Mallory Ortberg

A collection of darkly playful stories based on classic folk and fairy tales (but with a feminist spin) that find the sinister in the familiar and the familiar in the alien—from Mallory Ortberg, author of Texts From Jane Eyre. From Mallory Ortberg comes a collection of darkly mischievous stories based on classic fairy tales. Adapted from her beloved "Children's Stories Made Horrific" series, "The Merry Spinster" takes up the trademark wit that endeared Ortberg to readers of both The Toast and her best-selling debut Texts From Jane Eyre. The feature has become among the most popular on the site, with each entry bringing in tens of thousands of views, as the stories proved a perfect vehicle for Ortberg’s eye for deconstruction and destabilization. Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief. Readers of The Toast will instantly recognize Ortberg's boisterous good humor and uber-nerd swagger: those new to Ortberg's oeuvre will delight in her unique spin on fiction, where something a bit mischievous and unsettling is always at work just beneath the surface. Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night. Bed time will never be the same.

Tales of Everyday Horror

The Merry Spinster

Hilariously imagined text conversations—the passive aggressive, the clever, and the strange—from classic and modern literary figures, from Scarlett O’Hara to Jessica Wakefield Mallory Ortberg, the co-creator of the cult-favorite website The Toast, presents this whimsical collection of hysterical text conversations from your favorite literary characters. Everyone knows that if Scarlett O’Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she’d constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she’d text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.

And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

Texts from Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

A deluxe Harper Perennial Legacy Edition, with an introduction from Mallory Ortberg, New York Times best-selling author of Texts from Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte’s final and most autobiographical novel—even more critically acclaimed than Jane Eyre during its time—is a brilliant story of repressed passion and unrequited love in the fictional French town of Villette Lucy Snowe is a young woman alone in the world after a terrible event of which she never speaks. With no home, no family, and no prospects, she sets out on her own to the small French town of Villette, where she finds work as a governess at a boarding school for girls. When a handsome doctor from her past appears in Villette, Lucy believes she may at last be free of loneliness—if her rigorous self-control doesn’t conceal her true feelings. Based on Charlotte Bronte’s own experiences at a boarding school in Belgium, Villette is an intense psychological portrait of its heroine, a woman who so strenuously tries to hide her passions that she cannot help but reveal them.

Villette

Se Scarlett O'Hara tivesse um plano ilimitado para mensagens de texto, ela faria de tudo para manter Ashley afastado de Melanie bombardeando o rapaz com suas tentativas de sedução pelo celular. Se Platão decidisse explicar o Mito da Caverna para Glauco por SMS, a conversa fragmentada levaria a confusões filosóficas irreparáveis. Se Lorax usasse o smartphone para impedir a ação dos destruidores da natureza, obviamente digitaria TUDO EM LETRAS MAIÚSCULAS! Troca de mensagens entre Sherlock & Watson é um mix irreverente e genial de diálogos que trazem à tona o lado mais ridículo, manipulador e bizarro de personagens da literatura e da história. Também estão presentes no livro: O pequeno príncipe, Harry Potter, Jogos vorazes, Peter Pan, O grande Gatsby, Dom Quixote, Hamlet, Aquiles, Rei Lear, Jane Eyre, Oliver Twist, Emma, Orgulho e preconceito, O morro dos ventos uivantes, Os miseráveis, Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf, e muito mais!

Mallory Ortberg

Books

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