Short stories by Alix E. Harrow
I've been a student and a teacher, a farm-worker and a cashier, an ice-cream-scooper and a 9-to-5 office-dweller. I've lived in tents and cars, cramped city apartments and lonely cabins, and spent a summer in a really sweet '79 VW Vanagon Westfalia. I have library cards in at least five states. Now I'm a full-time writer living in with my husband and two semi-feral kids in Berea, Kentucky. It is, I'm very sure, the best of all possible worlds.
Listing 3 stories.
A boy visits the Ulysses County library seeking books that allow him to escape into distant worlds. As the witch-librarian chooses stories for him and senses him becoming more and more desperate, she eventually lends him a book that literally allows him to leave his world.
A Black foster teenager looks for escape from his life through books he borrows at a library. A witch-librarian guides his selections along the way, and ultimately gives him an off-limits book to help him literally escape the world.
A weary healer seeks to leave her warrior wife, her village, and a life endlessly tainted by war.