Thirty years ago my little girl used to watch The Last Unicorn video on repeat which made me buy the book and I fell in love with Peter Beagle's writing. I've since read many of his books but this was my first collection of short stories by him. What a delight. Bite sized portions of Beagle to indulge myself on. I see there are other collections. I have some catching up to do!

The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories by Peter S. Beagle
Review by Sam Lubell
Tachyon Publication Hardcover / eBook ISBN/ITEM#: 9781616963880
Date: 16 May 2023
Links: Author's Wikipedia Entry / Amazon Link / Show Official Info /


Every reader of fantasy has read (or at least knows about) Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn which has been turned into an animated film, a graphic novel, stickers, and even a tarot deck. But fans of the book who have not discovered Beagle's short stories are missing out.

The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume 1 is a collection of 16 short stories plus an introduction by Jane Yolen that serves as an excellent primer to Beagle's shorter work, with one story from the 1960s, one from the 70s, one from the 90s, 12 from the 2000s, and one from the 2010s. Many of the stories are fully or partially autobiographical and give a better sense of the author's own life than most other single-author collections.

The stories include:

"Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros" is a charming and oddly touching story of an aging academic and a rhinoceros that claims to be a unicorn and debates philosophy.

"Come Lady Death" is the story of a bored elitist London socialite who invites Death to attend her ball.

"Lila the Werewolf", which is also available as a standalone novella, is a character-driven narrative about a New York City man who discovers that his live-in girlfriend is a werewolf.

"Gordon, the Self-Made Cat" is about a mouse who decides to become a cat and winds up the star pupil at a school for cats.

There are four short animal fables – "Moth", "Tyrannosaurus Rex", "Ostrich", and "Octopus". My favorite is the dinosaur story that has a Tyrannosaurus Rex being told about the oncoming asteroid and the mammals' secret plan to evolve.

"El Regalo" features a twelve-year-old girl who must constantly save her eight-year-old brother from the trouble his witch powers cause.

"Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and The Angel" is based on Beagle's real-life painter uncles who probably never had an actual angel demand to be painted as happens in this story.

"We Never Talk About My Brother" is about Esau, the last of the great TV news anchormen who has the power to cause the news he reports.

"King Pelles the Sure" is a cautionary tale about what happens to a gentle and kindly monarch when he desires to be remembered as a mighty war leader.
"The Last and Only; or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French" features a Californian who turns French and loses his American identity.

"Spook" has a verbal bad poetry duel between Walter the Spook, a haunt who accuses the homeowner of murdering him 170 years ago, and the homeowner, Farrell, assisted by the mysterious Andy Mac. It includes samples of bad poetry (and the reader can tell Beagle had a lot of fun writing this).

"The Stickball Witch" is another tale based on Beagle's childhood, when boys in the Bronx played a form of improvised street baseball and dared each other to rescue balls hit into the yard of a woman they all thought was a witch.

"A Dance for Emilia" is another autobiographical story about the narrator's relationship with the girlfriend of a recently deceased old friend of the narrator and the cat that she inherits.

All the stories in this volume are well worth reading and demonstrate the unique genius of Peter Beagle. These are definitely fantasy as literature with the fantastical element frequently low key. Volume two is also out with even more great stories by this fantasy legend.

An amazing collection of short stories from Peter S Beagle. I have always enjoyed his stories, ever since The Last unicorn, however I did not realize how much I would enjoy his short stories. My favorite was probably The Fable of the Ostrich. I highly recommend this collection for any fans of fantasy and literature. 5 out of 5 stars. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased and honest review.

As a huge fan of both Peter S. Beagle and unicorn fiction generally, this short story collection did not disappoint!

Of course, it doesn’t just contain unicorn stories. Within these pages you will find stories about death, werewolves, time travel, angels, magic and cats (and mice). There are fairy tales and folk tales, and even a quartet of Aesop-style animal fables.

The writing is superb throughout, whether the author is working with realism or the outright surreal, or magical realism where the story is in the human drama and the fantastic is incidental.

With plenty of humour and tragedy and everything between the two, there is something for every fantasy reader in this collection, making it a great introduction to the shorter works of this master storyteller.

I see why he has legend status in the urban fantasy realm, some of these really took me back to what it was like to read a fantasy story as a kid (Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros, El Regalo) and will be floating around in my head forever probably. I guess my only issue is that I feel the introduction to this collection kind of misses the mark at points but hey ho.

8.5/10 stars

My full review on my blog.

[...]

I present to you Peter S. Beagle’s first volume of collected short stories, a book well worth a read even if you’re not a fan of the short form. If you are, however, it’s a required reading. The stories are varied, in length, themes, style, age, what have you – but Beagle’s skill shines in all of them (even the ones I didn’t like ;)). His prose is evocative, poetic, sometimes transcendent, and generally surprisingly gentle – but with a bite. You’ll never know what hit you with Beagle’s stories, but you’ll feel it anyway. Some of them will stay with you for a while, their mythopoetic quality making you look for the uncanny in the mundane around you.

Beagle’s storytelling techniques bring to my mind Isaac Bashevis Singer much more than any of the names listed in the blurb, but I guess Singer might not be as catchy a name these days as Tolkien or L’Engle. These stories might be set in modern New York, not a stetl from the past century, but nevertheless my other strongest association of Beagle’s prose is with the paintings of Marc Chagall. Yes, blue angels might have something to do with it 😉

Maybe because some of the hardest hitting stories were at their core personal memories, with the weight of emotions and rememberance making them somehow more solid in my mind, I felt there was a nostalgic quality to Beagle’s narrative: a realization of the time that has passed; a gentle form of pining for the past that might have been if not easier, then maybe a bit brighter; a delicate appreciative laughter at one’s own expense, at how we had been before. Beagle excels in stories that could be called magical realism if the term wasn’t so bound to the South American literature of the mid-20th century: the inexplicable is simply an accepted and unquestioned part of everyday life.

As usual, I’ll give a short review and rating on each story before I sum it all up.

Profesor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros (10/10)
One of my favorites in the collection, a whimsical, nostalgic tale slightly reminiscent of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, full of compassion, forebearance, and a little ironic smile at the little idiosyncracies filling our lives. I absolutely loved this one.

Come Lady Death (5/10)
Glittering and seemingly sharp, but not as cutting as it aspires to be, Come Lady Death comes close to the lofty levels of satire but lacks the final resolve to achieve them – in the end, it’s its high ambition that lays it low.

Lila the Werewolf (3/10)
Ouch. Didn’t like this one at all, reminded me of a Seinfield episode – and that’s not a compliment. The whiny, well-meaning but put-upon narrator describing his girlfriend problems to his supportive but not very bright friend, the problematic girlfriend herself, together with her obnoxious mother… And the final twist, that makes the entire piece really distasteful. Surprisingly sexist, in a seemingly unaware way, which doesn’t make it any better.

[...]

Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel (10/10)
My second favourite, a wonderful story almost long enought to be called a novellette, very Chagallian in themes and mood. Utterly captivating, poetic and moving, this intimate portrait of the creative process, guilt and compulsion and fear will stay with me for a long time. An absolute gem.

We Never Talk About My Brother (9/10)
Ooh, another great, absolutely fascinating story, quite dark and punchy, with a perfect narrative style that lures you in and then exposes you to the double twist. I don’t want to say too much, but this is how UF should look like.

[...]

All in all, while there were some duds, the great stories more than made up for the weaker ones. I very much enjoyed this collection of Beagle’s short pieces and would happily recommend it to all interested in thoughtful, well-written literature. While the fantasy aspect is slight, it nevertheless forms the core of all those stories. Beagle’s true skill lies in his ability to merge the uncanny with the real in a seamless, seemingly perfectly natural way – there’s no room for doubt, only appreciation of the unknowable around us. Hence my rating for the entire collection, higher than just a simple average.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thanks.

Some lovely, wonderful stories. No short story collection is going to be all winners, but this was a much higher percentage than most. Beagle is an underappreciated master of fantasy.

It’s a good time to be a Peter S. Beagle fan. In short order this mid-year, we’ve been gifted The Way Home — two novellas set in the world of the beloved classic The Last Unicorn — and two collections of Beagle’s short stories: The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volumes I and II. And true gifts they are. You can see my review of the novellas here at fantasyliterature.com while I’ll review both volumes of the collected stories below.

The two volumes span Beagle’s lengthy career, with most of them having been published earlier, though several of the stories appear for the first time here. And of course, with any such retrospective collection, the point is not so much new material but to have the author’s work all in one convenient place. The other benefits, beyond convenience, is that reading the stories through allows the reader to pick up on Beagle’s repeated themes, images, character types (or actual characters, as Beagle has several that people multiple tales), and the like, while also giving the reader a more full and intimate sense of the author behind the stories. This latter is especially true in these collections as despite being fantasy stories, few of these are set in fantasy worlds or even far-flung geographies but instead are grounded quite deeply and solidly in Beagle’s own past, as his brief intros to each story make clear.

That life includes a childhood growing up Jewish in the Bronx and an adulthood spent in California, and those two setting are the background for a good number of these stories. While the California tales feel more neutral, the Bronx stories have a deep emotionality to them as well as a not-unexpected sense of nostalgia and a mourning for the loss of those mostly innocent days of adolescent friendship. While “fantasy writer” nowadays calls up images of multi-book series set in wholly-created worlds, while we do get the occasional dragon or unicorn here, the setting and Jewish background/folklore, along with the mix of grief and humor, are more reminiscent of an Isaac Bashevis Singer story or the Bernard Malamud of The Magic Barrel (rather than his novels), while Beagle’s depictions of childhood and his sense of nostalgia for that age and the deep attachment to a specific geography reminded me of Ray Bradbury’s Waukegan stories, though the two are wildly different in the details.

Thematically, along with the nostalgia for a vanished childhood and inevitability of loss that comes with living, other topics that run throughout the two books are the power of imagination/creativity and the joys (and griefs) of deep abiding friendships, whether they be as children, as adolescent, as adults, or inter-generational. Several of his Beagle’s childhood friends (or at least, characters based on them as he tells us) appear in multiple stories, while two stories are pretty much out and out odes to his good friend and fellow writer Avram Davidson. The stories display a variety of form and style, and if they aren’t all home runs, many are, and the rest are always entertaining enough and always contain at least a few wonderful sentences; Beagle has always been, beside a great storyteller, an excellent wordsmith/sentence crafter. And what’s “essential” here is not any single story but wholeness of Beagle’s craft and mind at work, and the feeling one has at the end that they’ve formed a relationship not just with the author’s characters, but the author himself. And if it’s an illusory one, well, that’s pretty apt for the material here. You can stop here with a “highly recommended” from me or read on with some responses to specific stories.

My favorites from Volume I
“A Dance for Emilia”: A story about the too-early death of a friend and the way grief brings mourners and the mourned together (in fantasy, one gets to make that literal), all of it suffused with Beagle’s usual bittersweetness. This one alone is worth purchasing the collection for. A standout story.

“Come Lady Death”: A fantastic story that plays a bit with Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” as a somewhat jaded great lady decides to spice up her newest ball by inviting Death. Perfect pacing, sharply drawn characters despite the brevity of the descriptions, perfect close, and a great and unexpected Death.

“Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros”: A Thurber-esque like story about a professor who ends up in a rich friendship with a rhinoceros that thinks it’s a unicorn or a unicorn the professor thinks is a rhinoceros. Warmhearted, tender, and quite funny, though admittedly, some knowledge of philosophy, while by no means required, will make it all the more fun.

“Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel”: A good story if perhaps a little over-long, centered on the young narrator’s uncle, an artist who is visited by an angel (or is it) sent to act as his muse and pose for him. All the characters are brought memorably to life as the story goes in unexpected directions

“Gordon the Self-Made Cat”: If “Professor Gottesman” feels like Thurber and “Uncle Chaim” like Singer (just to be clear—they both feel way more like Beagle), this has more than a hint of E.B.White. Gordon the mouse decides this whole predator-prey thing is ridiculous, and so he takes himself off to cat school, where he excels at learning how to be a cat via classes like “Dealing with Dogs and another on Getting Down From Trees …Running and Pouncing . . . Waiting for the Prey to Forget You’re Still There, … Tail Etiquette, The Elegant Yawn, [and] Sleeping in Undignified Positions.” Gordon doesn’t end up getting everything he wants (it wouldn’t be a Beagle story otherwise) but one has a sense he’ll be fine. A pitch-perfect voice, a wonderful sense of whimsy, and a great ending. Seriously, this should be a chapter book followed by an animated short.

“The Stickball Witch”: One of Beagle’s “memory” tales involving his childhood friends, like many of Beagle’s stories it shows us the magic in the everyday. More specifically, it has fun with the classic “old neighbor every kid in the neighborhood is terrified of” story.

Favorites from Volume II

“The Rabbi’s Hobby”: probably my favorite of the two books. The story veers back and forth between the young narrator’s anxiety over learning Hebrew for his bar mitzvah and the quest he and the rabbi tutoring him set themselves on to find a young woman whose image in a photograph struck them both deeply. Warm, funny, a wonderful depiction of an inter-generational relationship, and a profound mediation on loss. Some of the best aspects are what Beagle doesn’t do here — plot moves that a lot of lesser writers would have chosen, though I won’t go into detail to avoid spoilers.

“La Lune T’Attend”: a riveting werewolf story (I liked this one far better than the one in Volume I) where the werewolves are two old men who have shared a horrible secret (beyond being werewolves) for much of their lives, one that now threatens not only them but their families.

“The Vanishing” an old man falls asleep in a waiting room and wakes up back in his old life as a soldier on the Berlin Wall, with his old Russian counterpart on the other side also there. A well-paced story of guilt and atonement, both in the past and present.

“The Bridge Partner”: a taut, suspenseful little quasi-horror story that begins, believe it or not, at a bridge game. There, mousy little Mattie is matched up with a new partner who at the end of the game whispers to her, “I will kill you.” Things only get more tense after that.

“Sleight of Hand” A woman, after an unspeakable tragedy, goes off for a mindless drive to try and escape her life and runs into a magician from her childhood who is much more than he seems. Another exploration of grief and love, the story itself is good, but it has some of the finest sentences in it of the collection.

“The Rock in the Park” Another “childhood” story, and also another where a moment of magic breaks through the usual routines, in this case, a family of lost centaurs. Also a good look at the power of art/creativity.

“The Story of Kao Yu” Set in ancient China and focused on the main character, a judge who falls in love with a thief brought before him. A good story but this one won me mover mostly for the perfect voicing.

“Trinity County CA”: a truly fun “what if” story — what if dragons are real, and what if drug dealers use them to guard their meth labs. Suspenseful, action packed, great dialogue, wonderful depiction of the dragons, and a perfect type of story in that magical realism way of changing just one thing about the world.

So, The Last Unicorn has been my favorite movie since I first saw it sometime between ages 3 and 6 (I'm now 45). But this is the first time I've read anything Peter has written besides TLU. And this is an incredible collection of short stories. You need to read this now.
Thank you very much to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for this wonderful ARC!

The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume I: Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories is a collection of short(er) fiction by perennial author Peter S. Beagle. Released together with its sister volume 16th May 2023 by Tachyon, it's 352 pages and is available in hardcover and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a wonderfully curated collection of 16 pieces, all of which I had previously read, but which still had the power and relevance to render me breathless. There simply isn't a lesser or unworthy story in the entire lot. Mr. Beagle is a superlative writer with a sublime and consummate command of English as well as being a master of written fiction and he is here in top artistic form.

Each of the stories contains a short introduction by the author himself. The collection is also enhanced by the intricate chapter headings and line drawings of artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, whose art is ethereal and reminiscent of Sulamith Wülfing and calls to mind P. Craig Russel as well, without being the slightest bit derivative of either.

Five stars. This would be an excellent choice for public or school library acquisition, for home use, and for gift giving purposes. For connoisseurs of speculative fiction, this is required reading.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes

It's impossible for me to rate this collection fairly. I have read all of these stories before in various collections, so I can't know how it will feel to come to this book without having experienced them. For me this collection was very like visiting old friends, and some of my favorites included:

Come Lady Death
Lila the Werewolf
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel
The Stickball Witch

Some of these stories were written when the author was young and some of them are him looking back upon the time when he was young once.

I believe the next volume has some stories that I haven't read yet, and I'm looking forward to getting into them!

This a common review for both Volume 1 and 2 of The Essential Peter S. Beagle
I recently discovered Peter Beagle when I read a new release of The Last Unicorn and I was happy I discovered a new to me classic author.
I've reading fantasy stories since the 80s so I was left wondering why I never read his stories before and happy because there was a lot of new worlds to discover.
This two volumes features all I loved in the Last Unicorn: tenderness, humour, fascinating world building and excellent storytelling.
I think it's time more people read this author as his stories are top level.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

A friend of mine recommended Peter S Beagle so I thought I'd try his short stories and BOOM, another author jumps onto my TBR list. I think a GREAT fantasy author cause you to suspend time and belief as you read. Beagle definitely has the talent and skill to do both. As I read, I joined the characters in the stories as they worked through their often tangled lives. What a wonderful reading experience!

› The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volume I Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories has an introduction by Jane Yolen, artwork by Stephanie Law, and 16 stories:

Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros: about a professor and a talking rhinoceros who thinks he's a unicorn.

Come Lady Death: After becoming bored of her parties Lady Neville decides to invite the best guest - Lady Death.

Lila the Werewolf: Farrell was living with Lila for three weeks when he discovers she's a werewolf.

Gordon, The Self-Made Cat: Gordon is a mouse who wants to attend cat school.

The Fable of the Moth: "Once there was a young moth who did not believe that the proper end for all mothkind was a zish and a drizzle."

The Fable of the Tyrannosaurus Rex: T-Rex meets a tiny animal resembling a shrew who can see the future and provides the T-Rex with a science lesson.

The Fable of the Ostrich: About a brave African ostrich who refused to put his head in the sand.

The Fable of the Octopus: is about a talking octopus who wanted to see god.

El Regalo: Angie catches her little brother doing magic.

Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and The Angel: A blue angel shows up in Uncle Chaim's studio to be his muse. One of my favourite stories in this collection.

We Never Talk About My Brother: Jacob's brother Essau is a tv anchor who has a special ability to wish people out of existence.

King Pelles the Sure: King Herman the Peaceful makes the horrible mistake to start a war.

The Last and Only (Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French): is about a man named George Moscowitz who becomes French.

Spook: Farrell seeks help to get rid of a ghost haunting his apartment.

The Stickball Witch: This story takes place in 1950. An elderly woman living in the neighbourhood confronts the kids who leave balls on her lawn.

A Dance for Emilia: Beagle said this story means the most to him. It's about the death of a friend who is reincarnated.

Peter S. Beagle's short stories are adventurous, lighthearted, mysterious, emotional, and funny. They have interesting themes about free will, discrimination, fear, acceptance, friendship, love, and sacrifice. Quite a few of the stories reminded me of classic stories like The Lion and the Mouse, American Tale, and Charlotte's Web. I recommend both of these collections to fantasy readers looking for unique short stories.

Currently, we’re in the middle of Peter S. Beagle mini-renaissance. In April, Ace Books published The Way Home, containing two novellas set in the world of Beagle’s most famous creation, The Last Unicorn. This month Taychon is releasing two premium “best of” anthologies: The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Volume I (Lila the Werewolf and Other Stories) and Volume II (Oakland Dragon Blues and Other Stories).

The two volumes span Beagle’s career. The second includes a previously unpublished story (“The Mantichora”) and four previously uncollected stories. Each tale is introduced by the author. As a fan of Peter S. Beagle, I loved the added context to what was many pleasant re-reads. The collections also contains several illustrations and cover art by Stephanie Law. I’m kind of bummed that I only had an eARC and wasn’t better able to enjoy her work.

If I were to categorize the two volumes, I’d say the first is split between fables and stories in which strange things happen to normal people. The second volume is the speculative fiction version of Beagle’s life with other fictional digressions.

Volume I shows off Peter Beagle’s ability to balance of the extremely mundane with the fantastical. I love the generally nonplussed manner in which many of his characters treat the unknown: they just accept things and move on to dealing with the situation.

"I’m seeing an angel, you’re not—this is no big deal. I just want it should move out the way, let me work."
from “Uncle Chian, Aunt Rifke, and the Angel”

These stories aren’t about how the fantastical comes to be, they are about the consequences these things will have in your life.

Volume II perhaps shows a wider range in Beagle’s writing with his most comedic works and his darker stories. It’s also the more uneven of the two volumes. The previously uncollected stories mostly feature young Beagle and his friends as characters. These are fine stories, but they suffer in comparison to a story like “Vanishing” with its shadowy East Berlin and not-quite-likeable protagonist.

If you are a fan of Peter S. Beagle, this is a nice collection to have for the extras. If the only thing you’ve read is The Last Unicorn, there are many tales in these volumes with as much heart and magic. If you’re asking “Peter who?”, you’re in for a treat.

While most people know Peter Beagle for The Last Unicorn, he has quite a body of work in a similar vein, with a career beginning in the 1960s. Volume one opens with "Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros," where the professor sees the rhinoceros at the zoo and can hear it talk; it says it's a unicorn, and the two argue philosophy and the naming of things. No one else can see it, though the professor's best friend saw some evidence of its presence. The story plays the fantastic elements straight, and never once makes Gus seem like a joke. As Jane Yolen puts it, Peter Beagle invented urban fantasy long before the genre had a name, and this sets the tone for the rest of the volume. Werewolves in New York City is a fun concept, though the visual of Lila changing and attacking dogs is a visceral one that was a bit uncomfortable to read. Gordon the mouse made an excellent cat, and it isn't what he thought it would be. That particular story made me a little sad, because many who try to go beyond expectations are treated like he was. To make up for it, his fables are hilarious. His tale "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and The Angel" is my favorite in the book. A little over thirty pages, it's the tale of the painter Chaim and the blue angel ordered to become his muse. It feels very much like a love letter to the NYC art scene, painting, family and Jewish traditions. It isn't until the end of the story that we understand the purpose of becoming a muse, and we see how pain and suffering becomes a hell of its own.

I am thoroughly enjoying "The Essential Peter S. Beagle," a  two-volume collection of the award-winning author’s short stories.  As a child I loved his novel, The Last Unicorn, and am delighted to find the same feats of imagination in his short stories.  In “Lila and the Werewolf,” a young man, Farrell, is distraught to learn that his new girlfriend, Lila, is a werewolf. Farrell’s gift is for acceptance, but the problems of lycanthropy multiply speedily.   In a sweet, comical story, “Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros,” a rhinoceros follows the professor home from the zoo.  The animal insists he is a unicorn, which the professor tells him is impossible.  The two live together for  years and argue constantly about philosophy. Is the rhinoceros/unicorn real?  Yes, I believe !   More on the stories when I get to the second volume.

I fell in love with Peter S. Beagle’s writing last year when I read The Last Unicorn for the first time. It was exciting to see this and the second volume of stories on Netgalley, and I had to request them both. This collection was a delight to read, and I loved seeing the very different stories throughout. My favorites from the volume were “Come Lady Death,” “Gordon, the Self-Made Cat,” and “Four Fables” (The Fable of the Moth, The Fable the Tyrannosaurus Rex, The Fable of the Ostrich, and The Fable of the Octopus).

My favorite aspect of this collection is that each of the stories feels so different from each other. There are children’s, young adult, and adult stories. You get a collection of stories like “Four Fables,” which were simple tales with humorous morals at the end, and then a story like “Come Lady Death.” I loved this gothic and suspenseful tale that kept me wondering what would happen next. Also, I enjoyed the introductions before each of the stories that give the reader context.

This was a wonderful collection of fantasy stories that would have something to appeal to many readers.

It was nice to see some of these short stories again. I did notice that those stories familiar from previous collections of Beagle's work tend to be the better stories, polished, charming, and told with a smoother, more delicate touch. Come Lady Death, Lila the Werewolf, Gordon The Self-Made Cat, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Emilia's Last Dance are the best of the bunch.

I was disappointed that the publisher did not separate the works intended for a younger audience from the works intended for adults. This leads to some jarring juxtapositions for the reader, and makes it difficult to recommend the volume to anyone not an adult, established fan of Beagle's writing. More careful organization of the material would improve the offering, and make it more giftable.

All in all, a pleasant wander through some nostalgia inducing stories.

An absolute delight to read, and a wonderful way to bring the author's lesser known works to new readers. Thank you to the publisher for the chance to read and review this collection.