Letters from an Imaginary Country

by Theodora Goss, Jo Walton (Foreword by)

Overview

Roam through the captivating stories of World Fantasy and Mythopoeic Award winner Theodora Goss (the Athena Club trilogy). This themed collection of imaginary places, with three new stories, recalls Susanna Clarke’s alternate Europe and the surreal metafictions of Jorge Luis Borges.

“The elegance of Goss’s work has never ceased to amaze me.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

The infamous girl monsters of nineteenth-century fiction gather in London and form their own club. In the imaginary country of Thüle. Characters from folklore band together to fight a dictator. An intrepid girl reporter finds the hidden land of Oz—and joins its invasion of our world. The author writes the autobiography of her alternative life and a science fiction love letter to Budapest. The White Witch conquers England with snow and silence.

Deeply influenced by the author’s Hungarian childhood during the regime of the Soviet Union, each of these intricate stories engages with storytelling and identity, including Goss's own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616964405
Publisher:	Tachyon Publications
Publication date:	11/11/2025
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

World Fantasy, Locus, and Mythopoeic Award-winning author and poet Theodora Goss was born in Hungary, and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Goss is the author of the novel trilogy The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, and The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. Her short story and poetry collections include In the Forest of Forgetting, Songs for Ophelia, and Snow White Learns Witchcraft. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, and Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Goss’s work has also been translated into fifteen languages. Currently, she teaches at several creative writing workshops, and in written, oral, and visual rhetoric at Boston University. Visit her at theodoragoss.com.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from “The Mad Scientist's Daughter”

I. The House Near Regent’s Park

Mary created a trust that holds the deed to the house. We are all listed as beneficiaries:

Miss Justine Frankenstein
Miss Catherine Moreau
Miss Beatrice Rappaccini
Miss Mary Jekyll
Miss Diana Hyde
Mrs. Arthur Meyrinck (née Helen Raymond)

But it is her house, really. Her father left it to her, along with a moderate fortune. She is the only one of us who has inherited any money. Science does not pay well; mad science pays even worse.

From that fortune, she created a fund out of which we can draw for emergencies, but we all work. Mary paints on porcelain. Justine and Beatrice embroider vestments for the church. I write potboilers for the penny press. Diana is on the music hall stage. She can’t, she says, stand the dull, ladylike sort of work the rest of us do. She must have excitement: the footlights, the greasepaint, the admirers. We don’t judge. Who, indeed, are we to do so? We have all done things of which we are not proud. The club is a haven for us, a port in a particularly stormy world.

Helen does not work, of course: she has a household to run, a daughter to raise. She is also her husband’s model. You might remember her as Helen Vaughan, although she also went by Herbert or Beaumont, at the time of what the newspapers called the West End Horrors. I have seen paintings of her at the Grosvenor, as Medusa with snakes for hair, or a lamia. I envy her sometimes, living in the midst of an artistic ferment, participating in the world. But then I curl up on the sofa by the fire in the clubroom, at peace with the world and myself, and think about how lucky I am to be here, out of the tumult of life, and I am content.

Table of Contents

1). The Mad Scientist’s Daughter
2). Dora/Dóra: An Autobiography
3). Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology
4). England Under the White Witch
5). Frankenstein’s Daughter
6). Come See the Living Dryad
7). Beautiful Boys
8). Pug
9). A Letter to Merlin
10). Estella Saves the Village
11). Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology
12). Lost Girls of Oz
13). To Budapest, with Love
14). Child-Empress of Mars
15). Letters to an Imaginary Country
16). The Secret Diary of Mina Harker

Editorial Reviews

In the tradition of great modern fantasists like Angela Carter and Marina Warner, Theodora Goss’s sublime tales are modern classics-beautiful, sly, sensual and deeply moving.”
—Elizabeth Hand, winner of the Mythopoeic, Nebula, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Awards

“Wildly imaginative, gloriously sneaky, delicious tales of monsters and the terrible and beautiful sublimity of the imagination.”
—Cory Doctorow, author of Walkaway

“The worlds in Theodora Goss’ wondrous collection Letters from an Imaginary Country are tantalizingly, dangerously close to our own. These love letters to storytelling are sharp-witted and illuminating.”
—David Ebenbach, author of How to Mars

“The elegance of Goss’s work has never ceased to amaze me.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, winner of the Mythopoeic, Locus, Hugo, Otherwise and Theodore Sturgeon Awards

“Through prose and poetry, Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest—and many bright eyes gleam back.”
—Margo Lanagan, winner of the Aurealis, Ditmar and World Fantasy Awards

Praise for The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel
Finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Novel
Finalist for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel

“Theodora Goss’s splendid debut novel is a whipsmart look at the truths hiding in the stories - Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein, and others—that you might think you know.”
—Kat Howard, author of Roses and Rot

"As if Charlie's Angels, as written by Mary Shelley, took over the Bluestocking Society, with bonus well-mannered explosions. An utterly delightful, transformative read.”
—Fran Wilde, award-winning author of Updraft

[STARRED REVIEW] “A tour de force of reclaiming the narrative, executed with impressive wit and insight.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A pleasure, especially for fans of Victorian detective stories, classic sf and horror literature, and feminist remakes.”
—Booklist

“A swiftly paced, immaculately plotted mystery full of winning characters you always thought you knew, as well as ones you would never have imagined.”
—NPR

“The brainy, gleefully madcap literary mashup of your dreams.”
—B&N SciFi & Fantasy Blog

From the Publisher