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Joan Aiken - published April 2016

April 2016: trade cloth · 256 pages · $24 · 9781618731128 | ebook · 9781618731135

November 2017: trade paper · $16 · 9781618731449

New: LeVar Burton reads Joan Aiken!

This week on #LeVarBurtonReads we travel to England for a fanciful Victorian Gothic tale by Joan Aiken, FURRY NIGHT, from her collection THE PEOPLE IN THE CASTLE@smallbeerpress.#bydhttmwfihttps://t.co/QoJ423l2tL — LeVar Burton (@levarburton) February 20, 2018

Apple Podcasts link · Stitcher link

Washington Post Notable Book

Read the introduction and title story on Tin House.

Here is the whisper in the night, the creak upstairs, that half-remembered ghost story that won’t let you sleep, the sound that raises gooseflesh, the wish you’d checked the lock on the door before it got really, really dark. Here are tales of suspense and the supernatural that will chill, amuse, and exhilarate.

“The particular joys of a Joan Aiken story have always been her capacity for this kind of brisk invention; her ear for dialect; her characters and their idiosyncrasies. Among the stories collected in this omnibus, are some of the very first Joan Aiken stories that I ever fell in love with, starting with the title story “The People in the Castle,” which is a variation on the classic tales of fairy wives.”

— Kelly Link, from her Introduction

Reviews

“Renowned fabulist and children’s author Joan Aiken had a long and prolific career, and it’s easy to see why her career endured across decades. Her stories have a timeless feel, whether screwball romantic comedies about ghosts, or tales of confounded faerie royalty.”

— Joel Cunningham, B&N, The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Collections and Anthologies of 2016

“Though the late fantastical British writer is best known for her children’s literature, this short story collection, edited by Aiken’s daughter Lizza and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist Kelly Link, compiles tales of the surreal and supernatural suited for an adult audience. ‘A Leg Full of Rubies’ features a doctor whose own mortality is measured out by the grains of sand in an hourglass; ‘A Portable Elephant’ imagines a world where a live animal companion is required to buy passage across a border. ‘She was one of those writers who made me think you can be funny while telling a scary story,’ Link says. ‘You can still write really fresh contemporary takes on a classical ghost story.’”

—Ryan Porter, Toronto Star

“Renowned fabulist and children’s author Joan Aiken had a long and prolific career, and it’s easy to see why her career endured across decades. Her stories have a timeless feel, whether screwball romantic comedies about ghosts, or tales of confounded faerie royalty. If you’re an Aiken neophyte, this offers an amazing starting point, with stories running the gamut of fantasy, horror, comic fantasy, reimagined fairy tales, and legends. If you’ve experienced Aiken before, this is a selection of her best work. Either way, The People in the Castle is a great example of why her stories still hold up.”

Standout stories: “Sonata for Harp and Bicycle” “Some Music for the Wicked Countess”

— Barnes & Noble: 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

“[A] haunting and wondrous book.”

— Emily Nordling, Tor.com

“For readers unfamiliar with Aiken’s work, its ice-and-stars clarity, naturalism, and unerring dialogue can be described as hypnotic. . . . Aiken was a lifelong fan of ghost stories by M.R. James, Henry James, Nugent Barker and similar others, and her textured prose certainly evokes dread and the uncanny, but there is a third aspect that can only be called “glamour” or enchantment. Easy comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Bradbury have been made, and Aiken’s fabulism (at least in my opinion) is of equal caliber, but less claustrophobic.”

— See the Elephant

“If you’re looking for speculative short fiction of a decided literary bent, it’s hard to imagine a more satisfying source than this assembly of fantastical work by the peerless, prolific Joan Aiken (who died in 2004), assembled from across her storied career. The magical and the everyday collide in these short, evocative tales, which, in marvelously efficient, elegant prose, find unsettling strangeness lurking just around the corner from normal (the ghost of a puppy is trapped in an abandoned storage box, fairy queen squat in overgrown forests). A slim, seriously moving collection.”

— Joel Cunningham, B&N SF&F

“Joan Aiken has been a favorite of mine since my childhood reading of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, a book that has stuck with me for decades. This collection is wonderful, full of undiscovered gems, and important. Joan Aiken is a classic.”

— Susan Buchman, Stonington Free Library

“A welcome anthology of fantasy stories by a 20th-century master. The author of the beloved classic gothic for children The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Aiken (1924-2004) also wrote hundreds of works of popular fiction that spanned the genres, from fantasy to horror to historical fiction, including several Jane Austen sequels. Naturally the tone of her books and short stories varies with their content, but its main notes include sophisticated, spritely satire and the darker moods of literary fairy tales. Fans of Wolves will recognize the honorable orphans and cruel guardians who populate these tales. Typically the wicked meet with fitting fates and the innocent triumph, though for Aiken, a good death counts as a happy ending. She plays with the contrast between the eldritch and modern culture and technology: ghosts and dead kings out of legend who contact the living by telephone, a doctor who writes prescriptions for fairies, a fairy princess who’s fond of Westerns. Her metaphors and similes surprise and delight: “the August night was as gentle and full as a bucket of new milk”; “He was tall and pale, with a bony righteous face and eyes like faded olives”; across a field, “lambs [followed] their mothers like iron filings drawn to a magnet in regular converging lines.” Sprightly but brooding, with well-defined plots, twists, and punch lines, these stories deserve a place on the shelf with the fantasies of Saki (H.H. Munro), Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Susanna Clarke.”

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“There’s so much to love about this slender collection… The juxtaposition of mundane and magical…feels effortless and fresh. The language is simply splendid, so evocative, as though the stories were actually very dense poems. And it brilliantly showcases Aiken’s affectionate, humorous, deft portrayals of female characters… Aiken’s prose is extraordinary, impossible to do justice to in this small space. Her skill with the language of folk tales—specifically the oral storytelling native to the British Isles—is unparalleled… These stories both feel very 20th century and somehow timeless.”

— Publishers Weekly, Boxed, signed review by Rose Fox, Senior Reviews Editor

Table of Contents

Introduction by Kelly Link [read it on Tin House]

“The Power of Storytelling: Joan Aiken’s Strange Stories” by Lizza Aiken

Cold Flame

The Dark Streets of Kimball’s Green

Furry Night

Hope

Humblepuppy

The Lame King

The Last Specimen

A Leg Full of Rubies

Listening

Lob’s Girl

The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick

The Mysterious Barricades [read it on Lit Hub]

Old Fillikin

The People in the Castle [read it on Tin House]

A Portable Elephant

A Room Full of Leaves

She Was Afraid of Upstairs

Some Music for the Wicked Countess

Sonata for Harp and Bicycle

Watkyn, Comma

Joan Aiken (1924–2004) was born in Rye, Sussex, England, into a literary family: her father was the poet and writer Conrad Aiken and her siblings, the novelists Jane Aiken Hodge and John Aiken. After her parents’ divorce her mother married the popular English writer Martin Armstrong.

Aiken began writing at the age of five and her first collection of stories, All You’ve Ever Wanted was published in 1953. After her first husband’s death, Aiken supported her family by copyediting at Argosy and working at an advertising agency before turning to writing fiction full time. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Women’s Own, and many other magazines.

She wrote over a hundred books and was perhaps best known for the dozen novels in The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series. She received the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards for fiction and in 1999 she was awarded an MBE.

Cover art “The Castle in the Air” by Joan Aikman, 1939. © Blue Lantern Studio/Corbis

Praise for Joan Aiken’s stories:

“Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising, this collection-like the mermaid in a bottle-is a literary treasure that should be cherished by fantastical fiction fans of all ages.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Darkly whimsical stories…Aiken writes with surpassing spirit and alertness, her elegant restraint and dry wit never fail to leave their mark.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Each story has a surprise or twist. Many are ironic, go-figure pieces. They are just like real life, only more so. VERDICT: This book will appeal to readers of short stories and literary fiction. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal

“Aiken’s pastoral meadows and circus chaos, gothic grotesques and quirky romances… have a dream-like quality executed with a brevity and wit that is a testament to her skill as a story-teller.” — California Literary Review

“From a bottled mermaid brought home from a sailor’s adventures at sea to a vicar reincarnated as a malevolent cat, fantasy is combined with magic, myth and adventure to form weird, wonderful and immersive tales.” — For Book’s Sake

Best known for The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken (1924-2004) wrote over a hundred books and won the Guardian and Edgar Allan Poe awards. After her first husband’s death, she supported her family by copyediting at Argosy magazine and an advertising agency before turning to fiction. She went on to write for Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Vanity Fair, Argosy, Women’s Own, and many others. Visit her online at: www.joanaiken.com | The People in the Castle.

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