Book cover of Tender

Book description

World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Locus award finalist

Divided into "Tender Bodies" and "Tender Landscapes," the stories collected here in this first collection of short fiction from a rising star travel from the commonplace to the edges of reality. Some of Samatar's weird and compassionate fabulations spring from her life…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Tender as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

One of my favorite fiction collections, it contains everything from selkies to homework assignments to imagined histories.

I’m drawn to stories that illuminate hidden literature, imagine landscapes, or unearth a secret history. Stories with footnotes, poems, and epistolaries. Tender is all these things, and in the best fabulist tradition, these elements are not the point. They heighten the stakes and experiences.

I love books where the unreal and uncanny don’t distract from reality but create a focus to make a fictional reality more real. In Tender, even stories that appear to be straight science fiction become something bigger and…

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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