Magic for Beginners

By Kelly Link, Shelley Jackson (illustrator),

Book cover of Magic for Beginners

Book description

Best of the Decade: Salon, The A.V. Club "If I had to pick the most powerfully original voice in fantasy today, it would be Kelly Link. Her stories begin in a world very much like our own, but then, following some mysterious alien geometry, they twist themselves into something fantastic…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Magic for Beginners as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Patrick Barb

Author

While trending more toward the fantasy side, then the previous picks on the list here, Link still manages to pull out some of the most unsettling moments in a short story that I’ve ever read.

When I finished her story “Some Zombie Contingency Plans,” I found myself immediately flipping back to the beginning of the story and reading it fresh. Link is masterful when it comes to weaving together narrative threads, playing literary sleight of hand. While the collection and one of the stories within are called “Magic for Beginners,” she’s very much an expert.

The cross-genre blending is very…

From Patrick's list on single-author weird and horrifying short stories.

Giselle Leeb

Author

After discovering Kelly Link in the Slipstream Anthology through her story, "The Specialist’s Hat", I wanted to read more. Magic for Beginners, her first collection, did not disappoint. Links’s imagination knows no bounds. She uses fantastical, sometimes whimsical, always surprising elements that mix fantasy with reality, and just when you think she’s reached the limits of imagination, she goes effortlessly forward to invent even more incredible layers. Her writing is wonderfully playful, with a sense of imaginative joy and a deeply knowledgeable foundation in fantasy, science fiction, and contemporary American culture.

From Giselle's list on genre-bending stories to fire your imagination.

Dead Hand

By Valerie Nieman,

Book cover of Dead Hand

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What is my book about?

Lourana and Darrick took down the dreaded coal barons in To the Bones, but it seems that the Kavanaghs aren’t done yet. The college-age son of Eamon Kavanagh has unexpectedly inherited not only the family’s business empire but the family itself: generations of Kavanagh men whose spirits persist and who have now taken up residence in Rory’s mind and body.

As Lourana and Darrick try to shape a life together, they are attacked by Eamon through Rory, and flee the life-sucking Kavanaghs across Appalachia and then, in desperation and hope, to Ireland. The reluctant Rory is urged onward in the…

Dead Hand

By Valerie Nieman,

What is this book about?

In this sequel to To the Bones, Lourana and Darrick have taken down Eamon Kavanagh, patriarch of the dreaded coal barons of Redbird, WV, but it seems that the family isn’t done yet. The college-age son Rory has unexpectedly inherited not only the family’s empire but the family itself: generations of Kavanagh men whose spirits persist and who have now taken up residence in Rory’s mind and body.
As Lourana and Darrick try to shape a life together, they are attacked by Eamon through Rory, and flee the life-sucking Kavanaghs across Appalachia and then, in desperation and hope, to Ireland.…

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