Newford's citizens--fey folk, magicians, hustlers, painters, fiddlers, and ordinary people--stumble headfirst into enchanting adventures YA-A collection of urban fantasies, interconnected in unexpected ways as characters slip between past and present. Most of the selections are akin to fairy tales, but not all have direct antecedents. The result is a delighfully naturalistic fairy tour of the city of Newford, where events are at times shocking, involved, or dreamlike. Jilly Coppercorn, Geordie Riddell, and his brother provide some of the links, and the city creates others. Ghosts, spirits of place, goblins, and conjure men all make appearances and remind readers that it's their ability to see magic that allows it to exist. Jilly and her friends' relationship with the otherworld is attractive, but so is their deep commitment to this one. deLint's unassuming prose is always in the service of his vision, never in its way. A thoroughly engaging book, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, full of ideas and characters that won't let go...but then, YAs won't want them to. Cathy Chauvette, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. A ghostly love story with its beginnings in "Timeskip" and its poignant conclusion in "Paperjack" sets the tone for this collection of 19 stories (most of them published only in magazines) of urban fantasy by the author of Moonheart (Ace: Berkley, 1987) and The Little Country (Morrow, 1991). De Lint has a flair for tales that blur the lines between the mundane world and magical reality, and nowhere is this more evident than in the fictional city of Newford, where the borders between the worlds are at their most permeable. These tales by a superb storyteller belong in most libraries. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. Nineteen associated tales, 1987-93, from the author of Spiritwalk (1992), etc., two previously unpublished, the remainder deriving from magazines, small presses, and minor anthologies. Newford, with its harbor, lost subterranean Old City, Chinatown, skid row, and so forth, is de Lint's all-purpose American city; his theme is Urban Faeries, wherein the creatures and beings of magic and folklore become real and tangible to those that believe in them. Though Newford's population leans heavily toward twentysomething New Agers, characters like author Christy (his stories are often related or read by the other characters), Professor Bramley Dapple of Butler U., and the ubiquitous, good- hearted Jilly Coppercorn, weave in and out of the stories. The ideas, too, display an entertaining diversity: magic birds, stone drums, ghosts in various guises, animated bicycles, Bigfoot, gypsy magic, psychic vampires, spirits of place, Frankenstein's monster, a conjuror and a Tree of Tales, a catalyst for bad luck, dreams, orphans and angels, night people, bridges and possibilities, music and mermaids, and spirits of the city. Tidy tales, with tingling openings, mundane middles, and limp or elusive endings: initially appealing but far from memorable. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.