Kelly Link riffs on haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, superheroes, marriage, and cannons in her new collection. Each story is illustrated by artist Shelley Jackson, and Jackson's cover illustration is modeled on Leonardo Da Vinci's painting “Lady with an Ermine.”Magic for Beginners was selected as a Best Book of the Year by Time Magazine, BookSense, and Salon, and as a Best of the Decade by Salon, The Onion, HTML Giant, and the Village Voice. Link's stories have been awarded the Tiptree, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. Her stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, McSweeney's, and Conjunctions, as well as translated into Japanese, German, Czech, Korean, French, and Greek. She lives with her family in Northampton, MA, although she can often be found driving across the country.