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Kat Howard has already been called a "remarkable writer" by Neil Gaiman and her "dark and enticing" (Publishers Weekly) debut novel, Roses and Rot, was beloved by critics and fans alike.

Now, you can experience her collected shorter works, including two new stories, in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone. In these stories, equally as beguiling and spellbinding as her novels, Howard expands into the enchanted territory of myths and saints, as well as an Arthurian novella set upon a college campus, Once, Future, which retells the story of King Arthur -- through the women's eyes.

Captivating and engrossing, and adorned in gorgeous prose, Kat Howard's stories are a fresh and stylish take on fantasy. "Kat Howard seems to possess a magic of her own, of making characters come alive and scenery so vivid, you forget it exists only on the page" (Anton Bogomazov, Politics and Prose).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• A Life in Fictions (2010) - short story
• The Saint of the Sidewalks (2014) - short story
• Maiden, Hunter, Beast (2016) - short story
• Once, Future - novella
• Translatio Corporis (2015) - short story
• Dreaming Like a Ghost (2014) - short story
• Murdered Sleep (2012) - short story
• The Speaking Bone (2011) - short story
• Those Are Pearls (2015) - short story
• All of Our Past Places (2014) - short story
• Saints' Tide - short story
• Painted Birds and Shivered Bones (2013) - novelette
• Returned (2015) - short story
• The Calendar of Saints (2011) - short story
• The Green Knight's Wife (2016) - short story
• Breaking the Frame (2012) - short story

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, March 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, November 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Originally anthologized in Stories: All-New Tales edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (2010), this short story was later published by Apex Magazine in October 2011, and collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Apex Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 17, July-August 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Originally published in The Journal of Unlikely Cartography in June 2014, this short story later appeared in Episode#364 of Drabblecast (2015) and was collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read or listen to this story for free online at Unlikely Story or Drabblecast.

Originally published by Lightspeed Magazine in August 2012, this short story was collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read or listen to this story for free online at Lightspeed Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine, April 2011. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Fantasy Magazine.

Originally published by Nightmare Magazine in February 2014, this short story has been collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Nightmare Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2016. The story is included in the collection A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2018).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue One, November-December 2014.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Originally published by Apex Magazine in August 2012, this short story was later anthologized in The Book of Apex: Volume Four of Apex Magazine (2013) and collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Apex Magazine.

Originally published by Subterranean Online in Spring 2013, this novelette has been anthologized in New York Fantastic edited by Paula Guran (2017) and collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Subterranean Magazine.

Originally published by Nightmare Magazine in January 2015, this short story has been collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Nightmare Magazine.

Imogen and her sister Marin escape their cruel mother to attend a prestigious artists' retreat, but soon learn that living in a fairy tale requires sacrifices, whether it be art or love in this haunting debut novel from "a remarkable young writer" (Neil Gaiman).

What would you sacrifice for everything you ever dreamed of?

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn't imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program--Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there's more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she's dreamed about as a child, but it's one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart's desire.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, July 2011.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Originally published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies in October 2011, this short story later appeared in Episode #286 of Podcastle (2013) and was collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read or listen to this story for free online at Beneath Ceaseless Skies or Podcastle.

It begins with a letter from a prisoner...

As he attempts to rebuild his life in rural Oregon after a tragic accident, Malcolm Mays finds himself corresponding with Dusha Chuchonnyhoof, a mysterious entity who claims to be the owner of Malcolm's house, jailed unjustly for 117 years. The prisoner demands that Malcolm perform a gory, bewildering task for him. As the clock ticks toward Dusha's release, Malcolm must attempt to find out whether he's assisting a murderer or an innocent. ''The End of the Sentence'' combines Kalapuya, Welsh, Scottish and Norse mythology, with a dark imagined history of the hidden corners of the American West.

Maria Dahvana Headley and Kat Howard have forged a fairytale of ghosts and guilt, literary horror blended with the visuals of Jean Cocteau, failed executions, shapeshifting goblins, and magical blacksmithery. In Chuchonnyhoof, they've created a new kind of Beast, longing, centuries later, for Beauty.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 13, November-December 2016. The story is included in the collection A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2018).

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, October 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Originally published by Clarkesworld Magazine in August 2014, this short story later appeared in Episode #410 of Podcastle (2016) and was collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read or listen to this story for free online at Clarkesworld Magazine or Podcastle.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 10, May-June 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Originally published by Apex Magazine in March 2011, this short story was later anthologized in The Book of Apex: Volume Three of Apex Magazine (2012) and collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Apex Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the non-genre magazine Guillotine Series #10, November 2015, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, Issue 106, March 2019. The story is inlcuded in the collection A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Originally published by Uncanny Magazine in March-April 2015, this short story has been collected in A Cathedral of Myth and Bone (2019).

Read the story for free online at Uncanny Magazine.

There is a dark secret that is hiding at the heart of New York City and diminishing the city's magicians' power in this fantasy thriller by acclaimed author Kat Howard.

In New York City, magic controls everything. But the power of magic is fading. No one knows what is happening, except for Sydney--a new, rare magician with incredible power that has been unmatched in decades, and she may be the only person who is able to stop the darkness that is weakening the magic. But Sydney doesn't want to help the system, she wants to destroy it.

Sydney comes from the House of Shadows, which controls the magic with the help of sacrifices from magicians.

After taking down the source of the corruption of the Unseen World, Sydney is left with almost no magical ability. Feeling estranged from herself, she is determined to find a way back to her status as one of the world's most dangerous magicians. Unfortunately, she needs to do this quickly: the House of Shadows, the hell on earth that shaped her into who she was, the place she sacrificed everything to destroy, is rebuilding itself.

"The House of shadows sits on bones. All of the sacrifices, all of the magicians who died in Shadows, they're buried beneath the foundations. Bones hold magic."

The magic of the Unseen World is acting strangely, faltering, bleeding out from the edges. Determined to keep the House of Shadows from returning to power and to defeat the magicians who want nothing more than to have it back, Sydney turns to extremes in a desperate attempt to regain her sacrificed magic. She is forced to decide what she will give up and what she will lose and whether what must be destroyed is not only the House of Shadows, but the Unseen World itself.

World Fantasy Award finalist Kat Howard has written a sequel that asks how you have a happily ever in a world that doesn't want it, where the cost of that happiness may be too much to bear.