Muse and Reverie » (First Edition)

CHARLES DE LINT and his wife, the artist MaryAnn Harris, live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His evocative novels, including Moonheart, The Onion Girl, and Widdershins, have earned him a devoted following and critical acclaim as a master of contemporary magical fiction in the manner of storytellers like John Crowley, Jonathan Carroll, Alice Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, and Isabel Allende.

Muse and Reverie is an all-new collection of short fiction in Charles de Lint’s “Newford” universe—the fifth such collection since 1993, and the first since 2002. Previous collections are Dreams Underfoot, The Ivory and the Horn, the World Fantasy Award-winning Memory and Dream, and Tapping the Dream Tree.

The city of Newford could be any city in North America, bursting with music, commerce, art, love and hate, and of course magic. Magic in the sidewalk cracks, myth at the foundations of its great buildings, enchantment in the spaces between its people. In this new collection, de Lint explores that magic and those spaces, shedding new light on the people and places that readers of novels like Moonheart, Forests of the Heart, The Onion Girl, and The Mystery of Grace have come to love.

Publishers Weekly

This collection of 13 stories is the fifth set in Newford, de Lint's city of artists, musicians and magic, and the first since 2002's Tapping the Dream Tree. Interspersing time travel (“Riding Shotgun,” “That Was Radio Clash”) and period pieces (“The Hour Before Dawn”) with tales of Native American and Celtic magic (“A Crow Girls' Christmas,” “Da Slockit Light”), de Lint creates an entirely organic mythology that seems as real as the folklore from which it draws. From flighty yet powerful avatars to fiendish goblins, the characters are complex and clever, and even the most fantastical still has a sense of humanity. The endings often contain twists worthy of O. Henry. These clever, frightening, wise and entertaining stories are an excellent introduction to de Lint's writing and imagination, and will also provide longtime fans a welcome return to Newford. (Dec.)