This unusual anthology contains fiction for adult readers addressing the dark side of childhood, child abuse, and the road to healing. The book includes fiction, poetry and nonfiction by writers including Lynda Barry, Emma Bull, Charles de Lint, Patricia A. McKillip, Lisel Mueller, Joanna Russ, Anne Sexton, Delia Sherman, Will Shetterly, Midori Snyder, Ellen Steiber, Peter Straub, Jane Yolen and many others. Published by Tor Books in hardcover and paperback, The Armless Maiden was short-listed for the Tiptree Award.

"As the editor’s own memoir-cum-afterword makes clear, she has herself survived a perilous journey, ultimately establishing herself as an artist, editor, and anthologist in an environment so far removed from her childhood experience that she might as well have emigrated from another planet. The Armless Maiden is an exploration, an extremely ambitious use of the fantastic for the most serious of literary purposes, to illuminate the human heart." — ThePhiladelphia Inquirer

"These fairy tales, ‘new tales spun from the threads of the old,’ plumb the dangers, the pain, the way back to life." — Feminist Bookstore News
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Table of Contents:

The armless maiden;The hero's journey - Midori Snyder
Bedtime story - Lisel Mueller
Allerleirauh - Jane Yolen
Snow White to the prince - Delia Sherman
She sleeps in a tower - Tanith Lee
Briar rose (sleeping beauty) - Anne Sexton
In the house of my enemy - Charles de Lint
Fear of falling - Susan Palwick
Princess in Puce - Annita Harlan
The stepsister's story - Emma Bull
The session - Steven Gould
The mirror speaks - Jane Yolen
The juniper tree - Peter Straub
Dolls - Guy Summertree Veryzer
This is us, excellent - Mark Richards
Saturn - Sharon Olds
The twelve-windowed tower - Silvana Siddali
Now I lay me - Sharon Olds
Now I lay me down to sleep - Ellen Kushner
Reading the Brothers Grimm to Jenny - Lisel Mueller
Knives;Scars - Munro Sickafoos
The pangs of love - Jane Gardam
Brother and sister - Terri Windling
The face in the cloth - Jane Yolen
Their father - Gwen Strauss
The chrysanthemum robe - Kara Dalkey
Watching the bobolinks - Caroline Stevermer
The boy who needed heroes - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Wolves - Sonia Keizs
Wolf's heart;The story I hadn't planned to write - Tappan King
Gretel in darkness - Louise Gluck
The lily and the weaver's heart - Nancy Etchemendy
Silvershod - Ellen Steiber
The lion and the lark - Patricia A. McKillip
The iron shoes - Johnny Clewell
The green children - Terri Windling
Guardian neighbor - Lynda Barry
The little dirty girl - Joanna Russ
Donkeyskin - Terri Windling
In the night country ; A matter of seeing - Ellen Steiber
Surviving childhood - Terri Windling
Dream catcher - Will Shetterly.