An entertaining collection of stories, I enjoyed some more than others. For instance, "The Witch's Headstone" by Neil Gaiman and "Nightside" by Mercedes Lackey were two of my favourites.

When I pick up a book of short stories, I expect to read stories I've never seen before. Not here. 20+ stories and only two of them new. Moreover, I didn't care for many of the selections, which seemed to have been made to illustrate a "form" of witchcraft over the ages, rather than being good reads. Even stories by my favorite authors weren't the ones I would've chosen.

Historically, those persecuted as witches, Dziemianowicz reminds us, "shared one common stigma: the perception they differed in subtle and insidious ways...their greatest transgression was their simple nonconformity." Being an outsider is a risky business.I've recently had a promotion at work, and as a result haven't finished a book in almost three weeks - until now!Short stories, as always, have a way of fitting into a busy day where a novel just doesn't. And if you've got as little time to spe...

Wow, I started this in 2013? I think this may be the first book that took me 3 years to finish it. Well, there were many wonderful, wild, and wicked stories just as the title promised. This is definitely not a read for anyone under 18 in my humble opinion, especially the re-write of hansel and grettle around page 350, that story was just extremely disturbing. If I could do this all again (and I just might because this was a good read despite how long it took me) I would read 1-3 stories per nigh...

None of the short stories in this anthology are a total miss and some of them are pretty good. I’m not usually a short story fan, but this was worth my time

It was okay, but I did skip some stories as most were not geling with me. Even the first story that quoted Oscar Wilde, without naming him, wasn't a great read on the account the tone was off.

Very uneven collection, with a few great stories, a few less so. All, or almost all, were previously published elsewhere — and over a rather long period of time, so some of them are now period pieces. I am ambivalent as to whether the attempt to group them by “witch theme” in this book was successful. Each story has a short intro from the editor, but I found most of these intros to be pedantic and often useless.

Most of the stories didn't seem complete. I picked this book up because of one author and hers was about the only story I liked. I had to force myself to finish the book. Each story had an introduction explaining why the witch was presented the way it was. This took a lot of the enjoyment out of the book for me. There was no drawing your own conclusions. Everything was laid out bare for you.

The unexpected and very "un" Madaleine L'Engle story, "Poor Little Saturday," was worth the purchase alone. It pre-dates A Wrinkle in Timeby six years, and is also about witches, although far different from the Wrinkle witches. Drawing lines between the witch woman in this short story and the later, greater Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which would make an interesting parlor discussion for L'Engle-philes and L'Engle-ologists. That story stood out for me, as did Tanith Lee's "Mirage and Magia,...

This was a fairly good anthology. But like all anthologies some of the stories were hit and miss. My favorites were: Walpurgis Afternoon,which focused on animals and gardening and the witches were lesbians, quite creative. Lessons with Miss Gray had an odd way of telling the story, but the characters were vivid and the magic, ridiculous, in a good way. However the ending made it seem like there should be another story. The World is Cruel, My Daughter was Rapunzel from the witch's point of view a...

This was a decent collection of short tales all dealing with witches. As with any collection, the style, focus, intensity and enjoyability varies. I ran across a Witch World tale I had not read and others that I enjoyed. Part of the reason I read anthologies is to expose myself to authors that I would not otherwise encounter since I do not buy (for various reasons) as many novels as I did earlier. Enjoy dipping into the tales.

"The dollhouse chimney had broken off and fallen to the ground. One of the cats picked it up and carried it away, like a souvenir. That cat carried the chimney into the woods and ate it, a mouthful at a time, and passed out of this story and into another one. It's no concern of ours." -- Catskin, by Kelly LinkI read a book very similar to this about a year ago called "Wizards: Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy" and loved it. This book had a very similar premise: a compilation of

I always go into short story collections with the expectation that the stories are going to be a mixture of hit or miss. A good collection brings me new gems from favorite authors and introduces me to authors I should be reading. This collection was... OK. Just OK.Many of the stories neither stunned me nor disappointed me. But tellingly, I can only really recall a few of them off the top of my head. The selections seemed to be chosen to provide as an encyclopedic overview of the range of fiction...

It was okay. I've had much better anthologies. Some stories I disliked intensely. Some others I couldn't even finish or skimmed over lightly. I can't even remember most of them. I remember that I liked a couple of them, but I can't rightly remember which they were.The stories are: Walpurgis afternoon, Delia Sherman; Nightside, Mercedes Lackey; The cold blacksmith, Elizabeth Bear; Basement magic, Ellen Klages; Mirage and magia, Tanith Lee; Lessons with Miss Gray, Theodora Gross; The world is crue...

The collection was mostly made up of previously published stories from various sources that the editor corralled into a book, though there were a couple written for this anthology specifically.Some of the stories I wouldn't have bothered to read if they hadn't been in the book, but that's true of any collection.It was interesting to read the editor's thoughts on why each story fit into the broad landscape that is witches, though I do tend to prefer anthologies that contain stories written to the...

A collection of witch stories, where the witches range from protective guardians to the sort of person you don't turn your back on. Some traditional stories retold, and new ones with an imaginative spin. The stories range from light-hearted and funny to dark and truly grotesque, so they're likely to be hit-or-miss for readers who want a particular tone.Avid fantasy readers are likely to find a favorite author, though, and you can always skip a story that doesn't appeal.

As with most anthologies, there were some stories I enjoyed a great deal, some I couldn't really stomach, and most of the rest fell somewhere in between.I'd read stuff by many of the featured authors but some of the ones I didn't know intrigued me so I have made a note to look into the works of Ellen Klages, Cory Kerry, Richard Parks, Cynthia Ward, and Margo Lanagan.

I love discovering authors, and found three in this anthology: Richard Parks: Skin Deep, Ellen Klages: Basement Magic and Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Bloodlines. Ellen Klages' story answered a question I've had all my life: what is a goofer. Growing up my mom (and my husbands mom) said things were as soft as goofer feathers. It's from a black comedy team on the radio. Not all the stories were great, but they were mostly good. The above were outstanding, as was Neil Gaiman's and Ursula K. Le Guin's, of...

A group of girls gather at the local witch’s house to learn magic. The lesbians next door have a tropical rainforest growing in their backyard (never mind the temperate climate). A boy discovers the right words to become invisible. The Magia arrives in a grasshopper carriage. A budding wise woman pulls on the enchanted skins of others.Magic is everywhere. Witches can be anyone.I love magic, and I love witches. I’d rather be reading about witches than anything else, and so I knew from the moment

This is a solid anthology with some surprises. I was in the mood for a mix of witch-themed short stories with a variety of approaches and authorial voices and it delivered. I particularly liked "The World is Cruel, My Daughter" by Cory Skerry and "Lessons with Miss Gray" by Theodora Goss. One criticism: All of the stories were either European or American settings and drew primarily on European folklore about witches (with one exception). I would have liked more variety of settings and sources fo...