There are many tales of shapeshifting women. Sharon Blackie explores their hidden powers in a collection of retellings by turns cautionary, haunting, and inspirational.
fairytale
There are never any strangers in the isolated moorland village of Near. Until now. A mysterious young man has been glimpsed in the moonlight. A child disappears each night. Is the stranger to blame, or does the moor harbour dark secrets?
The Vanishers left the world in tatters. The waters are poisoned, disease is rampant, lives are balanced against value and need. The elders give Yên to a dragon as payment for a healing; but what value can a failed scholar have to an immortal spirit? What need can an unwanted peasant girl fulfil?
Wyrd and Wonder is a fantasy event being held this May – a quest to celebrate the best fantasy books, movies, audiobooks, games, art and whatever else tickles our fancy. But every adventure needs a plan, so that you can look back on it and wonder what the hell happened…
Returned to her family, Liesl pines for her austere young man and for her brother. But from Vienna to the Bavarian forest, people are dying with mysterious marks on their lips and throat. The old laws cannot be broken. The Underground must have it due. Someone must die if spring is to return…
Plain, dutiful Liesl has given up her dreams for her family and longs only to make music, but once she played in the woods with the Goblin King. Her beautiful sister Käthe is engaged to be wed, but dreams of a life beyond the Bavarian forest. And if the Goblin King does not take a bride the world will fall into eternal winter. Which sister will he take? Which sister will he keep?
The tales that trees tell – most of them – are too long, too slow, too uneventful for us to understand. But some stories snake like cold sap through their roots in winter and quicken in summer to race through their thickening foliage. These tales, you see, tell of people, of you and of me.
