'To make a pact with the thing that threatens you is arguably the smartest trick of all.' From the brilliant, sui generis Anne Serre come three bewitching, thoroughly out-of-the-way tales, in which kernels of trauma, loss, loneliness and obsession are glimpsed through the glittering gauze of fiction. 'The Fool' may have stepped out of a tarot pack - to walk a mountain trail or worm his way into a writer's mind. 'The Narrator' proposes his mirror image, a storyteller in sheep's clothing, who has a bone to pick with language. The power of narrative to trump a stark reality is perhaps at its strongest in the last story; in 'The Wishing Table' the orgiastic antics of an incestuous family are recounted by one of three daughters. A dream logic rules each of these unpredictable, sensual, and surreal stories: romps no doubt, yet deeply moral, and entirely unforgettable ones.

Publishers Weekly Best Books in Fiction 2018 The sensational US debut of a major French writer—an intense, delicious meringue of a novella In a large country house shut off from the world by a gated garden, three young governesses responsible for the education of a group of little boys are preparing a party. The governesses, however, seem to spend more time running around in a state of frenzied desire than attending to the children’s education. One of their main activities is lying in wait for any passing stranger, and then throwing themselves on him like drunken Maenads. The rest of the time they drift about in a kind of sated, melancholy calm, spied upon by an old man in the house opposite, who watches their goings-on through a telescope. As they hang paper lanterns and prepare for the ball in their own honor, and in honor of the little boys rolling hoops on the lawn, much is mysterious: one reviewer wrote of the book’s “deceptively simple words and phrasing, the transparency of which works like a mirror reflecting back on the reader.” Written with the elegance of old French fables, the dark sensuality of Djuna Barnes and the subtle comedy of Robert Walser, this semi-deranged erotic fairy tale introduces American readers to the marvelous Anne Serre.

The seventh daughter of the Sea King, Ekaterina is more than a pampered princess-she's also the family spy. Which makes her the perfect emissary to check out interesting happenings in the neighboring kingdom…and nothing interests her more than Sasha, the seventh son of the king of Belrus. Ekaterina suspects he's far from the fool people think him. But before she can find out what lies beneath his facade, she is kidnapped! Trapped in a castle at the mercy of a possessive Jinn, Ekaterina knows her chances of being found are slim. Now fortune, a fool and a paper bird are the only things she can count on-along with her own clever mind and intrepid heart.…

When the Czar proclaims that he will marry his daughter to the man who brings him a flying ship, the Fool of the World sets out to try his luck and meets some unusual companions on the way.

A family of street performers wins a pile of gold when they are summoned to perform for King Henry VIII, but just as quickly they lose it again to save themselves from being hanged.