"Contemporary fairy tales, cushioned by goofy humor and a deep tenderness for her characters, that aren't always as dark or as sinister as they initially appear." -- The New York Times Book Review Aimee Bender’s Willful Creatures conjures a fantastical world in which authentic love blooms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a woman’s children are potatoes, and a little boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism, musical prose, and keenly felt emotion, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

"In this subversive retelling of the magical tale of 'Sleeping Beauty,' Rebecca Solnit shifts the focus from the girl who slept for a hundred years to her sister who stayed awake--and to a poor boy whose story stumbled into theirs. Waking beauty tells of each child's adventures and obstacles: of Maya, the inspiring, extraordinary artist and changemaker who 'found [beauty] everywhere and gave it to everyone' ; of Atlas, who guarded golden apples and was definitely not a prince; and of Ida, who dreamed for a century and work up in a very different world"--Back cover.

~ An Anne Izard Storytellers' Choice Award Winner~ A Storytelling World Honor BookOnce, when young Nasruddin was acting up in class by distracting his friends with endless antics, jests, and stories, his irate teacher uttered a curse: "Whatever you do or say, people will only laugh at you." Now, eight centuries later, children, adults, and wise fools everywhere are still laughing at Nasruddin (Nasreddin Hoca), one of the world's most beloved folk characters. This entertaining and insightful retelling of more than a year's worth of daily Mullah stories brings the famed Persian legend into the Twenty-First Century. Storytellers, folklorists, Sufis, comedians, wisdom seekers, and everyone who loves to laugh will be enriched and enlightened by the timeless wit, inscrutable wisdom, and uncommon sense of humor of Mullah Nasruddin."Suresha identifies the real strength of Nasruddin's stories in context to world literatureand story performance, that is, its power to build bridges between cultures. ... The point of these stories is to speak to the audience in the language and metaphors that are familiar." - Storytelling, Self, Society"A contemporary reworking of the tales (the stories fit for a general audience, at least) ... to Suresha's credit he has maintained the direct, unadorned style that is a hallmark of folk tales. ... a delightful break from the everyday world for an hour or two." - Green Man Review"A fine pick and very highly recommended." - Midwest Book Review"These hilarious, and at times, ribald folk tales of the Turkish wise fool take the reader to another time and place, and share the spiritual lessons of Nasruddin. ...The teaching stories included in this volume help to build bridges between cultures by exemplifying Arabic wisdom and universal human humor." - from the Preface by Ann Shapiro, Executive Director, Connecticut Storytelling Center

The return of a beloved classic, from the bestselling author of The Princess Bride ! “This inventive, offbeat fable has a touch of magic about it.”— Los Angeles Times Once upon a time, the gondoliers of Venice possessed the finest voices in all the world. But, alas, few remember those days—and fewer still were ever blessed to hear such glorious singing. No one since has discovered the secret behind the sudden silence of the golden-voiced gondoliers. No one, it seems, but S. Morgenstern. Now Morgenstern recounts the sad and noble story of the ambitions, frustrations, and eventual triumph of Luigi, the gondolier with the gooney smile. Here, in this brilliantly illustrated exposition of the surprising facts behind this all-but-forgotten mystery, S. Morgenstern reveals the fascinating truths about John the Bastard, Laura Lorenzini, the centenarian Cristaldi the Pickle, Enrico Caruso, Porky XII, the Great Sorrento, the Queen of Corsica—and, of course, the one and only Luigi. His tale will captivate you as much as his song! “Where The Princess Bride was lightheartedly brutal, this story is gently whimsical, well-complemented by Paul Giovanopoulos’s zany drawings.”— San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle

Marigold and Rose is a magical and incandescent fiction from the Nobel laureate Louise Glück. “Marigold was absorbed in her book; she had gotten as far as the V.” So begins Marigold and Rose , Louise Glück’s astonishing chronicle of the first year in the life of twin girls. Imagine a fairy tale that is also a multigenerational saga; a piece for two hands that is also a symphony; a poem that is also, in the spirit of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis , an incandescent act of autobiography. Here are the elements you’d expect to find in a story of infant twins: Father and Mother, Grandmother and Other Grandmother, bath time and naptime—but more than that, Marigold and Rose is an investigation of the great mystery of language and of time itself, of what is and what has been and what will be. “Outside the playpen there were day and night. What did they add up to? Time was what they added up to. Rain arrived, then snow.” The twins learn to climb stairs, they regard each other like criminals through the bars of their cribs, they begin to speak. “It was evening. Rose was smiling placidly in the bathtub playing with the squirting elephant, which, according to Mother, represented patience, strength, loyalty and wisdom. How does she do it, Marigold thought, knowing what we know.” Simultaneously sad and funny, and shot through with a sense of stoic wonder, this small miracle of a book, following thirteen books of poetry and two collections of essays, is unlike anything Glück has written, while at the same time it is inevitable, transcendent.

Jane Green, author the best-sellers The Beach House and Second Chance , follows happily married Alice who moves from London to the USA only to discover that her life is not as fairy-tale as it seems in Spellbound . Alice has everything. So why isn't she happy? After all, she has a handsome husband, a gorgeous home and membership of London's most exclusive clubs. Okay, Joe can't keep his hands to himself - but she got what she wanted, didn't she? When Joe's indiscretions force a transfer to New York, Alice hopes it'll be a fresh start. And when they find a beautiful old house in Connecticut she is overjoyed. For a while Alice and Joe are as happy as newlyweds. But then the late nights and unexplained absences start. Alice is desperate to give her marriage a fairy tale ending. What should she do? Stay and fight for Joe? Or try to break the spell he's cast over her? 'Will have you hungrily turning page after page' Heat 'Green whips up a sparkling morality tale that points the finger at bad boys and low-rent romance' Independent 'Her books are just damn readable' Glamour Jane Green's novels, including The Other Woman , Jemima J. , Babyville , The Love Verb (published as Promises to Keep in the USA), Girl Friday ( Dune Road ), Life Swap ( Swapping Lives ), Straight Talking , The Patchwork Marriage ( Another Piece of My Heart ), Mr. Maybe , and Bookends , are as moving as they are funny and have achieved best-seller status internationally. Spellbound is published in the USA as To Have and to Hold .

2012 Mythopoeic Award Winner In this long-awaited new novel from American Book Award winner Lisa Goldstein, an ages-old family secret breaches the boundaries between reality and magic, revealing the places between them. When Berkeley student Will Taylor is introduced by his best friend, Ben, to the mysterious Feierabend sisters, Will quickly falls for enigmatic Livvy, a chemistry major and accomplished chef. But Livvy's family--vivacious actress Maddie, family historian Rose, and their mother, absent-minded Sylvia--are behaving strangely. The Feierabend women believe that luck is their handmaiden, and so it is, almost as though they are living in a fairy tale. But the price for such gifts is extremely high. Will and Ben will unravel the riddle of a supernatural bargain, hoping to save Livvy from what appears to be an inescapable fate.

The fairy tale story is interesting and can be a lesson to all of us. Ancient storytelling can be an inspiration to all of us since our childhood

Leo Ware may be young, but he knows what he wants. And what he wants is Will Highland. Snarky, sophisticated, fiercely opinionated Will Highland, who burst into Leo's unremarkable life like a supernova... and then was gone just as quickly. For the past miserable year, Leo hasn't been able to stop thinking about the powerful connection he and Will shared. So, when Leo moves to New York for college, he sweeps back into Will's life, hopeful that they can pick up where they left off. What begins as a unique friendship soon burns with chemistry they can't deny... though Will certainly tries. But Leo longs for more than friendship and hot sex. A romantic to his core, Leo wants passion, love, commitment-everything Will isn't interested in giving. Will thinks romance is a cheesy fairy tale and love is overrated. He likes his space and he's happy with things just the way they are, thank you very much. Or is he? Because as he and Leo get more and more tangled up in each other's lives, Will begins to act like maybe love is something he could feel after all.

In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a child called Pavla is born to peasant parents. Her arrival, fervently anticipated and conceived in part by gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, stuns her parents and brings outrage and scorn from her community. Pavla has been born a dwarf, beautiful in face, but as the years pass, she grows no farther than the edge of her crib. When her parents turn to the treatments of a local charlatan, his terrifying cure opens the floodgates of persecution for Pavla. "Little Nothing" unfolds across a lifetime of unimaginable, magical transformation in and out of human form, as an outcast girl becomes a hunted woman whoseultimate survival depends on the most startling transfiguration of them all. Woven throughout is the journey of Danilo, the young man entranced by Pavla, obsessed only with protecting her. Part allegory about the shifting nature of being, part subversive fairy tale of love in all its uncanny guises, "Little Nothing" spans the beginning of a new century, the disintegration of ancient superstitions, and the adoption of industry and invention. With a cast of remarkable characters, a wholly original story, and extraordinary, page-turning prose, Marisa Silver delivers a novel of sheer electricity."

A haunting and emotionally satisfying novel from a much-loved and critically acclaimed author, which weaves fairy tale and gritty realism together to dazzlingly effect. 'The Story Sisters' charts the lives of three sisters - Elv, Claire and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart's desire, and a demon who will not let go. What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, 'The Story Sisters' sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them.

From the author of Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick The Rules of Magic comes a transfixing glimpse into a small American town where a mysterious, magical garden holds the truth behind three hundred years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty, and redemption. “[A] dreamy, fabulist series of connected stories . . . [These] tales, with their tight, soft focus on America, cast their own spell.”— The Washington Post The Red Garden introduces us to the luminous and haunting world of Blackwell, Massachusetts, capturing the unexpected turns in its history and in our own lives. From the town's founder, a brave young woman from England who has no fear of blizzards or bears, to the young man who runs away to New York City with only his dog for company, the characters in The Red Garden are extraordinary and vivid: a young wounded Civil War soldier who is saved by a passionate neighbor, a woman who meets a fiercely human historical character, a poet who falls in love with a blind man, a mysterious traveler who comes to town in the year when summer never arrives. At the center of everyone’s life is a mysterious garden where only red plants can grow, and where the truth can be found by those who dare to look. Beautifully crafted and shimmering with magic, The Red Garden is as unforgettable as it is moving.

Widely heralded for her bestselling first novel ( Feed My Dear Dogs ) and award-winning stories ( Sister Crazy , also nominated for the Orange Prize), Emma Richler finally returns with a dazzling major novel with the power of A.S. Byatt's Possession , the wit and wonder of Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life --about a sister and her adopted brother with a one-of-a-kind connection: a profoundly moving, original love story about the unbreakable ties that bind, and the choices we make or create for ourselves. Zachariah and Rachel are brother and sister. Well, not exactly. They are star-crossed lovers. Well, not exactly. Rachel is the cherished daughter of a Russian family living in London--the richly imagined, mysterious Wolffs; Zach is her parents' adopted son who arrived from the orphanage with one sweater, a head of curls and a dexterous set of fists. As children, they became as close as two people can be. But when they crossed a forbidden line, there was no going back. Now, as an adult, coping with their father's furious rebuttal of Zach, Rachel sets herself the task of inventing a family history for her beloved. And so she brings to life his imagined ancestry--from a tavern-educated boxer in Dickensian times, to a Hussar at the Battle of Borodino during the Napoleonic Wars--even as their troubles in present-day Camden Town build to yet another point of no return. Cartwheeling through history, filled with art and science, fairy tales and folk songs, tsars and foundlings, epic battles in the prize ring and on the Eastern Front, and characters that take over our hearts, Be My Wolff is riveting--wondrous, funny and tragic and of astonishing imagination and beauty.

New York Times bestselling author David Duchovny reimagines the Irish mythological figure of Emer in Miss Subways , a darkly comic fantasy love story set in New York City. Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on? Taking inspiration from the myth of Emer and Cuchulain and featuring an all-star cast of mythical figures from all over the world, David Duchovny’s darkly funny fantasy novel Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny. A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York. "Fresh off a new season of the evergreen X-Files and a late-blooming music career, the multitalented Duchovny ( Bucky F*cking Dent , 2016, etc.) offers a spooky domestic drama that is equal parts Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman... An entertaining, postmodern fairy tale that tests the boundaries of love and fate." - Kirkus Reviews

It began almost like a fairy tale. Plain Jane and Prince Charming met in college, fell in love, and were married soon after graduation. She shelved her dreams of a career as a painter to help him through medical school, and to be the perfect doctor's wife. He became a successful plastic surgeon and they had two beautiful children together. But real life is no fairy tale. Suspecting there was another woman behind his erratic schedule, she went to his office to confront him. What happens that night leads to the end of a marriage and the breakup of a family. Like "Whispers," Belva Plain's novel about spousal abuse, "After The Fire" deals with one of the more provocative issues of our time: the battle of child custody as a woman finds herself overpowered by her husband's ruthless actions. Here is the story of one such woman who, in the aftermath of an ugly divorce, alone must rebuild her world, find the strength and wherewithal to live in it, and regain a life with her children. Only Belva Plain, with her insight into the American family and the hearts of those who comprise it, could create a novel like this, showing that sometimes even real life can have a happy ending.

"Sophie is an amateur naturalist with a rare genetic gift: the ability to see a marvelous kingdom of invisible, sentient creatures that share a vital, symbiotic relationship with humankind. To record her observations, Sophie creates a personal bestiary and, as she relates the strange abilities of these endangered beings, her tales become extraordinary meditations on love, sex, evolution, extinction, truth, and self-knowledge"--

In the past hundred years, since the publication of Bram Stoker's infamous book, no literary figure has enjoyed a more horrific resiliency than Count Dracula. In film, television, novels, and short stories, he keeps coming back to life, fed by the vital imaginative energies of a world-wide audience that cannot seem to resist his abominable charms. Aristocratic and urbane, deeply erotic and profoundly evil, Dracula's bloodsucking savagery has cast a mesmerizing fascination not only over his victims but over his readers as well. And, as Leonard Wolf suggests, "Vampire fiction...exerts an amazing pull on readers for a reason that we may find disturbing. The blood exchange—the taking of blood by the vampire from his or her victim is, all by itself, felt to be a singularly symbolic event. Symbolic and attractive!" Now, in Blood Thirst: One Hundred Years of Vampire Fiction, Leonard Wolf brings together thirty tales in which vampires of all varieties make their ghastly presence felt—male and female, human and non-human, humorous and heroic—all of them kin to the dreadful bat. From Lafcadio Hearn, Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman, Edith Wharton, August Derleth, and Ray Bradbury to such contemporary masters as Anne Rice, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, John Cheever, and Woody Allen, and in settings as diverse as rural New England and outer space, this collection offers readers a dazzling compendium of vampire stories. Wolf organizes the collection into six categories—The Classic Adventure Tale, The Psychic Vampire, The Science Fiction Vampire, The Non-Human Vampire, The Comic Vampire, and The Heroic Vampire—which allows readers to see the many guises Dracula's descendants have assumed and the many ways they can be interpreted. In his penetrating introduction, Wolf argues that such an arrangement enables us to see the evolution of the vampire from an unmitigated evil to a creature we are more likely to identify with. "In a century in which God and Satan have become increasingly irrelevant in the popular arts, there has been an accompanying secularization of the vampire idea. And, as the stories in Blood Thirst will show, sympathy for the vampire has grown as we have become increasingly interested in the workings of the mind." Indeed, the vampire's ability to change over time, to draw into itself such a richness of symbolic meanings, to conjure itself into so many diabolical shapes, may account for the enduring appeal of the literature written about it. Here, then, is a definitive collection for aficionados and novices alike, and whether readers find the vampires who inhabit these pages sympathetic or horrific, psychologically intriguing or spiritually repellent, morbidly seductive or comically absurd, Blood Thirst gives us all something to sink our teeth into.

Renowned author Peter S. Beagle returns to the world of The Last Unicorn in this resonant and moving two-novella collection, featuring the award-winning “Two Hearts” and the brand-new “Sooz.” The Last Unicorn is one of fantasy’s most revered classics, beloved by generations of readers and with millions of copies in print. Revisiting the world of that novel, Beagle’s long-awaited Hugo and Nebula-Awards-winning “Two Hearts” introduced the irrepressible Sooz on a quest to save her village from a griffin, and explored the bonds she formed with unforgettable characters like the wise and wonderful Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician. In the never-before-published “Sooz,” the events of “Two Hearts” are years behind its narrator, but a perilous journey lies ahead of her, in a story that is at once a tender meditation on love and loss, and a lesson in finding your true self. The Way Home is suffused with Beagle’s wisdom, profound lyricism, and sly wit; and collects two timeless works of fantasy.

Maze Runner meets The Sixth Sense in this high-stakes survival story from New York Times bestseller Andrew Klavan. What should have been an ordinary morning is about to spiral into a day of unrelenting terror. As a reporter for his high school newspaper, Tom is always on the lookout for an offbeat story. But from the moment he woke up this morning, his own life has been more bizarre than any headline could ever tell. The streets of his town are suddenly empty and silent. A strange fog has drifted in from the sea and hangs over everything. And something is moving in that fog. Something evil. Something hungry. Closing in on Tom. Tom's terrified girlfriend Marie says the answers lie at the Santa Maria Monastery, a haunted ruin standing amidst a forest blackened by wildfire. But can he trust her? A voice that seems to be coming from beyond the grave is warning him that nothing is what it seems. Only one thing is certain: with his world collapsing around him, Tom has only a few hours to recover the life he knew--before he, too, is lost forever in this nightmare city. "Klavan retains his James Patterson--like gift for keeping pages turning, and the mystery behind it all--having to do with Tom's school-newspaper exposé on the performance-enhancing drug use of the football team--is a juicy one, and well handled." --Booklist | "Klavan's background in thrillers comes to the forefront, and the mysterious clues lead to elegant, intense chase sequences and a well-crafted mystery." --Publishers Weekly | "Klavan again hits readers with a story filled with such vivid imagery that one might find themselves looking over their shoulder to make sure they aren't the one being followed. The story--set partly in reality and partly somewhere else--grabs the reader from the first page and makes one wonder what could possibly happen next. The writing is stellar." --RT Book Reviews

In a modern version of the Snow White fairy tale, eighteen-year-old Bella is plagued by a series of mysterious accidents while singing with a small band in London and Paris during her summer break from school, and believes them to be caused by her jealous, malevolent stepmother.