Follow professional fairy tale fixer, Zinnia Gray, as she helps women get the endings they deserve! First, Sleeping Beauty in A Spindle Splintered, featuring Arthur Rackham's original illustrations for The Sleeping Beauty, fractured and reimagined. And then, Snow White's Evil Queen in A Mirror Mended! In A Spindle Splintered, it's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday. When she was young, an industrial accident left her with a rare condition and no one who has it has lived to twenty-two. Her best friend is intent on making Zin's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, she finds herself...

Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues. Just when Zinnia’s beginning to think she can't handle one more princess, she glances into a mirror and sees another face looking back at her: the shockingly gorgeous face of evil, asking for her help. Because there’s more than one person trapped in a story they didn’t choose. Snow White's Evil Queen has found...

It's Zinnia Gray's twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it's the last birthday she'll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no-one has lived past twenty-one. Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

В начале двадцатого века одна юная особа, отыскав загадочную книгу, отправляется в фантастическое путешествие, чтобы узнать тайну своего прошлого… Будучи подопечной богатого мистера Локка, Январри Сколлер чувствует, что не слишком отличается от других артефактов, украшающих коридоры его особняка: ее заботливо содержат, по большей части не замечают, и она совсем здесь не к месту. Однажды Январри обнаруживает странную книгу, в которой рассказывается о загадочных дверях, ведущих в другие миры… Каждая страница открывает ей невероятную историю, тесно связанную с ее собственной судьбой…

Хьюго / Hugo Award, 2019 // Рассказ

This eleventh volume of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy features twenty-six stories by some of the genre’s greatest authors, including David Gerrold, Carolyn Ives Gilman, James Patrick Kelly, Rich Larson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yoon Ha Lee, Sarah Pinsker, Justina Robson, Kelly Robson, Lavie Tidhar, Juliette Wade, and many others. Selecting the best fiction from Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Tor.com, and other top venues, The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.