Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories - Softcover

Nethercott, GennaRose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593314182 ISBN 13: 9780593314180

Publisher: Vintage, 2024

Synopsis

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong.

“Real magic, real delight, doled out generously in the shape of wistful, ferocious, this-world-but-better stories.”—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog

The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the hunger to be held, and seen, and known. And the terror, too: to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be recognized as the monstrous thing you are.

Two teenage girls working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A zombie rooster plays detective in a missing persons case. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend—and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. A pack of middle schoolers turn to the occult to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. And a pair of outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end.

In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.

About this title

About the Author

GENNAROSE NETHERCOTT is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, and a book-length poem, The Lumberjack’s Dove, which was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and helps create the podcast Lore. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593314182
• ISBN 13: 9780593314180
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272