Magic for Beginners

Random House re-released Magic for Beginners with a newly designed cover and an added conversation between Joe Hill and Kelly Link.

Perfect for readers of George Saunders, Karen Russell, Neil Gaiman, and Aimee Bender, Magic for Beginners is an exquisite, dreamlike dispatch from a virtuoso storyteller who can do seemingly anything. Kelly Link reconstructs modern life through an intoxicating prism, conjuring up unforgettable worlds with humor and humanity. These stories are at once ingenious and deeply moving. They leave the reader astonished and exhilarated.

Kelly Link’s engaging and funny second collection — call it kitchen-sink magical realism — riffs on haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, superheroes, marriage, and cannons — and includes several new stories. Link is an original voice: no one else writes quite like this.

Best of the Decade: Salon, The Onion, The Village Voice, HTML Giant.

Locus Award winner. Young Lions Award, Bram Stoker, and World Fantasy Finalist. Story Prize recommended reading list.

“Link’s stories … play in a place few writers go, a netherworld between literature and fantasy, Alice Munro and J.K. Rowling, and Link finds truths there that most authors wouldn’t dare touch.”

— Time Magazine

“The dream-logic of Magic for Beginners is intoxicating. These stories will come alive, put on zoot suits, and wrestle you to the ground. They want you and you will be theirs.”

— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

Each story is illustrated by cover artist Shelley Jackson. The cover is modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine.”

Stories from Magic for Beginners have been published in McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Conjunctions, The Dark, and One Story. “Stone Animals” was selected for The Best American Short Stories: 2005.

Hardcover edition.

Table of Contents

The Faery Handbag The Hortlak The Cannon Stone Animals Catskin Some Zombie Contingency Plans The Great Divorce Magic for Beginners Lull.

For publicity inquiries

Please contact Maria Braeckel at Random House:

[email protected]

Magic for Beginners around the world:

In Spain:

Magia para lectores Kelly Link Una joven autora inédita en España cuyos originales relatos mezclan realidad y fantasía y entusiasmarán tanto al lector más joven ávido de libros diferentes como al más literario y exigente.

In Japan.