Back to results
Cover image for book The Mermaid Girl

The Mermaid Girl

A Story
By:Erika Swyler
Publisher:Macmillan Trade
Print ISBN:9781250118851
eText ISBN:9781250118851
Edition:0
Format:Reflowable

eBook Features

Instant Access

Purchase and read your book immediately

Read Offline

Access your eTextbook anytime and anywhere

Study Tools

Built-in study tools like highlights and more

Read Aloud

Listen and follow along as Bookshelf reads to you

From Erika Swyler, author of The Book of Speculation—one of BuzzFeed’s Best Fiction Books of the year-- a short story of a mermaid who ran away from the circus, and what happened when she started a life on land.

Before she was a suburban wife and mother, Paulina Watson was the Mermaid Girl of Carnival Lareille. She traveled everywhere with two boxes: the first with red sequins for the dress she wore as a magician’s assistant, the second with green sequins for her mermaid tail. She'd grown up on wild stories told by wild circus people. Books, she hadn’t had books until she’d found Daniel Watson and stopped moving.

The first time Daniel saw her, Paulina was floating in a glass tank, suspended in water that sparkled like it was made from night sky. She has settled down now, living in a house on a cliff on Long Island Sound with Daniel and their young family: six-year-old Simon and his baby sister, Enola. But if you steal the magician’s assistant from a carnival, how can you know if she’ll disappear?

• 2026 © SAU Tech Bookstore. All Rights Reserved.