Faerie stories

Ask a reasonably open person about the music they like and they probably say "Oh I listen to everything. Except country." The country music of books is fantasy. While the haters will occasionally dip into the the more literary scifi like Jonathan Lethem, Philip K Dick or Kurt Vonnegut, fantasy is the undiscovered country.

Raymond Feist's Faerie Tale is one the haters should consider. Feist is best known for his never-ending Riftwar books, but Faerie Tale is blissfully standalone. The plot involves a modern American family moving to a rural house in upstate New York. Unfortunately for them, the nearby wood is connected to a Celtic tinged faerie land. The family children are slowly drawn into a not so friendly and oh so alien world.

I suspect that part of the appeal is the compact nature of the story and the connection to the modern world. If there is a gateway book to fantasy, this one could well be it.