Young Woman in a Garden

In her vivid and sly, gentle and wise long anticipated first collection, Delia Sherman takes seemingly insignificant moments in the lives of artists or sailors — the light out a window, the two strokes it takes to turn a small boat — and finds the ghosts haunting them, the magic surrounding them. Here are the lives that make up larger histories, here are tricksters and gardeners, faeries and musicians, all glittering and sparkling, finding beauty and hope and always unexpected, a touch of wild magic.

Praise for Sherman's previous books:

"Multilayered, compassionate and thought-provoking." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Fantastic in every sense of the word, Sherman's (Through a Brazen Mirror) second novel is a skillfully crafted fairy tale that owes as much to E.T.A. Hoffman as to Charles Perrault... The Porcelain Dove is no dainty vertu but a seductive, sinister bird with razored feathers." — Publishers Weekly

Contents:

• "Young Woman in a Garden"
• "The Ghost of Cwmlech Manor"
• "The Red Piano"
• "La Fée Verte"
• "Walpurgis Afternoon"
• "The Parwat Ruby"
• "The Fairy Cony-Catcher"
• "Sacred Harp"
• "The Printer’s Daughter"
• "Nanny Peters and the Feathery Bride"
• "Miss Carstairs and the Merman"
• "The Maid on the Shore"
• "The Fiddler of Bayou Teche"
• "Land’s End"