Horror Fairy

From Daniel Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from his beloved Children's Stories Made Horrific series, The Merry Spinster takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to listeners of both The Toast and his best-selling debut Texts from Jane Eyre. 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.

Upon a time. Remember the faery stories you were told as a child? Tales of tiny, magical, winged beings and elves, wicked witches and goblins. Demons... What if one day you found they were true? What if, when you became an adult, you discovered they were all based on fact? What if you met the fantasy and it was all so very real? That's what happened to Thom Kindred. The wonders were revealed to him – but so were the horrors; for not far behind the Good, there always lurks the Bad.

Almost anyone who has read or written science fiction or fantasy has been inspired by the work of Michael Moorcock. His literary flair and grand sense of adventure have been evident since his controversial first novel Behold the Man, from the stories and novels featuring his most famous character, Elric of Melniboné, to his fantasy masterpiece, Gloriana, winner of both the Campbell Memorial and World Fantasy awards for best novel.

A young woman on a trip to visit Grandma. A wolf. A Huntsman. Just the start of this grindhouse, blood-spattered battle of life and death. You've heard the fairy tales, but this tale has no Prince Charming. Just a girl in the woods driven to the edge of sanity as the magic of the forest awakens and reveals its dirty, rotten underbelly.

Soar among the redwoods in this bite-sized adventure with Chloe, the recently divorced fairy inventor. She's the one who'll discover the encroaching zombie horde, but what will she do when she does? Come for the campy creature face-off. Stay for the inventiveness, adventure, romance, and intrigue. Torn between her handsome ex-husband and the brave and beautiful captain of the fairy guard, Chloe must fight to save her unborn young and the rest of the fairies.

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared - or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied.

On Christmas Eve in 1988, seven-year-old Alfie Marsden vanished in the Wentshire Forest Pass when a burst tyre forced his father, Sorrel, to stop the car. Leaving the car to summon the emergency services, Sorrel returned to find his son gone. No trace of the child, nor his remains, have ever been found. Alfie Marsden was declared officially dead in 1995. Elusive online journalist Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the disappearance, interviewing six witnesses, to try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

The post-Katrina New Orleans of The City of Lost Fortunes is a place haunted by its history and by the hurricane's destruction, a place that is hoping to survive the rebuilding of its present long enough to ensure that it has a future. Street magician Jude Dubuisson is likewise burdened by his past and by the consequences of the storm, because he has a secret: the magical ability to find lost things, a gift passed down to him by the father he has never known - a father who just happens to be more than human.

When Michael "Blue" Whitley -- a former party boy turned up-and-coming Brooklyn chef -- returns with three friends to the remote Canadian commune of his birth, he discovers that his entire life has been a carefully orchestrated lie. He is in fact someone else altogether, a replacement for a local child who disappeared twenty-five years earlier. He is something not quite human.

Healey’s second novel The Shattering stars Keri, a 17-year-old trying to come to terms with her brother Jake’s death. Although authorities believe Jake committed suicide, Keri cannot accept that her brother would take his own life. And when she’s approached by her classmate Janna, whose brother also committed suicide years earlier, the two team up in search of answers. Soon the girls come to a grim realization—that their brothers weren’t the first in town to die under mysterious circumstances.

Will Henry and Dr. Warthrop have encountered many horrors together, but can Will endure a monstrumological terror without his mentor? Will Henry has been through more than seems possible for a boy of fourteen. He's been on the brink of death on more than one occasion, he has gazed into hell and hell has stared back at him, and known his face. But through it all, Dr. Warthrop has been at his side.

Micheline Helsing is a tetrachromat - a girl who sees the auras of the undead in a prismatic spectrum. As one of the last descendants of the Van Helsing lineage, she has trained since childhood to destroy monsters both corporeal and spiritual. The corporeal undead go down by the bullet, the spiritual undead by the lens. With an analog SLR camera as her best weapon, Micheline exorcises ghosts by capturing their spiritual energy on film.

The town lies at the province edge in a wild and empty land, and 12-year-old Erik Christian's house sits on the edge of an uncharted forest that's said to be haunted. For years, he's wondered what could be out there, but one night he sees something that tempts him to explore further than he should, where he risks losing more than just his way. Twelve-year-old Kristina Glynnis is excited to take a trip with her family to a baron's house in the north, to a part of the province that's still largely unknown.

When 17-year-old Sophia Petheram’s beloved father dies, she receives an unexpected letter. An invitation - on fine ivory paper, in bold black handwriting - from the mysterious Monsieur Bernard de Cressac, her godfather. With no money and fewer options, Sophie accepts, leaving her humble childhood home for the astonishingly lavish Wyndriven Abbey, in the heart of Mississippi. Sophie has always longed for a comfortable life, and she finds herself both attracted to and shocked by the charm and easy manners of her overgenerous guardian.

For the past 19 years, Rumpelstiltskin has kept his promise to Laila, the miller's daughter. Her son, Tristan, must never know the dark deal they made surrounded by straw and gold. But keeping the truth from a curious Tristan is the least of his troubles. He can't escape the chill of bodiless eyes watching him. Wanting him. Hunting him. When an oracle confirms his greatest fear, she also confirms his greatest hope. A hope and desire he believed long dead. Laila lives.

Detective Carly Greene was only 11 when she learned Lake Superior was a brutal beast, capable of bringing up long forgotten memories of pain and death, by occasionally releasing the bodies of those trapped beneath her waves. As an adult, Carly still despises the bodies occasionally coughed up, and the high water eroding the edge of the graveyard this year gave "floaters" a new meaning. But she could never have prepared for what else broke free to swim with those long dead.

Samuel Buckland is a young man who has it all and is planning for the future. Gregory Caitlin is a businessman and politician. He has designs to bring hope back to a world in need... and he'll be damned if anyone gets in his way! When the two cross paths, even the angels tremble.

Azriel Creed has gotten fat since slaughtering all the zombies. During the past year he's lived a life of leisure - drinking, partying, and ignoring the blood-thirsty monsters his race was bred to hunt and kill. His sedentary lifestyle has made him flabby and out-of-shape. He must hold his breath just to tie his shoes. He gets winded merely walking up and down stairs. And he's more concerned about pleasing his bitchy, iPhone-addicted girlfriend than his destiny as the most ruthless assassin of evil beings who has ever lived.

Zoey Sanders is thrilled to spend her senior year of high school in a medieval, gothic castle located in Scotland. When she meets her Prince Charming, everything seems to be clicking into place, and she dreams about having the perfect fairytale.But suddenly, things take a drastic turn. Zoey becomes increasingly disturbed as paranormal activity picks up all around her.

Last Spring, Claire was framed for the murder of Junior, the Devil's oldest hellspawn. Last Summer, she reawakened the fourth realm, saved the world (after almost destroying it), and wound up with the worst job ever. Now, Claire's been locked out of her realm, given an assistant that doesn't actually assist, and told to handle a small problem in Underworld that might just get her killed. And to top it all off, Mab's made one of the contenders her untouchable. So, yeah, you could say Claire's having one of those days.