Hair Side, Flesh Side

A child receives the body of Saint Lucia of Syracuse for her seventh birthday. A rebelling angel rewrites the Book of Judgement to protect the woman he loves. A young woman discovers the lost manuscript of Jane Austen written on the inside of her skin. A 747 populated by a dying pantheon makes the extraordinary journey to the beginning of the universe.




Lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting. Helen Marshall's exceptional debut collection weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human in fifteen modern parables about history, memory and the cost of creating art.

Winner of the British Fantasy Sydney J. Bounds Award

Shortlisted for the Aurora Award

One of January Magazine's Best Books of the Year

"Masterful horror. In Marshall's dark landscapes, the metaphors are feral and they'll turn on you in a heartbeat." --M.R. Carey, Author of The Girl with All the Gifts

". . . A tour de force of imagination, this remarkable debut collection uses the conventions of dark fantasy and horror as the framework for some of speculative fiction's most unusual stories. VERDICT Fans of experimental fiction and exceptional writing should find a wealth of enjoyment here." --Library Journal, Starred Review

". . . Amidst moments of body horror and hauntings galore, miracles and expressions of joy are liberally sprinkled, offering moments that lingered in my thoughts well after I'd finished the story. . . . I cannot wait to see what Marshall conjures next."--San Francisco Book Review

"The stories in Helen Marshall's Hair Side, Flesh Side occur in the interstices of our most fundamental relations. Brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers find the space between them grown strange, shifting, as the familiar becomes the site and the source of startling transformation. Elegant, unsettling, these stories leave the reader no less changed than their characters. Highly recommended work." --John Langan, Author of Technicolor and Other Revelations and House of Windows

". . . Hair Side, Flesh Side is a strong first collection of speculative fiction borne out of faded manuscripts, old libraries and the memories of the past. However, it's how Marshall sees us reconcile these ghosts with the world of the living that give her stories the weight of immediacy. She is a talent to be discovered." --The National Post

... More