There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby...Scary Fairy Tales

It was the cover & title, I'll admit, that first attracted me to There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and the stories themselves did not disappoint. Though the cover touts these as scary fairy tales the stories are broken up into more exact & interesting categories: Songs of the Eastern Slavs; Allegories; Requiems; and then come the Fairy Tales.

When the book was released at the beginning of the month, I realized it had been a while since had read the advanced reader copy the store had gotten. I browsed the first sentence of the first story, The Arm, & was transported back into the creepy & surreal world of Petrushevskaya.

I think the back of the book says it perfect, "Blending the miraculous with the macabre, and leavened by a mischievous gallows humor, these bewitching tales are like nothing being written in Russia—or anywhere else in the world—today."

These stories will surely delight anyone & are perfect for the upcoming Halloween. But really, any day is a good day for dark, scary tales...