Photo: Rina Weisman

SHELF TALK, the Seattle Public Library blog, includes Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG among their best of the year.

Best known for the fantasy classic THE LAST UNICORN, Beagle returns with a subtle fantasy set on a fictional island in the Pacific Northwest. An older couple who are long-time lovers take a young woman under their wing only to discover that she is not who she pretends to be. Who she is and what she represents will change their lives forever.

SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME raves about Beagle’s forthcoming IN CALABRIA.

IN CALABRIA is a gorgeous story shaped with elegant prose and stunning imagery. In Bianchi we have a very human protagonist who shifts and changes bit by bit as the story progresses. Once could say all the changes are a result of contact with the unicorn. It is this reader’s opinion that the unicorn might be the catalyst, but Bianchi grows through his own volition. Its an ancient story, humans changing after meeting a unicorn. Beagle has provided a modern incarnation of the tale, and it is a much needed bit of beauty and quiet joy.

It is a unicorn story. It is a coming of age story. It is a story of forgiveness and a story of love. IN CALABRIA will speak to each and every reader that ventures through its pages.

TOR.COM publishes the new Beagle fiction “The Story of Kao Yu.”

“The Story of Kao Yu” is a new fantasy short story by the legendary Peter S. Beagle which tells of an aging judge traveling through rural China and of a criminal he encounters. Of the story, Beagle says it “comes out of a lifelong fascination with Asian legendry — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Indonesian — all drawn from cultures where storytelling, in one form of another, remains a living art. As a young writer I loved everything from Robert van Gulik’s Judge Dee mysteries to Lafcadio Hearn’s translations of Japanese fairytales and many lesser-known fantasies. Like my story ‘The Tale of Junko and Sayuri,’ ‘The Story of Kao Yu’ is a respectful imitation of an ancient style, and never pretends to be anything else. But I wrote it with great care and love, and I’m still proud of it.“

Art copyright © 2016 by Alyssa Winans

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story