Mary Rickert

Bay's mother, Nan, has kept lots of secrets from her, and when Nan meets up with her estranged friends Mavis and Ruthie, the secrets just begin to be revealed.

The Memory Garden

Gordon Van Gelder

Set in a reality where nightmares do not fade upon waking, this anthology skims along the surface of life and dips just beneath, revealing the hidden machinations that fuel dreams. These underlying myths and fantasies exist not as musty old stories but as ancient truths that have come to illuminate the modern human condition. The title story touches on themes of grief, redemption, and time travel; "Cold Fire" ventures into love and obsession; and "Peace on Suburbia" introduces readers to a Christmas with an entirely different kind of savior. These and 13 other tales are framed by four interludes—Dreams, Nightmares, Waking, and Rising—that guide readers through a world that is at once familiar and eerily off-kilter.

Map of Dreams

From multiple World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award nominated author Mary Rickert comes a gorgeous and terrifying vision of the Mothers of Voorhisville, who love their babies just as intensely as any mother anywhere. Of course they do! And nothing in this world will change that, even if every single one of those tiny babies was born with an even tinier set of wings. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.Com Original

The Mothers of Voorhisville

Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the bar at the local diner—all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is—she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. Something seasonally appropriate. But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas tale—or one’s past—can never be tamed once unleashed.

A Krampus Story

Lucky Girl, How I Became A Horror Writer

Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the bar at the local diner—all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is—she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. Something seasonally appropriate. But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas tale—or one’s past—can never be tamed once unleashed. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Scalding and dark, these stories remind us of the price of politics, the costs we all pay, knowing and not.

New and Selected Stories

You Have Never Been Here

Winner of the 2015 LOCUS AWARD for Best First Novel "...A SUPERB FANTASY NOVEL." - The Chicago Tribune In a beautifully written tale woven together with magic and mystery, flowers and food, Bay Singer finally discovers the secrets her mother has been hiding. Bay Singer has bigger secrets than most. Not that she knows about them. Her mother, Nan, is sure that the burden of those secrets would be too much, and that's why she never told anyone the truth, not even Bay. There's a lot that Nan's kept quiet over the years, especially those times with Mavis and Ruthie?times that were dark and full of guilt. But some secrets have a power all their own, and Nan realizes she needs Mavis and Ruthie now more than ever. When the three meet again in Nan's garden, their reunion has spellbinding effects that none of them could have imagined, least of all Bay... An enchanting fantasy, fans of Alice Hoffman, Sarah Addison Allen, will be captivated by Mary Rickert, the World Fantasy and Crawford Award-winning author. What readers are saying about The Memory Garden: "The story is woven together with a touch of mystic and magic, and plants and food." "secrets, myths, friendships and family." "This book is BEAUTIFUL. Haunting (both literally and figuratively), filled with wonderful characters and food and flowers." "It's absolutely stunning, with beautiful poetic prose, full of everyday magic, a seriously unique conflict, and a bridge between generations." "If you like the novels of Alice Hoffman, you'll like Mary Rickert's first novel, The Memory Garden, EVEN BETTER." "Practical Magic meets Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood with a dash of White Oleander" "There is memory and forgetting and snow and sunlight and ghosts and a doorstep-baby and the echoes of ancient crimes... Infused with food and woven with flowers, The Memory Garden is AN ABSOLUTE DELIGHT." "The kind of book you want to hug after you've read the very last word...and whisper "thank you"." "This book is BEAUTIFUL. Captivating. The best sort of witches you can imagine." What reviewers are saying about The Memory Garden: "atmospheric, eerie, and utterly beautiful..." - Joshilyn Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Someone Else's Love Story "A totally CHARMING, totally ENGAGING story told by Rickert, a magus of the first order. MAGIC IN EVERY LINE." - Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club "The Memory Garden is one of the most intense fantasy books I've read in years...reminds me a bit of [Terry] Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books, but also of some of my favorite literary novels about misfits who invent themselves as they go along. I've seldom read a book that's as gentle, and yet as powerful, as The Memory Garden." io9 "... a blend of poetical language and dark suspense... 'The Memory Garden' is a tale of tragedy, hope and kinship." - The Washington Post "...A SUPERB FANTASY NOVEL." - The Chicago Tribune "[A] BEWITCHING MARVEL of a book." - BookPage "... absolutely STUNNING." - Christopher Barzak, author of One for Sorrow

Locus Recommended Reading List Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert’s protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy. Praise for Mary Rickert's books: "The Memory Garden is a lovely book of women, friendship, sadness and healing, and it is genuinely uplifting. Like the garden of its title, this is a book to take in slowly, to spend time in, to wander through; you'll likely find your-selves the better for it."— NPR "This is a novel haunted by mortality—with people who died young, with people now old and dying, with ghosts. But it is often a joyful novel, a novel of life, forgiveness and good meals with friends and strangers."—Los Angeles Review of Books "I've seldom read a book as gentle, and yet as powerful."— io9.com "Rickert writes with a blend of poetical language and dark suspense."—The Washington Post "A poet of the extremes housed within the human heart."—Locus Mary Rickert has long been an undiscovered master of the fantastic. Her first collection, Map of Dreams, received the Crawford and World Fantasy awards, and stories from this collection of new and selected work have received the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She has worked as kindergarten teacher, barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and in the personnel de-partment of Sequoia National Park where she spent her time off hiking the wilderness. She is the author of two collections and the novel The Memory Garden and she has received the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards. She lives in Wisconsin. See more at maryrickert.com.

Mary Rickert

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