The Girl With No Hands

Angela Slatter is a brilliant, intelligent woman with a razor sharp wit and a seemingly inexhaustible ability to create stories which are at once  beautiful and devastating, complex and refined. She reminds me a little of Neil Gaiman: both these writers manage to tread the line between whimsy and poignancy with apparently effortless grace. Both are weavers of contemporary fables, modern fairy tales, and new mythologies — essentially, bedtime stories for grown ups.  (Of course, Angela does have much better hair. Sorry Neil.)

All of which means that the second collection Angela has slated for publication this year, The Girl With No Hands and Other Tales, is pretty damn high on the list of Books I Must Have. It’s available for pre-order right now from Ticonderoga Publications in two gorgeous editions: a trade paperback and a signed limited edition hardcover. There is only 100 of the latter available … er, that will be 99 once I put my order in.

You want this book. Trust me. You really, really want this book.

[Angela’s debut collection will be Sourdough and Other Stories, forthcoming from Tartarus Press in the UK. You’ll most definitely want to keep an eye out for that one as well.]