Saffron and Brimstone

 Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand  240 pages

Summary from Goodreads: This new collection (an expansion of the limited-release Bibliomancy, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2005) showcases a wildly inventive author at the height of her powers. Included in this collection are "The Least Trumps," in which a lonely women reaches out to the world through symbols, tattooing, and the Tarot, and "Pavane for a Prince of the Air," where neo-pagan rituals bring a recently departed soul to something very different than eternal rest. Written in the author's characteristic poetic prose and rich with the details of traumatic lives that are luminously transformed, Saffron and Brimstone is a worthy addition to an outstanding career.

And here's what I thought: I re-read this book usually once a year because I enjoy some of the stories so much. Each time I read them, I usually re-discover something I had forgotten about, which is fun. The first story, about an unusual young woman and moths, never fails to captivate me. And I really love The Least Trumps, as well. Hand's writing style is really descriptive and evocative and I often savor a sentence or two in a story. Her description of being tattooed is the most accurate I've read -- "It's more like carving your own skin with the slanted nib of a razor-sharp calligraphy pen or writing on flesh with a soldering iron."