We were lost in the woods on our way to the city, my brother Hansel and I, when we came upon the cottage. A faery cottage, with a handsome and mysterious occupant. He calls himself the Magus, and he makes magnificent chocolates and confections for the Wicked Revels, the wild woodland dance of the fair folk. The moment I lay eyes on him, I sense he is everything I’ve ever dreamed of. And I’ve dreamed of a lot. No one knows what strange desires dance in my mind—until now. Hansel doesn’t want me to stay. I defy his wishes. He’s my brother, not my master. But the Magus can only offer me desire—never satisfaction. My desire feeds his magic, and his magic makes his confections delicious. He can never touch me, although he certainly has a lot of ways around that. He is forbidden from attending the Revels. And he bears a curse that ends on All Hallow’s Eve, but he can’t tell me its nature. Whoever this man is, whatever his name is, I will find out, because I have never met anyone who understands me the way he does, and I know he is meant to be mine. Tasting Gretel is a standalone fairy tale retelling of Hansel and Gretel, for those who like an unabashedly adorable happily ever after with serious steaminess! Although it is definitely standalone, it doesn't hurt to read These Wicked Revels before this one.

Decades after a celebrated Viennese psychoanalyst begins working with a woman who claims to be a machine, a young girl retreats into fairy tales, unaware of the dangers in her Nazi-controlled German city.

On January 19, 2009, Chicago teacher and playwright Joe Janes decided to write a comedy sketch a day for a year. He did that. When he was done, Don Hall of the WNEP Theater Foundation decided to produce them. All of them. In June of 2010, Don and Joe gathered together over 200 Chicago actors and directors and over eleven nights presented 26 shows each featuring two weeks worth of sketches (although one has 15 scenes). Yep. Crazy. All 365 comedy sketches are collected in this book along with a complete list of directors and actors from the Strawdog shows. Joe teaches comedy writing at The Second City and Columbia College.

The king is dead. Prince Augustus and Princess Marie Rose ascend to the throne. Rose must submit to becoming the Queen Who Bowed, her role affirmed as she is claimed by her husband before the faery court--a role she dreads. But first, she is allowed a trip to the capital to attend the Ball de Anon, where masks allow her the privilege of privacy. There, she meets the handsome and loyal officer Count Axel Farren of the high elves, whose destiny is soon to intertwine with that of Augustus and Rose in fateful and forbidden ways. The witch who cursed Rose at birth has not given up on her desire to bring down the Palace of the Sun. Her spies are everywhere; slander and manipulation her weapons. Will love be Marie Rose's undoing? This very steamy and sensual retelling of Sleeping Beauty is inspired by the life of Marie Antoinette. If you haven't read my other fairy tales or even if you have, let me warn you about this trilogy: It will include cliffhangers, menage, *some* themes of darker romance and power exchange, along with many decadent surprises, beautiful gardens and gowns. No one shall lose their heads in this revolution, but some will lose their hearts.

Kirksey lives in Tennessee. Sometimes he has odd visions. Some of them are Orwellian. He thinks a lot. You may think he is crazy.

The Graphic Canon, Volume 2 gives us a visual cornucopia based on the wealth of literature from the 1800s. Several artists—including Maxon Crumb and Gris Grimly—present their versions of Edgar Allan Poe’s visions. The great American novel Huckleberry Finn is adapted uncensored for the first time, as Twain wrote it. The bad boys of Romanticism—Shelley, Keats, and Byron—are visualized here, and so are the Brontë sisters. We see both of Coleridge’s most famous poems: “Kubla Khan” and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (the latter by British comics legend Hunt Emerson). Philosophy and science are ably represented by ink versions of Nietzsche’sThus Spake Zarathustra and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Frankenstein, Moby-Dick, Les Misérables, Great Expectations, Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment (a hallucinatory take on the pivotal murder scene), Thoreau’s Walden (in spare line art by John Porcellino of King-Cat Comics fame), “The Drunken Boat” by Rimbaud, Leaves of Grass by Whitman, and two of Emily Dickinson’s greatest poems are all present and accounted for. John Coulthart has created ten magnificent full-page collages that tell the story of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. And Pride and Prejudice has never looked this splendiferous! This volume is a special treat for Lewis Carroll fans. Dame Darcy puts her unmistakable stamp on—what else?—the Alice books in a new 16-page tour-de-force, while a dozen other artists present their versions of the most famous characters and moments from Wonderland. There’s also a gorgeous silhouetted telling of “Jabberwocky,” and Mahendra’s Singh’s surrealistic take on “The Hunting of the Snark.” Curveballs in this volume include fairy tales illustrated by the untameable S. Clay Wilson, a fiery speech from freed slave Frederick Douglass (rendered in stark black and white by Seth Tobocman), a letter on reincarnation from Flaubert, the Victorian erotic classic Venus in Furs, the drug classic The Hasheesh Eater, and silk-screened illustrations for the ghastly children’s classic Der Struwwelpeter. Among many other canonical works.

He'd kill for me. I'll die without him. My mother has promised me to a complete stranger. She says he is the doctor who saved my life when I was ill--but I've never known a doctor like Dr. Madsen. When I wake from my illness, he has marked my skin with the tattoo of a tree that spreads across my whole body--and heats at his mere presence, crying for his touch. We are married quickly, with no friends or family, and then he steals me away. I dreamed of being an artist, and now I am the wife of Torvald Madsen, the lord of a northern keep at the edge of troll country. Although he is handsome and protective and encourages me to paint, he is keeping secrets from me. Why is it rumored that he had other wives? Why do I grow so cold without his presence? Why can't I go into the east wing? And why are his eyes full of such pain? As I peek back my husband's secrets, the truth might kill me--or set us both free. This is a fairy tale retelling of Bluebeard for those who like an adorable happily ever after with a side of serious steaminess!

Ten essays on nature, ritual, and philosophy “that are so point-blank vital you nearly need to put the book down to settle yourself” (San Francisco Chronicle). Gretel Ehrlich’s world is one of solitude and wonder, pain and beauty, and these elements give life to her stunning prose. Ever since her acclaimed debut, The Solace of Open Spaces, she has illuminated the particular qualities of nature and the self with graceful precision. In Islands, the Universe, Home, Ehrlich expands her explorations, traveling to the remote reaches of the earth and deep into her soul. She tells of a voyage of discovery in northern Japan, where she finds her “bridge to heaven.” She captures a “light moving down a mountain slope.” She sees a ruined city in the face of a fire-scarred mountain. Above all, she recalls what a painter once told her about art when she was twelve years old, as she sat for her portrait: “You have to mix death into everything. Then you have to mix life into that.” In this unforgettable collection, Ehrlich mixes life and death, real and sacred, to offer a stunning vision of our world that is both achingly familiar and miraculously strange. According to National Book Award–winning author Andrea Barrett, these essays are “as spare and beautiful as the landscape from which they’ve grown. . . . Each one is a pilgrimage into the secrets of the heart.”