[Avid Reader Press] Winner of the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize • A BookPage Best Historical Fiction Book of the Year • “Artfully composed…keenly alive…this memorable novel reminds the reader of the enduring power of storytelling to transform and even save lives.” —The New York Times Lauren Groff’s Matrix meets Ophelia Field’s The Favourite in this wry and “bawdy” (Los Angeles Times) historical novel—inspired by true events—featuring an elite group of Paris intellectuals who perform fairy tales that put both the storytellers and their closely kept secrets in grave danger. Why don’t they tell you it is the beautiful princess who becomes the evil queen; that they are just the same person at different points in their story? At a safe distance from the intrigues of courtly life at Louis XIV’s Versailles, an intellectual crowd of mostly women have been gathering in a Parisian home to share what hostess Marie D’Aulnoy herself has christened contes de fées: fairy tales. Recently ousted