But she discovers that what seems to be freedom is a prison of another kind, one that entangles her in a story that leads to a prince, a kiss, and a clock striking midnight. To unravel herself from this new life, Pin must choose between a prince and another—the one who helped her before and who would give his life for her. Torn, the only thing for her to do is trade in the glass slipper for a sword and find her own destiny.

    But maybe there’s more to the stories than even the Wickeds know. Is it time to finally get revenge? After all, they’re due for a happily-enough-ever-after. Even if they have to write it themselves.

    One Hope.Rose has been appointed as a healer's apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter's daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her—a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill.When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she's never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose's life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny.

    . . and they lived happily ever after.” Remember the fairy tales you put away after you found that no princess is as beautiful as common sense and happy endings are just the beginning?Well, the old tales are back, and they’ve grown up! Black Pearls brings you the stories of your childhood, told in a way you’ve never heard before. Instead of lulling you to sleep, they’ll wake you up—to the haunting sadness that waits just inside the windows of a gingerbread cottage, the passion that fuels a witch’s flight, and the heartache that comes, again and again, at the stroke of midnight.Make no mistake: these stories are as dark as human nature itself. But they shine, too, lit with the fire of our dreams and our hunger for magic.

    From Sir Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops", literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, today's most acclaimed award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories and use their own unique styles to rebuild these timeless stories, the ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them, the ones that have become ingrained in modern culture, and the ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these twelve stories and boil them down to their bones, and reassemble them for a new generation of readers. Written from a twenty-first century perspective and set within the realms of science fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, and realistic fiction, these short stories are as moving and thought provoking as their originators. They pay homage to groundbreaking literary achievements of the past while celebrating each author's unique perception and innovative style.Contents:Introduction: Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales (2013) • essay by Tim Pratt and Melissa MarrThat the Machine May Progress Eternally (2013) / shortfiction by Carrie Ryan, inspired by E.M. Forster's The Machine StopsThe King of Elfland's Daughter (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessLosing Her Divinity [Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz] (2013) / shortfiction by Garth Nix, inspired by The Man Who Would Be KingThe Sleeper and the Spindle (2013) / novelette by Neil Gaiman, inspired by Sleeping BeautyKai Lung's Golden Hours (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessThe Cold Corner (2013) / shortfiction by Tim Pratt, inspired by Henry James' The Jolly CornerMillcara (2013) / shortfiction by Holly Black, inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's CarmillaFigures of Earth (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessWhen First We Were Gods (2013) / shortfiction by Rick Yancey, inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The BirthmarkSirocco (2013) / shortfiction by Margaret Stohl, inspired by Horace Walpole's The Castle of OtrantoThe Shaving of Shagpat (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessAwakened (2013) / shortfiction by Melissa Marr, inspired by Kate Chopin's The AwakeningNew Chicago (2013) / shortfiction by Kelley Armstrong, inspired by W. W. Jacob's The Monkey's PawThe Wood Beyond the World (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessThe Soul Collector (2013) / shortfiction by Kami Garcia, inspired by the Brothers Grimm's RumpelstiltskinWithout Faith, Without Law, Without Joy (2013) / shortfiction by Saladin Ahmed, inspired by Sir Edmund Spenser's Faerie QueeneGoblin Market (2013) • interior artwork by Charles VessUncaged (2013) / shortfiction by Gene Wolf, inspired by William Seabrook's The Caged White Werewolf..

    She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.

     Except it wasn't flu, and death gave them back.Seventeen-year-old Ella copes the best she can; caring for her war-injured father, scrubbing the floors, and slaying the undead that attack the locals. Vermin they're called, like rats they spread pestilence with their bite. Ella's world collides with another when she nearly decapitates a handsome stranger, who is very much alive.Seth deMage, the new Duke of Leithfield, has returned to his ancestral home with a mission from the War Office -- to control the plague of vermin in rural Somerset. He needs help; he just didn't expect to find it in a katana-wielding scullery maid.Working alongside Seth blurs the line between their positions, and Ella glimpses a future she never dreamed was possible. But in overstepping society's boundaries, Ella could lose everything - home, head and her heart...

    A Scottish hero determined to protect her. Can they survive the storm? Cast adrift on the Indian Ocean, Maria carries a terrible secret. Wherever she goes, death soon follows, and she's powerless to prevent it. William McGregor boarded the SS Trevessa in search of adventure, but he gets more than he bargained for when he saves the mysterious Maria from the sea. She can't tell them her tragic tale, so the superstitious sailors make up their own stories - and some would sacrifice her to the waves to save themselves from the coming storm. When the sharks start circling and the storm closes in, are sirens more than just a myth?

    My bodice did not plunge as dramatically as some, and no man--no man I would ever want to meet, surely--could fit his hands round my waist. What I lacked in beauty I would simply have to earn with charm..." Benevolence is not your typical princess--and Princess Ben is certainly not your typical fairy tale. With her parents lost to assassins, Princess Ben ends up under the thumb of the conniving Queen Sophia. Starved and miserable, locked in the castle's highest tower, Ben stumbles upon a mysterious enchanted room. So begins her secret education in the magical arts: mastering an obstinate flying broomstick, furtively emptying the castle's pantries, setting her hair on fire... But Ben's private adventures are soon overwhelmed by a mortal threat to her kingdom. Can Ben save the country and herself from tyranny?

    If you are looking for a narrative without emotion, without regrets, and without mistakes, this is definitely the wrong story. This is by no means an uncomplicated tale about uncomplicated people. It is by no means sweet or light. This story is ugly. This story is complicated. This story is emotional. This story is tragic. In short, this story is about being awkward. Peregrine Storke is an artist with an odd sketchbook full of pictures she’s drawn since she was a child. It is a book full of strange sketches and awkward characters, for there is no better way to hide from bullying and life than to create a world of your own. With a stroke of her pencil, she has given life to a spectacled princess, a freckle-nosed king, a candy loving troll, a two-horned unicorn, and a graceless fairy. At nineteen, Peregrine leaves her home, her sketchbook, and awkwardness behind. But what happens when something goes wrong in the world of Awkward? Trapped inside of her complex realm with the bully she thought to leave behind, Peregrine discovers there is nothing worse than falling for your own villain.

    But when Elsa unexpectedly finds herself as a young queen mysterious magic begins to happen and questions of her past start to form. Will the sisters ever be reunited?

    At the convent, she is comforted by an old nun, Sœur Seraphina, who tells her the tale of a young girl who, a hundred years earlier, is sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens...After Margherita's father steals parsley from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli, he is threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquish their precious little girl. Selena is the famous red-haired muse of the artist Tiziano, first painted by him in 1512 and still inspiring him at the time of his death. She is at the center of Renaissance life in Venice, a world of beauty and danger, seduction and betrayal, love and superstition.Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.Award-winning author Kate Forsyth braids together the stories of Margherita, Selena, and Charlotte-Rose, the woman who penned Rapunzel as we now know it, to create what is a sumptuous historical novel, an enchanting fairy tale retelling, and a loving tribute to the imagination of one remarkable woman.

    Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she’s going to do everything within her power to get it.But Alessandra’s not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen—all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?

    She suffers from the bizarre malady of experiencing stabbing pain in her feet. On her sixteenth birthday, she woke screaming from the sensation that her tongue had been cut out. No doctor can find a medical explanation for her pain, and even the most powerful drugs have proven useless. Only the touch of seawater can ease her pain, and just temporarily at that.Now Kathleen is a twenty-five-year-old opera student in Boston and shows immense promise as a soprano. Her girlfriend Harry, a mezzo in the same program, worries endlessly about Kathleen's phantom pain and obsession with the sea. Kathleen's mother and grandmother both committed suicide as young women, and Harry worries they suffered from the same symptoms. When Kathleen suffers yet another dangerous breakdown, Harry convinces Kathleen to visit her hometown in Ireland to learn more about her family history.In Ireland, they discover that the mystery—and the tragedy—of Kathleen’s family history is far older and stranger than they could have imagined.  Kathleen’s fate seems sealed, and the only way out is a terrible choice between a mermaid’s two sirens—the sea, and her lover. But both choices mean death… Haunting and lyrical, The Mermaid’s Daughter asks—how far we will go for those we love? And can the transformative power of music overcome a magic that has prevailed for generations?

    It's a wasteland haunted by wraiths searching for human souls. And the stranger waiting for her isn't an ordinary boy. Tristan is a Ferryman, tasked with transporting her soul safely to the afterlife, a journey he's made a thousand times before. Except this time, something's different.Torn between love and destiny, Dylan realises she can't let Tristan go, nor can she stay with him. Eventually, inevitably, the wraiths would capture her soul and she would be lost forever. Can true love overcome the boundaries of death?Ferryman is a thought-provoking and truly original story of a love that refuses to be limited by death. This stunning, award-winning debut novel is being reissued to coincide with the publication of the eagerly-anticipated sequel, Trespassers.