Featuring the Locus Award-winning novelette, “By Moonlight”
The extraordinary stories in this new contemporary fantasy collection show a mature, darker side of the author of The Last Unicorn, in modern parables of love, death, and transformation shadowed lightly with melancholy. Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside recently published classics, this is a lovely, haunting, and wholly satisfying read.
The extraordinary stories in this new contemporary fantasy collection show a mature, darker side of the author of The Last Unicorn in modern parables of love, death, and transformation shadowed lightly with melancholy.
The Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news; King Pelles the Sure, the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm, betrays himself in dreaming of a “manageable war”; an American librarian discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is also the last living Frenchman; and rivals in a supernatural battle forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry.
Featuring previously unpublished stories alongside recently published classics, this is a lovely, haunting, and wholly satisfying read.
[Starred Review] “Hugo and Nebula Award winner Beagle showcases his narrative breadth in this eclectic new collection with nine powerful fantasy tales and a short set of poems based on the famous Unicorn Tapestries. In the title story, one benevolent sibling must somehow stop another from becoming the Angel of Death. ‘The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French’ explores the significance of identity as a mild-mannered American librarian irrevocably transforms into the last true Frenchman, while the profoundly moving ‘King Pelles the Sure’ denounces the insanity of war. The most memorable selection is ‘The Stickball Witch,’ in which a group of Bronx boys playing stickball come face to face with the suspected witch of their neighborhood. Impressively diverse themes, styles, and subject matter make this collection addictive.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Peter [Beagle] is one of those writers who just seems to be getting better and better, and his short stories are delights.”
—Neil Gaiman
“…rooted in rich, thoughtful prose…each tale is a beautifully crafted gem, cut and polished to perfection….”
—Library Journal
“A perfect little assemblage of oddities, a handful of extremely well-realized sketches with unusual, unpredictable endings…instantly addictive.”
—The A.V. Club
“Beagle’s true strength in the last few years lies with his short fiction, an area in which he’s been both prolific and brilliant. His latest collection, from Tachyon Publications, showcases the best of his recent output.”
—Omnivoracious.com
“…not only worth reading, but worth adding to your library, for you are likely to find yourself returning to these stories again and again.”
—Reading the Leaves
“Beagle is a treasure, that’s all there is to it…. Peter Beagle’s new collection, We Never Talk About My Brother, is a great way to introduce yourself to the fabulous work this wonderful writer has been doing these recent years.”
—SF Site
“Beagle plays the classic themes of love and death, sacrifice, and self-discovery like a master. Never clichéd, he pulls out new riffs and vamps on the expected conventions of modern fantasy, even the ones he helped create in the first place…. Pure poetry. Beagle is an American bard.”
—io9.com
“…Peter S. Beagle [has] rejoined the main flow of literature with a vengeance…. [H]is work is marvelous.”
—Green Man Review
Peter S. Beagle is the best-selling author of The Last Unicorn, which has sold a reported five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His other novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has been collected in four volumes by Tachyon Publications, including The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, The Line Between, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Sleight of Hand. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Praise for Peter S. Beagle
“One of my favorite writers.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness
“. . . the only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”
—Booklist
“Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”
—Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser’s Song and The Very Best of Tad Williams
“It’s a fully rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle’s imagination. . . .”
—Kirkus
“[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet.”
—The Saturday Review
“Not only does Peter Beagle make his fantasy worlds come vividly, beautifully alive; he does it for the people who enter them.”
—Poul Anderson, author of The High Crusade
“Peter S. Beagle is the magician we all apprenticed ourselves to. Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured.”
—Lisa Goldstein, author of The Uncertain Places and The Red Magician
“Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century’s great writers in any arena he chose; we readers must feel blessed that Beagle picked fantasy as a homeland. Magic pumps like blood through the veins of his stories. Imparting passionately breathing, singing, laughing reality to the marvelous is his great gift to us all.”
—Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar
Praise for Sleight of Hand
“Multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Beagle opens readers’ eyes to wonder with his latest collection of 13 short stories. Each piece bridges the rich intersection of fantasy and fairy tale, reality and possibility, exploring predestination, fate, and the power of love through characters that come to vivid, three-dimensional life within a few short pages. Beagle’s lyrical writing is set in a wide range of landscapes both familiar and fresh, with twists on Jack and the Beanstalk, monsters and dragons, a singing enchantress, ghostly photographs, and a modern werewolf tale. ‘The Bridge Partner’ is more noir than fantasy yet fits within the collection quite well, as does the deeply chilling, experimental, and dark ‘Dirae.’ ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon’ features two lost children and an encounter with an early version of Schmendrick the Magician from his classic novel, The Last Unicorn. Each story is introduced with some background about its origin.”
—Library Journal
“This bittersweet collection of 13 recent stories pays tribute to the complicated power of family ties…. Fans of The Last Unicorn will also appreciate ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon,’ a Schmendrick prequel in classic bittersweet Beagle style.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Satisfying.”
—Washington Post Book World
“This 13-story anthology will entice even the most jaded reader to read long hours into the night…. Sleight of Hand will beguile and enchant.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Beagle still has the power to surprise . . . a new collection of stories by one of the all-time greats.”
—The Guardian
“Sleight of Hand is a strong collection by an author whose skill has only improved with time . . . a must-have.”
—Tor.com
“Few can match [Beagle] when it comes to a particular mix of the fantastic and the ordinary, with a tinge of nostalgia. As one character observes, the magic is in the telling, always.”
—Interzone
“Demonstrates yet again why [Beagle’s] perhaps the finest fantasy writer at short lengths working today.”
—Locus
“. . . not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Marquez, Allende, and even Borges.”
—The American Culture
“Engaging and wide-ranging selection of fantasies . . . the perfect book.”
—Strange Horizons
“There’s quiet power here, and delicate craftsmanship, and, most of all, a genuine emotional response that few short-story collections can generate.”
—Green Man Review
Praise for A Fine & Private Place
“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places . . . told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Both sepulchral and oddly appealing . . . [Beagle’s] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm.”
—TIME Magazine
“A Fine & Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition. . . . [I]t’s a great book in a lovely affordable package.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Delightful!”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death, and love . . . a book that has endured for a reason.”
—The Agony Column
“A wonderful work of literature . . . a gem of a novel.”
—BookLoons
By Moonlight
Chandail
King Pelles the Sure
Spook
The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French
The Stickball WitchThe Tale of Junko and Sayuri
The Unicorn Tapestries
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel
We Never Talk About My Brother
We Never Talk About My Brother
Peter S. Beagle
Featuring the Locus Award-winning novelette, “By Moonlight”
The extraordinary stories in this new contemporary fantasy collection show a mature, darker side of the author of The Last Unicorn, in modern parables of love, death, and transformation shadowed lightly with melancholy. Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside recently published classics, this is a lovely, haunting, and wholly satisfying read.
$14.95
We Never Talk About My Brother
by Peter S. Beagle
ISBN: 9781892391834
Published: 2009
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback
The extraordinary stories in this new contemporary fantasy collection show a mature, darker side of the author of The Last Unicorn in modern parables of love, death, and transformation shadowed lightly with melancholy.
The Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news; King Pelles the Sure, the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm, betrays himself in dreaming of a “manageable war”; an American librarian discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is also the last living Frenchman; and rivals in a supernatural battle forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry.
Featuring previously unpublished stories alongside recently published classics, this is a lovely, haunting, and wholly satisfying read.
[Starred Review] “Hugo and Nebula Award winner Beagle showcases his narrative breadth in this eclectic new collection with nine powerful fantasy tales and a short set of poems based on the famous Unicorn Tapestries. In the title story, one benevolent sibling must somehow stop another from becoming the Angel of Death. ‘The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French’ explores the significance of identity as a mild-mannered American librarian irrevocably transforms into the last true Frenchman, while the profoundly moving ‘King Pelles the Sure’ denounces the insanity of war. The most memorable selection is ‘The Stickball Witch,’ in which a group of Bronx boys playing stickball come face to face with the suspected witch of their neighborhood. Impressively diverse themes, styles, and subject matter make this collection addictive.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Peter [Beagle] is one of those writers who just seems to be getting better and better, and his short stories are delights.”
—Neil Gaiman
“…rooted in rich, thoughtful prose…each tale is a beautifully crafted gem, cut and polished to perfection….”
—Library Journal
“A perfect little assemblage of oddities, a handful of extremely well-realized sketches with unusual, unpredictable endings…instantly addictive.”
—The A.V. Club
“Beagle’s true strength in the last few years lies with his short fiction, an area in which he’s been both prolific and brilliant. His latest collection, from Tachyon Publications, showcases the best of his recent output.”
—Omnivoracious.com
“…not only worth reading, but worth adding to your library, for you are likely to find yourself returning to these stories again and again.”
—Reading the Leaves
“Beagle is a treasure, that’s all there is to it…. Peter Beagle’s new collection, We Never Talk About My Brother, is a great way to introduce yourself to the fabulous work this wonderful writer has been doing these recent years.”
—SF Site
“Beagle plays the classic themes of love and death, sacrifice, and self-discovery like a master. Never clichéd, he pulls out new riffs and vamps on the expected conventions of modern fantasy, even the ones he helped create in the first place…. Pure poetry. Beagle is an American bard.”
—io9.com
“…Peter S. Beagle [has] rejoined the main flow of literature with a vengeance…. [H]is work is marvelous.”
—Green Man Review
Peter S. Beagle is the best-selling author of The Last Unicorn, which has sold a reported five million copies since its initial publication in 1968. His other novels include A Fine & Private Place, The Innkeeper’s Song, and Tamsin. His short fiction has been collected in four volumes by Tachyon Publications, including The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche, The Line Between, We Never Talk About My Brother, and Sleight of Hand. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Praise for Peter S. Beagle
“One of my favorite writers.”
—Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet
“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic such commonplace matters as ghosts, unicorns, and werewolves. For years a loving readership has consulted him as an expert on those hearts’ reasons that reason does not know.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin, author of A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness
“. . . the only contemporary to remind one of Tolkien.”
—Booklist
“Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers’ hearts.”
—Tad Williams, author of Tailchaser’s Song and The Very Best of Tad Williams
“It’s a fully rounded region, this other world of Peter Beagle’s imagination. . . .”
—Kirkus
“[Beagle] has been compared, not unreasonably, with Lewis Carroll and J. R. R. Tolkien, but he stands squarely and triumphantly on his own feet.”
—The Saturday Review
“Not only does Peter Beagle make his fantasy worlds come vividly, beautifully alive; he does it for the people who enter them.”
—Poul Anderson, author of The High Crusade
“Peter S. Beagle is the magician we all apprenticed ourselves to. Before all the endless series and shared-world novels, Beagle was there to show us the amazing possibilities waiting in the worlds of fantasy, and he is still one of the masters by which the rest of the field is measured.”
—Lisa Goldstein, author of The Uncertain Places and The Red Magician
“Peter S. Beagle would be one of the century’s great writers in any arena he chose; we readers must feel blessed that Beagle picked fantasy as a homeland. Magic pumps like blood through the veins of his stories. Imparting passionately breathing, singing, laughing reality to the marvelous is his great gift to us all.”
—Edward Bryant, author of Cinnabar
Praise for Sleight of Hand
“Multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Beagle opens readers’ eyes to wonder with his latest collection of 13 short stories. Each piece bridges the rich intersection of fantasy and fairy tale, reality and possibility, exploring predestination, fate, and the power of love through characters that come to vivid, three-dimensional life within a few short pages. Beagle’s lyrical writing is set in a wide range of landscapes both familiar and fresh, with twists on Jack and the Beanstalk, monsters and dragons, a singing enchantress, ghostly photographs, and a modern werewolf tale. ‘The Bridge Partner’ is more noir than fantasy yet fits within the collection quite well, as does the deeply chilling, experimental, and dark ‘Dirae.’ ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon’ features two lost children and an encounter with an early version of Schmendrick the Magician from his classic novel, The Last Unicorn. Each story is introduced with some background about its origin.”
—Library Journal
“This bittersweet collection of 13 recent stories pays tribute to the complicated power of family ties…. Fans of The Last Unicorn will also appreciate ‘The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon,’ a Schmendrick prequel in classic bittersweet Beagle style.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Satisfying.”
—Washington Post Book World
“This 13-story anthology will entice even the most jaded reader to read long hours into the night…. Sleight of Hand will beguile and enchant.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Beagle still has the power to surprise . . . a new collection of stories by one of the all-time greats.”
—The Guardian
“Sleight of Hand is a strong collection by an author whose skill has only improved with time . . . a must-have.”
—Tor.com
“Few can match [Beagle] when it comes to a particular mix of the fantastic and the ordinary, with a tinge of nostalgia. As one character observes, the magic is in the telling, always.”
—Interzone
“Demonstrates yet again why [Beagle’s] perhaps the finest fantasy writer at short lengths working today.”
—Locus
“. . . not only one of our greatest fantasists, but one of our greatest writers, a magic realist worthy of consideration with such writers as Marquez, Allende, and even Borges.”
—The American Culture
“Engaging and wide-ranging selection of fantasies . . . the perfect book.”
—Strange Horizons
“There’s quiet power here, and delicate craftsmanship, and, most of all, a genuine emotional response that few short-story collections can generate.”
—Green Man Review
Praise for A Fine & Private Place
“One of literature’s most beautiful works about ghostly times and places . . . told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Both sepulchral and oddly appealing . . . [Beagle’s] ectoplasmic fable has a distinct mossy charm.”
—TIME Magazine
“A Fine & Private Place is just as wonderful as I remembered it to be: beautifully written, the characters warmly drawn, the pages filled with conversations that run the gamut of the human condition. . . . [I]t’s a great book in a lovely affordable package.”
—Fantasy & Science Fiction
“Delightful!”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death, and love . . . a book that has endured for a reason.”
—The Agony Column
“A wonderful work of literature . . . a gem of a novel.”
—BookLoons
Visit the Peter S. Beagle website.
Introduction by Charles de Lint
By Moonlight
Chandail
King Pelles the Sure
Spook
The Last and Only, or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French
The Stickball WitchThe Tale of Junko and Sayuri
The Unicorn Tapestries
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel
We Never Talk About My Brother
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