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"Beautifully written and subtly discomforting stories."-Nancy Pearl

"An exceptionally versatile author."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In her moving and elegant new collection, New York Times
bestseller Karen Joy Fowler writes about John Wilkes Booth’s younger
brother, a one-winged man, a California cult, and a pair of twins, and
she digs into our past, present, and future in the quiet, witty, and
incisive way only she can.

The sinister and the magical are always lurking just below the
surface: for a mother who invents a fairy-tale world for her son in
"Halfway People"; for Edwin Booth in “Booth’s Ghost,” haunted by his
fame as “America’s Hamlet” and his brother’s terrible actions; for
Norah, a rebellious teenager facing torture in the World Fantasy and
Shirley Jackson Award winner “The Pelican Bar” as she confronts Mama
Strong, the sadistic boss of a rehabilitation facility; for the narrator
recounting her descent in “What I Didn’t See.”

With clear and insightful prose, Fowler’s stories measure the human
capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness. This
collection, which includes two Nebula Award winners and some stories
which have been significantly rewritten since first publication, is sure
to delight readers, even as it pulls the rug out from underneath them.