The Curiosities Books in Order

The Curiosities series grew out of an online experiment. For years Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, and Brenna Yovanoff wrote short pieces for their shared blog, often drafting fast, posting without heavy revision, and chatting with one another in the margins. The two anthologies that came from that project invite readers into both the stories and the creative mess behind them.

The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories gathers some of their favorite dark, strange, and funny shorts, from basement vampires kept for good luck to girls who dine with ghosts and worlds where fires never quite go out. Each piece is printed with handwritten notes from the authors reacting to each other’s choices, talking about what worked, and occasionally poking fun at themselves. It feels a bit like sitting in on three friends’ workshop session where the monsters are real.

The follow up, The Anatomy of Curiosity, trades the rapid fire variety of the first book for three longer novellas, one from each writer. Here the focus is as much on process as on plot. Each story is paired with commentary on how the idea began, which choices changed during drafting, and what the author looked for in revision. The tales themselves range from a Brooklyn etiquette student with a very odd tutor to a bomb disposal expert in a desert war zone and a writer trapped in a drowned world of her own making.

Because the commentary sits right on the page next to the fiction, readers can see exactly where an image, line of dialogue, or plot twist shifted over time. That makes these books unusually transparent about the work behind finished prose, something that fans who write themselves often find encouraging.

Taken together, the Curiosities volumes are part story collection, part behind the scenes tour, and part pep talk for anyone who likes seeing how stories grow from a first spark into something polished and strange.