Magic and Romance: A Collection of Lesbian Short Stories

by Niamh Murphy

***NEW EDITION***Magic and Romance is a cross-genre collection of Sapphic tales by the bestselling author, Niamh Murphy.

Vampires and werewolves, confused teens and surfers, corporate bosses and knights in shining armour, are just some of the characters that thrill, kill, and fall in love in this compelling collection of funny, exciting, magical, and adventure-filled stories.

Stella, the fearless huntress, seeks out a Vampire Queen in “Enthralled”, Kara Telfer pines for her Dance instructor as they prepare for a life-changing competition in “In Rhythm”, Claire, an adorkable college student, seeks to unravel the mysteries of ‘gaydar’ in “Is She?”, Edris, a brave knight, finds love and peril on a magical quest in “The Kingdom in a Cave”, and Isobel faces danger at every turn in the tumbling gothic ruin on the moors in “The Black Hound”.

Revised and expanded with the addition of two new tales, the bestselling author of adventure fiction with lesbian main characters, brings you her favourite short stories filled with laughter and romance, magic and adventure, and of course, love.

Whether you're reading historical romance or contemporary rom-com, vampire thrillers or epic fantasy, gothic horror or teen drama, one thing is for certain. You’ll fall in love with Magic and Romance!

Genres: LGBT, Short Stories, Fantasy, Lesbian, Romance, Queer, Fiction

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 29, 2013

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Niamh Murphy is a historian and novelist specialising in romantic lesbian fiction. She is passionate about experimenting with different genres and has a fondness for romantic action and adventure. She has written stories with vampires, werewolves, elves, magic, knights, sorceresses, and witches as well as contemporary and humorous stories, but always with a lesbian protagonist and a romantic element to the tale.

Visit her website for a free book: www.AuthorNiamh.com

Reviews

[AnnMaree Of Oz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A neat collection of short stories, some fantasy some contemporary.

[Netgyrl (Laura) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 ⭐️ solid set of wlw romance short stories in various genres. Enjoyable.

[Hesch Aut · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite a lovely collection of quick reads.

With every story you keep diving into a completely new world. Each new story lets you guess, wonder, laugh, smile and sigh with satisfaction. The writer knows how to actually write a short story, even though sometimes you would like to continue reading. Gladly Murphy listens to her readers and every now and then even makes a proper novel out of a story that originally was meant to just be a quick read („The mask of the Highwaywoman“, for example).

„Magic & Romance“ is perfect for waiting rooms at the doc, your gate at the airport, the platform at the station … or when you’re in the mood for something sweet and/or funny.

[Heather Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this collection after seeing mention of the author’s novel Mask of the Highwaywoman, and seeing that it had the original shorter version of the same story (since the novel isn’t yet available for iBooks). I’m always looking for lesbian historical fiction that reaches farther back than the 20th century. Magic and Romance doesn’t have a focused theme (other than lesbian protagonists) and only four of the eight stories fall in my historical/fantasy target interest. The other four (In Rhythm: A ballroom dancing romance, Is She?: An on-campus student rom-com, Reason to Stay: A teen romance, and Delicious: A New Year’s Eve tale of food and infatuation -- and, yes, the genre-descriptive subtitles are part of the story titles) are contemporary romance and I’ll confess that I skimmed them lightly.

Enthralled: A dark vampire hunter story follows the usual conventions of the modern erotic vampire vs. vampire hunter story, with the protagonist infiltrating the lair of a vampire queen to rescue the object of her affection. The story veers away from being a rescue-the-damsel adventure at the climax when the protagonist’s understanding of what’s going on is turned inside out. A dark and violent story for those who enjoy charging single-handedly into danger.

The Lady Edris and the Kingdom in a Cave: A tale inspired by Arthurian legends also turns the protagonist’s initial understanding upside down, but is more of a traditional quest-and-rescue-the-damsel scenario. Edris is on a quest to seek assistance against the plague in her homeland from the sorceress-queen of Northgales, their traditional enemy. But the queen has other ideas for the female knight who has penetrated her enchanted realm--ideas that involve the queen’s bed. A deep familiarity with the themes and tropes of Arthurian legend shines through, though the plot feels like the summary of a role-playing game, where the character passes through a sequence of tests and challenges to emerge victorious with the McGuffin and the girl.

Mask of the Highwaywoman: The short-story that became a novel is the story that led me to pick this up in the first place. The plot itself follows the usual formula for highwaywoman romance stories: our heroine’s coach is stopped by a masked highwayman (with or without accomplices) who betrays a brief sympathy or erotic interest in the heroine, but takes a piece of sentimental jewelry from her. The highwaywoman uses returning the jewelry as an excuse for another meeting in which sparks fly, and... Well, presumably what happens next is in the expanded version of the story.

The Black Hound: A romantic gothic horror distills down the platonic ideal of a gothic novel. Our impoverished heroine has come to a lonely, sinister mansion to be the companion of a tyrannical distant relative. On being warned not to wander the woods as night, of course she does so, and barely escapes an encounter with The Black Hound. Curses, nightmares, and supernatural events come to a head as our heroine takes comfort in the arms of her employer’s lady’s maid. A forced separation, another flight through the haunted woods with the hound in pursuit, and a bloody denouement that...well, that would be giving away whether this turns our to be gothic horror or gothic romance.

I liked the story premises and how they dodged around some of the usual formulas, but the writing style was often choppy and too reliant on short declarative sentences and long passages of dialogue. I’m always hoping for something a bit more lyrical. The impression of a choppy style also comes from the stories being broken up into short chapters (as short as 300-400 words), sometimes breaking in the middle of a scene. Murphy has the potential to turn out some very enjoyable historical and fantastic fiction with a bit more work on the technical side and I will probably try out the expanded version of Mask of the Highwaywoman to see if it’s addressed some of these weak spots.

[avalon b✨tches bout books · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a light-hearted sapphic read, and this collection of short stories ticked all the boxes for me:

🥀 beautifully immersive fantasy worlds
💜 fluffy contemporary YA (and I truly mean 'fluffy' as a compliment - seriously, in a world obsessed with grit and doom, I just want nice stories with nice characters sometimes)
💜 easy to read for those of us with wandering attention spans

(And my graphic design/photobashing artist heart just slammed to a stop when I first caught sight of the beautiful cover! 🥰)

[Riska Sleepless · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected a lot more from this... it wad neither magical nor romantic in my opinion and some of the storys were a chore to get through... also, in my opinion none of these stories needed chapters...

[Lisa Marie Gabriel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magic and Romance is a lovely collection of multi-genre short stories from lesfic author Niamh Murphy. Right up until the very last, I thought I was dealing with sweet romance in an LGBT context which was refreshing and unusual. The stories would make a lot of sense to young girls coming to terms with their sexuality in a gentle way because romantic feelings were made more important than sex. That is how it often is when you are young and to me that seemed original and made a welcome change from explicit stories in the sort of book you might hide from your Mum. The last story took me by surprise after this, of course, but certainly not in a bad way. It was erotic and explicit but I felt it was written tastefully too. On the whole I was impressed by the quality of Niamh Murphy’s writing. The only criticisms I had were the chapters, which I felt were intrusive and unnecessary in short reads and distracted from the flow, and the “occasional dead foal” in the werewolf story which pulled me up and made me giggle. The fact this this was offered free gave me a chance to explore Niamh’s writing and add her to my list of authors I would like to read more of.

[Irina · Rating 3 out of 5]

That was a decent read! I enjoyed most of the stories, the fantasy ones more so than the contemporary romance ones (though the last story was contemporary and pretty great). There are tragic stories, sweet stories, hot stories, a little bit of everything really, and all of it ist gay as hell. <3 The second last story was kind of confusing to me, but apart from that, I'd recommend giving this collection a try!

(Also, bonus points for the stunning cover.)

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love wlw stories that involve magic and fantasy worlds, so when I saw this book at the library, it seemed like it would be an instant hit for me. Unfortunately, it was not quite what I hoped it would be. The book reads like it didn't even get proofread, and the characters all seem to have a high schooler's idea of love -- which is fine when the characters are high schoolers or just starting university, but less so when they're meant to be established professionals.

One of the issues I kept finding myself distracted by was the punctuation. I know that there are some minor differences in punctuation between British and American English, and it seems this book was written in British English. But there were so many times dialogue and dialogue tags would have no punctuation whatsoever, or incorrect punctuation. Sometimes, the line breaks were confusing, making me having to reread the section a time or two to figure out who was speaking anymore. At one point early on, the story accidentally refers to the main character by the love interest's name instead.

Since they're short stories, it's natural not to have the same kind of build up you would see in a novel. Of course. But repeatedly, we see these characters confessing "I love you," even leaving their old lives behind at times, for women they literally just met and often know next to nothing about. It feels like how some high schoolers will see a person they're attracted to and convince themselves they're "meant to be." So it's fine when the characters are around that age. But when we see women old enough to have finished school and begun their careers acting that way, for me it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

Ultimately, I think the author has potential. Based on the ages of a lot of the main characters and the way age is referenced in the book, I'm guessing the reason the characters seem that way is that the author was probably very young herself when she wrote it (maybe early 20s at most is my guess), and if that's the case, to have finished and published a book at all is very impressive in and of itself. So maybe her later works are better.

[Karen Harper Ren Ruggiero · Rating 1 out of 5]

Needs editing

This book contains some interesting story ideas but most of them do not work as short stories. They feel like snippets of longer novels and there isn't sufficient character or plot development for each to stand on its own. The book is full of spelling and grammatical errors throughout, making it tedious to read. The author would benefit from hiring an editor to help with this as well as sentence structure. I also found the chapters very distracting and unnecessary. I hope the author will consider reworking some of these story ideas with an editor. As it stands now, the book is difficult to read and doesn't hold the reader's interest.

[karla · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of short stories of lesbian in both modern settings and magical. As we don't really get lesbians in fantasy settings, and the overall lack of lesbian stories in general, when I first saw this on the kindle market, I was *obviously* going to read it!
Although, even with the happy endings (!!!), I wasn't really connecting or thoroughly enjoying it. And a shame, I only got invested in it by the halfway point. The author didn't give us enough time to get to know the character, her motives, desires, etc., or let the plot thicken. I understand they're short stories, but maybe they were *too* short? I actually tend to shy away from short story collections because of this, yet there is no reason that the characters need to seem so two-dimensional.
For the most part, if you're not really looking for the next modern classic, and just want to enjoy lesbians kicking ass and finding love they thought was unrequited, by all means, READ IT!
This really had a lot of potential, so I'll be on the look out for Niamh Murphy.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

A free copy rec'd through Kobo.
This is a satisfactory collection of lesbian themed short stories. Ms. Murphy is definitely not your usual "run-of-the-mill" author and I look forward to more of her work.

[Catherine Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of stories

My tastes are a little darker than most of the stories in this collection, but I did enjoy the Gothic wolf tale and the more explicit adventures. Lots of lady love to whet your appetite!

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not really sure which story was my favorite. Even those in genres I'm not particularly fond of were magnificent!

I revisit this set of stories from time to time, because the writing is just so well done!

[DR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging, well written descriptive language that drew me into each story. A worthy collection of shorts that had me wanting for more. I especially enjoyed the story about the knight and the highway woman. The angst of teenage love was endearing.
Thank you.

[Jennifer Reaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good light read

The stories were engaging and fun. A few of them were over all too soon. I knew the mask of the highway women became a book but a couple of the others would make good books too.

[J Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick and delightful collection

From magical dark fairytales to bringing in the New Year, this was a wonderfully written collection of shorts that will entertain any wlw story lover.

[Lorraine Rusnack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection has vampires, witches, comedy, tragedy , young adults and a butch Highway man. I enjoyed each story whether it made me laugh or cry. I wish a few of them were a bit longer but that's what we have an imagination for.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a read!

This was my first read by Niamh Murphy, and I was not disappointed! I plan to read more of her works in the future!

[Kyla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful

These stories are charming, imaginative and sexy. There are just like those delicious dreams I never want to wake up from.

[Felicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a refreshing read! or should I say ..reads! every story stuck with me. especially the highway woman.

[Anna Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wholesome fun

Nice mix of storyline’s. All were well written by the different authors. I liked that I could see the action as I read through. Wonderful quick read.

[Mindy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good, some clunkers. When it comes to these short story collection books most of the time they are hit or miss per story within.

[JC · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. It felt like most of the characters lacked characterization and the ending was too abrupt. I know short stories are supposed to be short but these were too short.

[Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it twice in a week.

A story for every girl. I loved its diversity and how each story made you physically feel something for the characters. You want to cheer them on and hold them up in their challenges.

[Ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some stories in this were a complete miss for me, while others provided a short enjoyable read.

[ren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was okay. I think some of these stories just weren't for me.