Snow White, Blood Red (Fairy Tale Anthologies)

Fairy tales retold—with a twist—from “some of our best storytellers” including Neil Gaiman, Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, and others (The Washington Post).   In this “no holds barred . . . nightmarish . . . provocative” collection, bestselling and award-winning fantasy masters put a dark, disturbing, and erotic spin on your favorite bedtime stories—and give you something entirely new to trouble your dreams (The New York Times Book Review).   A boy is haunted through adulthood by a soul-eating creature that lies forever in wait under Neil Gaiman’s “Troll Bridge”; a melancholy amphibian shares his most private fantasies with a therapist in Gahan Wilson’s “The Frog Prince”; in Tanith Lee’s “Snow-Drop,” a lonely artist invites seven circus performers into her home to satisfy an obsession; in Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Little Poucet,” a band of lost brothers find refuge and terror with a hungry family in the woods; and Wendy Wheeler delves into the deviant psyche of the predatory male in “Little Red.” Also featuring Nancy Kress, Charles de Lint, Melanie Tem, Patricia A. McKillip, Jack Dann, and others, all paying a revisit to our favorite fairy tales in ways you’ve never dared to imagine.

From Publishers Weekly

The dark and shadowed aspects of well-known folk stories and fairy tales are explored in updated retellings by such writers as Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen and Leonard Rysdyk in this anthology by the team that also compiles The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror volumes. In Esther M. Freisner's "Puss," one of the finest contributions, an ancient being dons boots with his feline guise to discharge a blood debt to a hated and brutal master. Patricia A. McKillip's "The Snow Queen" tells of a young woman who finds her real identity while her bored husband and their sophisticated friends nearly lose their souls to the eponymous enchantress. In a lighter vein, Caroline Stevermer and Ryan Edmonds write about an irritated stepmother who turns a baseball-mad family of boys into "The Springfield Swans." Blanche, a witch's daughter raised in isolation in Susan Wade's "Like a Red, Red Rose," finds tragedy when she reaches out for love. In "I Shall Do Thee Mischief in the Woods," Kathe Koja shows what Little Red Riding Hood really was doing on her way to her grandmother's. Some of these tales are enchanting; some are horrifying; most, like the originals, offer insight into human nature. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Publishers Weekly

“Some of these tales are enchanting; some are horrifying; most, like the originals, offer insight into human nature.”

Kirkus Reviews

“An excellent sampler of the current crop of fantasy writers; the annotated reading list is a bonus for those interested in further exploration.”

Locus

“Wickedly engaging fun . . . There’s plenty to enjoy here, so long as you haven’t just blundered in, looking for elves and fairies in the garden.”

About the Author

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York. Terri Windling is a writer, editor, and artist specializing in fantasy literature, folklore, and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award (for her novel The Wood Wife), the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA’s Solstice Award for “outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor.” She writes essays on folklore and fantasy; maintains a popular blog on these subjects (Myth & Moor); and is on the board of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Speculative Fiction (Chichester University). She also creates myth-inspired visual art for exhibition in the US and Europe; and she’s a member of the Modern Fairies music-and-folklore project (Oxford & Sheffield Universities). A former New Yorker, she now lives with her British husband and family in Devon, England.

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