Six works of literary fiction that take their mythical creatures seriously

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged six works of literary fiction that take their mythical creatures seriously, including:

Vampires in the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell (Vampires and more)

Karen Russell never got the memo that says that in order to be taken seriously as a literary fiction writer, you have to put mythical creatures aside. Her debut story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, features characters of a lupine nature, and Russell’s most recent collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, includes elderly vampires hanging out in Santa Francesca’s lemon grove, where the lemons they suck quell their thirst for blood. In another story in the collection, “Reeling for the Empire,” Russell invents her own mythical creatures, imagining young Japanese women working in a silk factory transforming into silkworms.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue