Skin Folk

Award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson's first collection is Skin Folk , and its 15 stories are as strong and beautiful as her novels. "The Glass Bottle Trick" retells the Bluebeard legend in a Caribbean setting and rhythms, for a sharp, chilling examination of love, gender, race, and class. In the myth-tinged "Money Tree," a Canadian immigrant's greed sends him back to Jamaica in pursuit of an accursed pirate treasure. In "Slow Cold Chick," a woman must confront the deadly cockatrice that embodies her suppressed desires. In the postapocalyptic science fantasy "Under Glass," events in one world affect those in another, and a child's carelessness may doom them both. The lightest of fantastic imagery touches "Fisherman," a tropically hot tale of sexual awakening, and one of the five original stories in Skin Folk . --Cynthia Ward