Tales of Folk and Fairies

The magic of folk tales is that they're older than nations, passed down through generations until someone had the good sense to write them down. Katharine Pyle gathered fifteen stories from corners of the world and gave them new life in this collection. There are tales of clever maidens and shape-shifting tricksters, of journeys through enchanted forests and meetings with beings that exist at the edge of rememberable things. Some stories glow with the warmth of hearth-fire wisdom; others carry the shiver of old forests where the rules are different. What ties them together is something harder to name: the sense that these stories hold keys to how humans have always tried to understand wonder, danger, and the thin line between our world and whatever lies beyond it. Pyle tells them with a light hand, letting the voices of the original tellers come through while adding her own gentle grace notes. Whether you are twelve or forty, these tales have a way of making you remember that the world was once larger and stranger and more full of possibility.