A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Tristan Elwell.

A Spindle Splintered and A Mirror Mended are individual volumes that will be published simultaneously.

The Subterranean Press edition of Alix E. Harrow’s A Spindle Splintered, a “fractured fable” will be printed in two colors throughout, with an original introduction by the author, three two-color illustrations printed in full color to bring out their richness, and a bonus story, “A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies.”

About A Spindle Splintered:

Zinnia Gray has been waiting to die practically her entire life. Her parents and her best friend Charm surround her with love, but also fretful worrying. The weight of the reality of the illness destined to kill her is ever more present as she turns 21. No one with this disease has made it past that age. 

But she deserves an excellent birthday party, right? For what’s almost certainly her last one, Charm pulls out all the stops. It’s a sleeping beauty-themed affair, held in a tower with a spinning wheel. The pull of some stories is too strong to avoid. Zinnia pricks her finger and is suddenly part of a fractured fairy tale that’s not just hers, but belongs to many sleeping beauties. Together, maybe they can break free of their old stories and wake up to a different reality. 

Hugo Award-winning author Alix E. Harrow is one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in fantasy in decades. Now, she brings her talent for reinventing old stories to a fairy tale classic with A Spindle Splintered. This novella is filled with humor, a vibrant voice, and heartbreak, all of which adds up to a character on an unforgettable journey. 

Limited: 400 signed numbered hardcover copies

Lettered: 26 signed, specially bound copies, housed in a custom traycase

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• A Spindle Splintered
• "A Witch's Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies"

From Library Journal:

“Sleeping Beauty crashes into the multiverse in Harrow’s queer, subversive, explicitly feminist retelling. This story of power, agency, and sisterhood is recommended.”

From Kirkus Reviews:

“…themes of female friendship, female strength, and female independence leave good feels behind, not to mention some laugh-out-loud bits. The short length, brisk pace, and pop-culture references definitely make this young-adult friendly, though anyone who enjoys a sarcastic first-person narrator can take this for a spin. This fairy tale–superhero movie mashup is pure entertainment.”

From Locus:

“As with any tale of an apparently doomed young woman – or for that matter any tale that tries to negotiate between the contrived worlds of faerie and grim realities – Harrow needs some fancy narrative footwork to avoid a compromised or cop-out ending, but she manages it with the same sort of cheerful panache with which Zin faces her own future… A Spindle Splintered is a subversive delight.”

From Publishers Weekly:

“This deeply researched fairy tale version of Into the Spiderverse is sure to please Harrow’s fans.”

About A Mirror Mended.

Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Tristan Elwell.

The Subterranean Press edition of Alix E. Harrow’s A Mirror Mended, a “fractured fable” will be printed in two colors throughout, with an original introduction by the author, three two-color illustrations printed in full color to bring out their richness, and a bonus story, “Roadside Attraction.”

Zinnia Gray burst out of her own version of Sleeping Beauty, where she was destined to die from a mysterious illness in our world by age 22, and into a fairy tale multiverse filled with Sleeping Beauties. Now she helps rescue others like—and very unlike—herself. A feat she first accomplished with her best friend Charm and other unlikely princesses who also didn’t want to prick their fingers and die young at her side. 

Problem is, it turns out hopping from Sleeping Beauty variation to variation is starting to get, well…boring. Not only that, she’s estranged from Charm and the fabric of the multiverse seems to be fraying. Fairy tales are mixing with one another in strange ways. When a fierce and beguiling evil stepmother with a magic mirror snares Zinnia, eager to escape her own version of Snow White, it begins to change everything Zinnia has believed about villains and protagonists—and, quite possibly, her own story. 

On the run in the multiverse with this maybe-not-entirely-evil villain who is definitely smoking hot, she also begins to see this might be the end…and to ask the question, can happy ever afters exist?

New York Times bestselling, Hugo Award-winning author Alix E. Harrow is one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in fantasy in decades. She brought her talent for reinventing old stories to a first fairy tale classic with A Spindle Splintered, and now she expands her purview far beyond with the unmissable sequel, A Mirror Mended.

Lettered: 26 signed, bradel bound copies, housed in a custom traycase

Limited: 400 signed numbered hardcover copies

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• A Mirror Mended
• “Roadside Attraction”

From Library Journal:

“Readers who love stories that twist narratives into knots will fall for Harrow’s fractured fairy tale”

From Locus:

“Zinnia is a wonderfully unique figure in the long tradition of bibliofantasy: a reluctant heroine whose superpower doesn’t derive from spindles or mirrors, but from skillfully deconstructing the very stories she’s in.”