Like Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Isak Dinesen and Angela Carter, A. S. Byatt knows that fairy tales are for grownups. And in this ravishing collection she breathes new life into the form. Little Black Book of Stories offers shivers along with magical thrills. Leaves rustle underfoot in a dark wood: " "two middle-aged women, childhood friends reunited by chance, venture into a dark forest where once, many years before, they saw-or thought they saw-something unspeakable. Another woman, recently bereaved, finds herself slowly but surely turning into stone. A coolly rational ob-gyn has his world pushed off-axis by a waiflike art student with her own ideas about the uses of the body. Spellbinding, witty, lovely, terrifying, the Little Black Book of Stories is Byatt at the height of her craft.

A. S. Byatt is the author of numerous novels, including A Whistling Woman and Possession, which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1990. She has also written two novellas, published together as Angels and Insects, four previous collections of shorter works, and several works of nonfiction. Educated at Cambridge, she was a senior lecturer in English at University College London. She lives in London.