A Handful of Pearls & Other Stories

Second Edition, May 2011

Nominated for Best Indie Fantasy/Paranormal, 2011 RT Reviewer's Choice Awards

From RT Book Reviews

"…this collection contains a genuinely lyrical, well-imagined, and complex assemblage of tales. It is the most compelling ever read by this reviewer."

—Victoria Frerichs

From Publishers Weekly

"Bernobich's lush prose focuses on scent, touch, and world building…it's clear she's a writer to watch."

From Fantasy Book Critic

Lyrical, touching and imaginative short fiction of the highest calibre… A Handful of Pearls & Other Stories stands out by its wonderful prose. If it has a theme, it is about strong people who are in a less than privileged position—mostly women in male dominated societies, but not only—it is also about regrets and (sometimes) second chances, with sense of wonder and great characters; the occasional lighter touches work well too.

From Booklist

In this collection of short stories, veteran sf author Bernobich delivers nine imaginative tales. "Chrysalide" presents painter Claudette Theron, whose inherited talent from her father helps her provide for her mother and her son, and her own portraitist's psychic gift takes her to a studio in the king's palace. From her balcony, servants "clothed in black, scattered onto the grassy clearing like inky blots against the brilliant green," bringing the young duchess whose likeness she will brilliantly capture and whose soul she will dim in this brooding story of convoluted genius. "Medusa in the Morning," another moody, sensual story, finds Medusa sipping coffee on the rocks surrounding her ocean-view cottage; when, in her new, lonely freedom from a man, she tosses her hair loose of its knot, she leaves those untethered snakes equally free to stir. In the title story, an expedition to remote islands puts a microbiologist with a wounded heart on a collision course with himself. These vivid tales can't be pigeonholed or labeled, comprising an oddly exceptional read.

—Whitney Scott