From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Kelly Barnhill comes a stunning collection of nine stories teeming with uncanny characters whose lives unfold in worlds at once strikingly human and eerily original.
When Mrs. Sorensen's husband dies, she rekindles a long-dormant love with an unsuitable mate in "Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch." In "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through," a young man wrestles with grief and his sexuality in an exchange of letters with his faraway beloved. "Dreadful Young Ladies" demonstrates the strength and power—known and unknown—of the imagination. The World Fantasy Award–winning novella The Unlicensed Magician introduces the secret, magical life of an invisible girl once left for dead.
By an author hailed as "a fantasist on the order of Neil Gaiman" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), the stories in Dreadful Young Ladies feature bold, reality-bending fantasy underscored by rich universal themes of love, death, jealousy, and hope.
Download and start listening now!
“The eight short stories and one novella in Newbery Medalist Barnhill’s collection are haunting and beautifully told…Each story is written in intensely poetic language that can exult or disturb, sometimes within the same sentence, and evokes a dreamlike, enchanted mood that lingers in the reader’s mind. These tales are made to be reread and savored.”
—
Publishers Weekly (starred review)