I don’t know about you, but I’m scared. Why? This is what they say about Petrushevskaya’s writing:  The New York Times: “Again and again, in surprisingly few words, her witchy magic foments an unsettling brew of conscience and consequences.” The Nation: “Many of [the stories] translated into English for the first time, cover the familiar domain of domestic conflict and urban despair, but the situations are infused with a strong dose of the supernatural that lends them extreme, often ghastly, consequences.”

Elle magazine simply states: “There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby gave me nightmares.”

Want to know more? Ludmilla Petrushevskaya is the award-winning author of more than fifteen collections of prose. The progenitor of the “women’s fiction” movement in Russian letters, she is also a playwright whose work has been staged by leading theater companies all over the world. The tales that are told in There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby explore fate and the supernatural, as well as grief, madness, and all kinds of unpleasant whatnot.

If you’re up for it, we at Wonders & Marvels are giving away three copies of these Scary Fairy Tales. To enter, just comment by 11:59 p.m. Eastern time December 21, 2009 in response to this question: What seemingly benign childhood encounter instead scared you silly? (For this Giveaways Editor, it was my godfather’s German Santa costume.) If you don’t have such a memory, feel free to comment that you were fearless. Good luck! (Sorry, at this time we can only ship to U.S. addresses.)