Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories

by Kelly Barnhill, John Lee (Narrated by)

Overview

When Mrs. Sorensen's husband dies, she rekindles a long-dormant love with an unsuitable mate in "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch." In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through," a young man wrestles with grief and his sexuality in an exchange of letters with his faraway beloved. "Dreadful Young Ladies" demonstrates the strength and power-known and unknown-of the imagination. "The Insect and the Astronomer" upends expectations about good and bad, knowledge and ignorance, love and longing. The World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Unlicensed Magician introduces the secret, magical life of an invisible girl once left for dead. By an author hailed as "a fantasist on the order of Neil Gaiman" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), the stories in Dreadful Young Ladies feature bold, reality-bending fantasy underscored by rich universal themes of love, death, jealousy, and hope.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684411603
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 5.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Kelly Barnhill is the author of four novels, most recently The Girl Who Drank the Moon, winner of the 2017 John Newbery Medal. She is also the winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Parents' Choice Gold Award. Visit her online at kellybarnhill.wordpress.com or on Twitter: @kellybarnhill.

John Lee has read audiobooks in almost every conceivable genre, from Charles Dickens to Patrick O'Brian, and from the very real life of Napoleon to the entirely imagined lives of sorcerers and swashbucklers. An AudioFile Golden Voice narrator, he is the winner of numerous Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards.

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/08/2018
The eight short stories and one novella in Newbery Medalist Barnhill’s collection are haunting and beautifully told. Each tale features characters, mostly girls and women, who chafe at rules and rebel in ways both quiet and extraordinary. The titular widow of “Mrs. Sorenson and the Sasquatch” dismays her neighbors by taking up with a huge furry humanoid. In “Elegy to Gabrielle—Patron Saint of Healers, Whores, and Righteous Thieves,” the young pirate Gabrielle Belain frees slaves and is defiant to the end. The poignant novella “The Unlicensed Magician” tells the story of a young woman, known as the Sparrow, as she quietly brings prosperity to her small town despite her country’s murderous dictator. Barnhill skillfully incorporates fairy tale elements and makes them freshly unsettling: many of her heroines have unusual effects on animals, and the title character of “Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake” faintly echoes Cinderella’s dead mother. Each story is written in intensely poetic language that can exult or disturb, sometimes within the same sentence, and evokes a dreamlike, enchanted mood that lingers in the reader’s mind. These tales are made to be reread and savored. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

The eight short stories and one novella in Newbery Medalist Barnhill’s collection are haunting and beautifully told . . . Each story is written in intensely poetic language that can exult or disturb, sometimes within the same sentence, and evokes a dreamlike, enchanted mood that lingers in the reader’s mind. These tales are made to be reread and savored.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Newbery medalist Barnhill dazzles in her short story collection for adults . . . This is a well-crafted short story collection featuring elements of magic realism while touching on the themes of love, grief, hope, jealousy, and more. Fantasy readers—especially fans of Neil Gaiman or even Kelly Link—will appreciate this spellbinding collection."
—Booklist

"Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury or Angela Carter . . . Whether Barnhill's settings are contemporary, historical, or dystopian, she mixes the feeling of fairy tales with the psychological preoccupations of literary fiction."
—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher