Back to all books

Tales from the Tower

Edited by Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab

Twelve of the world’s most exciting and best-loved writers have chosen fairytales as inspiration for this spellbinding and subversive short-story collection.

‘The writers in The Wilful Eye imbue all of their characters, including the villains, with a deep sense of psychological realism, producing often tender, engaging, and insightful results. Unnamed soldiers and hideous beasts are given a voice, even if that voice is at times unsettling, and wolves are still wolves, however they disguise themselves.’ – Australian Book Review

‘sublime, with each tale landing a punch squarely between the old and the new, bewitching and terrifying.’ – Australian Bookseller & Publisher

Books in

Tales from the Tower

The Wilful Eye, in Tales from the Tower
The Wilful Eye

First published: 2011

Six writers – Margo Lanagan, Rosie Borella, Isobelle Carmody, Richard Harland, Margaret Mahy and Martine Murray – have taken inspiration from stories that have shaped us all, tales like ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘The Steadfast Tin Soldier’ and ‘The Snow Queen’. This collection carries universal themes of envy and desire, deception and abandonment, courage and sacrifice.

Characters are enchanted, they transgress, they yearn, they hunger, they hate and, sometimes, they kill.

Some of the stories inhabit a traditional fairytale world, while others are set in the distant future. Some are set in the present and some in an alternative present. The stories offer no prescription for living or moral advice and none belong in a nursery.

Open the covers and submit to their enchantment.

Where to buy The Wilful Eye
The Wicked Wood, in Tales from the Tower
The Wicked Wood

First published: 2011

In this companion to The Wilful Eye, six much-loved writers – Catherine Bateson, Victor Kelleher, Cate Kennedy, Maureen McCarthy, Nan McNab and Kate Thompson – give fresh voice to age-old stories of abandonment, desire and entrapment.

Where to buy The Wicked Wood
Back to all books