WOW: Toil & Trouble

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft edited by Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Expected Publication: August 28th 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy/ Paranormal, Short Story Collection
Pages: 304

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A young adult fiction anthology of 15 stories featuring contemporary, historical, and futuristic stories featuring witchy heroines who are diverse in race, class, sexuality, religion, geography, and era.

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Glinda the Good Witch. Elphaba the Wicked Witch. Willow. Sabrina. Gemma Doyle. The Mayfair Witches. Ursula the Sea Witch. Morgan le Fey. The three weird sisters from Macbeth.

History tells us women accused of witchcraft were often outsiders: educated, independent, unmarried, unwilling to fall in line with traditional societal expectations.

Bold. Powerful. Rebellious.

A bruja’s traditional love spell has unexpected results. A witch’s healing hands begin to take life instead of giving it when she ignores her attraction to a fellow witch. In a terrifying future, women are captured by a cabal of men crying witchcraft and the one true witch among them must fight to free them all. In a desolate past, three orphaned sisters prophesize for a murderous king. Somewhere in the present, a teen girl just wants to kiss a boy without causing a hurricane.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors. The collective strength of women working together—magically or mundanely–has long frightened society, to the point that women’s rights are challenged, legislated against, and denied all over the world. Toil & Trouble delves deep into the truly diverse mythology of witchcraft from many cultures and feminist points of view, to create modern and unique tales of witchery that have yet to be explored.

 

3 REASONS I’M EXCITED FOR TOIL & TROUBLE

• Y’all know I love witches, right? Of all sorts. So. No brainer. 

• I’ve been wanting to read more anthologies anyway. You might have seen yesterdays Top Ten Tuesday post, where I talked about wanting to fit in more short story collections. This just feels like perfect timing. Plus, if I can hold off til October it’ll be great for all the Halloween readathons.
  

• There’s a lot of great authors taking part. I’m especially excited to read the stories by Zoraida Córdova and Anna-Marie McLemore.