Wicked Wonders - Softcover
2018 World Fantasy Award nominee
2018 Locus finalist – Best short story collection
2018 Alex Award nominee
“Magical stories unfurl with marvelous subtlety in this delightful collection from Klages.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
A rebellious child identifies with Maleficent instead of Sleeping Beauty. Best friends Anna and Corry share one last morning on Earth. A solitary woman inherits a penny arcade haunted by a beautiful stranger. A prep-school student requires more than luck when playing dice with a faerie. Ladies who lunch―dividing one last bite of dessert―delve into new dimensions of quantum politeness. At summer camp, a young girl discovers the heartbreak of forbidden love.
Whether on a habitat on Mars or in a boardinghouse in London, discover Ellen Klages’ wicked, wondrous adventures full of cheeky wit, empathy, and courage.
2018 Locus finalist – Best short story collection
2018 Alex Award nominee
“Magical stories unfurl with marvelous subtlety in this delightful collection from Klages.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
A rebellious child identifies with Maleficent instead of Sleeping Beauty. Best friends Anna and Corry share one last morning on Earth. A solitary woman inherits a penny arcade haunted by a beautiful stranger. A prep-school student requires more than luck when playing dice with a faerie. Ladies who lunch―dividing one last bite of dessert―delve into new dimensions of quantum politeness. At summer camp, a young girl discovers the heartbreak of forbidden love.
Whether on a habitat on Mars or in a boardinghouse in London, discover Ellen Klages’ wicked, wondrous adventures full of cheeky wit, empathy, and courage.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
―Publishers Weekly
“Poignant and relatable tales that push the barriers of the fantastical realism and beyond.”
―Library Journal
“The reader never knows what fantastic surprise may come next. Enthusiasts of genre fiction―fantasy, science fiction, metafiction―will delight in these 14 strong tales.”
―San Francisco Chronicle
“If novels are like dollar bills, short stories are the shiny silvers and coppers that you hold in the palm of your hand. Ellen Klages, in her latest collection of short fiction, pours out a handful of these bright coppers and silver crescents (together with the tokens to some old arcades along summer boardwalks); they catch the mind and the eye with their brilliance.”
―Strange Horizons
“Very highly recommended.”
―She Treads Softly
“Witty and subversive.”
―Reader’s Lane
“The stories here are beautifully written, entertaining, heartfelt, and thoroughly enjoyable. Klages is a talented storyteller with a knack for creating worlds and situations that morph into new, wondrous things.”
―Lit Reactor
“Serious, funny, tough, tender . . . This is a collection of stories that I felt better for having read. Strongly recommended.”
―Big Book Balloon
“All the stories in Klages’ brilliant collection have an understated charm. They start of so calmly and quietly, perfectly normal and straightforward except for those few notes that are both discordant and yet elevate the story. And then something wonderful happens on the pages of each story, and I think it is best described as joy.”
―A Universe in Words
“In these 14 tales, Ellen Klages managed to shift my paradigms, to help me regain some of the magic lost in my passage out of childhood. Such is the power of the short story, when told by one skilled in the magic of words.”
―Barnes and Noble
“Wicked Wonders is truly a wonderful collection of recent short fiction by Ellen Klages. It's a terrific introduction to her work.”
―The MT Void
“Klages uses language very artfully. Her descriptions are very beautiful and rich, which leave the worlds she creates very well-painted.”
―SF Crowsnest
“Reading Wicked Wonders is like looking through a box filled with heirloom jewelry and listening to their histories: each piece is special or significant in some way, and at least one story is likely to stay with you for one reason or another. I’ll be adding a copy of Wicked Wonders to my own library, with the intent of reading it many times in the future. Highly recommended.”
―Jana Nyman, Fantasy Literature
“Delightful. Disturbing. Delicious. And always, her prose is gorgeous. Klages is one of my favourite authors.”
―Nalo Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads and Falling in Love with Hominids
“Every time you think you know where an Ellen Klages story is going, she pulls another fast one. Wicked Wonders is fancy in every sense of the word.”
―Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky
“Klages surprises in each story, but maintains a sense of humanity and warmth throughout that transforms her tales from narrative experiments into powerful observations of the human (and non-human) condition.”
―Barnes & Noble
“Witty, sly, wicked, and poignant.”
―Lightspeed
“Klages writes from the emotional center of a tale rather than from the science fiction conceit . . . Klages’ mastery of the telling detail is evident.”
―Chicago Tribune
“Full of consistently thoughtful, clever, affecting stories, all overlaid by a sort of gently reassuring feeling of nostalgia.”
―SF Bluestocking
“Ellen Klages is a phenomenally skilled writer with the miraculous ability to immerse her readers into nostalgic years of childhoods passed. Her stories also have a clear feminist bent, with the focus on the lives of smart and strong willed women.”
―The Illustrated Page
“Ellen Klages’ Wicked Wonders is smart, sad, funny, moving fiction . . . highly entertaining.”
―Amazing Stories
“Like Bradbury, Klages is notable for the clarity and unstrained elegance of her prose . . . she’s learned from writers as diverse as Bradbury and Cheever, part of Klages’s storytelling DNA derives from old radio raconteurs like Jean Shepherd or Garrison Keillor.”
―Locus
“Wicked Wonders is a collection that the reader finds themselves not wanting to put down, but also not wanting to finish out of fear that they will have to leave the magical world they’ve found behind when the close the cover.”
―Fangirl Nation
“All of these stories have a strange little bend in them but the magic isn’t overwhelming, they are ‘curiouser and curiouser’ still.”
―Bookstalker
“If you enjoy strong or subversive female protagonists in speculative fiction, this collection is for you!”
―Read Well Reviews
“Klages has a very unique way of telling a story that sneaks up on you and burrows under the layers of your subconscious, ready to pop up when you least expect it. She’s a great writer, and I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more of her work.”
―Fiction Fantastic
“A mixture of heartbreaking magical melancholy, vintage nostalgia, and forlorn near-futurism . . . the aesthetic is memorably fantastic.”
―Nostalgia Reader
“A shimmering cornucopia of language, emotion, and surprises rich with meaning. No one gives us the terrible innocence and longings of childhood better than Ellen Klages. These stories are fabulous, in every sense of that multi-faceted word.”
―Nancy Kress, author of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
“The stories collected in Ellen Klages’ Wicked Wonders are the best kind: ones that deliver charm and delight the first time, then open further and compound their meanings on each consecutive read. As I devoured the collection, I kept saying, ‘This one is my favorite. No. This one.’ And then I turned the page to find even more . . . A fantastic achievement.”
―Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon.
“Wicked Wonders will realign disparate parts of your heart into quantum sympathy. Read it. Read it now.”
―William Alexander, National Book Award-winning author of Goblin Secrets
“Stunning. She draws your eye to the waves at the shore then gathers the tide behind your back. Bradbury, Dahl, Jackson? No―simply incomparable Klages.”
―Karen Lord, author of The Galaxy Game and The Best of All Possible Worlds
“In Wicked Wonders (2017), Ellen Klages has assembled an impressive collection of her short stories . . . They’re often bittersweet or wistful and frequently surreal; tales of ordinary lives in which the fantastical or unexpected element sneaks up and taps you on the shoulder, and when you turn around the world has shifted.”
―Fantasy Literature
“Absolutely gorgeous.”
―Starburst, 10 out of 10 stars
“Whenever I start to read a new story by the incomparable Ellen Klages, I feel as if I’m on the edge of my seat in the front row of the theater: keen-eyed and determined, this time, to pay close attention to the entire performance and figure out how she does it. I never do figure it out―her hands are too quick, too deft, and she seems to be everywhere at once . But that’s OK, the magic happens anyway, and bits of it still glitter on my shoulders as I re-enter my life, dazed and exhilarated, wiser and richer for the experience.”
―Andy Duncan, author of The Night Cache and The Pottawatomie Giant
“Smart, often funny, and satisfyingly strange, these wicked stories will delight.”
―Jenny Blackford, author of Duties to my Cat and The Princess and the Slave
“Hugely enjoyable.”
―The Booklover’s Boudoir
“Ms. Klages, you have a new fan.”
―The Writerly Reader
“Wicked Wonders is marvelous. Klages has a unique world-view and her stories are both fresh and surprising. While reading this collection, I felt a range of emotions, from laughing to crying and everything in-between . . . Klages is the best “new-to-me” author discovery that I’ve made in a long time. I have a serious crush on her writing style.”
―Perpetually Booked
“Honestly, I really couldn’t find fault with this collection.”
―The Book That
“In Ellen Klages’ dazzling new collection of short stories, Wicked Wonders, she crafts one perfect sentence after another.”
―Mirabile Dictu
“These stories completely charmed me and this quickly became one of my favorite books of 2017.”
―Emily Reads Jane
“In Wicked Wonders, readers are surrounded by stories of magic, transformation, art, longing, sleight of hand, and the extraordinary hiding in plain sight . . . altogether wonderful.”
―New York Review of Science Fiction
“If you think short stories are not for you, read this book. From the first page I was instantly immersed in the magical and vibrant worlds of Wicked Wonders.”
―Satellite Mind
“Klages, whose debut novel, [The] Green Glass Sea (2006), won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, demonstrates both superior writing skill and a wide range.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Klages creates wonder-filled and beautiful worlds in her short stories.”
―Booklist
“The kind of SF writer that comes along once in a decade . . . brilliant stories.”
―Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
“Klages has the true storyteller’s gift of characters and plot.”
―Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Haunting and crystalline.”
―Tangent Online
“Ellen Klages’s work seems as transparent as spring water, but this is a woman who knows that clarity and simplicity can pierce the heart.”
―Peter Straub
“Ellen Klages writes about childhood in brilliant, primary colors. Like Ray Bradbury, her nostalgic stories are like myths.”
―Maureen McHugh
Ellen Klages is the acclaimed author of the Scott O'Dell Award-winner, The Green Glass Sea, and White Sands, Red Menace, which won the California and New Mexico Book awards. Her short fiction, previously collected in the World Fantasy Award-nominated Portable Childhoods, has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and has been translated into more than seven languages and republished worldwide. A graduate from the Second City's infamous Improv Program, Klages also holds a degree in philosophy, which led to many randomly-alliterative jobs such as proofreader, photographer, painter, and pinball arcade manager. She lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.
Karen Joy Fowler is the author of twelve novels and fiction collections, including the New York Times bestsellers The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards, as well as the Commonwealth Medal and the International Fiction Prize. Fowler lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Review:
Karen Joy Fowler is the author of twelve novels and fiction collections, including the New York Times bestsellers The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. She is the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards, as well as the Commonwealth Medal and the International Fiction Prize. Fowler lives in Santa Cruz, California.
Praise for Wicked Wonders
Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog Best Books of May
Amazon Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of the Month
io9 - 20 Amazing New Scifi and Fantasy Books to Add to Your Reading List in May
A Book Riot Must-Read New Release
A She Treads Softly Top 2017 Book
Locus 2017 Recommended Reading List
―Publishers Weekly
“Poignant and relatable tales that push the barriers of the fantastical realism and beyond.”
―Library Journal
“The reader never knows what fantastic surprise may come next. Enthusiasts of genre fiction―fantasy, science fiction, metafiction―will delight in these 14 strong tales.”
―San Francisco Chronicle
“If novels are like dollar bills, short stories are the shiny silvers and coppers that you hold in the palm of your hand. Ellen Klages, in her latest collection of short fiction, pours out a handful of these bright coppers and silver crescents (together with the tokens to some old arcades along summer boardwalks); they catch the mind and the eye with their brilliance.”
―Strange Horizons
“Very highly recommended.”
―She Treads Softly
“Witty and subversive.”
―Reader’s Lane
“The stories here are beautifully written, entertaining, heartfelt, and thoroughly enjoyable. Klages is a talented storyteller with a knack for creating worlds and situations that morph into new, wondrous things.”
―Lit Reactor
“Serious, funny, tough, tender . . . This is a collection of stories that I felt better for having read. Strongly recommended.”
―Big Book Balloon
“All the stories in Klages’ brilliant collection have an understated charm. They start of so calmly and quietly, perfectly normal and straightforward except for those few notes that are both discordant and yet elevate the story. And then something wonderful happens on the pages of each story, and I think it is best described as joy.”
―A Universe in Words
“In these 14 tales, Ellen Klages managed to shift my paradigms, to help me regain some of the magic lost in my passage out of childhood. Such is the power of the short story, when told by one skilled in the magic of words.”
―Barnes and Noble
“Wicked Wonders is truly a wonderful collection of recent short fiction by Ellen Klages. It's a terrific introduction to her work.”
―The MT Void
“Klages uses language very artfully. Her descriptions are very beautiful and rich, which leave the worlds she creates very well-painted.”
―SF Crowsnest
“Reading Wicked Wonders is like looking through a box filled with heirloom jewelry and listening to their histories: each piece is special or significant in some way, and at least one story is likely to stay with you for one reason or another. I’ll be adding a copy of Wicked Wonders to my own library, with the intent of reading it many times in the future. Highly recommended.”
―Jana Nyman, Fantasy Literature
“Delightful. Disturbing. Delicious. And always, her prose is gorgeous. Klages is one of my favourite authors.”
―Nalo Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads and Falling in Love with Hominids
“Every time you think you know where an Ellen Klages story is going, she pulls another fast one. Wicked Wonders is fancy in every sense of the word.”
―Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky
“Klages surprises in each story, but maintains a sense of humanity and warmth throughout that transforms her tales from narrative experiments into powerful observations of the human (and non-human) condition.”
―Barnes & Noble
“Witty, sly, wicked, and poignant.”
―Lightspeed
“Klages writes from the emotional center of a tale rather than from the science fiction conceit . . . Klages’ mastery of the telling detail is evident.”
―Chicago Tribune
“Full of consistently thoughtful, clever, affecting stories, all overlaid by a sort of gently reassuring feeling of nostalgia.”
―SF Bluestocking
“Ellen Klages is a phenomenally skilled writer with the miraculous ability to immerse her readers into nostalgic years of childhoods passed. Her stories also have a clear feminist bent, with the focus on the lives of smart and strong willed women.”
―The Illustrated Page
“Ellen Klages’ Wicked Wonders is smart, sad, funny, moving fiction . . . highly entertaining.”
―Amazing Stories
“Like Bradbury, Klages is notable for the clarity and unstrained elegance of her prose . . . she’s learned from writers as diverse as Bradbury and Cheever, part of Klages’s storytelling DNA derives from old radio raconteurs like Jean Shepherd or Garrison Keillor.”
―Locus
“Wicked Wonders is a collection that the reader finds themselves not wanting to put down, but also not wanting to finish out of fear that they will have to leave the magical world they’ve found behind when the close the cover.”
―Fangirl Nation
“All of these stories have a strange little bend in them but the magic isn’t overwhelming, they are ‘curiouser and curiouser’ still.”
―Bookstalker
“If you enjoy strong or subversive female protagonists in speculative fiction, this collection is for you!”
―Read Well Reviews
“Klages has a very unique way of telling a story that sneaks up on you and burrows under the layers of your subconscious, ready to pop up when you least expect it. She’s a great writer, and I’ll definitely keep an eye out for more of her work.”
―Fiction Fantastic
“A mixture of heartbreaking magical melancholy, vintage nostalgia, and forlorn near-futurism . . . the aesthetic is memorably fantastic.”
―Nostalgia Reader
“A shimmering cornucopia of language, emotion, and surprises rich with meaning. No one gives us the terrible innocence and longings of childhood better than Ellen Klages. These stories are fabulous, in every sense of that multi-faceted word.”
―Nancy Kress, author of After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
“The stories collected in Ellen Klages’ Wicked Wonders are the best kind: ones that deliver charm and delight the first time, then open further and compound their meanings on each consecutive read. As I devoured the collection, I kept saying, ‘This one is my favorite. No. This one.’ And then I turned the page to find even more . . . A fantastic achievement.”
―Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft, Cloudbound, and Horizon.
“Wicked Wonders will realign disparate parts of your heart into quantum sympathy. Read it. Read it now.”
―William Alexander, National Book Award-winning author of Goblin Secrets
“Stunning. She draws your eye to the waves at the shore then gathers the tide behind your back. Bradbury, Dahl, Jackson? No―simply incomparable Klages.”
―Karen Lord, author of The Galaxy Game and The Best of All Possible Worlds
“In Wicked Wonders (2017), Ellen Klages has assembled an impressive collection of her short stories . . . They’re often bittersweet or wistful and frequently surreal; tales of ordinary lives in which the fantastical or unexpected element sneaks up and taps you on the shoulder, and when you turn around the world has shifted.”
―Fantasy Literature
“Absolutely gorgeous.”
―Starburst, 10 out of 10 stars
“Whenever I start to read a new story by the incomparable Ellen Klages, I feel as if I’m on the edge of my seat in the front row of the theater: keen-eyed and determined, this time, to pay close attention to the entire performance and figure out how she does it. I never do figure it out―her hands are too quick, too deft, and she seems to be everywhere at once . But that’s OK, the magic happens anyway, and bits of it still glitter on my shoulders as I re-enter my life, dazed and exhilarated, wiser and richer for the experience.”
―Andy Duncan, author of The Night Cache and The Pottawatomie Giant
“Smart, often funny, and satisfyingly strange, these wicked stories will delight.”
―Jenny Blackford, author of Duties to my Cat and The Princess and the Slave
“Hugely enjoyable.”
―The Booklover’s Boudoir
“Ms. Klages, you have a new fan.”
―The Writerly Reader
“Wicked Wonders is marvelous. Klages has a unique world-view and her stories are both fresh and surprising. While reading this collection, I felt a range of emotions, from laughing to crying and everything in-between . . . Klages is the best “new-to-me” author discovery that I’ve made in a long time. I have a serious crush on her writing style.”
―Perpetually Booked
“Honestly, I really couldn’t find fault with this collection.”
―The Book That
“In Ellen Klages’ dazzling new collection of short stories, Wicked Wonders, she crafts one perfect sentence after another.”
―Mirabile Dictu
“These stories completely charmed me and this quickly became one of my favorite books of 2017.”
―Emily Reads Jane
“In Wicked Wonders, readers are surrounded by stories of magic, transformation, art, longing, sleight of hand, and the extraordinary hiding in plain sight . . . altogether wonderful.”
―New York Review of Science Fiction
“If you think short stories are not for you, read this book. From the first page I was instantly immersed in the magical and vibrant worlds of Wicked Wonders.”
―Satellite Mind
“This is an author who demonstrates great skill in both creating richly-developed worlds and unique, three-dimensional characters over and over again in short stories. It’s no small feat, and she does it so very well. Definitely worth a read!”
―Convergence Book Reviews
“Powerful, touching, and very much worth reading.”
―Looking for a Good Book
“Klages, whose debut novel, [The] Green Glass Sea (2006), won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, demonstrates both superior writing skill and a wide range.”
―Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Klages creates wonder-filled and beautiful worlds in her short stories.”
―Booklist
“The kind of SF writer that comes along once in a decade . . . brilliant stories.”
―Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
“Klages has the true storyteller’s gift of characters and plot.”
―Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Haunting and crystalline.”
―Tangent Online
“Ellen Klages’s work seems as transparent as spring water, but this is a woman who knows that clarity and simplicity can pierce the heart.”
―Peter Straub
“Ellen Klages writes about childhood in brilliant, primary colors. Like Ray Bradbury, her nostalgic stories are like myths.”
―Maureen McHugh
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherTachyon Publications
- Publication date2017
- ISBN 10 1616962615
- ISBN 13 9781616962616
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages240
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