Fruiting Bodies: Stories

It was a finalist for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and named one of Vulture’s Best Books of the Year.

In this genre-bending debut collection, Fruiting Bodies presents eight eerie, haunting stories that range from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny — often exploring characters (mostly queer, mostly women) on the precipice of change, in worlds suffused with decay or transformation.

Spanning motifs of myth, magic, and climate-altered landscapes, the stories evoke desire, loss, and metamorphosis — from childhood anxieties in “The Changeling,” to a road trip across a climate-altered country in “Endangered Animals,” to the strange body-horror intimacy of the title story.

“In stunning prose … Harlan’s wildly imaginative and daring stories reveal the anguish of growing up in a dying world.” — Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers

“These excellent stories are insightful, transporting, and gloriously uncanny. In story after story, Fruiting Bodies uncovers knowledge that is tantalizing and terrible.” — Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of The Five Wounds