Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Hair bright as gold.… Lips red as blood.… Heart black as sin.… Truth sharp as bone.…As in their previous critically acclaimed volumes of reconsidered fairy tales, award-winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have gathered together remarkable stories that illuminate the more sinister, sensual, and sophisticated aspects of the tales we cherished in childhood—the fables of witches and princes and lost children that we once imagined we knew.Black Heart, Ivory Bones showcases 20 beguiling tales for the child who was and the adult who is, penned by 20 of the most creative artists in contemporary American literature. Here dissected are the darker anatomies of the timeless, seemingly simple stories we have long loved. Here wonder and truth have serious bite.A lovelorn prince seeking his father's blessing concocts a fantastic tale of a witch, a tower, and lustrous, long hair.… A pair of accursed red boots punishes a beautiful dancer for her pride.… A troll-killing, princess-rescuing warrior is compelled to consider events from his adversaries' points of view.… In a blistering tell-all memoir, Goldilocks reveals the sordid truth about her brutal foster parent, Papa Bear.… Rich, surprising, funny, erotic, and unsettling, these 20 new yarns and poems offer exceptional new treasures as they brilliantly reveal lusts and jealousies, foibles, hatreds and dangerous obsessions, and the things that slyly lurk in the midnight interior of oft-told tales.

About the Author

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for almost thirty years. She was the fiction editor of Omni magazine and Sci Fiction and has edited more than fifty anthologies. She has also won many awards for her work, including the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Hugo Award, among many others.Terri Windling (www.terriwindling.com) is an award-winning editor, artist, essayist, and author. She has edited more than thirty anthologies, many of them with Ellen Datlow, and has been a consulting editor for the Tor Books fantasy line since 1986. A former New Yorker, Terri now lives in a small country village in southwestern England with her husband, daughter, and a dog named Tilly.

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