The Modern Fairies

Winner of the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize • A BookPage Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year • “Artfully composed…keenly alive…this memorable novel reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives.” —The New York Times

Lauren Groff’s Matrix meets Ophelia Field’s The Favourite in this wry and “bawdy” (Los Angeles Times) historical novel—inspired by true events—featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that put both the storytellers and their closely kept secrets in grave danger.

Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story?

At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted from court and still raw from the death of his beloved wife, Charles Perrault finds companionship and creative camaraderie at the salon, where he eagerly joins the storytellers. Their hostess is impressive, fiercely intelligent, but somehow unreadable. She is harboring secrets of her own: sold off as a child in marriage to a brutal baron, imprisonment, scandal. Despite the vicious Versailles gossip, Marie has mysteriously been allowed to return to polite society and establish her salon in the heart of Paris.

A devastating winter soon sweeps in, bringing with it all kinds of rumors and fears. A spate of poisonings at Versailles has led to several arrests, and no matter how high born the suspect, it seems no one is safe. Paranoia stokes the King’s insecurities, and there is a wolf among the salon’s members—someone more dangerous than any force they could conjure in their own tales, watching and waiting, reporting on the secret goings-on, and threatening to destroy them one by one.

“Clever and glittering” (Kirkus Reviews), witty and wise, Modern Fairies is a dazzling novel of stories within stories, familiar tales spun with fresh and provocative meaning, perfect for fans of Jenny Offill, Italo Calvino, and Angela Carter.