When their Ukrainian grandmother is lost on a trans-Atlantic Flight, two sisters are swept into a quest across eastern Europe to find the woman who had always told more tales than truths. From Poland to Slovakia to Hungary and beyond, Larissa and Ira navigate the steps of Ukrainian folk dance, the cliff-side paths of Slovak Paradise National Park, and the stark realities of war, folktales, and feminism, all for the sake of chasing who they're starting to believe is a true Baba Yaga. Understanding their family's roots has never been more clear. The setting's mythic properties drift like ghosts in the humid air, hinting of the folktales the sisters whisper like codes of bravery. The nesting dolls they discover reveal how each woman becomes stronger when tucked one, within another, within another-forgetting lies and truths to seize upon history, love, and the familial traditions that have shaped them into who they are together. Author and professional editor Kris Spisak has been spotlighted in Writer's Digest and The Huffington Post for her work to helping other writers. Her previous non-fiction books include Get a Grip on Your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious or Confused, The Novel Editing Workbook, and The Family Story Workbook. Spisak's background and her own family experience in the Ukrainian diaspora add weight to her fiction debut.

"When darkness, fear, and instability inundate our daily lives, folktale figures like Baba Yaga speak to the dichotomy of our existence-the hope and the horror, the magic and the mundane. This book provides an in-depth look at the Baba Yaga mythos and history through Slavic folklore and is a comprehensive resource for anyone hoping to learn more about this ambiguous character"--

“A useful reference [and] a fun read, chock-full of telling examples and pop-culture references.” —Charles Euchner, author of Keep It Short Most of us are not poets or novelists, but we are all writers. We email, text, and post; we craft memos and reports, menus and outdoor signage, birthday cards and sticky notes on the fridge. And just as we should think before we speak, we need to think before we write. Get a Grip on Your Grammar is a grammar book for those who hate grammar books, a writing resource filled with quick answers and a playful style—not endless, indecipherable grammar jargon. Designed for student, business, and creative-writing audiences alike, its easily digestible writing tips will finally teach you: • How to keep “lay” and “lie” straight • The proper usage of “backup” versus “back up” • Where to put punctuation around quotation marks • The meaning of “e.g.” versus “i.e.” • The perils of overusing the word “suddenly” • Why apostrophes should not be thrown about like confetti and 244 more great tips

Welcome to Zombay, a town full of mystery, magic and make-believe. Once upon a time, Rownie lived there with his mother and his older brother. But his mother drowned in the town's vast River; and then his brother vanished; so now Rownie runs through Zombay's riddlesome streets orphaned and all alone . . . alone except for Graba, the coddle-headed, chicken-legged witch who offers him shelter along with the other stray children she has collected - her Grubs. Rownie suspects that his brother's love of acting - which is severely outlawed in Zombay - led to his disappearance; so when Rownie encounters a theatrical troupe of goblins daring to perform a play for the townspeople (with masks and stage-tricks and everything!) he wonders whether they might hold the key to discovering what happened to his brother . . . and perhaps even help him find him again. Thus opens a dazzling heroic adventure - of immense love, loss and all-conquering courage - in which one boy's quest for the truth, leads him to learn his greatest power may lie in his mighty and boundless imagination . . .

An extraordinary retelling of the Baba Yaga myth, this debut novel will wrap itself around your heart and never let go. All 12-year-old Marinka wants is a friend. A real friend. Not like her house with chicken legs. Sure, the house can play games like tag and hide-and-seek, but Marinka longs for a human companion. Someone she can talk to and share secrets with. But that's tough when your grandmother is a Yaga, a guardian who guides the dead into the afterlife. It's even harder when you live in a house that wanders all over the world . . . carrying you with it. Even worse, Marinka is being trained to be a Yaga. That means no school, no parties -- and no playmates that stick around for more than a day. So when Marinka stumbles across the chance to make a real friend, she breaks all the rules . . . with devastating consequences. Her beloved grandmother mysteriously disappears, and it's up to Marinka to find her -- even if it means making a dangerous journey to the afterlife.With a mix of whimsy, humor, and adventure, this debut novel will wrap itself around your heart and never let go.

Masha's mother sells eggs at market, and Masha loves to paint their smooth shells. One day, deep in the forest, Masha meets the magical Firebird, guardian of the eggs of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The Firebird asks Masha to paint its eggs so that they blend with the elements, hiding them from the vicious witch, Baba Yaga. At first, the plan works well, but Baba Yaga finally gets her hands on the last egg, and Masha sets off on an amazing journey to find it. This original folktale blends elements of the Firebird legend and traditional European folktales in a bilingual English and Russian text, along with suggestions to inspire children to paint their own eggs.

Baba Yaga is a well-known witch from the folklore tradition of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. A fascinating and colorful character, she resembles witches of other traditions but is in many ways unique. Living in the forest in a hut that stands and moves on chicken legs, she travels in a mortar with a pestle and sweeps away her tracks with a broom. In some tales she tries to harm the protagonist, while in others she is helpful. This book investigates the image and ambiguity of Baba Yaga in detail and considers the meanings she has for East Slavic culture. Providing a broad survey of folktales and other sources, it is the most thorough study of Baba Yaga yet published and will be of interest to students of anthropology, comparative literature, folklore, and Slavic and East European studies.

What happens when someone confirmed to be deceased shows up at your front door in perfect shape? As summer recess comes to a close in 1933, a seven-year-old girl is found almost entirely dismembered and lying on the ground in a forest of the Pacific Northwest. Her dress is in shreds, a leg is folded 90 degrees in the wrong direction, and her face is gone, leaving only a heap of slimy pulp. Before the child’s parents have a chance to navigate the devastation, however, someone shows up at their door one day, and they are unable to distinguish this person from the daughter they had just buried. In this modern, grimly twisted take on a fairytale from Slavic folklore, the world of Baba Yaga brims with the supernatural as a team of local investigators attempts to make sense of physical impossibilities, extravagant hallucinations, and the historical enigma of the Voynich manuscript. But once the mystery begins to reveal itself, the townspeople realize that they’ve disturbed a force deep in the forest that is so insidious and so frightening that its threat lingers beyond the final page.

A New York Review Books Original In 1908, deep in Siberia, it fell to earth. THEIR ICE. A young man on a scientific expedition found it. It spoke to his heart, and his heart named him Bro. Bro felt the Ice. Bro knew its purpose. To bring together the 23,000 blond, blue-eyed Brothers and Sisters of the Light who were scattered on earth. To wake their sleeping hearts. To return to the Light. To destroy this world. And secretly, throughout the twentieth century and up to our own day, the Children of the Light have pursued their beloved goal. Pulp fiction, science fiction, New Ageism, pornography, video-game mayhem, old-time Communist propaganda, and rampant commercial hype all collide, splinter, and splatter in Vladimir Sorokin’s virtuosic Ice Trilogy, a crazed joyride through modern times with the promise of a truly spectacular crash at the end. And the reader, as eager for the redemptive fix of a good story as the Children are for the Primordial Light, has no choice except to go along, caught up in a brilliant illusion from which only illusion escapes intact.