Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Rickert worked as kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and personnel assistant in Sequoia National Park. She is the winner of the Locus, Crawford, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards. She is a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her short story, "Funeral Birds" is included in the anthology, When things Get Dark: Stories Inspired by Shirley Jackson. Her most recent novel is The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie and her novella, Lucky Girl, How I Became a Horror Writer: A Krampus Story will be published by Tor.com in the fall of 2022.
Open this book to any page and find yourself enspelled by these lush, alchemical stories. Faced with the uncanny and the impossible, Rickert's protagonists are as painfully, shockingly, complexly human as the readers who will encounter them. Mothers, daughters, witches, artists, strangers, winged babies, and others grapple with deception, loss, and moments of extraordinary joy.
Mary Rickert's stories are so beautifully written. Mysterious, atmospheric, haunting. A perfect fit for our theme of ghosts and apparitions with tales like "Journey into the Kingdom," "Shipbuilder," and "Holiday," all poignant tales of ghosts that will have you thinking about them long after the collection is finished. – Tricia Reeks
"Each protagonist deals with their own fantastical yet distinctly human interactions with love. In 'Memoir of a Deer Woman" for example, when the protagonist hits a deer on New Years' Eve, it is her relationship with her husband that holds the reader's attention as impossible events and repercussions unfold."
– Mary Kay McBrayer, Book Riot"A few years ago Mary Rickert achieved the rare distinction of winning two World Fantasy Awards in one year, for a story and a collection. That story, 'Journey into the Kingdom,' is a highlight of this retrospective collection. . . . The strangeness of Rickert's fiction is more than balanced by her acute insights into families and disturbed minds."
– Gary K. Wolfe, Chicago Tribune"Reading a Mary Rickert story quite often is like sinking through layers of such worlds. We begin in one place, blink, and open our eyes to somewhere—something—else."
– James Sallis, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science FictionExcerpt from World Fantasy Award winner "Journey to the Kingdom"
The first painting was of an egg, the pale ovoid produced with faint strokes of pink, blue, and violet to create the illusion of white. After that there were two apples, a pear, an avocado, and finally, an empty plate on a white tablecloth before a window covered with gauzy curtains, a single fly nestled in a fold at the top right corner. The series was titled "Journey into the Kingdom."
On a small table beneath the avocado there was a black binder, an unevenly cut rectangle of white paper with the words "Artist's Statement" in neat, square, hand-written letters taped to the front. Balancing the porcelain cup and saucer with one hand, Alex picked up the binder and took it with him to a small table against the wall toward the back of the coffee shop, where he opened it, thinking it might be interesting to read something besides the newspaper for once, though he almost abandoned the idea when he saw that the page before him was handwritten in the same neat letters as on the cover. But the title intrigued him.
AN IMITATION LIFE
THOUGH I ALWAYS enjoyed my crayons and watercolors, I was not a particularly artistic child. I produced the usual assortment of stick figures and houses with dripping yellow suns. I was an avid collector of seashells and sea glass and much preferred to be outdoors, throwing stones at seagulls (please, no haranguing from animal rights activists, I have long since outgrown this) or playing with my imaginary friends to sitting quietly in the salt rooms of the keeper's house, making pictures at the big wooden kitchen table while my mother, in her black dress, kneaded bread and sang the old French songs between her duties as lighthouse keeper, watcher over the waves, beacon for the lost, governess of the dead.
The first ghost to come to my mother was my own father who had set out the day previous in the small boat heading to the mainland for supplies such as string and rice, and also bags of soil, which, in years past, we emptied into crevices between the rocks and planted with seeds, a makeshift garden and a "brave attempt," as my father called it, referring to the barren stone we lived on.
We did not expect him for several days so my mother was surprised when he returned in a storm, dripping wet icicles from his mustache and behaving strangely, repeating over and over again, "It is lost, my dear Maggie, the garden is at the bottom of the sea."
My mother fixed him hot tea but he refused it, she begged him to take off the wet clothes and retire with her, to their feather bed piled with quilts, but he said, "Tend the light, don't waste your time with me." So my mother, a worried expression on her face, left our little keeper's house and walked against the gale to the lighthouse, not realizing that she left me with a ghost, melting before the fire into a great puddle, which was all that was left of him upon her return. She searched frantically while I kept pointing at the puddle and insisting it was he. Eventually she tied on her cape and went out into the storm, calling his name. I thought that, surely, I would become orphaned that night.
