Fairy Godfather

The day Paul's daughter is born, a smiling stranger with pointed ears visits the hospital to make him an offer he can't refuse. It's a dangerous world out there. Especially for children. But he can give Paul something any parent would do anything for: the certainty that his child will be safe. And all it will cost is a single drop of blood. For now. But prices always go up... This short story is 12,000 words long. It is also available in Devil's Bargains, a short story collection.

A New Romantic Comedy from the New York Times Bestselling Author, Agatha Award Nominee and IMBA National Bestseller Tim Myers! All Tom ever wanted to do was fall in love, but things never seemed to work out. He didn’t think his love life could get any worse until Rocco came into his life, a broken down, hapless mobster who’d died saving someone for love. Rocco was recruited to be a fairy godfather, but his second chances are about to run out unless he can find Tom true love.

In the classic rags-to-riches fairy tale a penniless heroine (or hero), with some magic help, marries a royal prince (or princess) and rises to wealth. Received opinion has long been that stories like these originated among peasants, who passed them along by word of mouth from one place to another over the course of centuries. In a bold departure from conventional fairy tale scholarship, Ruth B. Bottigheimer asserts that city life and a single individual played a central role in the creation and transmission of many of these familiar tales. According to her, a provincial boy, Zoan Francesco Straparola, went to Venice to seek his fortune and found it by inventing the modern fairy tale, including the long beloved Puss in Boots, and by selling its many versions to the hopeful inhabitants of that colorful and commercially bustling city. With innovative literary sleuthing, Bottigheimer has reconstructed the actual composition of Straparola's collection of tales. Grounding her work in social history of the Renaissance Venice, Bottigheimer has created a possible biography for Straparola, a man about whom hardly anything is known. This is the first book-length study of Straparola in any language.

Marissa Locks, newly appointed partner of the Grimm Agency, has a reputation for making a mess of magical matters—although causing Armageddon is a new low, even for her… Marissa is due for a little happily ever after. After all, she did kill the evil Fairy Godmother, end a war, and snag a sweet promotion within the Fairy Godfather's magical-problem-solving Agency. But between maintaining a relationship with someone whose amorous advances can cause third-degree burns, dealing with a killer-poodle infestation, and helping her best friend, Princess Ari, learn to wield spells more powerful than curing a hangover, she’s not getting as much peace and quiet as she hoped. When an enemy from her past appears to exact a terrible revenge, Marissa’s life goes from hectic to hell on earth. With Grimm inexplicably gone and Ari trapped by a sleeping spell, Marissa decides to fight fire with hellfire—and accidentally begins a countdown to the apocalypse. With the end of days extremely nigh, Marissa will have to master royal politics, demonic law, and biblical plagues in a hurry—because even the end of the world can’t keep the Agency from opening for business…

From the bestselling author of the Heralds of Valdemar series comes an enchanting novel. In the land of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, if you can't carry out your legendary role, life is no fairy tale.… Elena Klovis was supposed to be her kingdom's Cinderella—until fate left her with a completely inappropriate prince! So she set out to make a new life for herself. But breaking with "The Tradition" was no easy matter—until she got a little help from her own fairy godmother. Who promptly offered Elena a most unexpected job.… Now, instead of sleeping in the chimney, she has to deal with arrogant, stuffed-shirt princes who keep trying to rise above their place in the tale. And there's one in particular who needs to be dealt with…. Sometimes a fairy godmother's work is never done….

A deal with the devil… A man has an unexpected reunion with the firstborn child he sacrificed for power long ago. A human tricks the fae into a bargain. A chance meeting on an airplane teaches a burned-out charity worker the cost of a few careless words. Since the beginning of time, humans have whispered desperate pleas into the darkness. In these six stories, someone is listening. Dark forces are ready to meet every need and fulfill every wish... for a price. But eventually, the bill always comes due. This collection contains the following short stories: The Woman on the Plane The Fairy Godfather The Dark Road Home Born Bad Hell Respects a Work Ethic The Dancing Girl and the Music Box Heart

In the twenty-first century, American culture is experiencing a profound shift toward pluralism and secularization. In Fairy Tales in Contemporary American Culture: How We Hate to Love Them, Kate Koppy argues that the increasing popularity and presence of fairy tales within American culture is both indicative of and contributing to this shift. By analyzing contemporary fairy tale texts as both new versions in a particular tale type and as wholly new fairy-tale pastiches, Koppy shows that fairy tales have become a key part of American secular scripture, a corpus of shared stories that work to maintain a sense of community among diverse audiences in the United States, as much as biblical scripture and associated texts used to.