Did you ever wonder what happened to the seven dwarfs after Snow White ditched them, or what life was like for the giant in "Jack and the Beanstalk?" Can you imagine a wicked stepsister who really gets what she deserves, and a Cinderella who isn't dainty, but actually rather plump? Then this is the book for you.
All the fairy tales you've heard over and over again are revisted here, made new by award-winning fantasy and science fiction authors: Garth Nix tells a twisted new version of "Hansel and Gretel," Nancy Farmer shows us what life was like for the princess's magical horse, Gregory Maguire provides a side of the seven dwarfs you've never seen, and Neil Gaiman lays out the "Instructions" that fairy tales should have taught you. In all, thirteen new stories are born from old fairy tales, some disturbing and dark, others strange and funny, but each offering something original and unexpected -- and as surprising as a wolf at the door.
Author Biography:
Ellen Datlow has been editing sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short fiction for more than thirty years. She was fiction editor of Omni magazine and Scifiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the annual Best Horror of the Year; Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe; Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror; Lovecraft Unbound; Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy; Blood and Other Cravings; Supernatural Noir; Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy; and two YA anthologies: Teeth: Vampire Tales and After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia. She’s won nine World Fantasy Awards, plus multiple Locus, Hugo, Stoker, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards. She was the recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for outstanding contribution to the genre, and was honored with the Life Achievement Award given by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career.
Terri Windling has been a fiction editor for more than thirty years and has won many awards for her work. She has published more than forty anthologies (often in partnership with Ellen Datlow), as well as her own novels, children’s books, and nonfiction on fantasy, folklore, and mythic arts. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA Solstice Award for “outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field as writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor.” Her adult novel The Wood Wife won the Mythopoeic Award for Novel of the Year, her collection The Armless Maiden was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the YA anthology Teeth (co-edited with Ellen Datlow) was short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award. A former New Yorker, Terri lives with her husband and daughter in a small country village in Devon, England.
“If there is a single person at the nexus of fantasy literature, it is Terri Windling—as writer, as painter, as editor, as muse.” —Jane Yolen
