82 books like Jackal, Jackal

I really enjoyed this playful, ethereal, experimental collection of seventeen stories from prolific Tanzania-Australian author Eugen Bacon.

Her work often defies genre, spanning science fiction, horror, fantasy with a strong literary sensibility. These are poetic, evocative stories, about migration and displacement, about climate change and technology, about blackness and womanhood, about politics and community.

Adding up to more than just the sum of its parts, I could not help but be impressed. As a whole, with each story allowed to resonate with the other, it’s an excellent, inventive collection.

The late Nick Wood, a science fiction writer, clinical psychologist, former journalist, humanitarian, and anti-apartheid activist born in Zambia and raised in South Africa, was always learning.

This is reflected in all his writing, including most of the stories in his collection. Largely science fiction stories in a variety of settings: from post-apocalyptic worlds, settled moons, and climate-changed earths, these stories are highly focused on the social and environmental aspects of humanity even in the most science fictional scenarios.

These stories, intersectional, emotionally resonant, exciting, thoughtful, and varied. Learning Monkey and Crocodile is a wonderful way to sample some of South Africa’s interesting science fiction corpus from a voice that has now left us, but which will not be forgotten.

This collection by the gifted Nigerian author who excels at evoking a haunting sense of beauty with words, is sure to delight anyone that enjoys throwing themselves off a literary cliff to see words and images fly by like many-splendored birds.

These are stories that will transport you to changed versions of our world with exquisite prose. Familiar and not. Dark and beautiful and occasionally terrifying they run the gamut from dark fantasy to science fiction to cosmic horror. Often set in Nigeria and using, Yoruba mythology, folklore, and legends as jumping-off points this is an immersive and strange book that defies categorical taxonomy.

Vivid, colorful, and just downright beautiful to read, I was moved by this collection, and you probably will be too.

As a Zimbabwean sarungano, Ndlovu is an expert storyteller, and that skill truly shows in this collection of fourteen stories chronicling the strangeness and surrealism of the lives of African women at home and abroad.

Exploring everything from the legacy of colonization to cultural appropriation and from literalized metaphors to exploring the nature of time in African thought, this is a collection that is clever and funny and emotionally astute, rendered in poetic and clear prose.

As a collection, the stories reinforce each other making this an experience to read. I highly recommend it.

Retellings are some of my favorite fantasy stories as they rely on new, inventive ways to spin the same yarn. Little Thieves is a reimagining of the Goose Girl from the perspective of the original villain as our main character. Vanja is the goddaughter of Death and Fortune, two of the goddesses in a pantheon with deities who represent abstract concepts like Time and Justice. 

Vanja has spent her life conning and stealing like when she steals the identity of her former friend, Princess Giselle, and steals from the haughty nobles. She maintains these three identities by using magic pearls that change her appearance. But the story truly begins when Vanja is cursed to either return what she has stolen or be consumed by her greed.

I want to end with a book that showed me that parenting was perfect material for leaning into the surreal. Around the time I read it, the regular rhythm of my life included morning dropoffs at daycare and evening lice checks while my kids watched Power Rangers.

Opening up this story collection, I immediately found stories that took these experiences to fantastical places—like Spells, where a lice lady does her steady work for ashamed mothers as a strange spell takes over her own sons, or Wild Milk, where a mom’s experience with her son’s daycare provider becomes increasingly bizarre.

The entire collection gave me the confidence to surrender to the strangeness, both in my writing and with my kids.

I adored this book. I loved its clever fairy tale reimagining of Beauty and Beast set in 1940s Germany under the Third Reich. I enjoyed the transformation of this classic fairy tale into a historical novel that was rich in detail and unique characters and revealed much of the hidden voices of resistance within Germany during this time.

Forsyth is a fellow Australian fairytale, fantasy, and historical author who writes fantasy, history, fairy tale, and myth retellings reimagined into new settings that I find inspiring and the power of the fairy tale to be retold and made new and to endure. 

These stories run deep in my blood! I remember my Mum reading "Cinderella," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rapunzel," and "Snow White," to name a few, and being totally enthralled, captivated, and scared all at once.

Reading this edition as an adult evokes the same feelings, but I also experienced a sense of wonder and intrigue as I read the lesser-known stories such as "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers," "The Girl with No Hands," "The Nixie of the Millpond," and "Hans-my-Hedgehog." 

I loved discovering these stories, closer to the originally published ones in their first collection, Children's and Household Tales in 1812, as they are much darker and scarier in nature than modern versions, and reading what Philip Pullman says about each one is an unexpected delight!

Not the new, watered-down versions, mind you. The original, dark ones that you read now and think, “Who in their right mind would let a kid read this?”

These stories were insane, and I couldn’t get enough of them. And the thing about these stories is that they’re real. There are monsters living among us (we read about them in the news). There’s a reason to be cautious and aware of our surroundings. Life isn’t all sunshine and lollipops, and I think it’s not a bad idea to let kids know that bad things happen, but that children can be stronger than they think. After all, Hansel and Gretel sent the witch into the oven instead of themselves.  

A hauntingly beautiful anthology of five twisted fairytales that, to me, felt like stepping into a pastoral Twilight Zone and stayed in my mind for days after the final page. Carroll’s artwork is eerie and subtle, and the limited color palette turns scenes of the mundane into a visual nightmare.

The stories are well-paced and spooky, and in my opinion, best read during a dark summer thunderstorm.