Edgy, wildly diverse, sometimes bizarre-and often flat-out creepy-the stories in Badlands all shove the reader face first into the minds and souls of characters facing frightening moments in their lives. Read the pair of short-shorts "Far Andromeda" and "Abby"s List" that open the collection, and you"ll know immediately that these are not the usual generic workshop stories; indeed, many are like no other stories you have read-dark and disturbing, filled with ambiguity, wholly original. Stories that reflect British novelist and short story writer Graham Swift"s definition of good storytelling as "the relating of something strange."