Short Stories/Novellas

Kelly Barnhill's Mrs. Sorenson and the Sasquatch , a Tor.com Original, is "a warmhearted tale."-- Locus When Mr. Sorensen - a drab, cipher of a man - passes away, his lovely widow falls in love with a most unsuitable mate. Enraged and scandalized (and armed with hot-dish and gossip and seven-layer bars), the Parish Council turns to the old priest to fix the situation - to convince Mrs. Sorensen to reject the green world and live as a widow ought. But the pretty widow has plans of her own. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

There were twenty magical children born that year. Nineteen, if you count the one that died. The Minister ordered that the nineteen children be shipped to the Tower to be worked and drained to nothing, and that the dead child be thrown on the rubbish heap, and never spoken of again. But the dead baby had other plans. When the half-drunk junk man witnesses the half-decayed corpse becoming a living, breathing, healthy baby, he knows at once that he must protect the child from the clutches of the Minister. Enlisting the help of the formidable egg woman and the sagacious constable, he manages to keep the existence of the child a secret. But children grow. And so does magic. And secrets long to be told.

Kelly Barnhill is a weirdo. I know this because she told me so, and because her stories of dreadful, terrible, passionate, immoderate, young women are undeniably the product of a weird imagination. I know many, many writers, and weirdness is endemic to the species. Whether the weirdness is a product of the writing, or vice versa, I don’t know. In any case, it’s not a glitch; it’s a feature. That weirdness manifests as a sort of hyper-developed peripheral vision: it enables a writer to see things that might not withstand direct scrutiny and bring them into startling focus — a literary circumvention of the physicists’ observer effect. Kelly Barnhill possesses this gift in abundance. She shows us things that are not real, but are nevertheless true; things that we know to be important even though they may not exist. To put it another way, she writes fairy tales. Fairy tales written in lush, insistent, dreamlike prose. Yarns that the Grimm brothers never dreamed. Some of her stories are written to be read by children, but all of her stories are for adults. This is one of those stories. - Pete Hautman About the Author: Kelly Barnhill lives in Minnesota with her husband and three children. She is the author of four novels, most recently The Girl Who Drank the Moon, winner of the Newbery Medal. The Witch’s Boy received four starred reviews and was a finalist for the Min­nesota Book Awards. Kelly Barnhill has been awarded writing fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the McKnight Foundation. Visit her online at kellybarnhill.wordpress.com or on Twitter: @kellybarnhill. About the Recommender: Pete Hautman is the author of several novels for young adults, including Rash, Invisible, and Godless, for which he won the 2004 National Book Award. Several of his books have received ALA Best Book for Young Adults citations. You can visit him at petehautman.com. About the Publisher: Electric Literature is an independent publisher amplifying the power of storytelling through digital innovation. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction. Recommended Reading is supported by the Amazon Literary Partnership, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. For other links from Electric Literature, follow us, or sign up for our eNewsletter.

Nebula Award nominee for Best Novella World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novella “If I had to nominate a worthy successor to Angela Carter, I would nominate Kelly Barnhill. "―Laura Ruby, two-time National Book Award finalist and author of Bone Gap "A slim little novella that packs a narrative punch more intense than that of many books ten times its length."― NPR Award-winning author Kelly Barnhill brings her singular talents to The Crane Husband , a raw, powerful story of love, sacrifice, and family. “Mothers fly away like migrating birds. This is why farmers have daughters. ” A fifteen-year-old teenager is the backbone of her small Midwestern family, budgeting the household finances and raising her younger brother while her mom, a talented artist, weaves beautiful tapestries. For six years, it’s been just the three of them―her mom has brought home guests at times, but none have ever stayed. Yet when her mom brings home a six-foot tall crane with a menacing air, the girl is powerless to prevent her mom letting the intruder into her heart, and her children’s lives. Utterly enchanted and numb to his sharp edges, her mom abandons the world around her to weave the masterpiece the crane demands. In this stunning contemporary retelling of “The Crane Wife” by the Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon , one fiercely pragmatic teen forced to grow up faster than was fair will do whatever it takes to protect her family―and change the story.