A genius at the short-story form, Julia Elliott achieves new highs with the astonishing Hellions. Beautiful, visceral, surprising stories, both wild and dangerous, with a Southern twang but universal appeal. Elliott is an Angela Carter for our times. One of my favorite collections of the past few years.--Jeff VanderMeer, author of Absolution

In Hellions Elliott has a remarkable ability to cross-pollinate subgenres of the fantastic and then ricochet between them to find new genres in the cracks. Fairy tales, folk magic, horror, Southern gothic, and dirty realism inflect one another and explode to make a swampy magic realism that only Elliott could write.--Brian Evenson, author of Good Night, Sleep Tight

Julia Elliott's fiction is its own country. Every sentence drips and unsettles, every character lusts and schemes, every landscape is alien and forbidding. But there is something eerily familiar pulsing underneath the wildness--the way your waking life snakes through the logic of your dreams. I am obsessed with these lush, feral stories.--Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

Intoxicating, fantasy-tinged. . . . Elliott's rich and magical landscape will pull readers in.-- "Publishers Weekly"

Bewitching. . . . Gothic, atmospheric, and filled with the lavish symbolism contained in the natural world.-- "Booklist"

Elliott has a penchant for blending lived-in settings with big conceptual flexes; these stories continue in that tradition, covering everything from strange familial dynamics to magic's effect on an art colony.-- "Reactor"

Jeff VanderMeer called Elliott an Angela Carter for our times, and he's absolutely right. Elliott's fiction blends folklore and fairy tale, reality and strangeness, the surreal and the mundane to make dazzling mobiles of oddity--and her new collection is shaping up to be her most curious to date. From medieval convents to small Southern towns, Elliott's protagonists make her strange worlds seem vibrantly real.-- "LitHub, A Most Anticipated Book of 2025"

Feral fairytales with a gothic twist....Blurring the line between reality and fantasy, Hellions provides an unsettling look at what it means to be alienated in our technology-driven world.-- "TIME, Best Book of April"

Captivating.... Julia Elliott masterfully crafts these haunting tales, bringing both comedy and a dreadful sense of eeriness to every page.-- "Chicago Review of Books"

Publisher: Tin House Books

Pub date: 2025-04-15

Length: 272 pages