Where the Wild Ladies Are

A meddling aunt who frowns on hair removal. Two door-to-door saleswomen offering magical lanterns. A radiant lover who appears nightly to luxuriate in the bath. A silent visitor who cleans and babysits while a single mother works late. The women in Where the Wild Ladies Are are many things—bold, passionate, complicated—and they also happen to be ghosts.

In this enchanting collection, Aoko Matsuda reimagines classic Japanese folktales with a feminist, fantastical twist. Here, so-called "excessive" traits like jealousy, stubbornness, and longing aren’t flaws to hide—they’re powers to embrace. And if Mr. Tei notices your talents, he may just invite you—dead or alive (though preferably dead)—to join his curious company of spectral women.

Drawing from centuries of myth and legend—shapeshifting foxes, bewitched wells, and ghostly brides—Matsuda crafts a world where the supernatural is just another thread in the fabric of everyday life, and where the dead have much to teach the living.