This year Rikki Ducornet is being presented with a lifetime achievement award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters for her beloved work as a novelist and essayist, but perhaps most of all for her work as a writer of short stories. In the tradition of Italo Calvino, Donald Barthelme, and Angela Carter, Ducornet creates modern-day fables filled with characters as complex and surprising as any in American short fiction. This landmark collection of new stories is generously illustrated by T. Motley, whose gritty, fantastical cartooning explores the same post-magical realism that has been the subject of Ducornet"s distinguished career.