Late one night, Laura, Daniel and Mo find themselves beneath the fluorescent lights of a high school classroom, almost a year after disappearing from their hometown, the small seaside community of Lovesend, Massachusetts, having long been presumed dead. Which, in fact, they are. With them in the room is their previously unremarkable high school music teacher, who seems to know something about their disappearance --- and what has brought them back again. Desperate to reclaim their lives, the three agree to the terms of the bargain their music teacher proposes. They will be given a series of magical tasks. While they undertake them, they may return to their families and friends, but they can tell no one where they’ve been. But their resurrection has attracted the notice of other supernatural figures, all with their own agendas.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, 17th-century French lore and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers --- characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge or their own sense of purpose. In “The White Cat’s Divorce,” an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which child will become his heir. In “Skinder’s Veil,” a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers --- or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.

Kelly Link’s new story collection presents nine tales of the fantastic and the bizarre. The protagonists, most of them young women, include a teenager who hears voices in her head, an actress from a ghost-hunting reality show, a 15-year-old gamer who travels from Iowa to New York to meet an older man she met online, and a woman who departs from a bar in the company of a man who claims to be a wolfman.