'I am a long-standing, passionate fan of Aimee Bender's stories. Her images explode, her words ignite. Watching her imagination catch fire remains a sustaining joy in my readerly life.' Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones'To curl up with an Aimee Bender story is to thank heaven you ever learned to read in the first place . What a treat to spend 15 stories in Bender's vast and wonderfully unhinged imagination.' Entertainment WeeklyIn Willful Creatures Aimee Bender takes us on a journey to a fantastical world in which authentic love blossoms. This is a place where a boy with keys for fingers is a hero, a family of pumpkin heads embrace their ironhead son and a mother whose potato-children dotingly follow her around as she completes her daily chores. With the mix of charm and keenly felt emotion that characterised her New York Times bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Bender once again proves herself to be a masterful chronicler of the human condition.

'Contemporary fairy tales . and a deep tenderness for her characters, that aren't always as dark or as sinister as they initially appear.' The New York Times Book Review'Exciting, harsh, rugged and unyielding . Every sentence in [Willful Creatures] is a fresh surprise.' The Washington Post.