Strange Little Girls

by Camilla Bruce (Editor), Liv Lingborn (Editor), Terra LeMay

Strange Little Girls are made of sugar and spice, and something not quite as nice...
The strange little girls are orphans and changelings, suburban princesses, housewives, nuns and monsters. They are quirky and sweet, terrifying and heartbreaking. All of them a little lost, brimming with their own uniqueness.
In this strange little book of nineteen tales, Lotte goes swimming with her new fishy friends, Rin is freshly dug up, D'arcy strikes a bargain with the midnight mailman and Adelaide enters the mysterious House of Infinite Diversions. Our girls must fasten their bonnets and straighten their skirts to battle otherworldly dangers and challenging circumstances, internal struggles and doubts – and maybe find out who they really are.

Edited by Camilla Bruce and Liv Lingborn.
Table of Contents:
Fairy Tale Ending by Terra LeMay
Deep Down by Tim Jeffreys
The Cottage of Curiosities by Annie Neugebauer
Black Flower Butterfly by Rich Hawkins
Beehive Heart by Angela Rega
Annabelle’s Sleepover by Jan Stinchcomb
Bones in Boxes by Frances Pauli
Marco Polo by Calypso Kane
Teeth Bite Harder in the Dark by Sierra July
Sisters in the Art of Dying by Megan Neumann
The Empty Birdcage by L. Lark
Cedar Lake by Ekaterina Sedia
Pinhole by Tantra Bensko
From Strangers by Ephiny Gale
D’arcy Gray and the Midnight Mailman by Ian MacAllister-McDonald
Pretty Jennie Greenteeth by Leife Shallcross
Where Summer Ends by Colette Aburime
We Have Always Lived in the Subdivision by Karen Munro
House of Infinite Diversions by Aliya Whiteley

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Anthologies, Paranormal

196 pages, Paperback

First published March 14, 2016

About the author

Camilla Bruce was born in central Norway and grew up in an old forest, next to an Iron Age burial mound. She has a master's degree in comparative literature, and have co-run a small press that published dark fairy tales. Camilla currently lives in Trondheim with her son and cat.

Reviews

[Intellectual Magpie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to take a few days to fully settle upon finishing this book filled with 19 strange little twisted tales by some very talented authors.. overall I give this book a big 5/5 stars..
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The tales held originality... so many times ending a tale I just closed the book and took a moment to chew upon what I just read... never was the tale what I had expected. The dark twisted girls buried within these pages were raw and true.
I definitely recommend this book if your wanting something unexpected... so many times my brain felt as if I had been rattled and needed to reorganize... come back down to earth.
The only downfall was that many times I had and issue reading one story at a time... due to becoming so immersed within each tale I needed time to detox before I could travel to another detailed world! .
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[Kristin Scearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

The title definitely doesn't lie -- these are some STRANGE little girls. Each story is so different from the last, and they all suck you in and don't let up until the end. There are even a couple I could see being turned into at least a novella on their own, as I would love to read more about that particular girl's story.

Really interesting read, and since it's a collection of short stories, you can read a little bit at a time and not forget where you are.

5 stars

[Shira Glassman]

This turned out to be a horror anthology and I'm not really one for horror, but I want to give a shout-out to "Pretty Jennie Greenteeth" by Leife Shallcross for adding a new twist to the setup of the Mr. Collins bit in Pride and Prejudice (multiple sisters encountering the unpleasant cousin one of them might have to marry so the family won't lose the house when he inherits it.)

"Mr. Collins" acts like a far worse cad than in Austen and vengeance is supernatural and female. I really don't speak the language of horror very well so I may have misunderstood but I think this story comes with either an assault or attempted assault trigger? But in any case he gets his creepy just-desserts and the couple the story wants you to ship end up together, so this is my pick from this collection.

If you like horror the stories are all pretty short and creative so I could easily see this becoming something to leave in an easy to reach spot that you could sneak stories from as little treats to yourself.

[Ephiny Gale]

I'm so pleased to have a story in this excellent anthology. So many of its pieces are deliciously atmospheric and highly original. Very much recommended to anyone who enjoys the dark, the odd, and stories with child protagonists which are aimed at an adult audience.

My favourites are (in order of appearance):
Annabelle's Sleepover - Jan Stinchcomb
Marco Polo - Calypso Kane
The Empty Birdcage - L Lark
Pinhole - Tantra Bensko
House of Infinite Diversion - Aliya Whiteley

I'm looking forward to reading the next wondrous anthology from Belladonna Publishing.

[Barbara Strickland · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful mixture of stories and what a strange mixture of girls. This was entertaining, chilling, at odd times amusing but at all times really worth reading.
Anthologies break up the reading in a special way. They are made up of stories less time consuming but no less enjoyable. I particularly enjoyed Angela Rega's bees and found it quite confronting in the realm of human behaviour.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some wonderfully disturbing stories in this anthology. Standouts for me were: Leife Shallcross's "Pretty Jenny Greenteeth", Angela Rega's "Beehive Heart", and Ephiny Gale's Donkeyskin reworking "From Strangers".

[Leife Shallcross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: I have a story in this book (Pretty Jennie Greenteeth).
This is a real treasure box of stories about odd, strange and eerie girls. None of them are comfortable stories; some of them are downright horrifying. I think my favourite is D'arcy Grey and the Midnight Mailman, by Ian MacAllister-McDonald, but Marco Polo by Calypso Kane is also insidiously good.
*shudders*

[Krista Pojman · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad to have bought this book! Such a beautiful and wide array of stories, many of which leave you attempting to answer the twisted questions they presented. My favorites were "Pretty Jennie Greenteeth", "Marco Polo", and "Beehive Heart". These three stories were the ones my brain kept thinking about randomly during the day. That being said, I greatly look forward to re-reading this twisted book and find the hidden gems that I missed.

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. Even though I am not a big fan of horror movie/story, but the short stories in this book are just amazing.

[Roxy · Rating 3 out of 5]

strange little girls is a strange little book filled with wonderfully weird and macabre short stories. a captivating collection from various authors.