The stories in this volume are fairy tales in split vision because they’re not, not quite, the fairy tales of childhood, but they evoke that same sense of wonder. A handful are re-imaginings of old favorites, such as David Sklar’s Little Red Riding Hood, “Red ’Hood”, which could have happened—be happening—in any major city today; C. S. Inman’s lyrical Beauty and the Beast, “The Castle of Masks”; Cindy Lynn Speer’s regency-flavored Bluebeard, “A Necklace of Rubies”; and Imogen Howson’s futuristic “Falling”, a retelling of Rapunzel. Some of these stories are entirely new but still tell us tales we know in our heart of hearts. In “Dream-Drinker,” Heather Ingemar’s Isabele must rise to a frightening occasion and be the heroine she never dreamed she could be. In “Flame in the Night Regions,” J. A. Howe’s heroine fights to give the woman she loves exactly what she wants. Which, you know, in fairy tales never ends as well as one might like. Bree Donovan takes us to a thoroughly modern Ireland for a tale of a kind of green knight, a man who uncovers the best in everyone he meets. Trulie Peterson’s story, “Spellbound”, is a quest tale and the fairy tale of my youth. It’s the most traditional in style, made new and utterly beautiful, and then Francesca Forrest takes us back to the fairy tale before the Grimm brothers made it pretty in “The Gallows Maiden”. G. L. Simmons’ is a Jack story. In “The Orb of Enori,” an innocent Jac makes the right decisions for all the right reasons, despite what people might think. Joselle Vanderhooft’s lyrical prose marries grace and myth to make the villain real in “The Chess-Girl and the Sorcerer-King”. Finally, Mureall Hebert finishes the collection with a novella that takes us to another world, a once upon a time where Gods and Monsters touch the earth and are touched by it with “In the Light of the World There is a Tree”. There was no editor who could care for these stories any better than Cindy Lynn Speer, one of my favorite authors and a woman with a deft hand for a fairy tale. Whether the well-loved stories of my childhood re-imagined or new tales, I will treasure these stories just as long as I have those stories I read when I was far too old to be reading them. I hope you love them as much as I do. Deena Fisher, Publisher