Award-winning and internationally bestselling author Alix E. Harrow delivers a fantastical collection of stories old and new. Tales about tricksters and ghosts, ordinary magic and mundane spectacle, all in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton and Carmen Maria Machado.

Before I was a liar I was a historian. Which is a kind of storyteller who doesn’t make any money and likes footnotes.

When I took up professional lying (writing fiction), I thought I was done with the truth. But when I paused and turned back to look at my almost-decade of stories, I didn’t find pure fantasy. I found history, fractured and recast, but not false. I am still telling the truth – but slant, by starlight.

These are stories about the past as it wasn’t quite, but might have been, from ancient battlefields all the way up through roadside attractions off I-70. They’re about the people caught in the mean jaws of history: the women and workers, the soldiers and mothers, everyone shoved into the margins of the world.

But these aren’t tragedies – these are the stories of the ones that got away. The ones who defected and dissented, who broke the rules, who ran and tossed a match behind them.

* * *

PRAISE FOR ALIX E. HARROW

'This book has everything you could possibly want'
— Reese Witherspoon on Starling House

'Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent'
— Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Dinner

'A feat of the ages. An utter masterpiece . . . I loved every single page'
— Rachel Gillig, New York Times bestselling author of One Dark Window, on The Everlasting

'I was utterly trapped in its pages – and now free, already long to return'
— Caitlin Starling, Bram Stoker Award Winner and bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence on The Everlasting

'No one writes about why we read quite like Alix Harrow '
— Ava Reid, No.1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning