Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales

xi, 356 pp. The best writers of our generation retell classic tales. From Sir Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene to E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops," literature is filled with sexy, deadly, and downright twisted tales. In this collection, award-winning and bestselling authors reimagine their favorite classic stories, the ones that have inspired, awed, and enraged them, the ones that have become ingrained in modern culture, and the ones that have been too long overlooked. They take these stories and boil them down to their bones, and reassemble them for a new generation of readers. Written from a twenty-first century perspective and set within the realms of science fiction, dystopian fiction, fantasy, and realistic fiction, these short stories are as moving and thought provoking as their originators. They pay homage to groundbreaking literary achievements of the past while celebrating each author's unique perception and innovative style. Includes: Introduction by editors; That the Machine May Progress Eternally (Inspired by E.M. Forster's 'The Machine Stops'); Losing Her Divinity (Rudyard Kipling's 'The Man Who Would Be King'); The Sleeper and the Spindle (Sleeping Beauty); The Cold Corner (Henry James's 'The Jolly Corner'); Millcara (Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Carmilla'); When First We Were Gods (Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Birth-Mark'); Sirocco (Horace Walpole's 'The Castle of Otranto'); Awakened (Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening'); New Chicago (W.W. Jacobs's 'The Monkey's Paw'); The Soul Collector (The Brothers Grimm's 'Rumpelstiltskin'); Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy (Sir Edmund Spenser's 'The Faerie Queene'); Uncaged (William B. Seabrook's 'The Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban'); Contributor Biographies.