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Table of Contents
About The Book
Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?
At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own: sold off as a child in marriage to a brutal baron, imprisonment, scandal. Despite the vicious Versailles gossip, Marie has mysteriously been allowed to return to polite society and establish her salon in the heart of Paris.
A devastating winter soon sweeps in, bringing with it all kinds of rumors and fears. A spate of poisonings at Versailles has led to several arrests, and no matter how high born the suspect, it seems no one is safe. Paranoia stokes the King’s insecurities, and there is a wolf among the salon’s members—someone more dangerous than any force they could conjure in their own tales, watching and waiting, reporting on the secret goings-on, and threatening to destroy them one by one.
Brilliant and bawdy, witty and wise, Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel of stories within stories, familiar tales spun with fresh and provocative meaning, perfect for fans of Jenny Offill, Deborah Levy, and Angela Carter.
Product Details
- Publisher: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster (July 23, 2024)
- Length: 272 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668049419
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Raves and Reviews
"Original, fantastical, historical, and unputdownable." —Karen Joy Fowler, Booker shortlisted author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“Elegant and decadent, vulgar and clever, enchanting and dark. The love child of Angel Carter and Anaïs Nin—the book I really, really needed.” —Sarah Perry, New York Times bestselling author of The Essex Serpent
“Funny, filthy, dancingly clever, The Modern Fairies is a delectable confection of many-layered pleasures. A story of stories, storytellers, and the lurking dangers of fairy tales, set against the lavish decadence of 1600s Versailles. I gobbled it all up.” —Joanna Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Whalebone Theatre
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