Newford Stories: The Blue Fiddle

The fiddle Staley Cross' grandmother gave her plays a calling on music that opens doors into the otherworld. Sometimes it allows beings to step out of our world, sometimes the music lets them step in. But it makes no allowance for the danger such actions can bring, or how it can put the fiddler's soul in jeopardy.

These stories were previously published. "Seven for a Secret" is also available in Moonlight & Vines; "Ten for the Devil" in Tapping the Dream Tree.

"Nobody does urban fantasy better than Charles de Lint. He has a gift for creating engaging, fully realized characters, totally believable dialogue, and a feeling that magic is just around the corner … He can make you believe 'as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' " 

—Amazon.com Editorial Review

"De Lint's elegant prose and effective storytelling continue to transform the mundane into the magical at every turn. Highly recommended."

—Library Journal, Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. 

"In many hands, the urban fantasy plot involving strange beings just around the corner fails dismally. It does not in the hands of the reliable, the inimitable de Lint … 

—Booklist

" de Lint…clearly has no equal as an urban fantasist and very few equals among fantasists as a folklorist."

—Booklist

Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better.

— Alice Hoffman

Charles de Lint writes like a magician.  He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them.  He is, simply put, the best.

— Holly Black

Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts.  Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans.  Perhaps it's just damned fine writing. 

—Quill & Quire