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Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson
"Shape-shifting spirits, cunning bargains, and sharp-edged desire collide across islands and cities in a collection that hums with living folklore. With wit and sensuality, these tales peel back the skin of the everyday to reveal the uncanny beating beneath. Skin Folk invites you into myth’s back rooms—where power changes hands and nothing wears just one face."
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In Skin Folk, did you enjoy ...
... how Caribbean and West African folklore (soucouyants, Anansi-like tricksters) is remixed into modern tales?
Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord
If the soucouyant dread in “Greedy Choke Puppy” and the folkloric twist of “The Glass Bottle Trick” hooked you, you’ll love how Redemption in Indigo lets Paama tangle with djombi and a personified Chaos. Lord’s retelling vibe—clever spirits meddling in human lives, fables made intimate—hits the same sweet spot, but spins it into one luminous, mischievous arc.
... sensual, body-focused fabulism that slides from desire to dread in a single page?
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
If “A Habit of Waste” made you think about bodies as commodities and “Riding the Red” seduced you with lush, uncanny intimacy, Her Body and Other Parties will feel like stepping deeper into that dream. From “The Husband Stitch” to the feverish rhythms of “Especially Heinous,” Machado threads desire, horror, and myth the way Hopkinson tilts domestic spaces into the surreal.
... contemporary city streets haunted by duppies and other spirits?
Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older
If you vibed with the way “Greedy Choke Puppy” and “A Habit of Waste” set folkloric menace and magic against modern apartments and city blocks, Half-Resurrection Blues delivers that urban haunt. Carlos Delacruz, a half-dead fixer for Brooklyn’s Council of the Dead, moves through bodegas, back alleys, and Santería shadows—where duppies and deals feel as real as rent.
... a mosaic of uncanny short pieces where folklore seeps into everyday life?
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck
If the story-by-story shapeshifting of Skin Folk—from the Bluebeard remix in “The Glass Bottle Trick” to the monstrous hunger of “Greedy Choke Puppy”—was your jam, Jagannath offers another cabinet of wonders. Tales like “Beatrice” and “Brita’s Holiday Village” slide folklore and the inexplicable into daily routines with the same intimate, unsettling charge.
... shape-shifting explorations of Black women’s bodies, desire, and selfhood through a speculative lens?
The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
If “A Habit of Waste” and “The Glass Bottle Trick” drew you to questions of beauty, agency, and the stories skin tells, The Salt Roads widens that into a time-spanning chorus. Following Jeanne Duval in Paris, Meritet in ancient Egypt, and the loa Ezili threading through them, Hopkinson braids sensuality, myth, and identity into an unforgettable reckoning.
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