The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories

by Alix E Harrow · 2026

In *The Slantwise Histories: Collected Stories*, award‑winning author Alix E. Harrow gathers her most daring short fiction into a single, spell‑binding volume. These tales hover at the edge of reality—where tricksters, ghosts, and ordinary magic slip into the cracks of history. From ancient battlefields to the odd roadside attraction off I‑70, Harrow rewrites the past as it might have been, giving voice to women, workers, soldiers, and mothers who have been pushed to the margins. Rather than victims, the protagonists are defiant outliers who break rules, flee oppression, and light a match behind them as they disappear into legend. The collection includes the Hugo‑winning "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies" and, for the first time in print, the haunting "The Six Deaths of the Saint" and "The Knight and the Butcherbird." Harrow’s prose, echoing the bold imaginations of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and Carmen Maria Machado, leaps off the page, turning each story into a slantwise glimpse of a world that never was—but could have been.