The Slantwise Histories

These tales tell a different truth:
slantwise and by starlight.

Award-winning and internationally bestselling author Alix E. Harrow delivers a fantastical collection of stories old and new: tales about tricksters and ghosts, ordinary magic and mundane spectacle, all in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton and Carmen Maria Machado.

Stretching from ancient battlefields to the American freeway’s neon-lit attractions, these stories are filled with tricksters, ghosts and ordinary magic. They honour the people caught in the jaws of history; women, workers, soldiers and mothers – everyone who’s been shoved into the margins of the world.

Whether exploring the airless, unchanging dark of an underworld, tracking werewolves through snow-crusted mountain passes or watching a steel mill grind a community into ash, these narratives dive into mysteries that might have been. But these tales aren’t tragedies. They are the triumphant stories of the ones who got away: the dissenters and rule-breakers who ran – and tossed a match behind them as they left.

This collection includes Alix’s acclaimed novelette The Six Deaths of the Saint and the Hugo-Award winning story that started her career, A Witch’s Guide to Escape.

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Praise for Alix E. Harrow:

‘This book has everything you could possibly want’
Reese Witherspoon on Starling House

‘Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent’
Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of Girl Dinner

‘A feat of the ages. An utter masterpiece . . . I loved every single page’
Rachel Gillig, New York Times bestselling author of One Dark Window, on The Everlasting

‘I was utterly trapped in its pages – and, now free, already long to return’
Caitlin Starling, Bram Stoker Award-winner and bestselling author of The Death of Jane Lawrence, on The Everlasting

‘No one writes about why we read quite like Alix E. Harrow’
Ava Reid, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Drowning