Murder, Magic, and Machines

For fans of Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, and other "twisted" or "fractured" fairy tales.

Fifteen Familiar Fairy Tales Reimagined and Retold. Folklore was intended to be retold. Oral stories had the ability to be updated, to change with their audiences, tellers, and occasions. Since folktales and fairy tales have been written down, we tend to get stuck in older versions of the stories. Which means we might also get stuck in older versions of ourselves.

This collection of fairy tale retellings - wrapped in a frame tale evoking 1,001 Nights - ask the questions "why?" and "why not?" of our favorite stories.

Stories that have been imagined anew in this volume include the story of Scheherazade, the Snow Queen, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the Princess and the Pea, Allerleirauh, the Princess who became a Goose Girl, and the Goose Girl Annie, Cinderella, Fitcher's Bird, Unicorns, Hamlet, Merlin, and of course, Baba Yaga. Set in worlds ranging from a cyberpunk future to steampunk alternate universes and beyond, these tales defy space and time. Several of the stories feature LGBTQIA+ characters, and like all fairy tales, a few have unsettling themes.