Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast follows a merchant's daughter who trades her freedom to save her father, in Alicia Steffann's retelling of the classic fairy tale. The story traces back to Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, who set down this version of the tale in the eighteenth century.

Her father, once wealthy and now struggling, plucks a single rose from a stranger's garden on his way home. That small theft brings him face to face with the castle's owner, a beast with the manners of a lord and the look of a monster, who spares his life only if his daughter comes to live in the castle in his place. She goes, expecting cruelty. Instead she finds long quiet halls, a table that sets itself, and a Beast who asks only for her company each evening.

Their friendship grows slowly, over shared meals and careful conversation, even as she still longs for the family and home she left behind. When she's finally allowed to visit her father, she has to choose between the ordinary life she knows and the strange, lonely creature waiting back at the castle. What she decides settles the fate of them both.

This is a gothic-tinged fairy tale about kindness mistaken for weakness and appearances mistaken for truth, closer to a slow-burn romance than an adventure story. It sits alongside other classic French and European fairy tales retold for grown-up ears, and it suits listeners who love old enchanted-castle stories, quiet transformations, and an ending you can feel coming from the first page.

Long, calm sentences move you through the castle's empty halls at a pace made for shut eyes. Beauty's story can see you to sleep well before the spell ever breaks.