The Curiosities (Tessa Gratton) Books in Order

The Curiosities books came out of a long-running friendship and a very public writing habit. Tessa Gratton, Maggie Stiefvater, and Brenna Yovanoff spent years posting short fiction for their shared Merry Sisters of Fate project, often working fast, taking risks, and letting readers see the rougher edges that usually disappear before publication. These anthologies keep that spirit.

The Curiosities is the looser, wilder of the two books. It gathers short stories that slide between horror, fantasy, dark comedy, and the sort of strange idea you can only really explain by handing someone the story and saying, here, read this. The pieces vary a lot in tone, but that is part of the charm. One story might lean creepy, the next melancholy, the next weirdly funny.

What makes the book stand out is the marginalia. The authors leave handwritten comments beside the stories, reacting to lines, confessing where a draft almost failed, teasing each other, and pointing out the tiny choices that made a scene click. It feels less like a formal textbook and more like getting to sit near three writer friends who are talking shop without bothering to clean up the conversation first.

The Anatomy of Curiosity changes the shape of the project. Instead of a large pile of short pieces, it offers three longer novellas, one from each author, followed by notes on brainstorming, drafting, and revision. The emphasis moves from variety to process. Readers get a clearer sense of how an idea grows, what problems show up in the middle, and how a finished story becomes something sturdier than its first version.

That makes these books work on two levels. If you are here for fiction, there is plenty of eerie magic, dangerous longing, and offbeat invention. If you are here because you write, or want to, they are unusually open about the labor behind the page. Gratton's part in the project is especially easy to spot if you already know her novels: the love of monsters, transformation, and emotional mess is there from the start.

Taken together, The Curiosities books are less about a single shared universe than a shared creative energy. They are about stories, yes, but also about collaboration, risk, and the useful fact that first drafts are allowed to be strange.