"The Crow Girls and their kind, once seen, are impossible to forget. Wild, but curiously childlike; wise and yet playful; existing outside the confines of conventional morality, and yet bringing hope and clarity to everyone whose lives they touch." -Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, from her introduction to this book. Charles de Lint's readers have been asking him to put together story collections featuring their favourite Newford characters. The crow girls are among his best-loved characters, so de Lint obliged by gathering their stories all under one roof, so to speak. Some other members of the Newford repertory company show up here, but at the forefront of each story are these two little wild girls with their big personalities. This book features an introduction by Joanne Harris and an afterword by the de Lint. Cover art by Tara Larsen Chang (www.taralarsenchang.com). These stories have all been published before. "Crow Girls" is also available in The Very Best of Charles de Lint and in Moonlight and Vines; "Twa Corbies" in Moonlight and Vines; "The Buffalo Man" in Tapping the Dream Tree; and "A Crow Girls' Christmas" in Muse and Reverie. "Make a Joyful Noise," published in a limited edition by Subterranean Press, has not appeared in any of his previous collections. "Nobody does urban fantasy better than Charles de Lint. He has a gift for creating engaging, fully realized characters, totally believable dialogue, and a feeling that magic is just around the corner ... He can make you believe 'as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' " -Amazon.com Editorial Review "De Lint's elegant prose and effective storytelling continue to transform the mundane into the magical at every turn. Highly recommended." -Library Journal, Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. "In many hands, the urban fantasy plot involving strange beings just around the corner fails dismally. It does not in the hands of the reliable, the inimitable de Lint ... -Booklist " de Lint...clearly has no equal as an urban fantasist and very few equals among fantasists as a folklorist." -Booklist Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend-all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better. - Alice Hoffman Charles de Lint writes like a magician. He draws out the strange inside our own world, weaving stories that feel more real than we are when we read them. He is, simply put, the best. - Holly Black Unlike most fantasy writers who deal with battles between ultimate good and evil, de Lint concentrates on smaller, very personal conflicts. Perhaps this is what makes him accessible to the non-fantasy audience as well as the hard-core fans. Perhaps it's just damned fine writing. -Quill & Quire
