The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

Angela Slatter's collection of thirteen tales is set in a dark fairy-tale world of witches, nobles, poisoners, stepparents and common folk, where sorcery is real and grudges last for generations. A woman plans her next commission after being snubbed at a burial, a wronged lover turns her nightmares into a curse, and an academy trains girls to take revenge on the families that harmed their ancestors. Small references tie the stories together, so that people and events from one surface in another and the pieces slowly form a shared history of the same troubled land. The book includes dozens of illustrations by Kathleen Jennings and won the World Fantasy Award for best collection. It is written for adult readers who like their fairy tales somber.