My Books

Sourdough and Other Stories is from Tartarus Press in the UK, with a beautiful (and creepy) cover illustration by Stephen J Clark. It can be ordered here.

It has an introduction by Robert Shearman (Tiny Deaths, Love Songs for the Shy and Cyncial), and an afterword by Jeff VanderMeer (City of Saints and Madmen, Veniss Underground, Finch, Shriek).

Welcome to the beautiful magic, restless passion and exquisite horror of Angela Slatter’s impeccably imagined tales.

In the cathedral-city of Lodellan and its uneasy hinterland, babies are fashioned from bread, dolls are given souls and wishes granted may be soon regretted. There are ghosts who dream, men whose wings have been clipped and trolls who long for something other. Love, loss and life are elegantly dissected in Slatter’s earthy yet poetic prose.

As Rob Shearman says in his Introduction: ‘Sourdough and Other Stories manages to be grand and ambitious and worldbuilding-but also as intimate and focused as all good short fiction should be . . . The joy of Angela Slatter’s book is that she’s given us a set of fairy tales that are at once both new and fresh, and yet feel as old as storytelling itself.’

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The Girl with No Hands & Other Tales is from Ticonderoga Publications in Australia and can be ordered here. It has gorgeous cover by LL Hannett, an introduction by Jack Dann and contains reprints of stories such as The Little Match Girl, Bluebeard, Frozen, Dresses, three and new stories including The Bone Mother, The Living Book and The Dead Ones Don’t Hurt You.

 

Jack Dann says in his introduction: “Her writing, which seems transparent as glass, as if so easily and simply wrought, belies the complete control of craft and the complexity of the material floating and glinting and shifting just under the surface. Her concerns are the primordial fears of childhood…and adulthood: the dark, slimy, senescent fairy-tale monsters that threaten to chop off our fingers when we suck our thumbs, burn us to death if we play with matches, or turn us into pale, thin, little corpses if we won’t eat our soup…the same monsters—albeit transmogrified into suits and skirts—that stalk us even now and threaten to maim us yet again as we flee that dangerous, ill-remembered country called childhood.”

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Black-Winged Angels is a collection of nine reworked/reloaded fairytales, from Little Red Riding Hood to The Snow Queen, from The Little Match Girl to the tales of Mélusine and her sisters, from Baba Yaga to Bluebeard. Available only in digital formats here at Smashwords.

 

“Bluebeard” by Angela Slatter is the best story in this issue. I highly recommend “Bluebeard” to anyone who would ask the question: What defines a great short story? Foremost, Slatter’s ability to play with words to invoke mood, setting, and characterization are good enough to impress even the snottiest MFA. Jason Sizemore at Tangent Online.

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Sourdough and Other Stories is also available for purchase as an ebook in various formats at Smashwords – go here.