinced of the connection to folklore until a second girl is found, this time dressed as Red Riding Hood and with claw marks gouged into her flesh, like a wolf had been at her.
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9781623658557
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Hardcover
A Plague of Giants
By Hearne, Kevin
In the start of an enchanting new series, the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles creates an unforgettable fantasy world . . . one that is forever changed when an army of giants invades. The kingdom's only hope? The discovery of a form of magic that will call the world's wondrous beasts to fight by the side of humankind.
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9780345548603
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Hardcover
The Song of Achilles
By Miller, Madeline
“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art by an incredibly talented new novelist….A book I could not put down.”—Ann Patchett“Mary Renault lives again!” declares Emma Donoghue, author of Room, referring to The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.
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9780062060624
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Paperback
The Taiga Syndrome
By Garza, Cristina Rivera
Fiction. Latinx Studies. Women's Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana. A fairy tale run amok, THE TAIGA SYNDROME follows an unnamed female Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down--that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one's senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest, though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well.
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9780997366679
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Paperback
That Hideous Strength
By S., Lewis, C.
Written during the dark hours immediately before and during World War II, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength is the third and final volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George Orwell's 1984 as a timely p
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743234928
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Trigger Warning
By Gaiman, Neil
Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things - which includes a never-before published American Gods story, "Black Dog," written exclusively for this volume.In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction - stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 - as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion. In Adventure Story - a thematic companion to The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Gaiman ponders death and the way people take their stories with them when they die. His social media experience A Calendar of Tales are short takes inspired by replies to fan tweets about the months of the year - stories of pirates and the March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. And Click-Clack the Rattlebag explains the creaks and clatter we hear when we're all alone in the darkness.A sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.
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9780062330260
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Hardcover
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
By Rushdie, Salman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling. In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub-Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor's office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils.
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9780812998917
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Hardcover
Uprooted
By Novik, Naomi
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL * Naomi Novik, author of the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, as elemental as a Grimm fairy tale.HUGO AWARD FINALIST * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR | BuzzFeed | Tor.com | BookPage | Library Journal | Publishers Weekly"Uprooted is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching." - Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon "Our Dragon doesnt eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course thats not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but hes still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and were grateful, but not that grateful." Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isnt, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.Praise for Uprooted"Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book Ive Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel Ive been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you wont want to put it down." - NPR "A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in." - The New York Times Book Review "Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today." - The Washington Post "Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . . The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturing environment for her heroines unusual adventures." - The Seattle Times "Breathtaking . . . [Novik] weaves a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible. This will be a must-read for fantasy fans for years to come." - Pubilshers Weekly (starred review) "An original and fully realized fantastical place guaranteed to enthrall her longtime fans and attract new readers." - Library Journal (starred review)
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9780804179034
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Hardcover
Spinning Silver
By Novik, Naomi
A fresh and imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale from the bestselling author of Uprooted, called "a very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic" by The New York Times Book Review.Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is not a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem intercedes. Hardening her heart, she sets out to retrieve what is owed, and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. But when an ill-advised boast brings her to the attention of the cold creatures who haunt the wood, nothing will be the same again. For words have power, and the fate of a kingdom will be forever altered by the challenge she is issued. Channeling the heart of the classic fairy tale, Novik deftly interweaves six distinct narrative voices--each learning valuable lessons about sacrifice, power and love--into a rich, multilayered fantasy that readers will want to return to again and again.
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9780399180989
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Hardcover
The Wild Girl
By Forsyth, Kate
One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old half-forgotten tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small over the land.As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart.
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9781250047540
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Hardcover
A Wild Swan
By Cunningham, Michael
Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The HoursA poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away -- the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder -- are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse.
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9780374290252
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Print book
Winter Garden
By Hannah, Kristin
Mesmerizing from the first page to the last, Winter Garden is one woman's sweeping, heartbreaking story of love, loss, and redemption. At once an epic love story set in World War II Russia and an intimate portrait of contemporary mothers and daughters poised at the crossroads of their lives, it explores the heartbreak of war, the cost of survival and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. It is a novel that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.1941. Leningrad, a once magical city besieged by war, cut off from aid, buried in snow. A city full of women desperate to save their children and themselves ... 2000. Loss and old age have taken a terrible toll on Anya Whitson. At last, she will reach out to her estranged daughters. In a halting, uncertain voice, she begins to weave a fable about a beautiful Russian girl who lived in Leningrad a lifetime ago ... Nina and Meredith sit spellbound at their mother's bedside, listening to a story that spans more than sixty years and moves from the terrors of war-torn Leningrad under siege to modern-day Alaska. In a quest to uncover the truth behind the story, Nina and Meredith discover a secret so shocking, so impossible to believe, it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are."Another powerful story of family love, and strong women ... a fascinating story that weaves fairy tales into reality, fairy tales that don't always have the expected endings." -- The Herald-News" ... a gripping read. Hannah's audience will find plenty to discuss in this enthralling entry." -- BOOKLIST
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9780312663155
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Paperback
Wonder Tales
By Warner, Marina
Designed for gift giving, an illustrated collection of classic fairy tales, rendered in modern prose by such celebrated authors as A. S. Byatt and John Ashbery, explores the battle of good and evil and the endless quest for love.
Boy, Snow, Bird
By Oyeyemi, Helen
As seen on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, where it was described as "gloriously unsettling ... evoking Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Angela Carter, Edgar Allan Poe, Gabriel García Márquez, Chris Abani and even Emily Dickinson," and already one of the years most widely acclaimed novels:. "Helen Oyeyemi has fully transformed from a literary prodigy into a powerful, distinctive storyteller ... Transfixing and surprising." - Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A) . "I dont care what the magic mirror says; Oyeyemi is the cleverest in the land ... daring and unnerving ... Under Oyeyemis spell, the fairy-tale conceit makes a brilliant setting in which to explore the alchemy of racism, the weird ways in which identity can be transmuted in an instant - from beauty to beast or vice versa." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post. From the prizewinning author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, Gingerbread, and Peaces comes a brilliant recasting of the Snow White fairy tale as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity.In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts looking, she believes, for beauty - the opposite of the life shes left behind in New York. She marries Arturo Whitman, a local widower, and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow.. A wicked stepmother is a creature Boy never imagined shed become, but elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boys daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African-Americans passing for white. And even as Boy, Snow, and Bird are divided, their estrangement is complicated by an insistent curiosity about one another. In seeking an understanding that is separate from the image each presents to the world, Boy, Snow, and Bird confront the tyranny of the mirror to ask how much power surfaces really hold. . Dazzlingly inventive and powerfully moving, Boy, Snow, Bird is an astonishing and enchanting novel. With breathtaking feats of imagination, Helen Oyeyemi confirms her place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of our time.
After Alice
By Maguire, Gregory
From the multi-million-copy bestselling author of Wicked comes a magical new twist on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Lewis's Carroll's beloved classic.When Alice toppled down the rabbit-hole 150 years ago, she found a Wonderland as rife with inconsistent rules and abrasive egos as the world she left behind. But what of that world? How did 1860s Oxford react to Alice's disappearance?In this brilliant work of fiction, Gregory Maguire turns his dazzling imagination to the question of underworlds, undergrounds, underpinnings - and understandings old and new, offering an inventive spin on Carroll's enduring tale. Ada, a friend of Alice's mentioned briefly in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is off to visit her friend, but arrives a moment too late - and tumbles down the rabbit-hole herself.Ada brings to Wonderland her own imperfect apprehension of cause and effect as she embarks on an odyssey to find Alice and see her safely home from this surreal world below the world. If Eurydice can ever be returned to the arms of Orpheus, or Lazarus can be raised from the tomb, perhaps Alice can be returned to life. Either way, everything that happens next is "After Alice."
Bitter Greens
By Forsyth, Kate
A Library Journal Best Book of 2014: Historical FictionThe amazing power and truth of the Rapunzel fairy tale comes alive for the first time in this breathtaking tale of desire, black magic and the redemptive power of loveFrench novelist Charlotte-Rose de la Force has been banished from the court of Versailles by the Sun King, Louis XIV, after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.Award-winning author Kate Forsyth braids together the stories of Margherita, Selena, and Charlotte-Rose, the woman who penned Rapunzel as we now know it, to create what is a sumptuous historical novel, an enchanting fairy tale retelling, and a loving tribute to the imagination of one remarkable woman.
Charlie Glass's Slippers
By Mcqueen, Holly
In this delightful, clever spin on Cinderella, Charlie Glassa heroine as loveable as Cannie Shapiro and Bridget Jonesinherits her fathers shoe empire and snatches up a drop-dead-gorgeous, multi-millionaire Prince Charming. But is he truly the key to her happily ever after When Charlies beloved father, iconic shoe designer Elroy Glass, dies after a long illness, everyone expects that hell leave his business to his glamorous wife and eldest daughters. After all, theyve been running the company for years. But Elroy surprises everyone from beyond the grave at the will reading, its announced that his fashion empire has been left to Charlie, his youngestand plumpestdaughter. Before she can run the company, Charlie decides she needs to make a few changes in her life.
Circe
By Miller, Madeline
"A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller "manages to be both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times) . In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.
Cursed
By Marie, O'regan,
Fairy tales take a weird twist in this anthology compiling stories from an all-star cast of fantasy writers, including stories from Neil Gaiman, Charlie Jane Anders and Alison Littlewood. Here in this book you'll find unique twists on the fairy tale conceit of the curse, from the more traditional to the modern - giving us brand new mythologies as well as new approaches to well-loved fables. Some might shock you, some might make you laugh, but they will all impress you with their originality.
Dreamer's Pool
By Marillier, Juliet
Award-winning author Juliet Marillier "weaves magic, mythology, and folklore into every sentence on the page" (The Book Smugglers) . Now she begins an all-new and enchanting series that will transport readers to a magical vision of ancient Ireland.... In exchange for help escaping her long and wrongful imprisonment, embittered magical healer Blackthorn has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against the man who destroyed all that she once held dear. Followed by a former prison mate, a silent hulk of a man named Grim, she travels north to Dalriada. There she'll live on the fringe of a mysterious forest, duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks for her help. Oran, crown prince of Dalriada, has waited anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais.
The Emerald Circus
By Yolen, Jane
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned
By Schultz, Gretchen
The wolf is tricked by Red Riding Hood into strangling her grandmother and is subsequently arrested. Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella do not live happily ever after. And the fairies are saucy, angry, and capricious. Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned collects thirty-six tales, many newly translated, by writers associated with the decadent literary movement, which flourished in France in the late nineteenth century. Written by such creative luminaries as Charles Baudelaire, Anatole France, and Guillaume Apollinaire, these enchanting yet troubling stories reflect the concerns and fascinations of a time of great political, social, and cultural change. Recasting well-known favorites from classic French fairy tales, as well as Arthurian legends and English and German tales, the updated interpretations in this collection allow for more perverse settings and disillusioned perspectives--a trademark style and ethos of the decadent tradition.
Ferryman institute
By Gigl, Colin
In this stunning, fantastical debut novel from a bold new voice in the bestselling traditions of Christopher Moore and Jasper Fforde, a ferryman for the dead finds his existence unraveling after making either the best decision or the biggest mistake of his immortal life.Ferryman Charlie Dawson saves dead people - somebody has to convince them to move on to the afterlife, after all. Having never failed a single assignment, he's acquired a reputation for success that's as legendary as it is unwanted. It turns out that serving as a Ferryman is causing Charlie to slowly lose his mind. Deemed too valuable by the Ferryman Institute to be let go and too stubborn to just give up in his own right, Charlie's pretty much abandoned all hope of escaping his grim existence. Or he had, anyway, until he saved Alice Spiegel. To be fair, Charlie never planned on stopping Alice from taking her own life - that sort of thing is strictly forbidden by the Institute - but he never planned on the President secretly giving him the choice to, either. Charlie's not quite sure what to make of it, but Alice is alive, and it's the first time he's felt right in more than two hundred years. When word of the incident reaches Inspector Javrouche, the Ferryman Institute's resident internal affairs liaison, Charlie finds he's in a world of trouble. But Charlie's not about to lose the only living, breathing person he's ever saved without a fight. He's ready to protect her from Javrouche and save Alice from herself, and he's willing to put the entire continued existence of mankind at risk to do it. Written in the same vein as bestselling modern classics such as The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore, The Ferryman Institute is a thrilling supernatural adventure packed with wit and humor.
Full Throttle
By Hill, Joe
In this masterful collection of short fiction, Joe Hill dissects timeless human struggles in thirteen relentless tales of supernatural suspense, including "In The Tall Grass," one of two stories co-written with Stephen King, basis for the terrifying feature film from Netflix.A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in "Faun." A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in "Late Returns." In "By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain," two young friends stumble on the corpse of a plesiosaur at the water's edge, a discovery that forces them to confront the inescapable truth of their own mortality . . . and other horrors that lurk in the water's shivery depths. And tension shimmers in the sweltering heat of the Nevada desert as a faceless trucker finds himself caught in a sinister dance with a tribe of motorcycle outlaws in "Throttle," co-written with Stephen King.Featuring two previously unpublished stories, and a brace of shocking chillers, Full Throttle is a darkly imagined odyssey through the complexities of the human psyche. Hypnotic and disquieting, it mines our tormented secrets, hidden vulnerabilities, and basest fears, and demonstrates this exceptional talent at his very best.
The Girl in Red
By Henry, Christina
From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a postapocalyptic take on the perennial classic "Little Red Riding Hood"...about a woman who isn't as defenseless as she seems.It's not safe for anyone alone in the woods. There are predators that come out at night: critters and coyotes, snakes and wolves. But the woman in the red jacket has no choice. Not since the Crisis came, decimated the population, and sent those who survived fleeing into quarantine camps that serve as breeding grounds for death, destruction, and disease. She is just a woman trying not to get killed in a world that doesn't look anything like the one she grew up in, the one that was perfectly sane and normal and boring until three months ago.There are worse threats in the woods than the things that stalk their prey at night. Sometimes, there are men. Men with dark desires, weak wills, and evil intents. Men in uniform with classified information, deadly secrets, and unforgiving orders. And sometimes, just sometimes, there's something worse than all of the horrible people and vicious beasts combined. Red doesn't like to think of herself as a killer, but she isn't about to let herself get eaten up just because she is a woman alone in the woods....
Helen of Troy
By George, Margaret
A lush, seductive novel of the legendary beauty whose face "launched a thousand ships" Daughter of a god, wife of a king, prize of antiquity's bloodiest war, Helen of Troy has inspired artists for millennia. Now Margaret George, the highly acclaimed bestselling historical novelist, has turned her intelligent, perceptive eye to the myth that is Helen of Troy. Margaret George breathes new life into the great Homeric tale by having Helen narrate her own story. Through her eyes and in her voice, we experience the young Helen's discovery of her divine origin and her terrifying beauty. While hardly more than a girl, Helen married the remote Spartan king Menelaus and bore him a daughter. By the age of twenty, the world's most beautiful woman was resigned to a passionless marriage - until she encountered the handsome Trojan prince Paris. And once the lovers flee to Troy, war, murder, and tragedy become inevitable. In Helen of Troy, Margaret George has captured a timeless legend in a mesmerizing tale of a woman whose life was destined to create strife - and destroy civilizations.
Hiddensee
By Maguire, Gregory
From the author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Wicked, the magical story of a toymaker, a nutcracker, and a legend remade . . .Gregory Maguire returns with an inventive novel inspired by a timeless holiday legend, intertwining the story of the famous Nutcracker with the life of the mysterious toy maker named Drosselmeier who carves him.Hiddensee: An island of white sandy beaches, salt marshes, steep cliffs, and pine forests north of Berlin in the Baltic Sea, an island that is an enchanting bohemian retreat and home to a large artists' colony-- a wellspring of inspiration for the Romantic imagination . . .Having brought his legions of devoted readers to Oz in Wicked and to Wonderland in After Alice, Maguire now takes us to the realms of the Brothers Grimm and E. T. A. Hoffmann-- the enchanted Black Forest of Bavaria and the salons of Munich. Hiddensee imagines the backstory of the Nutcracker, revealing how this entrancing creature came to be carved and how he guided an ailing girl named Klara through a dreamy paradise on a Christmas Eve. At the heart of Hoffmann's mysterious tale hovers Godfather Drosselmeier-- the ominous, canny, one-eyed toy maker made immortal by Petipa and Tchaikovsky's fairy tale ballet-- who presents the once and future Nutcracker to Klara, his goddaughter. But Hiddensee is not just a retelling of a classic story. Maguire discovers in the flowering of German Romanticism ties to Hellenic mystery-cults-- a fascination with death and the afterlife-- and ponders a profound question: How can a person who is abused by life, shortchanged and challenged, nevertheless access secrets that benefit the disadvantaged and powerless? Ultimately, Hiddensee offers a message of hope. If the compromised Godfather Drosselmeier can bring an enchanted Nutcracker to a young girl in distress on a dark winter evening, perhaps everyone, however lonely or marginalized, has something precious to share.
House of Names
By Toibin, Colm
From the thrilling imagination of bestselling, award-winning Colm Tibn comes a retelling of the story of Clytemnestra - spectacularly audacious, violent, vengeful, lustful, and instantly compelling - and her children."I have been acquainted with the smell of death." So begins Clytemnestra's tale of her own life in ancient Mycenae, the legendary Greek city from which her husband King Agamemnon left when he set sail with his army for Troy. Clytemnestra rules Mycenae now, along with her new lover Aegisthus, and together they plot the bloody murder of Agamemnon on the day of his return after nine years at war. Judged, despised, cursed by gods she has long since lost faith in, Clytemnestra reveals the tragic saga that led to these bloody actions: how her husband deceived her eldest daughter Iphigeneia with a promise of marriage to Achilles, only to sacrifice her because that is what he was told would make the winds blow in his favor and take him to Troy; how she seduced and collaborated with the prisoner Aegisthus, who shared her bed in the dark and could kill; how Agamemnon came back with a lover himself; and how Clytemnestra finally achieved her vengeance for his stunning betrayal - his quest for victory, greater than his love for his child. In House of Names, Colm Tibn brings a modern sensibility and language to an ancient classic, and gives this extraordinary character new life, so that we not only believe Clytemnestra's thirst for revenge, but applaud it. He brilliantly inhabits the mind of one of Greek myth's most powerful villains to reveal the love, lust, and pain she feels. Told in fours parts, this is a fiercely dramatic portrait of a murderess, who will herself be murdered by her own son, Orestes. It is Orestes' story, too: his capture by the forces of his mother's lover Aegisthus, his escape and his exile. And it is the story of the vengeful Electra, who watches over her mother and Aegisthus with cold anger and slow calculation, until, on the return of her brother, she has the fates of both of them in her hands.
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale
By Yolen, Jane
"[Yolen is] the Aesop of the twentieth century" -- The New York TimesFantasy legend Jane Yolen (The Emerald Circus The Devil's Arithmetic) , adored by generations of readers of all ages, delights with these effortlessly wide-ranging fairy tales, myths, and legends. She fractures the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets, holding them to the light and presenting them transformed: a spinner of straw as a falsely-accused moneylender, a philosophical bridge who longs for its troll, and the villainous wolf retiring to a nursing home. Each offering features an intimate author note and poem, allowing readers to discover stories old, new, and refined for the world we live in -- or a much better version of it.
Ithaca
By Dillon, Patrick
In the tumultuous aftermath of the Trojan War, a young man battles to save his home and his inheritance. Setting out to find his father, he ends up discovering himself. Telemachus's father, Odysseus, went off to war before he was born ... and never came back. Aged sixteen, Telemachus finds himself abandoned, his father's house overrun with men pursuing his beautiful mother, Penelope, and devouring the family's wealth. He determines to leave Ithaca, his island home, and find the truth. What really happened to his father? Was Odysseus killed on his journey home from the war? Or might he, one day, return to take his revenge? Telemachus's journey takes him across the landscape of bronze-age Greece in the aftermath of the great Trojan war. Veterans hide out in the hills. Chieftains, scarred by war, hoard their treasure in luxurious palaces. Ithaca re-tells Homer's famous poem, The Odyssey, from the point of view of Odysseus' resourceful and troubled son, describing Odysseus's extraordinary voyage from Troy to the gates of hell, and Telemachus's own journey from boyhood to the desperate struggle that wins back his home ... and his father.
Kill the Farm Boy
By Hearne, Kevin
In an irreverent new series in the tradition of Terry Pratchett novels and The Princess Bride, the New York Times bestselling authors of the Iron Druid Chronicles and Star Wars: Phasma reinvent fantasy, fairy tales, and floridly overwritten feast scenes. Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told. This is not that fairy tale. There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened. And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell. There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he's bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there's the Dark Lord, who wishes for the boy's untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there's a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar "happily ever after" that ever once-upon-a-timed.
Letters to Zell
By Griep, Camille
Everything is going according to story for CeCi (Cinderella) , Bianca (Snow White) , and Rory (Sleeping Beauty) - until the day that Zell (Rapunzel) decides to leave Grimmland and pursue her life. Now, Zell's best friends are left to wonder whether their own passions are worth risking their predetermined "happily ever afters," regardless of the consequences. CeCi wonders whether she should become a professional chef, sharp-tongued and quick-witted Bianca wants to escape an engagement to her platonic friend, and Rory will do anything to make her boorish husband love her. But as Bianca's wedding approaches, can they escape their fates - and is there enough wine in all of the Realm to help them?In this hilarious modern interpretation of the fairy-tale stories we all know and love, Letters to Zell explores what happens when women abandon the stories they didn't write for themselves and go completely off script to follow their dreams.
A Lion Among Men
By Maguire, Gregory
This is the Limited and Signed First Edition, specially bound and produced by the publisher, 2008, first printing, 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, SIGNED by the author on a special page provided by the publisher for this issue, a new, unread, unworn, unopened, otherwise unmarked hardcover, with an equally fine unclipped ($26.95 top, 1006 bottom, front flap) dust jacket, from Morrow, with a gold sticker on the front stating: Signed First Edition. By Gregory Maguire, previously author of the bestselling WICKED. ISBN 978-0-06-054892-6. In this much-anticipated third volume of the Wicked Years, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion - the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked. While civil war looms, a tetchy oracle named Yackle prepares for death. Before her final hour, an enigmatic figure known as Brrr - the Cowardly Lion - arrives searching for information about Elphaba Thropp, the Wicked Witch of the West. As payment, Yackle demands some answers of her own. Brrr surrenders his story: abandoned as a cub, his earliest memories are gluey hazes, and his lifes path is no Yellow Brick Road. A Lion Among Men chronicles a battle of wits hastened by the Emerald Citys approaching armies. At once a portrait of a would-be survivor and a panoramic glimpse of a world gone shrill with war fever, Gregory Maguires new novel is written with the sympathy and power that have made his books contemporary classics.
The Merry Spinster
By Ortberg, Mallory
A collection of darkly playful stories based on classic folk and fairy tales (but with a feminist spin) that find the sinister in the familiar and the familiar in the alien -- from Mallory Ortberg, author of Texts From Jane Eyre.From Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from her beloved "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series, "The Merry Spinster" takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to readers of both The Toast and her best-selling debut Texts From Jane Eyre. The feature has become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Ortberg's eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief. Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Ortberg's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Ortberg's oeuvre will delight in her unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface. Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night. Bed time will never be the same.
Mirror Mirror
By Maguire, Gregory
"A brilliant achievement." - Boston Herald "Entertaining ... profound ... .A novel for adults that unearths our buried fascination with the primal fears and truths fairy tales contain." - Christian Science Monitor Gregory Maguire, the acclaimed author who re-imagined a darker, more dangerous Land of Oz in his New York Times bestselling series The Wicked Years, offers a brilliant reinvention of the timeless Snow White fairy tale: Mirror Mirror. Setting his story amid the cultural, political and artistic whirlwind of Renaissance Italy - and casting the notorious Lucrezia Borgia as the Evil Queen - Maguire and Mirror Mirror will enthrall a wide array of book lovers ranging from adult fans of Harry Potter to readers of the sophisticated stories of Angela Carter.
Mythic Journeys
By Guran, Paula
Award-winning editor Paula Guran presents a diverse reprint anthology collecting classic myths and legends, retold by today's top fantasy writers. Myths and legends are the oldest of stories, part of our collective consciousness, and the source from which all fiction flows. Full of magic, supernatural powers, monsters, heroes, epic journeys, strange worlds, and vast imagination, they are fantasies so compelling we want to believe them true. The authors of fantastic literature create new mythologies, heroes, and monsters. Retelling, reinventing, mixing the old with new insight and meaning. Their stories, like the ancient tales, entertain and often offer readers new ways to interpret and understand the world. Drawn from diverse cultures, modern legends and mythic tales are told in a variety of ways - amiable or acerbic, rollicking or reflective, charming or chilling - as they take us on new journeys along paths both fresh and familiar. This new anthology compiles some of the best modern short mythic retellings and reinvention of legend from award-winning and bestselling authors, acclaimed storytellers, and exciting new talents in a captivating collection. Adventure with us on these Mythic Journeys ... TABLE OF CONTENTSIntroduction: A Map or Maybe Not"Lost Lake" - Emma Straub and Peter Straub "White Lines on a Green Field" - Catherynne M. Valente "Trickster" - Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies" - Brooke Bolander "A Memory of Wind" - Rachel Swirsky "Leda" - M. Rickert "Chivalry" - Neil Gaiman "The God of Au" - Ann Leckie "Faint Voices, Increasingly Desperate" - Anya Johanna DeNiro "Ogres of East Africa" - Sofia Samatar "Ys" - Aliette de Bodard "The Gorgon" - Tanith Lee "Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood" - Charles de Lint "Calypso in Berlin" - Elizabeth Hand "Seeds" - Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter "Wonder-Worker-of-the-World" - Nisi Shawl "Thesea and Astaurius" - Priya Sharma "Foxfire, Foxfire" - Yoon Ha Lee "Owl vs. the Neighborhood Watch" - Darcie Little Badger "How to Survive an Epic Journey" - Tansy Rayner Roberts "Simargl and the Rowan Tree" - Ekaterina Sedia "The Ten Suns" - Ken Liu "Armless Maidens of the American West" - Genevieve Valentine "Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream" - Maria Dahvana Headley "Zhyuin" - John Shirley "Immortal Snake" - Rachel Pollack "A Wolf in Iceland Is the Child of a Lie" - Sonya TaaffeAbout the AuthorsAbout the EditorAcknowledgements
No Country for Old Gnomes
By Dawson, Delilah S.
Go big or go gnome. The New York Times bestselling authors of Kill the Farm Boy welcome you to the world of Pell, the irreverent fantasy universe that recalls Monty Python and Terry Pratchett. War is coming, and it's gonna be Pell. On one side stand the gnomes: smol, cheerful, possessing tidy cardigans and no taste for cruelty.On the other side sit the halflings, proudly astride their war alpacas, carrying bags of grenades and hungry for a fight. And pretty much anything else. It takes only one halfling bomb and Offi Numminen's world is turned upside down - or downside up, really, since he lives in a hole in the ground. His goth cardigans and aggressive melancholy set him apart from the other gnomes, as does his decision to fight back against their halfling oppressors. Suddenly Offi is the leader of a band of lovable misfits and outcasts - from a gryphon who would literally kill for omelets to a young dwarf herbalist who is better with bees than with his cudgel to an assertive and cheerful teen witch with a beard as long as her book of curses - all on a journey to the Toot Towers to confront the dastardly villain intent on tearing Pell asunder. These adventurers never fit in anywhere else, but as they become friends, fight mermaids, and get really angry at this one raccoon, they learn that there's nothing more heroic than being yourself. In No Country for Old Gnomes, Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne lovingly tweak the tropes of fantasy and fairy tales. Here you'll find goofy jokes and whimsical puns, but you'll also find a diverse, feminist, and lighthearted approach to fantasy that will bring a smile to your face and many fine cheeses to your plate.
Norse Mythology
By Gaiman, Neil
Introducing an instant classic -- master storyteller Neil Gaiman presents a dazzling version of the great Norse myths.Neil Gaiman has long been inspired by ancient mythology in creating the fantastical realms of his fiction. Now he turns his attention back to the source, presenting a bravura rendition of the great northern tales.In Norse Mythology, Gaiman stays true to the myths in envisioning the major Norse pantheon: Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki -- son of a giant -- blood brother to Odin and a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.Gaiman fashions these primeval stories into a novelistic arc that begins with the genesis of the legendary nine worlds and delves into the exploits of deities, dwarfs, and giants. Once, when Thor's hammer is stolen, Thor must disguise himself as a woman -- difficult with his beard and huge appetite -- to steal it back. More poignant is the tale in which the blood of Kvasir -- the most sagacious of gods -- is turned into a mead that infuses drinkers with poetry. The work culminates in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and rebirth of a new time and people.Through Gaiman's deft and witty prose emerge these gods with their fiercely competitive natures, their susceptibility to being duped and to duping others, and their tendency to let passion ignite their actions, making these long-ago myths breathe pungent life again.
Northwood
By Meijer, Maryse
"Northwood's mesmerizing alchemy is this: pain desire the deep, dark woods = a book so addictive you will inhale it in one breath. Meijer has made her own form, something new and wide-open, something as blissful and broken as the language of lovesickness itself." -- Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark "This strange and beautiful novelal has everything I want: formal play, myths and fairy tales, the politics of art-making, the all-obliterating power and complexity of desire, a cabin in the woods. I can't wait to see what Maryse Meijer does next." -- Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties Part fairy tale, part horror story, Northwood is a genre-breaking novella told in short, brilliant, beautifully strange passages.
One Good Knight
By Lackey, Mercedes
Another story sparkling with wit and humor from New York Times bestselling author Mercedes Lackey. Traditionally, marauding dragons are soothed only by a virgin sacrifice. And so practical-minded Princess Andromeda -- with the encouragement of her mother's court -- reluctantly volunteers to do her duty, asking only for a sword to defend herself. Well, her offer is accepted, but the weapon isn't forthcoming, and so Andromeda faces the dragon alone. Until a Champion arrives to save her -- sort of. Sir George doesn't quite defeat the dragon, but as Andromeda finishes rescuing herself she discovers that beneath the Good Knight's well-meaning though inexperienced heroics lies a further tale . . . Still, Andromeda can't leave her seacoast country in further jeopardy from the dragon's return, and so she and .
From a High Tower
By Lackey, Mercedes
From a High Tower is newest adventure in Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, featuring a retelling of Rapunzel's not-so-happily-ever-after ending.
Fortune's Fool
By Lackey, Mercedes
The seventh daughter of the Sea King, Ekaterina is more than a pampered princess-she's also the family spy. Which makes her the perfect emissary to check out interesting happenings in the neighboring kingdom…and nothing interests her more than Sasha, the seventh son of the king of Belrus. Ekaterina suspects he's far from the fool people think him. But before she can find out what lies beneath his facade, she is kidnapped!Trapped in a castle at the mercy of a possessive Jinn, Ekaterina knows her chances of being found are slim. Now fortune, a fool and a paper bird are the only things she can count on-along with her own clever mind and intrepid heart.… --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.
The Snow Queen
By Lackey, Mercedes
Aleksia, Queen of the Northern Lights, is mysterious, beautiful, and widely known to have a heart of ice. No one would seek her wisdom except as a last resort. But when shes falsely accused of unleashing evil on nearby villages, she realizes theres an impostor out there far more heartless than she could ever be. And when a young warrior following the Tradition disappears, leaving his sweetheart and mother to fear the worst, Aleksias powers are needed as never before.Now, on a journey through a realm of perpetual winter, it will take all her skills, a mothers faith and a little magic to face down an enemy more formidable than any she has ever known....
Out of Oz
By Maguire, Gregory
The stunning conclusion to the smash New York Times bestselling series the Wicked Years. Hailed as bewitching, remarkable, extraordinary, engrossing, amazing, and delicious, Gregory Maguires Wicked Years seriesa sophisticated fantasy cycle inspired by the classic childrens novel The Wizard of Ozbecame national bestsellers and the basis for a hit Tony-winning Broadway musical. Now, Maguire returns with the final installment in his transformative work, a thrilling and compulsively readable saga in which the fate of Oz is decided at last. . . . Once peaceful and prosperous, the spectacular Land of Oz is knotted with social unrest The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland, Glinda is under house arrest, and the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law.
The Overneath
By Beagle, Peter S
An odd couple patrols a county full of mythological beasts and ornery locals. A familiar youngster from the world of The Last Unicorn is gifted in magic but terrible at spell-casting. A seemingly incorruptible judge meets his match in a mysterious thief who steals his heart. Two old friends discover that the Overneath goes anywhere, including locations better left unvisited. Lyrical, witty, and insightful, The Overneath is Peter S. Beagle's much-anticipated return to the short form. In these uniquely beautiful and wholly original tales, with new and uncollected work, Beagle once again proves himself a master of the imagination.
Path of Needles
By Littlewood, Alison
When an expert on fairy tales is called in to consult on the investigation of bizarre murders, her premonition and insight causes suspicion she must solve the case--and fast--to prove her innocence.Alice Hyland is an expert on fairy tales--lecturing on the well-known stories and their lesser-known variants--and the natural choice for Police Constable Cate Corbin to consult when a dead girl is found in the woods dressed up as Snow White. Especially when the girls grieving mother receives a parcel containing a glass bottle of blood stoppered with the dead girls toe. Cates boss, Detective Superintendent Heath, isnt convinced of the connection to folklore until a second girl is found, this time dressed as Red Riding Hood and with claw marks gouged into her flesh, like a wolf had been at her.
Path of Needles
By Littlewood, Alison
When an expert on fairy tales is called in to consult on the investigation of bizarre murders, her premonition and insight causes suspicion she must solve the case--and fast--to prove her innocence.Alice Hyland is an expert on fairy tales--lecturing on the well-known stories and their lesser-known variants--and the natural choice for Police Constable Cate Corbin to consult when a dead girl is found in the woods dressed up as Snow White. Especially when the girls grieving mother receives a parcel containing a glass bottle of blood stoppered with the dead girls toe. Cates boss, Detective Superintendent Heath, isnt convinced of the connection to folklore until a second girl is found, this time dressed as Red Riding Hood and with claw marks gouged into her flesh, like a wolf had been at her.
A Plague of Giants
By Hearne, Kevin
In the start of an enchanting new series, the New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Druid Chronicles creates an unforgettable fantasy world . . . one that is forever changed when an army of giants invades. The kingdom's only hope? The discovery of a form of magic that will call the world's wondrous beasts to fight by the side of humankind.
The Song of Achilles
By Miller, Madeline
“At once a scholar’s homage to The Iliad and startlingly original work of art by an incredibly talented new novelist….A book I could not put down.”—Ann Patchett“Mary Renault lives again!” declares Emma Donoghue, author of Room, referring to The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s thrilling, profoundly moving, and utterly unique retelling of the legend of Achilles and the Trojan War. A tale of gods, kings, immortal fame, and the human heart, The Song of Achilles is a dazzling literary feat that brilliantly reimagines Homer’s enduring masterwork, The Iliad. An action-packed adventure, an epic love story, a marvelously conceived and executed page-turner, Miller’s monumental debut novel has already earned resounding acclaim from some of contemporary fiction’s brightest lights—and fans of Mary Renault, Bernard Cornwell, Steven Pressfield, and Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series will delight in this unforgettable journey back to ancient Greece in the Age of Heroes.
The Taiga Syndrome
By Garza, Cristina Rivera
Fiction. Latinx Studies. Women's Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana. A fairy tale run amok, THE TAIGA SYNDROME follows an unnamed female Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down--that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one's senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective's quest, though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well.
That Hideous Strength
By S., Lewis, C.
Written during the dark hours immediately before and during World War II, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength is the third and final volume, stands alongside such works as Albert Camus's The Plague and George Orwell's 1984 as a timely p
Trigger Warning
By Gaiman, Neil
Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things - which includes a never-before published American Gods story, "Black Dog," written exclusively for this volume.In this new anthology, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction - stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013 - as well "Black Dog," a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion. In Adventure Story - a thematic companion to The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Gaiman ponders death and the way people take their stories with them when they die. His social media experience A Calendar of Tales are short takes inspired by replies to fan tweets about the months of the year - stories of pirates and the March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. And Click-Clack the Rattlebag explains the creaks and clatter we hear when we're all alone in the darkness.A sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
By Rushdie, Salman
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling. In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub-Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor's office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils.
Uprooted
By Novik, Naomi
WINNER OF THE NEBULA AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL * Naomi Novik, author of the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed Temeraire novels, introduces a bold new world rooted in folk stories and legends, as elemental as a Grimm fairy tale.HUGO AWARD FINALIST * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR | BuzzFeed | Tor.com | BookPage | Library Journal | Publishers Weekly"Uprooted is confidently wrought and sympathetically cast. I might even call it bewitching." - Gregory Maguire, bestselling author of Wicked and Egg & Spoon "Our Dragon doesnt eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course thats not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but hes still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and were grateful, but not that grateful." Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows - everyone knows - that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isnt, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.Praise for Uprooted"Uprooted has leapt forward to claim the title of Best Book Ive Read Yet This Year. . . . Moving, heartbreaking, and thoroughly satisfying, Uprooted is the fantasy novel I feel Ive been waiting a lifetime for. Clear your schedule before picking it up, because you wont want to put it down." - NPR "A very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic . . . Naomi Novik skillfully takes the fairy-tale-turned-bildungsroman structure of her premise . . . and builds enough flesh on those bones to make a very different animal. . . . The vivid characters around her also echo their fairy-tale forebears, but are grounded in real-world ambivalence that makes this book feel quietly mature, its world lived-in." - The New York Times Book Review "Novik here delivers a tale that is funny and fast-paced, laced with hair-raising battle scenes and conspiracies; it also touches on deeper ecological concerns we grapple with today." - The Washington Post "Novik takes us on a surprise-filled journey. . . . The resulting warmth and intimacy provide a nicely nurturing environment for her heroines unusual adventures." - The Seattle Times "Breathtaking . . . [Novik] weaves a tale that is both elegantly grand and earthily humble, familiar as a Grimm fairy tale yet fresh, original, and totally irresistible. This will be a must-read for fantasy fans for years to come." - Pubilshers Weekly (starred review) "An original and fully realized fantastical place guaranteed to enthrall her longtime fans and attract new readers." - Library Journal (starred review)
Spinning Silver
By Novik, Naomi
A fresh and imaginative retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin fairytale from the bestselling author of Uprooted, called "a very enjoyable fantasy with the air of a modern classic" by The New York Times Book Review.Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father is not a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has left his family on the edge of poverty--until Miryem intercedes. Hardening her heart, she sets out to retrieve what is owed, and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. But when an ill-advised boast brings her to the attention of the cold creatures who haunt the wood, nothing will be the same again. For words have power, and the fate of a kingdom will be forever altered by the challenge she is issued. Channeling the heart of the classic fairy tale, Novik deftly interweaves six distinct narrative voices--each learning valuable lessons about sacrifice, power and love--into a rich, multilayered fantasy that readers will want to return to again and again.
The Wild Girl
By Forsyth, Kate
One of six sisters, Dortchen Wild lives in the small German kingdom of Hesse-Cassel in the early 19th century. She finds herself irresistibly drawn to the boy next door, the handsome but very poor fairy tale scholar Wilhelm Grimm. It is a time of tyranny and terror. Napoleon Bonaparte wants to conquer all of Europe, and Hesse-Cassel is one of the first kingdoms to fall. Forced to live under oppressive French rule, Wilhelm and his brothers quietly rebel by preserving old half-forgotten tales that had once been told by the firesides of houses grand and small over the land.As Dortchen tells Wilhelm some of the most powerful and compelling stories in what will one day become his and Jacob's famous fairy tale collection, their love blossoms. But Dortchen's father will not give his consent for them to marry and war, death, and poverty also conspire to keep the lovers apart.
A Wild Swan
By Cunningham, Michael
Fairy tales for our times from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The HoursA poisoned apple and a monkey's paw with the power to change fate; a girl whose extraordinarily long hair causes catastrophe; a man with one human arm and one swan's wing; and a house deep in the forest, constructed of gumdrops and gingerbread, vanilla frosting and boiled sugar. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away -- the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder -- are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation. Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed: the years after a spell is broken, the rapturous instant of a miracle unexpectedly realized, or the fate of a prince only half cured of a curse.
Winter Garden
By Hannah, Kristin
Mesmerizing from the first page to the last, Winter Garden is one woman's sweeping, heartbreaking story of love, loss, and redemption. At once an epic love story set in World War II Russia and an intimate portrait of contemporary mothers and daughters poised at the crossroads of their lives, it explores the heartbreak of war, the cost of survival and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. It is a novel that will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.1941. Leningrad, a once magical city besieged by war, cut off from aid, buried in snow. A city full of women desperate to save their children and themselves ... 2000. Loss and old age have taken a terrible toll on Anya Whitson. At last, she will reach out to her estranged daughters. In a halting, uncertain voice, she begins to weave a fable about a beautiful Russian girl who lived in Leningrad a lifetime ago ... Nina and Meredith sit spellbound at their mother's bedside, listening to a story that spans more than sixty years and moves from the terrors of war-torn Leningrad under siege to modern-day Alaska. In a quest to uncover the truth behind the story, Nina and Meredith discover a secret so shocking, so impossible to believe, it shakes the foundation of their family and changes who they believe they are."Another powerful story of family love, and strong women ... a fascinating story that weaves fairy tales into reality, fairy tales that don't always have the expected endings." -- The Herald-News" ... a gripping read. Hannah's audience will find plenty to discuss in this enthralling entry." -- BOOKLIST
Wonder Tales
By Warner, Marina
Designed for gift giving, an illustrated collection of classic fairy tales, rendered in modern prose by such celebrated authors as A. S. Byatt and John Ashbery, explores the battle of good and evil and the endless quest for love.