In this elegant volume, award-winning author Sarah Totton takes her readers on speculative journeys of the heart and mind that will both challenge and engage you. Within these tales, readers will learn the meaning of darkness and pain and fear. Yet they will also learn about love and happiness and laughter. Sarah Totton explores the full kaleidoscope of the human heart and peels it back, one layer at a time. She offers her readers a full palette of emotions and stories to sift through, never settling, never holding back, and never flinching. Whether she is writing about the loss of innocence through dark revelations, the point to which a human mind can be stretched before succumbing to the magic of faerie, or something as preposterous as cloud-fishing in a world with pink yaks, the stories in Animythical Tales are always told with an eye toward revealing something important about the human condition. If you have ever yearned to fall into fabulous adventures in unforgettable worlds, Animythical Tales is the collection for you.
 
Table of Contents:
Introduction, by Forrest Aguirre
A Fish Story
The Man with the Seahorse Head
Flatrock Sunners
Pelly Medley
Bluecoat Jack
A Sip from the Cup of Enlightenment
Choke Point
The Bone Fisher's Apprentice
A Little Tea and Personal Magnetism
The Teasewater Five
 
Awards:
"The Man with the Seahorse Head" was the Regional Winner (for Canada & the Caribbean) of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition (2008)
 
Reviews:
 
"Deftly written." —Waterloo Region Record
 
"… speaks to one on an emotional level… Totton’s writing has depth and is multilayered, inviting the reader to explore the deeper meaning of the issues that she covers." —BookPleasures.com
 
"'A Sip from the Cup of Enlightenment' was one of my favourites in the book. It's a perfect example of why I found Totton's work to be so intriguing and alluring; it's fantasy that challenges the reader in unfamiliar, surprising ways. The story is gorgeously written, and its imaginary culture effortlessly evoked. It's a murder mystery, a fantasy, a horror story, and terrifically ominous. It works, despite being eminently perplexing. If anything, I was left wishing she'd written a novella set in Congaree instead of a short story.… The writing, as with all of Totton's stories, is exquisite, infusing the mundane with magic.… Even when set in what is ostensibly the 'real' world, Totton's writing is gifted with this intangible but lovely quality of transformative fantasia that reminds one of a child's imagination and perspective (both dark and light), lensed through an adult's language.… This is a collection worth owning. I look forward to Sarah Totton's future work." —Tangent Online
 
"A pleasantly absurd comedy of manners with an ending highly satisfactory to most of the parties concerned. Recommended."—Lois Tilton, Internet Review of Science Fiction
 
"...wildly inventive..." —Rich Horton, Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2007