In this modern version of Sleeping Beauty, Brendan is fascinated by the house on Willow Avenue, and by the story the mysterious school nurse tells him of the girl trapped within--but though he manages to free the Sova family, the enchantment still lingers, even onto the next generation.
Hansen and Gracie are orphaned twins, but their ability to hear each other even when they are not together has made them strange, and prevented them from being adopted--so when the evil officials from the orphanage abandon them in the woods they set out to find a home of their own.
In this modern version of Cinderella, Chantella Verre is being treated like a servant by her oblivious father's new wife and her awful twins--but Chantella gets a chance to sing at the Next Teen Star audition when her former nanny shows up to set things right.
For fourteen years Dandelion has lived in a house with the witch she thinks is her mother, but when she shows signs of growing up the witch locks her in a tower in the woods--where a boy named Arthur hears her singing.
In this modern version of Beauty and the Beast, unhappy fifteen-year-old Carlo has been living in the basement of his family's mansion ever since his father died--until beautiful fifteen-year-old Belle shows up to pay for the rose her father picked in the garden.
Chantella dreams her singing will take her away from chores and grant a Cinderella-worthy happy ever after. Whereas Cassie walks through the streets in her red coat, looking over her shoulder as a dark figure named Caleb Woolf follows her... In this collection of short stories, normal kids find themselves lost in the woods or locked in a tower - situations that might seem familiar. But fairy tales have a dark side and not all have a happy ending...
Rough draughts of some of the following tales and essays were actually written during a residence in the Alhambra; others were subsequently added, founded on notes and observations made there. Care was taken to maintain local coloring and verisimilitude; so that the whole might present a faithful and living picture of that microcosm, that singular little world into which I had been fortuitously thrown; and about which the external world had a very imperfect idea. It was my endeavor scrupulously to depict its half Spanish, half Oriental character; its mixture of the heroic, the poetic, and the grotesque; to revive the traces of grace and beauty fast fading from its walls; to record the regal and chivalrous traditions concerning those who once trod its courts; and the whimsical and superstitious legends of the motley race now burrowing among its ruins.