White Cat, Black Dog, by Kelly Link

Kelly Link's stories are often inspired, in some small or large way, by fairy tales, but they are modern stories and in no way emulations of the classic fairy tales. White Cat, Black Dog is her fifth collection, and it contains seven stories, the first concerns a white cat, and the last a black dog, thus giving rise to the book's title.  And it follows the flow of a typical story collection--the first few stories are high spots, and so is the end tale, while the lesser ones (lesser in the sense of being only slightly less good than the others) come in the middle.  The final story, "Skinder's Veil" (slightly associated with "Snow-White and Rose-Red), is the high point of the book.  It original appeared in an Ellen Datlow anthology a few years ago, When Things Get Dark: Stories inspired by Shirley Jackson. Though I highly recommend White Cat, Black Dog, if you read or sample only one of Link's stories, I'd suggest everyone try "Skinder's Veil."

Saturnalia, by Stephanie Feldman

Saturnalia is set in a near future Philadelphia in an America that has been much altered by climate change. The city is now host to various pagan clubs and secret societies, with social climbers and elites mixing together, some with aims of getting a very valuable ticket out to somewhere safe. They hope to accomplish this via occult means, involving the successful creation of a homunculus, and a frightening mandragora. The story involves a small number of friends and former-friends, all with murky motivations that seem to shift a bit too easily. The main narrative depends upon something which happened three years earlier, but which is only gradually revealed to the reader via flashbacks. The prose is solid, and the plotting compelling and hallucinatory, as the novel enfolds over a short span of time. A few loose ends remain, but overall I very much enjoyed this book, especially in its opening up of a new world of occultism at play in a ravaged future.