Into the Forest
Tales of the Baba Yaga
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
"Perfect for horror fans who can't get enough of folklore and fairy-tale retellings that veer in unexpected directions." –Booklist, STARRED Review
2023 Bram Stoker Awards® Nominee
2023 Silver Falchion Awards Winner
"Fans of folklore retellings will find plenty to enjoy." –Publishers Weekly
A collection of new and exclusive short stories inspired by the Baba Yaga. Featuring Gwendolyn Kiste, Stephanie M. Wytovich, Mercedes M. Yardley, Monique Snyman, Donna Lynch, Lisa Quigley, and R. J. Joseph, with a foreword by Christina Henry.
Deep in the dark forest, in a cottage that spins on birds' legs behind a fence topped with human skulls, lives the Baba Yaga. A guardian of the water of life, she lives with her sisters and takes to the skies in a giant mortar and pestle, creating tempests as she goes. Those who come across the Baba Yaga may find help, or hinderance, or horror. She is wild, she is woman, she is witch—and these are her tales.
Edited by Lindy Ryan, this collection brings together some of today's leading voices of women-in-horror as they pay tribute to the Baba Yaga, and go Into the Forest.
"Lyrical and brutal; each story unfolds hidden truths about the all-devouring witch. The stories in Into the Forest collect the guts and bones of some of the world's oldest witch tales and refashion them into something new, beautiful, and gruesome." –Foreword Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ryan (Throw Me to the Wolves, written with Christopher Brooks) brings together 23 dark, feminist fairy tales exploring the folkloric figure of Baba Yaga. The eerily cheerful tone of Gwendolyn Kiste's Stepford Wives–esque "Last Tour into the Hungering Moonlight" spirals into something more desperate and erratic as the housewives of an apparently perfect neighborhood succumb to Baba Yaga's pull. An unloved princess finds revenge and salvation through Baba Yaga in "Of Moonlight and Moss" by Sara Tantlinger, while the heroine of R.J. Joseph's "Where the Horizon Meets the Sky" joins the witch to escape her husband's ghost. In EV Knight's timely standout "Stork Bites," a young woman in need of an illegal abortion seeks out Baba Yaga. Many of these stories take place in the ambiguous, "long ago" era of fairy tales, but some—like Donna Lynch's "Flood Zone" and Jacqueline West's "Fair Trade"—transpose the legend into the present day. The least successful of these is "Baba Yaga Learns to Shave, Gets Her Period, Then Grows into Her Own" by Jess Hagemann, which lacks the eerie atmosphere that makes the other stories work. "Water Like Broken Glass" by Carina Bissett, meanwhile, delivers a wonderfully queer update to the tale against the backdrop of WWII. Fans of folklore retellings will find plenty to enjoy.
