“Slatter takes the raw material of myth and fairy tale and uses it to build her own dark and poignant stories.”
Angela Slatter’s first U.S. collection features twelve of the award-winning Australian author’s finest, darkest fairy tales, and adds two new stories to her marvellous cauldron of fiction. Stories peopled by women and girls-fearless, frightened, brave, bold, frail, and fantastical-who take the paths less travelled, accept (and offer) poisoned apples, and embrace transformation in all its forms. Reminiscent of Angela Carter at her best, Slatter’s work is both timeless and fresh: fascinating new reflections from the enchanted mirrors of fairy tales and folklore. Includes an introduction by Theodora Goss, author of The Thorn and the Blossom.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Acclaimed author Angela Slatter’s new collection A Feast Of Sorrows collects together a dozen reprints and two brand new novellas. Within these pages you’ll find magical curses, deep dark forests, murderers, rapists, and dead people whose souls still wander. Slatter’s work is elegantly wrought, as she takes the raw material of myth and fairy tale and uses it to build her own dark and poignant stories.
The magic in these tales is a form of power available to those without wealth or status. Slatter’s protagonists are mainly women–mothers, daughters, servants, prostitutes, dressmakers–and the enchantments they seek are often to ward off those men who would do them harm. But inevitably, the use of magic has a price.
Inventive, perfectly told, and timeless, Slatter’s stories are a real delight.
A Feast of Sorrows is out now from Prime Books.
“The stories here pay deserved tribute to McKean’s artwork.”
The consummate artistry of Dave McKean has permeated popular culture for more than thirty years. His images, at once bizarre, beautiful, and instantly recognizable, have graced an impressive array of books, CDs, graphic novels, and films. In The Weight of Words, ten of our finest contemporary storytellers, among them the artist himself, have created a series of varied, compelling narratives, each inspired by one of McKean’s extraordinary paintings. The result is a unique collaborative effort in which words and pictures enhance and illuminate each other on page after page.
The Weight of Words is the rare anthology that really does offer something for everyone. Its complementary merger of words and images adds up to something special, something more than the sum of its impressive parts. It is both a major accomplishment in itself and a long overdue tribute to an important—and necessary—artist.
The Weight of Words contains more than two dozen illustrations by Dave McKean, and is printed in two colours throughout.
Why We’re Excited About This Book:
Dave McKean is an artist whose work is surely known by anyone with even a passing interest in popular culture. He is perhaps most famous for his graphic novel work, including illustrations for Arkham Asylum (Grant Morrison),The Sandman (Neil Gaiman) and his own highly regarded Cages. His art has also been used for albums by Tori Amos album and Alice Cooper, a Heston Blumenthal cookery book and a set of Royal Mail stamps of mythical creatures.
The Weight of Words is a beautifully illustrated anthology in which some of the finest genre writers of the day have written a story inspired by McKean’s work. It includes stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe Hill, M. John Harrison, Catherynne M. Valente, Maria Dahvana Headley and Neil Gaiman (who contributes two pieces). There’s also a story by McKean himself.
Featuring doppelgangers, golems, lucid dreams, the hallucinations of the dying and the death of literature itself, these stories pay deserved tribute to McKean’s artwork. The Weight of Words should take pride of place on the bookshelf of any horror fan or lover of contemporary illustration.
It is available in both trade and limited edition signed editions.
The Weight of Words is available to preorder now from P.S. Publishing. It will be released in 2017.
JAMES EVERINGTON