Description
A Washington Post Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Selection
One of Electric Literature’s Best Short Story Collections of the Year
A highly anticipated collection of wildly imaginative short stories from “one of contemporary fiction’s true mad scientists” (Necessary Fiction).
Reviews
"Sparks's stylish second collection is the work of a young writer whose voice feels far wiser than her years…[S]he plays with both fantasy and form. No one story sounds like another, yet her singular voice floats through the collection, tying it together with opulent prose that draws heavily on history and the macabre." — Rachel Syme, New York Times Book Review
"Amber Sparks uses the surreal and fantastic in stunning, surprising ways. Like Carola Dibbell's The Only Ones and Emily Mandel's Station Eleven, the book is a masterful work of speculative fiction." — Nancy Hightower, Washington Post
"Amber Sparks's The Unfinished World and Other Stories has all the furnishings of a twenty-first century homage to the carnally macabre Angela Carter. The collection captures an off-kilter universe of almost-fairy tales with equal parts beauty and melancholy." — Keziah Weir, Elle
"Fabulist authors such as Lauren Groff, Kelly Link, Karen Russell and Margaret Atwood examine monumental family sagas and twisted love affairs through [mythology and fairy tales] because these universal stories demand the profound gravity that emerges only from a distorted sense of reality. Amber Sparks' crackling, dark clutch of sharply focused short stories falls into this canon. . . . Forged in an evocative and sensual fire, these tales transcend tradition to shine new light onto timeless complications." — Lauren LeBlanc, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Fascinating in its serendipity, yet alert to pangs of the ordinary, The Unfinished World…[is] lovely, brave." — John Domini, Bookforum
"The images tumbling from Sparks’s mind in her extraordinary second story collection (following May We Shed These Human Bodies) are fantastical and sublime…. In present-day, historical, and fantasy settings, the author is assured; her spare but colorful prose takes the reader on journeys of longing and mystery, often into uncharted territory, all the while capturing setting and character in a few words…. [T]he breadth of her imagination never ceases to amaze." — Publishers Weekly, Starred review
"In The Unfinished World and Other Stories, Amber Sparks is a master of the fantastic. Here are stories about fever librarians and brothers who are swans, time travelers and space janitors. With each story, Sparks defies the known world in absolutely thrilling ways." — Roxane Gay, author of An Untamed State and Bad Feminist
"Amber Sparks is one of my favorite writers working today. Her stories are brutal beauties, guaranteed to explode your brain and steal your heart, and The Unfinished World and Other Stories is vintage Sparks: endlessly inventive, thrillingly imaginative, utterly assured. I loved this wild miracle of a collection." — Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me
Also By: Amber Sparks 
And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges
Paperback, 2021
Amber Sparks holds her crown in the canon of the weird with this fantastical collection of “eye-popping range” (John Domini, Washington Post).
And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges
Hardback, 2020
An NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year
Populated with such heroes as time-traveling queens and video-game designing goddesses, and such specters as clingy ghosts and mediocre men, And I...
And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges
E Book, 2020
Amber Sparks holds her crown in the canon of the weird with this fantastical collection of “eye-popping range” (John Domini, Washington Post).
