The Slantwise Histories and Other Stories - by Alix E Harrow (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Everlasting and Starling House comes a new fantastical collection of stories about tricksters and ghosts, magics ordinary and spectacular. Alix E. Harrow spins tales never-told and seen just outside the periphery of reality--in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and Carmen Maria Machado, these hauntingly resonant and defiant stories leap from the page and dance in and out of a history that never was (but could have been) and into a future startingly like our own.

Before I was a liar I was a historian, which is a kind of storyteller who doesn't make any money and likes footnotes.

These are stories about the past as it wasn't quite, but might have been, from ancient battlefields all the way up through roadside attractions off I-70. They're about the people caught in the mean jaws of history: the women and workers, the soldiers and mothers, everyone shoved into the margins of the world.

But these aren't singular tragedies--these are the stories of the ones that got away. The ones who defected and dissented, who broke the rules, who ran and tossed a match behind them. SLANTWISE HISTORIES AND OTHER STORIES collects the best known short fiction of Alix. E. Harrow, including the Hugo-award winning "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" and for the first time in print, Amazon original titles "The Six Deaths of the Saint" and "The Knight and the Butcherbird". Updated to reflect the author's preferred editions, Slantwise Histories also includes "The Long Way Up", "Roadside Attraction", "Mr. Death", "The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly", "The Sycamore and the Sybil", "Do Not Look Back, My Lion", "The Whisper in the Weld", "Dustbaby", and four all-new short stories.

Review Quotes

Praise for The Everlasting

[The Everlasting] is a feat of the ages. An utter masterpiece... It has scribbled itself over the heart line of my palm and there it will remain, as eternal as its namesake. I loved every single page. --Rachel Gillig, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of One Dark Window

"The loveliness of an Alix E. Harrow story is matched only by the exquisiteness of her craft...It's pure magic.--Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

"No one writes about why we read quite like Alix Harrow...A wildly inventive, truly magical tour de force." --Ava Reid, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning, on The Everlasting

"A beautiful novel about the stories that shape our lives and the divine and ordinary inevitability of love... If Una Everlasting stabbed me I'd die happy."--Lex Croucher, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Gwen & Art Are Not In Love

"This impressively constructed plot keeps the pages flying on the way to a stunning finale. Harrow remains at the top of her game." -Publishers Weekly

"Combining an epic love story with meditations on storytelling, history, and power, Harrow achieves the perfect balance of these powerful themes. Readers will savor the legendary love and lives of Owen and Una. Highly recommended." - Booklist

"Harrow once again skillfully writes a story of love, loss, and choosing one's own path, no matter what anyone else says (or writes)." -Library Journal

Praise for Starling House

"This book has everything you could possibly want this fall...a cursed town, a haunted house, a vivid & eerie setting--plus, characters willing to risk everything." --Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club October '23 Pick)

"Harrow's lyrical prose propels this contemporary Southern gothic, offering an atmospheric fairy tale with delightfully jagged-edged characters." -EW.com

"Starling House will no doubt take its place alongside fiction's most memorable haunted houses."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Alix E. Harrow is a fantasy author who just does not miss." --Paste Magazine

About the Author