From Booklist
The 17 stories in this anthology on the theme of places to buy magic make up an exceptionally strong volume. In "Tarnished Linings," P. N. Elrod goes for the gruesome, while in "Dime Store Rings," Michelle West offers probably the most powerful story here--on aging, in children as well as parents. Mel Odom uses American Indian folklore in "The Serpent of the Lakes," while Kristine Katherine Rusch puts a corporate troubleshooter for a chain of magic shops in a position where the trouble at hand threatens to shoot (or stab) back. "The Fairest" by Von Jocks ingeniously varies the theme of the magic mirror, while India Edghill's "Winter Phoenix" (which nearly ties West's entry as best in the book) powerfully alters the theme of the fate of a certain Russian princess. Even the less compelling stories here feature gratifying grace notes. All told, singular testimony to how much originality, or at least good storytelling, a venerable theme can generate. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
All-original stories from P.N. Elrod, Jody Lynn Nye, Michelle West, and others explore the endlessly fascinating possibilities that would arise if a magic shop truly sold magic.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The Magic Shop, an anthology of 15 original short stories edited by Denise Little, investigates the possibilities that could arise if a magic shop really sold magical items. Authors featured in the collection include P. N. Elrod, Michelle West, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Noteworthy stories include Laura Resnick's "The Magic Keyboard," a Twilight Zone–like tale about a struggling mystery writer ("pale, physically unfit, financially desperate, and emotionally downtrodden") named Ethelfreda Feldsnitch, who must get over a case of writer's block or be evicted from her apartment. After throwing her keyboard out the window, she fatefully visits a nearby magic shop, where the owner gives her a magic pen guaranteed to stop writer's block. The pen works wonderfully -- except that it's writing classic works already published by other writers! When Ethelfreda goes back to return the pen, she finally gets the motivation she needs!

Other literary gems are "Winter Phoenix" by India Edghill, an alternate history of sorts about Anastasia, Tsar Nicholas Romanov's youngest daughter, and her magic-aided escape from 1918 Russia, and "For Whom the Bell Tolled" by Jody Lynn Nye, about an owner of a small magic shop who gets exactly what he inadvertently wishes for.

After finishing this anthology, readers will never look at magic shops and new age/metaphysical bookstores the same way again. Little aptly describes the anthology as a "collection of stories of the changed fates and challenged minds of the amazed consumers -- both mundane and magical -- who dared to shop at a Magic Shop." Buyer beware! Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER