Faerie Truths: Tales to Disturb Us Awake

by Rose Guildenstern

We’ve lost ourselves. And this book just might be a key to finding our way back.

Does that sound absurd? Possibly–but then again, truth often does. Consider this: once upon a time, fairy tales weren’t just bedtime stories to lull children into dreamland. They were sharp, dangerous things–maps to survival, warnings wrapped in wonder, truths dressed in fangs and feathers.

Somewhere along the way, we smoothed their edges. Declawed them. Turned them into pretty little distractions. And in doing so, we forgot something vital: fairy tales were never meant to comfort us. They were meant to wake us.

Faerie Truths: Tales to Disturb Us Awake by Rose Guildenstern is an intervention. A collection of thirty tales reshaped, reforged, and restored to their original potency–not as relics of the past, but as urgent messages for the present. Some will make you laugh. Some will gnaw at the edges of your mind. Some might unsettle you so thoroughly that you’ll want to fling the book across the room. (That’s fine. Just pick it back up when you’re ready.)

Inside, you’ll find talking beasts and treacherous bargains, hungry forests and broken promises. But more than that, you’ll find mirrors: thirty different ways to see yourself, your world, and the precarious path we all walk. These are stories that know the darkness we live in. And more importantly, they know the way through.

So take these stories. Make them yours. But tread carefully. The woods are dark. The wolves are watching. And your journey begins now.

This collection contains thirty irreverent and unsettling (yet timely) modern fairy tale retellings, including:

• Sleeping Beauty

• Cinderella

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears

• Little Red Riding Hood

• Rumpelstiltskin

• The Elves and the Shoemaker

• Hansel and Gretel

• Puss in Boots

• The Emperor’s New Clothes

• The Frog Prince

• Bluebeard

• Baba Yaga

• The Snow Queen

• Beauty and the Beast

• Snow White

• The Little Mermaid

• Jack and the Beanstalk

• Rapunzel

• Three Little Pigs

• The Princess and the Pea

• …and many more