Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants?all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. In this critically acclaimed collection, Lydia Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in wildly inventive stories that “evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). While...

Dinosaurs, grenades, and a team of people world-hopping to alternate universes. In many worlds, the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs never struck. These great beasts roam freely, creating unique and diverse ecosystems. In a few, life never originated. And in a rare one-in-a-trillion chance, something truly unique happened.

On a summer night in 1932, twelve-year-old Joel Fitchett wanders into an East Texas diner badly beaten and carrying his unconscious brother, Clancy. Although both boys claim they have no memory of what happened, the horrific details are etched into their minds as deep as the scar left across Joel's face. Thirteen years later, both men still struggle with the aftershocks of that long-ago night and the pact they made to hide the truth. When they find themselves at the center of a murder inve...

Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department and thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be when her husband is sleeping right next to her? But when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there. Tessa is the twenty-three-year-old bartender who escapes to a backroom storage closet during the shooting. When it comes to light that five people were killed, she i...

As a wealthy, young real-estate developer in Los Angeles, T. lives an isolated life. He has always kept his distance from people—from his doting mother to his crass fraternity brothers—but remains unaware of his loneliness until one night, while driving to Las Vegas, he hits a coyote on the highway. The experience unnerves him and inspires a transformation that leads him to question his business pursuits for the first time in his life, to take a chance at falling in love, and to begin brea...

N is employed at a prestigious California university, where he has distinguished himself as an aloof and somewhat eccentric presence. His meticulous, ordered life is violently disrupted by the death of his estranged father-unanticipated and, as it increasingly seems to N, surrounded by murky circumstances. His investigation leads him to a hotel built over a former Spanish mission, a site with a dark power and secrets all its own. On campus, a chance meeting with a young doctor provokes unc...

He was nearly killed over 35 years ago by KGB spies, which is no small feat for a 34-year-old.In 1986 when games like Tron and Pac-Man ruled the arcades, carburetors still powered most American vehicles, and the US Space Shuttle Program was still in full swing, Tim Cooper finds himself employed by some strange-talking, mysterious people who make him an offer he can’t refuse: cold, hard cash. Will Tim figure out what’s going on in time to prevent a tragedy, or will ...

For all its brevity, Intermezzo is a beautiful and deeply profound piece, rightfully considered Kotsubinsky's best work. It speaks of an artist's ongoing struggle to create in the midst of life and all its good, bad, and ugly aspects. It also acknowledges the need to escape and reset - but emphasizes this as a temporary measure only.

From the author of Nives, a story of love, redemption, and resistance set in Italy during WWIIMaremma, Tuscany, November 1943. Le Case is a village far from everything. Seen from there, even the war looks different—mostly waiting, prayers, poverty. As a fierce winter looms, an order is issued to arrest all Jews and detain them in the bishop's villa, awaiting deportation.René is the town's shoemaker. Everyone calls him Settebello, “...