{"product_id":"hellions-isbn-9781963108064","title":"Hellions","description":"\u003cb\u003eFinalist for the Southern Book Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories.\"―Carmen Maria Machado, author of \u003ci\u003eHer Body and Other Parties\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times.”―Jeff VanderMeer, author of \u003ci\u003eAbsolution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA \u003ci\u003eTIME\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Month\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eThe Wilds\u003c\/i\u003e comes an electric story collection that blends folklore, fairy tales, Southern Gothic, and horror, reveling in the collision of the familiar with the wildly surreal.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn a plague-stricken medieval convent, a nun works on a forbidden mystic manuscript, pining for Christ’s love. During a long, muggy July in rural South Carolina, an adolescent girl finds unexpected power as her family obsesses over the horror film \u003ci\u003eThe Exorcist\u003c\/i\u003e. On the outskirts of a Southern college town, a young woman resists the tyranny of a shape-shifting older professor as she develops her own sorceress skills. And at a feminist art colony in the North Carolina mountains, a group of mothers contends with the supernatural talents their children have picked up from a pair of mysterious orphans who live in the woods.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith exuberance, ferocity, and astounding imagination, Julia Elliott’s \u003ci\u003eHellions\u003c\/i\u003e jumps from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earthbound characters who long for the otherworldly.\"Swamp apes and Slim Jims populate the rural landscape of this collection, which swings from comedy to horror in stories about pet alligators, shape-shifting professors and more.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Incorporating elements of Southern gothic, fantasy, fairy tales, and other genres, [\u003ci\u003eHellions\u003c\/i\u003e] showcases a fearless imagination.\" —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Feral fairytales with a gothic twist….Blurring the line between reality and fantasy, \u003ci\u003eHellions \u003c\/i\u003eprovides an unsettling look at what it means to be alienated in our technology-driven world.\" —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTIME\u003c\/i\u003e, Best Book of April\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Delightfully disturbing short stories rendered in such lush detail and gorgeous prose....Elliott explores our modern world in way that surprise and resonate.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAtlanta Journal Constitution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Intoxicating, fantasy-tinged. . . . Elliott’s rich and magical landscape will pull readers in.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Marvelously diverse and divine magic from everyday lives.”—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLargehearted Boy\u003c\/i\u003e, A Favorite Short Story Collection of 2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“This collection defies conventional story telling blending Greek and Roman mythology, mysticism, fairy tales and folklore, as well as allusions to the Old Testament and nursery rhymes. . . . Elliott’s prose is transcendent.”—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSouthern Literary Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Elliott writes sensory, sensual prose turned up to 11, with descriptions that practically explode. These rich and surprising stories, grounded in archetypal imagery, linger after reading the way a spent firework shimmers in the night sky before fading.”—\u003cb\u003eLiterary Hub, A Notable Small Press Book of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The talented Julia Elliott alchemizes a mix of southern gothic horror and folktale, creating her own muggy, wild atmospheres.\"—\u003cb\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Elliott has a penchant for blending lived-in settings with big conceptual flexes; these stories continue in that tradition, covering everything from strange familial dynamics to magic’s effect on an art colony.\" —\u003cb\u003eReactor\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Jeff VanderMeer called Elliott an Angela Carter for our times, and he’s absolutely right. Elliott’s fiction blends folklore and fairy tale, reality and strangeness, the surreal and the mundane to make dazzling mobiles of oddity—and her new collection is shaping up to be her most curious to date. From medieval convents to small Southern towns, Elliott’s protagonists make her strange worlds seem vibrantly real.\"—\u003cb\u003eLitHub, A Most Anticipated Book of 2025\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"These tales teem with supernatural creatures — demons, hags, changelings, and swamp apes — but it’s the humans who are most compelling…. Elliot offers stories that defy categorization, challenging readers to see the world as limitless, beyond understanding, and therefore worth exploring.\"—\u003cb\u003eChapter 16\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Captivating…. Julia Elliott masterfully crafts these haunting tales, bringing both comedy and a dreadful sense of eeriness to every page.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChicago Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Hellions\u003c\/i\u003e is the best short story collection I’ve read in a while. Elliott experiments with different types of horror in every story, from the fantastic to the domestic. Anyone who has spent a summer in a rural Southern town can recognize the collection’s harsh shadows, overbearing sun, and buzzing air. \"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLas Vegas Weekly\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Singular and compelling…. Full-throated, grown-ass Southern Gothic fairy tales of seemingly original extraction; that’s what makes them great—and fresh…. [Elliott] might just be one of the best genre blenders to shed her human skin and screech.\"—\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Southwest Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Bewitching. . . . Gothic, atmospheric, and filled with the lavish symbolism contained in the natural world.\"—\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A genius at the short-story form, Julia Elliott achieves new highs with the astonishing \u003ci\u003eHellions\u003c\/i\u003e. Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times. One of my favorite collections of the past few years.\" —\u003cb\u003eJeff VanderMeer, author of \u003ci\u003eAbsolution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Julia Elliott’s fiction is its own country. Every sentence drips and unsettles, every character lusts and schemes, every landscape is alien and forbidding. But there is something eerily familiar pulsing underneath the wildness—the way your waking life snakes through the logic of your dreams. I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories.\"—\u003cb\u003eCarmen Maria Machado, author of\u003ci\u003e Her Body and Other Parties\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In \u003ci\u003eHellions\u003c\/i\u003e Elliott has a remarkable ability to cross-pollinate subgenres of the fantastic and then ricochet between them to find new genres in the cracks. Fairy tales, folk magic, horror, Southern gothic, and dirty realism inflect one another and explode to make a swampy magic realism that only Elliott could write.\"—\u003cb\u003eBrian Evenson, author of \u003ci\u003eGood Night, Sleep Tight\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eJulia Elliott\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the story collection \u003ci\u003eThe Wilds\u003c\/i\u003e, a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editors’ Choice, and the novel \u003ci\u003eThe New and Improved Romie Futch\u003c\/i\u003e (both from Tin House). Her work has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe Georgia Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTin House\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eConjunctions\u003c\/i\u003e, and the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, and her stories have been anthologized in \u003ci\u003eBest American Short Stories\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses\u003c\/i\u003e. She teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina and lives in Columbia with her husband, daughter, and five hens.","brand":"Tin House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233222209765,"sku":"NP9781963108064","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781963108064.jpg?v=1767728892","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/hellions-isbn-9781963108064","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}