If the heroine’s trek to the castle “east of the sun and west of the moon,” bargaining with the North Wind and outwitting trolls, enchanted you, you’ll love how Vasilisa faces frost-demon Morozko and house spirits in the Russian North. Like the girl who trades treasured gifts for nights to wake her bewitched prince, Vasya navigates old customs and dangerous magic to guard her family and village. The same fairy-tale bones—impossible journeys, perilous bargains, and ancient beings—are here, richly reimagined.

If you loved how Nielsen’s collection moves from tale to tale—each with its own cadence and moral, like the girl’s barter of a golden apple, comb, and spinning wheel for three hard-won nights—this book gives you six jewel-box stories that stand alone yet hum with archetypal power. The woodcut-style illustrations grow with each page, echoing Nielsen’s visual magic, while stories like “Ayama and the Thorn Wood” and “The Too-Clever Fox” twist familiar folklore into something startling and new.

If the dreamlike rules of the troll kingdom—taboos broken by candlelight, sleep draughts that steal a prince’s voice, winds that can be bargained with—drew you in, Stardust offers that same enchantment. Tristran crosses a boundary hedgerow into Faerie to fetch a fallen star and finds a woman made of starlight, witches with sinister designs, and princely rivals guided by omens—not unlike the girl trading treasures for a chance to break a spell. It’s questing by riddles, luck, and sharp wits.

If you were spellbound by the stark wonder of riding the North Wind to the world’s edge and the eerie splendor of the trolls’ castle, this tale’s quiet radiance will resonate. A unicorn leaves her wood to seek others of her kind, joined by Schmendrick and Molly—an odyssey filled with marvels and melancholy, like the girl’s long road to free her prince. The mood is the same: haunting beauty, sly humor, and revelations that feel like old stories remembered.

If you admired the girl who refuses to give up—riding with the North Wind, bartering precious gifts, and outmaneuvering trolls to reclaim her prince—Novik’s Miryem, Wanda, and Irina deliver that same steel. Miryem’s bargains entangle her with the icy Staryk king; Irina must outsmart a demon-bound tsar. Like trading a golden apple for a night to undo a sleeping spell, their clever deals and courage bend impossible odds toward freedom.