Often misunderstood as an idyllic "poet of beetles and buttercups," the 19th-century Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter has been rediscovered in recent years as a radical experimenter with narrative and a forerunner of nature writing's darker currents. One of his best-known and most accessible works, the novella cycle Motley Stones now appears in its first complete English translation, a rendition that respects the bracing strangeness of the original. In six thematically linked novellas, including the beloved classic "Rock Crystal," human dramas play out amid the natural cycles of the Alps or the urban rhythms of Vienna—environments so keenly observed that they emerge as the tales' most indomitable protagonists. Stifter's human characters are equally haunting—children braving perils, eccentrics and loners harboring enigmatic torments. The tension between his humane sensitivity and his dark visions is what lends his writing its heartbreaking power.