
Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart
And Other Stories
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $15.75
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
GennaRose Nethercott
-
January LaVoy
-
Gabra Zackman
-
Max Meyers
-
Elena Rey
About this listen
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • From the author of the breakout novel Thistlefoot: a collection of dark fairytales and fractured folklore exploring how our passions can save us—or go monstrously wrong.
“Real magic, real delight, doled out generously in the shape of wistful, ferocious, this-world-but-better stories.”—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
The stories in Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart are about the abomination that resides within us all. That churning, clawing, ravenous yearning: the hunger to be held, and seen, and known. And the terror, too: to be loved too well, or not enough, or for long enough. To be laid bare before your sweetheart, to their horror. To be recognized as the monstrous thing you are.
Two teenage girls working at a sinister roadside attraction called the Eternal Staircase explore its secrets—and their own doomed summer love. A zombie rooster plays detective in a missing persons case. A woman moves into a new house with her acclaimed artist boyfriend—and finds her body slowly shifting into something specially constructed to accommodate his needs and whims. A pack of middle schoolers turn to the occult to rid themselves of a hated new classmate. And a pair of outcasts, a vampire and a goat woman, find solace in each other, even as the world's lack of understanding might bring about its own end.
In these lush, strange, beautifully written stories, GennaRose Nethercott explores human longing in all its diamond-dark facets to create a collection that will redefine what you see as a beast, and make you beg to have your heart broken.
©2024 GennaRose Nethercott (P)2024 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
-
Becoming Baba Yaga
- Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods
- By: Kris Spisak, GennaRose Nethercott - Foreword by
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Becoming Baba Yaga provides an in-depth look at the Baba Yaga mythos and history through Slavic folklore. Filled with historical and cultural context, analyses, and the stories themselves that add depth to the conversation. A comprehensive resource for anyone hoping to learn more about this ambiguous character and how her multifaceted presence still ripples through the present day, Becoming Baba Yaga is as thoughtful as it is illuminating.
-
-
Engaging narration of a fascinating mythical character
- By Sandy on 11-05-24
By: Kris Spisak, and others
-
Thistlefoot
- A Novel
- By: GennaRose Nethercott
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Yaga siblings—Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist—have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet—only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.
-
-
I can't decide if I liked it
- By Lorraine Cannon on 11-03-22
-
House of Hollow
- By: Krystal Sutherland
- Narrated by: Eleanor Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.
-
-
Pay no attention to the cover art
- By Kimberly D. Bouchu on 05-19-22
-
The Knight and the Butcherbird
- A Short Story
- By: Alix E. Harrow
- Narrated by: Aida Reluzco
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first. When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.
-
-
Alix E Harrow is one of my favorite authors
- By Leilani on 04-17-25
By: Alix E. Harrow
-
Victorian Psycho
- By: Virginia Feito
- Narrated by: Anna Burnett
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.
-
-
meh
- By Pamela Y. S. on 02-13-25
By: Virginia Feito
-
Thornhedge
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Jennifer Blom
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? If only. Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold.
-
-
Not everything can be fixed
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 08-15-23
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Becoming Baba Yaga
- Trickster, Feminist, and Witch of the Woods
- By: Kris Spisak, GennaRose Nethercott - Foreword by
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Becoming Baba Yaga provides an in-depth look at the Baba Yaga mythos and history through Slavic folklore. Filled with historical and cultural context, analyses, and the stories themselves that add depth to the conversation. A comprehensive resource for anyone hoping to learn more about this ambiguous character and how her multifaceted presence still ripples through the present day, Becoming Baba Yaga is as thoughtful as it is illuminating.
-
-
Engaging narration of a fascinating mythical character
- By Sandy on 11-05-24
By: Kris Spisak, and others
-
Thistlefoot
- A Novel
- By: GennaRose Nethercott
- Narrated by: January LaVoy
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Yaga siblings—Bellatine, a young woodworker, and Isaac, a wayfaring street performer and con artist—have been estranged since childhood, separated both by resentment and by wide miles of American highway. But when they learn that they are to receive an inheritance, the siblings agree to meet—only to discover that their bequest isn’t land or money, but something far stranger: a sentient house on chicken legs.
-
-
I can't decide if I liked it
- By Lorraine Cannon on 11-03-22
-
House of Hollow
- By: Krystal Sutherland
- Narrated by: Eleanor Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.
-
-
Pay no attention to the cover art
- By Kimberly D. Bouchu on 05-19-22
-
The Knight and the Butcherbird
- A Short Story
- By: Alix E. Harrow
- Narrated by: Aida Reluzco
- Length: 1 hr and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hundreds of years after the end of the world, the Appalachian community of Iron Hollow finds itself beset by demons. Such horrors are common these days in the outlands, where most folks die young—if they don’t turn into monsters first. When a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest unearthly beast to haunt their woods, the town’s new oral historian, Shrike, has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still herself, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.
-
-
Alix E Harrow is one of my favorite authors
- By Leilani on 04-17-25
By: Alix E. Harrow
-
Victorian Psycho
- By: Virginia Feito
- Narrated by: Anna Burnett
- Length: 4 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze.
-
-
meh
- By Pamela Y. S. on 02-13-25
By: Virginia Feito
-
Thornhedge
- By: T. Kingfisher
- Narrated by: Jennifer Blom
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? If only. Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He's heard there's a curse here that needs breaking, but it's a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold.
-
-
Not everything can be fixed
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 08-15-23
By: T. Kingfisher
-
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
- By: John Wiswell
- Narrated by: Carmen Rose
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body using a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth. However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she's found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warmhearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human
-
-
Weird, but good
- By Kris Rudin on 12-08-24
By: John Wiswell
-
The Dead of Winter
- Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures
- By: Sarah Clegg
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis, Sarah Clegg
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you think about Christmas, you likely picture mangers, glowing fireplaces, sweet carolers, and snow-blanketed hills. But behind all this bright magic, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows. In The Dead of Winter, Cambridge-trained historian Sarah Clegg delves deep into the folklore of the Christmas season in Europe, detailing the way its terrifying and often debaucherous past continues to haunt and entertain us now in the twenty-first century.
-
-
Maglcal
- By Karin Conti on 12-23-24
By: Sarah Clegg
-
Lady Macbeth
- A Novel
- By: Ava Reid
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men. The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his warrior ways behind when he comes to the marriage bed. The Lady knows his hostile, suspicious court will be a game of strategy, requiring all of her wiles and hidden witchcraft to survive. But the Lady does not know her husband has occult secrets of his own. She does not know that prophecy girds him like armor. She does not know that her magic is greater and more dangerous, and that it will threaten the order of the world.
-
-
feminine rage
- By Anonymous User on 08-15-24
By: Ava Reid
-
We Sold Our Souls
- By: Grady Hendrix
- Narrated by: Carol Monda
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1990s, heavy metal band Durt Wurk was poised for breakout success - but then lead singer Terry Hunt embarked on a solo career and rocketed to stardom as Koffin, leaving his fellow bandmates to rot in obscurity. Two decades later, former guitarist Kris Pulaski works as the night manager of a Best Western - she's tired, broke, and unhappy. Everything changes when a shocking act of violence turns her life upside down, and she begins to suspect that Terry sabotaged more than just the band.
-
-
A Girl With a Guitar Never has to Apologize
- By Dave on 03-14-19
By: Grady Hendrix
-
I Found Christmas Lights Slithering Up My Street
- I Found Horror
- By: Ben Farthing
- Narrated by: Aaron Camacho
- Length: 3 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Something festive is growing in the sewer... After last year’s tragedy, Douglas’ parents are ignoring Christmas. But when Douglas finds an eerie strand of lights slithering through the sewer, he unwittingly unleashes merry terror upon his neighborhood’s tacky lights contest. String lights spread like invasive kudzu, turning festive decorations into surreal, predatory nightmares.
-
-
The Color Out of Christmas
- By Christine on 03-25-25
By: Ben Farthing
-
When the Wolf Comes Home
- By: Nat Cassidy
- Narrated by: Helen Laser, Nat Cassidy
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One night, Jess, a struggling actress, finds a five-year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment. After a violent, bloody encounter with the boy's father, she and the boy find themselves running for their lives. As they attempt to evade the boy's increasingly desperate father, Jess slowly comes to a horrifying understanding of the butchery that follows them—the boy can turn his every fear into reality. And when the wolf finally comes home, no one will be spared.
-
-
Not for the faint of heart
- By CC on 05-21-25
By: Nat Cassidy
-
The Unworthy
- A Novel
- By: Agustina Bazterrica
- Narrated by: Imani Jade Powers
- Length: 4 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.
-
-
Religious Crashout
- By Jourdan Fenwick on 06-02-25
-
Twice Cursed
- An Anthology
- By: Joe Hill, Joanne Harris, Paul Kane, and others
- Narrated by: Melanie Crawley, Antonia Beamish, Mark Peachey
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Take a trip to a terrifying carnival and uncover the secrets within, solve a mysterious puzzle box and await your reward, join a travelling circus and witness the strangest ventriloquist act you've ever seen. In this follow-up to the bestselling Cursed: An Anthology, you'll unearth curses old and new. From a very different take on Snow White, to a new interpretation of The Red Shoes, the best in fantasy spin straw into gold, and invite you into the labyrinth.
-
-
cursed stories not retold tales
- By Cathrine Bonham on 04-24-24
By: Joe Hill, and others
-
After the Forest
- By: Kell Woods
- Narrated by: Esther Wane
- Length: 13 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war. Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, secreted away and whispering in Greta's ear for the past two decades, and the recipe inside that makes the best gingerbread you've ever tasted. As long as she can bake, Greta can keep her small family afloat.
-
-
Fantastic!
- By Brazilla A. Leonard on 11-07-23
By: Kell Woods
-
The Final Girl Support Group
- By: Grady Hendrix
- Narrated by: Adrienne King
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized - someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.
-
-
1.3 speed = perfection
- By Rachel Kapila on 07-15-21
By: Grady Hendrix
-
Graveyard Shift
- A Novella
- By: M. L. Rio
- Narrated by: Jess Nahikian, M. L. Rio, Max Meyers, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every night, in the college’s ancient cemetery, five people cross paths as they work the late shift: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel receptionist, the steward of the derelict church that looms over them, and the editor-in-chief of the college paper, always in search of a story. One dark October evening in the defunct churchyard, they find a hole that wasn’t there before. A fresh, open grave where no grave should be. But who dug it, and for whom?
-
-
Honestly, what was this even about?
- By The Dutchess on 09-25-24
By: M. L. Rio
-
The Dead Take the A Train
- Carrion City
- By: Richard Kadrey, Cassandra Khaw
- Narrated by: Natalie Naudus
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out 30-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s trying to establish herself as a major psychic operative in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top. Desperate to break the dead-end grind, Julie summons a guardian angel for a quick career boost. But when her power grab accidentally releases an elder god hell-bent on the annihilation of our galaxy, the body count rises rapidly.
-
-
Cared more about monsters than plot or characters
- By 🔥 Phx17 🔥 on 10-04-23
By: Richard Kadrey, and others
Critic reviews
“Real magic, real delight, doled out generously in the shape of wistful, ferocious, this-world-but-better stories.”—Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
“All of you who love that strain of witty, wistful, enigmatic stories that runs from Kafka to Kelly Link: come read this book. GennaRose Nethercott draws from a magic well, bringing us tales that feel as old as time yet marvelously new.”—Sofia Samatar, author of Tender and Monster Portraits
"GennaRose Nethercott's imagination is boundless, her writing emerging from a rich personal folklore of which Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart suggests only the edge. Everything in this book is alive and ready to love you or to wound you."—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Ghost Variations
And I get it, none of us sound the way we hear ourselves, but Nethercott's aggressive coquettishness is just... a lot. I'll likely get a physical or digital copy of this book in order to finish the stories I skipped, as I really do enjoy Nethercott's writing and story-telling ability.
Read, Don't Listen!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrative was both whimsical and unpredictable, laying a fantastic lore and atmosphere right on top of our world that was so rich and creative it felt like I was walking through it while listening to the book.
I was lead here by the “Sleepy” podcast - I put it on to fall asleep but wound up keeping myself awake to see how it ended! And I was not disappointed.
Overall, I would say 4 of these stories are phenomenal and the rest are really, really good. 100% worth a listen if you’re someone who is interested in cryptids, a little spooky atmosphere, and frequently revisits fairy tales in their own imagination. Happy listening!
Folklore for the Modern Age
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.