Maiden, Mother, Crone

A Collection

By: Joanne Harris

Narrated by: David Rintoul, Joanne Harris

Join Joanne Harris on a beautiful journey through her gloriously reimagined take on traditional British folktales. Drawing inspiration from The Child Ballads, this collection brings together her award-winning novellas A Pocketful of Crows, The Blue Salt Road and Orfeia. Published in one beautiful volume for the first time, this collection also includes a brand new introduction by Joanne Harris, and three original short stories.

Take a moment and step into this stunning, evocative world where nature, magic and fate are inextricably linked, and one wrong - or right - step can lead you from the modern world and into an adventure filled with both danger and wonder.

©2023 Joanne Harris (P)2023 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Beautiful Reimagined Stories Retain Traditional Feel

This collection was so much more than I was expecting. Written in transcendentally beautiful prose that retains the rhythms and feel of traditional British folklore, these tales flesh out the motives and hearts of characters previously with only two dimensions. It should be no surprise that the theme of memory—its preservation and its loss—is visited and revisited within these covers as tbe author explores who owns the truth of a person’s life: they themself, the community they live with, family, or the collective legacy of lore.

The stories within include a tale about a shape-shifting, lovelorn young woman and her faithless lover, a selkie trapped in a community that victimizes his people and conceals an even darker secret, and the breathtaking tale of a mother who seeks out death himself to exchange her very sense of self for her daughter’s life—and the pervasive sadness that can come with getting what you want.

A shame this book doesn’t have more reviews. Highly recommended.