In this new collection from Shirley Jackson Award winning author Christopher Barzak, discover stories where fairy tales, gothic narratives, and classic monster stories are transformed into new wonders. A princess who yearns only for freedom dances her nights away at clubs in defiancé of tradition. A young man plots revenge on his murderer from the underworld. Two friends discover a goblin market where they are offered the fruit of forbidden love. On the streets of London, a man destroys the life of a little girl in an instant. The caretaker for a woman confined to her room frees her from the circumstances that have bound her. A maid at an inn discovers the powerlessness and power of invisibility. A teenager, locked into Kensington Gardens after closing time, is brought face to face with the reality of a childhood icon. A man is born, grows up, and dies, all within the span of a day. A bank clerk determines to save himself and his friend from the destinies their overbearing fathers have made for them. From the Brothers Grimm to Kafka, Barzak imaginatively traverses the history of the dark and the fantastic, and returns with new tales for an ever-changing world. "In Monstrous Alterations, Christopher Barzak fashions old tales into modern marvels, trimming, embellishing, and turning them inside out. A spellbound tailor, he is both witty with his scissors and entranced by his source material, enmeshed in Poe, Kafka, Christina Rossetti, and the vast fairy tale tradition. These stories display not only the power of craft but the helplessness of desire: that intoxicating stuff we call inspiration." -Sofia Samatar, World Fantasy Award winning author of A Stranger in Olondria
Author
Christopher Barzak is the author of the Crawford Fantasy Award winning novel One for Sorrow which has been made into the Sundance feature film Jamie Marks is Dead. His second novel, The Love We Share Without Knowing, was a finalist for the Nebula Award and the James Tiptree Jr. Award. His third novel, Wonders of the Invisible World, received the Stonewall Honor from the American Library Association and most recently was selected for inclusion on the Human Rights Campaign’s list of books for libraries in LGBTQ welcoming schools. He is also the author of three short story collections: Birds and Birthdays, a collection of surrealist fantasy stories, Before and Afterlives, a collection of supernatural fantasies, which won Best Collection in the 2013 Shirley Jackson Awards, and Monstrous Alterations. His most recent novel, The Gone Away Place, received the inaugural Whippoorwill Award, and was selected for the Choose to Read Ohio program by the State Library of Ohio, the Ohioana Library Association, and the Ohio Center for the Book. Christopher grew up in rural Kinsman, Ohio, has lived in the southern California beach town of Carlsbad, and the capital of Michigan; he taught English outside of Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for two years. He teaches creative writing at Youngstown State University, in Youngstown, Ohio.
