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Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories Audiobook
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From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong.
The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the hunger to be held, and seen, and known. And the terror, too: to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be recognized as the monstrous thing you are.
Two teenage girls working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A zombie rooster plays detective in a missing persons case. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend—and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. A pack of middle schoolers turn to the occult to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. And a pair of outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end.
In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.
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"“Nethercott’s writing takes on the tone of timeless folklore, from fairy tales to urban legends to ghost stories. But what makes these stories read as true and familiar isn’t a trick of syntax. Instead, it’s Nethercott’s insightful exploration of the universal themes that classic stories are meant to capture. . . . [These themes] are all explored here with great sensitivity and almost always a surprising twist. . . . [Nethercott] has a great talent for taking personal pains and making them universal. A memorable story collection that makes the supernatural personal."
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Delectable dark fairy tales which tend to start in worlds that feel almost comfortable—until the shadows thicken and all at once everything has teeth. . . . Nethercott’s supremely confident prose assists—and indeed demands—the suspension of disbelief. . . . Fantastic.
Quotes
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GennaRose Nethercott's imagination is boundless, her writing emerging from a rich personal folklore of which Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart suggests only the edge. Everything in this book is alive and ready to love you or to wound you.
— Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations -
By blending humor, horror, and the fantastical with history and the here and now, GennaRose Nethercott’s Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart induces feelings of love, loneliness, wonderment, fury, and fear. Pure fuel for the imagination, the magic on these pages offers comfort from stories that aren’t always comfortable but which are full of truths and so much beauty.
— Nick Medina, author of Sisters of the Lost Nation -
All of you who love that strain of witty, wistful, enigmatic stories that runs from Kafka to Kelly Link: come read this book. GennaRose Nethercott draws from a magic well, bringing us tales that feel as old as time yet marvelously new.
— Sofia Samatar, author of Tender and Monster Portraits -
GennaRose Nethercott's imagination is boundless, her writing emerging from a rich personal folklore of which Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart suggests only the edge. Everything in this book is alive and ready to love you or to wound you.
— Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations“Delectable dark fairy tales which tend to start in worlds that feel almost comfortable—until the shadows thicken and all at once everything has teeth. . . . Nethercott’s supremely confident prose assists—and indeed demands—the suspension of disbelief. . . . Fantastic. -
GennaRose Nethercott's imagination is boundless, her writing emerging from a rich personal folklore of which Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart suggests only the edge. Everything in this book is alive and ready to love you or to wound you.
— Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations -
Real magic, real delight, doled out generously in the shape of wistful, ferocious, this-world-but-better stories.
— Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
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About GennaRose Nethercott
Gennarose Nethercott, author of her debut novel Thistlefoot, is a writer and folklorist whose projects are all rooted in myth and what our stories reveal about who we are. Her book The Lumberjack’s Dove was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She tours nationally and internationally, performing strange tales, sometimes with puppets in tow, and composing poems-to-order for strangers on an antique typewriter with her team, the Traveling Poetry Emporium.
About the Narrators
Gabra Zackman is an actress, author, and narrator who has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards. She was educated at Northwestern University. A classically trained actress, she has appeared in theaters all over the country as well as on film and television.
January LaVoy, winner of numerous awards for narration, was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She is an American actress best known for her character Noelle Ortiz on the ABC daytime drama One Life to Live. In addition to working extensively in narration and television, including roles on Law & Order and All My Children, she has worked on and off Broadway as well as in regional theater.