Briar Rose, a collection of superbly crafted epic poem/short stories, revisits familiar tales from antiquity to open up new mystical realms of strange, unsettling possibilities and surprises. One thing is for certain – you’ll never, ever look at classic fairy tales the same way again. Fairy tales didn’t begin as children’s stories. They were originally oral folktales thought to belong to the ‘peasant’ class, until the literary salons of the 17th Century adopted them as their own. They have been retold countless times and hundreds of years later they still resonate. They are a guide through the dark woods of life and a conversation with our mythic selves. Take another look: The witch, the wolf and the wonder await. -- Alyxandra Harvey