Never Afters
About this ebook
In Never Afters, Kirstyn McDermott upends everything we know about fairy tales by asking a simple question: what happens to the heroines after their tales are over?
An aging Gretel runs a bakery in a remote town, enduring the antics of her drunken brother and the siren song of the witch’s grimoire searching for a new mistress.
Bluebeard’s seventh bride survives his reign of terror, but now occupies a manor filled with ghostly wives who crave vengeance.
Queen Cinderella is exiled in her own palace, replaced by a younger, prettier girl who can bear her King an heir. Through her journals, she charts how she lost her power…and what she’ll do to regain it.
Rapunzel confronts the trauma and sorrow of a childhood locked in a tower when she learns Mother Gothel is dead, while Beauty and her once beastly husband find themselves estranged as their passion dwindles.
Red Riding Hood discovers a long-kept family secret, while Snow White learns her prince is less charming than he first appeared.
Dark, powerful, and brimming with magic, the seven stories in this collection weave a reimagined world in which fairy-tale girls grow up to find both love and heartbreak, family and friendship, and moments of loss and forgiveness.
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About the author
Kirstyn McDermott has been working in the darker alleyways of speculative fiction for much of her career. She is the author of two award-winning novels, Madigan Mine and Perfections, along with two collections of short fiction, Caution: Contains Small Parts and Hard Places. Her stories and poetry have been published in various magazines, journals and anthologies within Australia and internationally, with her most recent work being Never Afters, a collection of novellas that retell classic fairy tales. Her next novel, What the Bones Know, is due to be published by Mira/HarperCollins in February 2026. She also holds a PhD in creative writing with a research focus on re-visioned fairy tales and for many years produced and co-hosted a literary discussion podcast, The Writer and the Critic. Kirstyn lives in Ballarat, Australia, with fellow writer Jason Nahrung and two distinctly non-literary felines. She can be found online at www.kirstynmcdermott.com.
