Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet

From the author of the best-selling Magic For Unlucky Girls comes a new collection of magical short stories with a fabulist feminist edge...."Exquisite...This accomplished collection interlocks the horrific and the wondrous through deliciously dry humor, resulting in a unique must-read for fans of Angela Carter, Maria Dahvana Headley, and A.S. Byatt."--Publishers WeeklyThis new collection of unusual, fabulist fiction leads you down strange paths for dark encounters with familiar fairy tales, odd people from history, and weirdos who may be living right next door...Among the characters in these bizarre stories, a starving beauty finds a beast who can save her village, a man eats everything in sight but is never full, a woman gives birth to bloody animal parts, and a daughter is forced to dance every night to the reenactment of her fathers' murder.These tales invite you to spend time with people who, in the maddest of circumstances, chew their way forward. With elements of psychological horror, sly humor, and the fantastic, these stories will burrow under your skin, haunt your dreams, and make you wonder what worlds lie just beyond that tiny hole in the wall.For lovers of fractured fairy tales, and those who wonder what goes bump in the night, this collection is a must-read!

Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

Praise for the author's last book, Magic for Unlucky Girls: "Magic for Unlucky Girls is that rarest of things: a book that doesn’t remind me of anything else I’ve read … A wonderful, truly original work."

Library Journal

“A new bride is faced with her husband’s mysterious locked door. Twin infants finally wake their mother from a century of sleep. One woman finds that her prince adores her perfect hair, but abhors any other flaws. These 14 stories spins new twists on familiar fairy-tale tropes with heroines who take control of their situations. The darkness that could destroy them is vanquished through brains, beauty, and the light of their own souls. VERDICT Winner of the 2015 Santa Fe Literary Awards Program, Balaskovits’s anthology breathes fresh life into classic fairy tales. Readers who enjoy short fiction with a fantastical bent should pick up this award-winning book.”

or sometimes run around, setting fire to everything in their path

"The mundane and bizarre walk hand in hand

these are stories that matter, and that will stick with you long after you’ve read them.”

“To say that the stories in Magic For Unlucky Girls are unsettling is an understatement. In these tales, A. A. Balaskovits has created characters and worlds we think we know, and then destroys our expectations-unflinchingly, with no gory or sordid detail spared, and often with alarming violence. Yet, despite kicking us out of our collective comfort zone, these stories go down like pleasant poison, with language that moves seamlessly between brutal starkness and hypnotic lyricism. Balaskovits takes the stories that form the core of us from childhood and reshapes them into something dark and unfamiliar. Magic For Unlucky Girls is a bold debut from a bold author, and make no mistake

and often startling

“In this reimagining and reinventing of traditional, patriarchal fairy tales, Balaskovits creates a safe

Publishers Weekly

"Exquisite...This accomplished collection interlocks the horrific and the wondrous through deliciously dry humor, resulting in a unique must-read for fans of Angela Carter, Maria Dahvana Headley, and A.S. Byatt."

Lenore Hart, series editor, The Night Bazaar and The Night Bazaar Venice

"In this weirdly wonderful collection, Balaskovits takes old, familiar archetypes and turns them on their heads, giving an extra spin for good measure. Not your great-grandmother’s fireside tales, these stories are slyly comedic one moment, viscerally horrifying the next, and evermore gorgeously eerie."

Scott Garson, author of Is That You, John Wayne?

“…addictive…You might run into the kinds of things you’d have thought were consigned to the darkness of your unremembered dreams. If you’re like me, you’ll be wowing quietly after the reading is done. Read this, people! Read!”

Wendy J. Fox, Buzzfeed

"Written with a darkly sparkling lyricism, Balaskovits’ collection is gory, gorgeous, and like nothing else you’ll read."

From the Back Cover

This new collection of unusual, fabulist fiction leads you down strange paths for dark encounters with familiar fairy tales, odd people from history, and weirdos who may be living right next door. Among the characters in these bizarre stories, a starving beauty finds a beast who can save her village, a man eats everything in sight but is never full, a woman gives birth to bloody animal parts, and a daughter is forced to dance every night to the reenactment of her fathers' murder. These tales invite you to spend time with people who, in the maddest of circumstances, chew their way forward. With elements of psychological horror, sly humor, and the fantastic, these stories will burrow under your skin, haunt your dreams, and make you wonder what worlds lie just beyond that tiny hole in the wall.

About the Author

A.A. Balaskovits is the author of Magic for Unlucky Girls and Strange Folk You’ll Never Meet (SFWP). Her work has been published in Best Small Fictions, Indiana Review, The Missouri Review, Story and many others. Find her on Twitter @aabalaskovits and at aabalaskovits.com

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