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Spring is in the air in the Northern Hemisphere, and The Fairy Tale Magazine  has a roundup of garden and fairy inspired novels to plant the seeds of new life of your book shelf. Read on for book recommendations that will bring light and color to your early spring days! No spring reading list is complete without The Secret Garden , the classic novel about three children who restore a garden and heal a family. Frances Hodgson Burnett’s heartwarming tale has been turned into a movie and a musical, and it remains a centerpiece of Children’s Literature. Garden Spells ,  by Sarah Addison Allen, tells the story of the Waverly family, a group of women with a luscious garden famous for its apple tree which bears prophetic fruit. This is the perfect book to read while you sit in the sun and watch your own garden grow. Hawthorn trees are at the center of Melissa Harrison’s novel At Hawthorn Time , a heartbreaking exploration of love and loss. Set during a spring month when the Hawthorn trees in rural England bloom, this novel explores the way that modern people try to find belonging in the natural landscape. Something in the Woods Loves You  is a poetic memoir by Jarod K. Anderson, a poet who uses the comforts of nature to heal his own depression. This book is a love letter to the natural world sure to be enjoyed by readers of books like Braiding Sweetgrass . If you would like to learn more about the healing properties of springtime flowers and plants give The Sacred Herbs of Spring: Magical, Healing, and Edible Plants to Celebrate Beltane  a try. Ellen Evert Hopman explores how to identify, harvest, and use earth’s bounty to commemorate the coming of spring and summer. House of Roots and Ruin  by Erin A. Craig continues the story of the Thaumas sisters (from House of Salt and Sorrows ) with an emphasis on the beautiful and poisonous plants that grow in a lush fairy tale landscape. This beautifully written book is a unique retelling of Bluebeard with gorgeous spring vibes, and is sure to enchant those who love gardening and fairy tales. You can read my review here . Faeries are synonymous with springtime, and Hazel Gaynor’s The Cottingley Secret  explores what happens when a young girl becomes fascinated with Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, the children who claimed to photograph fairies in 1917. This is a beautifully written and researched book that will help you see the fairy world in a whole new light. If you want to delve even deeper into faerie lore, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries  by Heather Fawcett is the perfect way to invite the fair folk to your reading corner. This novel about a Cambridge professor finding love while compiling an encyclopaedia of faerie lore will enchant you!   Heather Fawcett also breathes new life into the classic spring story Anne of Green Gables  in her novel The Grace of Wild Things . A witch living in the middle of the woods takes the protagonist on as an apprentice, teaching her to find the beauty in nature, magic, and poetry. Review coming soon to The Fairy Tale Magazine ! Finally, no spring reading list is complete without Sarah J. Maas’ best selling novel A Court of Thorns and Roses , the Beauty and the Beast retelling that launches a series of five books about the world of the Fae. The novel takes place largely in The Spring Court, a fairy land filled with beautiful flowers and unseen dangers. Happy Spring! Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own,   Baseball Bard , Blue Heron Review , Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer,   Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly , The Chamber Magazine , The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . Her first novella, Selkie Moon , comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/ Cover Image from Pixabay

In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Aschenputtel , Cinderella’s father asks his daughter and step-daughters what kind of gift they would like from the fair. The step-sisters request “beautiful dresses,” “pearls,” and “jewels,” but Cinderella asks for “the first twig” that brushes against her father’s hat on his way home. Her father returns with a hazel twig which she plants on her mother’s grave, watering it with her tears until it grows into a tree. The birds that build their nests in the tree help Cinderella with her chores, and eventually, they gift her the dresses and shoes she needs to attend the Prince’s ball. A twig may seem like a strange request, but it turns out to be the very thing that rescues Cinderella from a life of drudgery, and the fact that the Grimms specify the twig comes from a hazel tree may help their readers unlock the deeper meanings of the fairy tale. Hazel trees have long been associated with wisdom. Their pliancy makes them excellent walking sticks, and forked hazel twigs are cherished by diviners who use them to locate water. The nuts produced by the tree can be sweetened with chocolate to create delicacies, and even the leaves, which are the first to appear in spring and the last to fall in autumn, hold sacred meaning. Several communities across Europe have planted hazel trees at their borders as a form of protection, using the trees’ magical properties to ward off evil spirits. Hazel Tree , Pixabay Cinderella’s hazel twig digs its roots deep into the dark earth, and, when the girl is ready to stop mourning her mother and return to a world beyond the hearth, it spreads its green leaves across the sky to throw silver and gold down on her. Cinderella knows that a simple hazel twig is far more valuable than jewels or dresses because a twig holds the transformative magic of spring deep within it. In my area of the world, March is a month of impending transformation. The landscape is still dull and leafless and the clouds are still gray and cold, but the scent of warm, bright days to come is in the air. March is a month when we should all take a cue from Cinderella, letting the tears of our compassion water the world while we wait for spring’s arrival. Soon the barren twigs which scratch the skies will burst into beautiful bloom, their buds and berries outshining the most precious pearls in the kingdom’s coffers, their trailing leaves more beautiful than gowns of green and gold. Cinderella Praying to her Mother's Spirit , Children's Book Illustration The Brothers Grimm find the happily-ever-after of their Cinderella  story in the protagonist’s humble request for a hazel twig. In reminding us that we are all a part of nature’s cycles, and in teaching us to remain patient and compassionate, Cinderella and her hazel twig promise us that the grief and loneliness of winter will always transform into the joys of spring. Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own,   Baseball Bard , Blue Heron Review , Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer,   Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly , The Chamber Magazine , The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . Her first novella, Selkie Moon , comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

Shveta Thakrar returns readers to the Night Market in her luscious new Young Adult release Divining the Leaves . The novel follows Ridhi Kapadia, a young girl struggling to find her place in the contemporary world. Ridhi would rather spend time hugging trees and wandering the forests than auditioning for the dance team and making friends. She has always yearned to become a Yakshini, and she delights in crafting perfumes based on her interaction with the natural world. Ridhi tells stories with her scents, but her teenage peers find her behaviors strange. When her family agrees to give shelter to a popular but troubled teen struggling with his own family's breakdown, Ridhi’s home becomes yet another place of conflict and isolation, driving her further into the magical forest realm. The boy who comes to live with the Kapadias, Nilesh, finds his way into the forest as well, following a beautiful but potentially deadly being through the portal that divides the worlds. Nilesh becomes fascinated with the Night Market, the haunting fair where Ridhi hopes to sell her perfumes. Ridhi and Nilesh are at odds with one another throughout most of the book, but when Nilesh winds up trapped in the realm of the Yakshini, Ridhi must devise safe passage to help him find his way back to the human world. Divining the Leaves  is full of cultural stories and mythological enchantment, and readers interested in learning about Indian fairy tale and folklore will adore the book. The plot oscillates between real-world teen troubles and the dangers posed by magical places. Young love, family fractures, and the struggle to fit in with friends all sit side by side with enchanted transformations and the political turmoil of a faerie world. Each section of Divining the Leaves is prefaced by a story from The Tales that Trees Tell , and readers will enjoy the skill with which Thakrar weaves Indian mythology into contemporary teen life. Divining the Leaves  lifts the veil between our world and the world of magic, inviting readers to taste spring, smell stories, and listen to the meaningful rustle of forest trees. Like phyllomancy, the divining skill that Ridhi strives to perfect in the novel, Thakrar’s haunting prose and heartwarming story must be experienced firsthand, and readers will come away from the book transformed. Divining the Leaves  is a beautifully written stand-alone novel that is the third installment (following Star Daughter and The Dream Runners ) in Thakrar's Night Market Triptych, and it will leave you searching the tree line to find the mystical world beyond our own. I loved it! You can find Divining the Leaves   here , and you can watch my “Author Talk” with Shveta Thakrar on The Fairy Tale Magazine ’s new YouTube channel here . Subscribe today! Thank you to HarperCollins for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own,   Baseball Bard , Blue Heron Review , Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer,   Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly , The Chamber Magazine , The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . Her first novella, Selkie Moon , comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

Can you imagine how profoundly dark the night must have been for Cinderella? There probably was almost no light pollution. For Cinderella, sleeping in ashes and mucking around the kitchen at night with nothing but a rush light was likely scary, but total darkness when I’m trying to sleep is my idea of actual heaven. More relevant to this post is that Cinderella didn’t have to contend with the radiant, silent killer: Daylight Savings Time (DST). How do I loathe it? Let me count the ways. First, it steals an hour of everyone’s life, as it did yesterday. It’s so disorienting. Back when I was teaching, inevitably, some students would miss a Monday class because they forgot to “spring forward.” They’d also forget assignments, and they were always groggy, but I never penalized them for that, because I was too. Next, DST makes me irritable. This is partially my fault, because we built a house absolutely littered with windows, and there are no trees right by the house. (I had an aesthetic vision that would not be denied.) The accumulation of light in the house makes me wakeful well into the night. Yes, the amount of light you face all day and into the evening can make you extra wakeful. Seeing all that light all makes me worry about how my night will be, which makes me petty and grumpy.  DST is bad for everyone’s health. Yes, really. Reader, I give you a post  from Johns Hopkins University on the evils of DST. Do your further googling; it’s genuinely unhealthy to have DST. Finally, from March to November, my already wrecked sleep gets so much worse. Over the years, doctors have treated me to extended rants on how much they hate Daylight Savings Time, because chronic insomnia is linked to heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. Not gonna lie, the angry doctors give me a sense of justice: medicine is on my side. But this year, I’ve turned the tables on the DST, for I have found the holy grail of blackout curtains. I’ve tried other kinds by the dozens over the years, but always, always, ended up letting a lot of light in. (Those slivers of light around the edges of bad blackout curtains are especially annoying.) Enter, UBlockout . I swear to you, these roller shades will make your bedroom as dark as a cave even when it’s high noon on a sunny July day. They come with a frame, so no sunny edges peek out. Yesterday morning, when I woke up and went into the bathroom, which does not have UBlockout shades, it was like Dorothy opening the door to Munchkin Land. So searingly bright! The shades work, so, so well. Sadly, I cannot use the UBlockout shades on all of my windows, because I have so many, it would ruin the appeal of the house. It would also look like meth cooks or serial killers live here—too many blank windows are unsettling and suspicious. Despite all the evidence that DST is terrible, I know we’re stuck with it because people who love that extra hour are more vociferous than those who don’t. But my shades give me a bit more sleep, and like Cinderella, I know how to appreciate an opportunity to improve my life. 💤🤩💤 Kate Wolford was the publisher and editor of The Fairy Tale Magazine  for many years. She’s now enjoying being Resident Fairy Godmother. Image from Pixabay

Image by Ghinzo on Pixabay Dear Enchanted Friends:  We received many outstanding submissions for the Sleeping Beauty issue. There were well over one hundred submissions and the competition at the very top was fierce. Many of the chosen pieces reside in the liminal, magic world of fairy tale, with a couple of pieces cleverly weaving Sleeping Beauty motifs into contemporary thematic ideas.  Mark your calendars for our April 15 launch and sign up for our newsletter to be among the first to know when it’s available.  Guest Poetry Editor Sally Rosen Kindred, and all of us at  The Fairy Tale Magazine  are proud to list the following as the chosen authors: Jo Niederhoff Lynden Wade Jon Negroni Amy Trent Angela Regala KT Wagner Laura Matney Sergej Pavlović Deborah Sage  Rachel Ferriman  R. Haven  Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman Emily Kramer Kim Whysall-Hammond   Caitlin Gemmell  Robin Michel  Thomas R. Keith  Yukti Narang  They join our Contributing Writer Kelly Jarvis for our Sleeping Beauty issue who is bringing us an Enchanted Creator article about Jane Yolen, and a brief overview of the tales within this story realm in addition to contributing her own enchanting tale. If you are on this list and haven’t responded to my email, please do ASAP! Our next submission opportunity is the Fairy Tale Prose & Poetry Contest (fee based) May 15 - May 31 (midnight to midnight EST) . No theme requirements. For the contest: you may submit multiple works; each work must be accompanied by a $5 payment via PayPal.

If you are looking for a heart-pounding thrill of a novel, look no further than Ava Morgyn’s The Bane Witch ! Pitched as a Practical Magic  meets Gone Girl  narrative, Morgyn’s book will keep readers on the edge of their seats as they follow Piers Corbin, a young woman with a mysterious past, who fakes her own death and discovers a family she has never known. Piers rebrands herself as Acacia Lee to hide from her abusive husband. She then flees to a long-lost great-aunt living deep in the Adirondack Mountains. It is here that Piers learns she is from a long line of Bane Witches who possess magical powers. Bane Witches have curious cravings for poisonous plants, and although they have a natural resistance to the toxicity in the foliage, they can pass its harm along to others. Because of this, the Bane Witches are compelled to act as avengers and protectors, using their powers to prevent violent men from committing crimes and making them pay for their evil deeds. Although Piers first resists the call of her blood, she soon learns that the burden of being a Bane Witch also carries incredible power, and in the arms of her new family, she finds the strength and love that eluded her in her isolated childhood. “I planned my death the way I design a room,” Piers reveals in the novel’s opening line, explaining that a well-designed room and a well-designed death both feel accidental but never hapless. In The Bane Witch , Ava Morgyn proves that a well-designed book is the same, bringing her readers on an exciting and unpredictable journey while masterfully weaving the organic threads of her plot together. In addition to Piers’ discovery of her true nature and a hometown police officer’s hunt to investigate her mysterious disappearance, there is a serial killer on the loose, a found family to embrace, and a steamy romance with a mountain sheriff who is investigating a string of just poisonings caused by Piers and her aunt. Beneath the thrill of the plot and the lush descriptions of the settings and the poisonous plants that grow within them is an empowering tale of feminine revenge against the crimes of the past, present, and future. The Bane Witch  is the perfect read for those looking for an exciting but thought-provoking commentary on life, love, and the dark magic that provides justice. I couldn’t put it down! You can pre-order The Bane Witch   here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own,   Baseball Bard , Blue Heron Review , Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer,   Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly , The Chamber Magazine , The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . Her first novella, Selkie Moon , comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

Has it been hard for you to be upbeat lately? It seems that many of my friends and family members are struggling to stay positive. I, too, have found it difficult to be hopeful. The whirlwind of constant news is very hard to escape, and I have ongoing health problems that are plaguing me. Nothing too serious individually, just a whole lot of chronic things that make life harder.  I think we’re all in for a long-haul anxiety experience worldwide, and I’ve come up with some tricks to battle bad vibes and sad feelings. (Can you imagine how many stratagems and hacks Cinderella had to come up with just to get through any given day? The cooking, the cleaning, the bowing, the scraping—she must have had constant turmoil.) My favorite trick is one I started in mid-2016, when it dawned on me that life in the US was about to be unpredictable, so I started meditating. I’ve done so every single day since then, except the day my grandson Ben was born. Here’s my advice to every single person out there who is feeling overwhelmed: Do something meditative every day.  Meditative activities include knitting, crocheting, hand sewing, chopping vegetables, walking or running while focusing on your body, kneading bread dough, staring at a lit candle, and doing yoga. Just 10 minutes a day of any of these activities will clear your mind. Next, if you are consuming more than 60 minutes of news a day, please stop—unless you are one of those magically protected, chill people who isn’t filled with anxiety when awash in current events. You will not be a bad citizen if you don’t know every single thing that happens the moment it happens.  Just. Stop. Consuming. So. Much. News. Here’s my nicest trick: Every morning before I get out of bed, I think of three things to look forward to during the day. Mine usually include things like a great book I plan to read that day, some tasty treats I can enjoy, and an episode of great TV I’m looking forward to. Really simple stuff. When I’m very down and can’t think of a single thing special about the day before me, I think of three things that are good in my life in general, like how lucky we are not to have a mortgage or how happy my husband I are to watch TV with the dog at night or how much I love our grandchildren. Simple stuff, but it’s a powerful exercise. If you are overwhelmed these days (and who isn’t?) I hope you’ll find some enchanted rest in my suggestions. Kate Wolford was the publisher and editor of The Fairy Tale Magazine  for many years. She’s now enjoying being Resident Fairy Godmother. Image from Pixabay

Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli has been the newest book in my reading lineup of fairy tale inspired romantasy. The folklore history of witch hunters and witches is long and fraught and I absolutely feel as though this book represented those tales perfectly. Following a revolution that turned the witches of her kingdom from rulers into hunted, Rune Winters works as a vigilante “Crimson Moth” saving the witches of her kingdom from execution. When Gideon Sharpe, the best witch hunter in the kingdom is sent to kill the Crimson Moth, Rune seeks him out to discover just how much he knows. In their pursuits, the lives of Rune and Gideon are inexplicably intertwined and they find themselves falling for one another even as Rune is keeping a deadly secret.  Rune and Gideon’s relationship is tension-filled and will tug at the heartstrings of any reader. We only want the best for them, but the structure of their society and the hatred between witches and civilians comes between them time and time again. Fans of Uprooted, Red Queen, and Six of Crows will devour this book. The world building is slow and precise, but not excessive and really adds to the tension of the novel. Now is a better time than ever to read this book, as the second book, Rebel Witch, will be released in February to continue the story! You can find Heartless Hunter here . Madeline Mertz is a graduate student at Truman State University in English and Education, having received her BA in Creative Writing. She works as a teacher, managing editor, and literary agent intern. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, reading, writing, and eating anything with copious amounts of sugar in it. Her work has appeared in journals such  Three Elements Literary Journal, Tomahawk Review,  and  The Fairy Tale Magazine.

I hope Cinderella had plenty of chickens to feed and keep her company. Chickens do have personalities; friends who raise them have sworn to me that they do, and Google concurs. Plus, eggs would have enriched Cinderella’s diet, cholesterol be damned. I was always skeptical of the decades-long campaign of “just say no” to eggs. Remember that idiotic ad about drugs where they cracked an egg in a hot, oily frying pan, and said it was your brain on drugs? I still see that as just another attempt to demonize the truly noble chicken egg. I blame you, Big Cholesterol. Thank goodness that the science began to change again on eggs about 10 years ago—not that I ever followed it anyway. Eggs are nutritious and delicious! I hope Cinderella scrambled them with abandon to keep up her strength. Sadly, as you no doubt know if you live in the US, we have an egg shortage, largely due to avian flu and transportation issues. You may also be aware that there are people who, in 2024, based the entire future of the United States of America on the price of eggs, so they are indeed important. They have become America’s caviar of the chicken coop, as prices have continued to rise. To me, the $5.47 we paid yesterday for 12 eggs was still a pretty good deal. I figure Todd and I can use them as the basis of two hearty dinners. One will be brinner (breakfast for dinner). The other will be a frittata filled with whatever vegetables I have lying around. Both of these meals will cost less than $5 each for both of us to eat, which is still very, very cheap.  You may be thinking that Todd and I are only two people, what about the cost of a family of four—two adults and two kids? Todd proudly eats the equivalent of an adult and two children, I assure you. My math stays the same. Eggs are not leaving our diet, even if the price doubles, and I imagine I’m not alone. I do, however, recognize that the higher cost of eggs may remove a very important and nutritious element from the tables of low-income families, so those of us who can afford an extra dozen should donate them to a food bank. Most food banks will accept clean eggs in good condition. Eggs are a foundational part of good eating the world over, they contain protein and vitamins and should I ever decide to become a vegetarian (a real possibility), they’ll be an even bigger part of my diet. If I have cheese, eggs and milk along with beans, vegetables, pasta and rice, I can eat as well as Cinderella’s mother-in-law, presumably a real queen. Crack ‘em open and fry ‘em up, and you too, can live a fairy tale at the dinner table. Kate Wolford was the publisher and editor of The Fairy Tale Magazine  for many years. She’s now enjoying being Resident Fairy Godmother. Image from Pixabay

In her new dark historical fantasy, Upon a Starlit Tide , Kell Woods delights readers with a scintillating love story that rewrites classic fairy tales like The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and Bluebeard. Woods’ novel takes place on Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1785, where Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of a wealthy merchant and a noble woman, rescues a drowning man from the sea. When it is revealed that the sailor, Morgan, is the youngest son of another wealthy ship-owning family, Luce and her sisters begin dreaming of wedding bells, and their mother commissions dresses for each of them in anticipation of a grand ball celebrating Morgan’s survival. Although Luce is drawn to the dashing young sailor whose charm hides a dark past, she is also smitten with her best friend Samuel, an English smuggler who taught her to sail. The relationships between the wealthy families and between Luce and Samuel play out in the shadow of war on the high seas, and romance and danger intertwine themselves seamlessly as Woods spins her tale. Those who love the folklore of the sea will adore Upon a Starlit Tide . Woods captures the ocean’s natural beauty and creates a world where humans and Fae live side by side. In the novel, Saint-Malo has been built of storm stone, a protective ballast made by the Fae residents which includes korrigans, water sprites, washer-women, sea hags, and sea maids. Luce has a strange connection to these creatures who are just as likely to grant wishes as they are to cause mischief, and her skin tingles whenever storm stone, now a rare and valued commodity because it can protect ships and sailors at sea, is near. The past haunts this Gothic Tale as the ghosts of drowned sailors walk the beaches at night searching for retribution. Even Luce must uncover the sorted secrets of her childhood to help her make difficult decisions about her future. Upon a Starlit Tide  forces readers to confront the magic that lurks just beneath the surface as they read a story that is impossible to put down. In addition to her kind and adventurous personality, Luce has a talent for music, releasing tunes into the air rather than simply playing the notes, and Luce’s natural talent for music is evocative of Wood’s writing ability. Woods has a way of releasing characters, settings, symbols, and themes into the air, letting multiple storylines churn before they come together like a rising tide. Her lush descriptions of silk dresses and masquerade balls complement her beautiful explorations of the coastline and sea, and her romantic interludes harmonize with touching explorations of family relationships. If you are a fan of Gothic tales, family mysteries, romantic unions, ocean legends, or ancient fairy tales retold in innovative new ways, you must read this book. I loved it! You can pre-order the book here , and you can sign up to receive my exclusive, upcoming interview with Kell Woods here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis is the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her work has also been featured in A Moon of One’s Own,   Baseball Bard , Blue Heron Review , Corvid Queen, Eternal Haunted Summer,   Forget Me Not Press, Mermaids Monthly , The Chamber Magazine , The Magic of Us, and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers . Her first novella, Selkie Moon , comes out in 2025. You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

I like to imagine Cinderella curled up by a dying fire, reading every word she can before she drops off to sleep. The way I see it, books would have given her the imagination to believe in her fairy godmother enough to take the magical gifts and go to the ball. Books get me through tough times, easy times, sad and happy times. Books have been a through line in my life since early childhood. They are my number one love that isn’t a human or a pet. They’ve gotten me through illness, heartbreak, anxiety and boredom. Books broaden my mind and expose me to ideas that soothe my soul. I’d like to think that lonely Cinderella had the same consolation. January is always a big reading month for me. I just ignore the cold weather and keep turning the page. But this past week has been particularly rough. I think however you voted, the speed with which life is about to change in the US is startling. Coping through reading has been especially effective over the last couple of months. I shut the world out and sink into someone else’s fantastically detailed dream committed to paper. (It has to be paper. I’ve given up on Kindle. I don’t remember anything I read on Kindle.) I’ve probably read 20 books in the last couple of months, but only a couple have really stood out. One of the books I read changed the way I see the world, so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s Never Let Me Go , by Kazuo Ishiguro. Many of you may have already read it, as it is a very famous book, and it’s been out a while. In fact, a lot of people think that Never Let Me Go  (NLMG) is the book that won Ishiguro the Nobel Prize in 2017. Ishiguro’s prose is so direct and spare in NLMG that the reader barely knows that anything is happening. At first, you just think you are reading the thoughts and memories of a not especially special girl who went to a special boarding school in the UK. I found it just readable enough to keep going. Yet ever so slowly, I began to sense that there was something very odd about the school and the kids. The prose in the book is deceptively simple. It’s the work of a complete master—a master who uses clarity and simplicity to change the reader from one way to another. I don’t want to tell you any more if you’ve never read NLMG. It’s a slim book, and it’s best to go into blind. But I will tell you this: I was sobbing by the end. Sobbing at 2:30 AM, not caring that I’d never sleep that night. I was sad, for sure, but I also felt like my ideas of what it means to be human were bigger than they’d ever been. I still feel like it made me a slightly different and better person. I generally avoid sad books, but not if they make me more fully understand my own humanity and that of others. I also avoid sci-fi books. They just aren’t my thing. But NLMG is set in the UK of the recent past, and it’s really not about sci-fi. It’s about the person reading the book and how they experience being alive on this beautiful, difficult planet. Never Let Me Go  tore me up, but made me stronger. It helped make me feel a bit more equal to navigate the changes that are coming. Strangely enough, it also made me happier, because it made me feel my humanity and the humanity of others more keenly. It changed me as surely as the fairy godmother changed Cinderella. Kate Wolford was the publisher and editor of The Fairy Tale Magazine  for many years. She’s now enjoying being Resident Fairy Godmother.

The Book of Night by Holly Black takes a new approach to the classic tale of Pan and his shadow. It’s quick, dark, and full of murder, mystery, and intrigue. In short, everything good from a new look at an old fairy tale.  Charlie Hall, reformed thief and talented bartender is happy in her new chaos-free life with her boring boyfriend Vince and her psychic sister. Unfortunately, she lives in a world where shadow magic runs rampant, and gloamists, those that can alter their shadows, have all of the power and influence. When she witnesses the scene of a murder after a harrowing night at the bar, she is forced to dive back into her work as a thief and con artist to protect her sister. As secrets come to light and shadows fill every alley, it appears that her boring boyfriend is absolutely not what he seems and she must work with him to stand off against an old enemy even as her new life is falling to pieces.  I was on the edge of my seat throughout the entirety of this book. The shadow magic systems of this world are fascinating and really add something new to the magic systems of romantasy as a whole. Fans of Cinder, Cruel Prince, and Once Upon A Time will fall in love with this book, as it’s the perfect choice for a cozy winter read. You can find the book here . Madeline Mertz is a graduate student at Truman State University in English and Education, having received her BA in Creative Writing. She works as a teacher, managing editor, and literary agent intern. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, reading, writing, and eating anything with copious amounts of sugar in it. Her work has appeared in journals such  Three Elements Literary Journal, Tomahawk Review,  and  The Fairy Tale Magazine.