Joan (Delano) Aiken | Biography

Joan Delano Aiken is one of the most prolific and energetic of living authors, with a body of works that includes novels, short stories, drama, and poetry. She is probably best known for the Wolves Chronicles, a series of loosely connected "unhistorical" novels set in a fictional England in which the Stuarts continue to reign into the nineteenth century and the Hanoverians are the pretenders. However, she also writes adult thrillers and Gothics, juvenile novels set in contemporary England, and modern fairy tales. Within the genre of the short story alone, her versatility is apparent. For example, the contents of A Touch of Chill: Tales for Sleepless Nights (1979) include examples of the classic tale of folk magic, domestic comedy shading into the bizarre, and modern psychological horror. The title suggests the only common factor in the collection: the touch of chill and horror lurking below the surface of even...
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