Honeycomb – Joanne M Harris

"When the Nine Worlds were still very young, there were no stories." Honeycomb is a collection of dark, fable-like short stories, all set in the same world of myth and fairy tale, many of which centre around the same few characters while others take us on detours. I believe this is called a 'mosaic' collection, …

A Pocketful of Crows – Joanne M Harris

"The year it turns, and turns, and turns." Taking inspiration from The Child Ballads (which I'll confess I'd never heard of, but turn out to be a collection of traditional ballads collected by Francis Child, rather than songs about children!), A Pocketful of Crows is a lovely, if dark, fairy tale-esque story of the magic of nature, and …

Odd & True – Cat Winters

"'Tell me the story again,' I urged my sister in the nighttime blackness of our attic bedroom." Raised on stories about their mother and uncle's monster hunting past, Trudchen Grey is still not inclined to believe her sister's letters, telling of Odette's adventures in the circus or even wilder escapades. But when Odette returns to …

Bryony and Roses – T Kingfisher

"She was going to die because of the rutabagas." Bryony may just have found herself trapped in a magical manor house with a surprisingly eloquent Beast, but if there's one thing she's not it's a 'beauty'. She is, however, a gardener, and as things in the House take ever darker turns it might just turn …

Beauty and the Beast (2017)

A bookish young woman is captured by an enchanted prince. Only love can break the spell that transformed him into a beast - and his servants into various household objects. A tale as old as time, the song says - and sure enough, here we've got a pretty straight retelling of the 1991 Disney animation, …

The Raven and the Reindeer – T. Kingfisher

"Once upon a time, there was a boy born with frost in his eyes and frost in his heart." Her whole life, Gerta has been infatuated with the boy who lives next door, Kay, despite him being rather cold and inconsistent and just a little bit cruel. When he is spirited away in the night by …

The Bear and the Nightingale – Katherine Arden

"It was late winter in northern Rus', the air sullen with wet that was neither rain nor snow." Deep in rural Rus(sia) - some 200 years before the rise of Ivan the Terrible - Vasilisa is the youngest child of the local lord, allowed to run somewhat wild after her mother dies in childbirth. Life is hard …

The Seventh Bride – T. Kingfisher

"Her name was Rhea." Re-tellings and re-imaginings of fairy tales have been all the rage for quite a while now, and to be honest, if you're feeling a little bored of all that then I don't blame you. But perhaps you could put that aside for just a few minutes, and consider T.Kingfisher - the pseudonym for …