For two hundred years, they told these as his story. You know these ballads. You have never heard them like this.
In seven short stories retelling Scotland’s oldest, darkest ballads, the women those songs reduced to warnings, witches, and casualties finally take up the telling themselves. Nannie reveals the dance was never the scandal; it was the only freedom she’d ever had, until a drunk man named her the “Cutty Sark” and she sought her revenge. Janet grips the burning iron through Tam Lin’s every shape, and tells her daughter why. The Queen of Elfland traces every river of blood back to its source, and finds a lie waiting there.
These seven stories are confessions, curses, and reckonings, in voices that have waited a long time to be heard. Lyrical, unsettling, and steeped in folk horror, Their Own Dark is a debut collection in the tradition of Angela Carter and Kirsty Logan, for readers of Carmen Maria Machado. Perfect for those who love a short story from her pov, short reads horror, and historical fiction short stories.
Coming soon: Their Own Dark
Cordelia Webb 