20 fairy tales hauntingly reimagined by some of today’s finest sci-fi and fantasy authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, and more.
Once upon a time, all our cherished dreams began with the words once upon a time. This is the phrase that opened our favorite tales of princes and spells and magical adventures. World Fantasy Award–winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling understand the power of beloved stories—and in Black Heart, Ivory Bones, their sixth anthology of reimagined fairy tales, they have gathered together stories and poetry from some of the most acclaimed writers of our time, including Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Charles de Lint, and Joyce Carol Oates. But be forewarned: These fairy tales are not for children.
A prideful Texas dancer is cursed by a pair of lustrous red boots . . . Goldilocks tells all about her brutal and wildly dysfunctional foster family, the Bears . . . An archaeologist in Victorian England is enchanted by a newly exhumed Sleeping Beauty . . . A prince of tabloid journalism is smitten by a trailer-park Rapunzel . . . A clockwork amusement park troll becomes sentient and sets out to foment an automaton revolution. These are but a few examples of the marvels that await within these pages—tales that range from the humorous to the sensuous to the haunting and horrifying, each one a treasure with a distinctly adult edge.
<B>Ellen Datlow</B> was editor of Sci Fiction, the multi award- winning fiction area of scifi.com, for almost six years. Previously, she was fiction editor of <I>Omni</I> for over seventeen years. She has won the World Fantasy Award seven times, two Bram Stoker Awards, the International Horror Guild Award, the 2002 and 2005 Hugo Award, and the 2005 Locus Award, for her work as an editor. Sci Fiction won the 2005 Hugo Award for Best Website. Datlow and Windling are the co-editors of over eleven original anthologies and of seventeen volumes of <I>The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror</I>. <br><br><I>Terri Windling</I> is an editor, writer, painter, and passionate advocate of mythic arts. She has won the World Fantasy Award seven times, as well as the Mythopoeic Award for her novel <I>The Wood Wife</I>. During the last two decades she's edited over twenty-five anthologies with Ellen Datlow, as well as several other anthologies, including one called <I>Faery</I>. Her paintings, which are based on folklore and feminist themes, have been exhibited at museums and galleries in the United States, England, and France.