The Modern Fairies

Winner of the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize • A BookPage Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year • “Artfully composed…keenly alive…this memorable novel reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives.” —The New York Times Lauren Groff’s Matrix meets Ophelia Field’s The Favourite in this wry and “bawdy” (Los Angeles Times) historical novel—inspired by true events—featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that put both the storytellers and their closely kept secrets in grave danger. Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story? At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles,an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wifeCharles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salonwhere he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressivefiercely intelligentbut somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own: sold off as a child in marriage to a brutal baronimprisonmentscandal. Despite the vicious Versailles gossipMarie has mysteriously been allowed to return to polite society and establish her salon in the heart of Paris. A devastating winter soon sweeps inbringing with it all kinds of rumors and fears. A spate of poisonings at Versailles has led to several arrestsand no matter how high born the suspectit seems no one is safe. Paranoia stokes the King’s insecuritiesand there is a wolf among the salon’s members—someone more dangerous than any force they could conjure in their own taleswatching and waitingreporting on the secret goings-onand threatening to destroy them one by one. “Clever and glittering” (Kirkus Reviews)witty and wiseModern Fairies is a dazzling novel of stories within storiesfamiliar tales spun with fresh and provocative meaningperfect for fans of Jenny OffillItalo Calvinoand Angela Carter.