Midnight Circus

Step inside a carnival that opens only at midnight, where the tents hide darker attractions than cotton candy. Jane Yolen, the fantasy writer whose work includes the children's picture book Owl Moon, gathers sixteen short stories and poems in this collection. The pieces range over familiar places and old stories. Central Park is turned into a fairground where a visitor might be tempted to take on the shape of a wild animal. Elsewhere, the Red Sea becomes a dangerous crossing because of a swarm of ravenous angels, and a man journeying to the South Pole finds the cold is the least of his troubles, whether he is alive or dead.

The tone is solemn and eerie, with each piece adding its own unsettling twist to the collection's shared theme of the uncanny. Readers who enjoy dark fantasy, folklore reimagined in strange settings, and verse mixed with prose will find plenty here. The collection closes the same way it opens, with a reminder that the circus is waiting and it will not wait for latecomers.