Earth and Air: Stories

A handsome singing gypsy who has the power to make girls sleep, sometimes forever, decides to rest from his journeys in an old Victorian house in suburbia with two mesmerized sisters. A broken jukebox leads a girl into uncharted territory, a wilderness in the back of a bar where the colorful neon lights of a working jukebox beckon and where she learns terrible things from a dragon-like woman breathing fire in the dark. A thirty-something career woman trying to rediscover her purpose on an island retreat is attacked in the still of the night by a neighbor whose greatest wish is for her to leave.

Tara McTiernan's stories resemble twisted modern fairy tales, full of real-life magic and Grimm-like darkness. Containing three unforgettable short works, Earth and Air, like her novel Barefoot Girls, illuminates and explores the lives of women with rare eloquence, keen insight, and a sharp wit.