Tooth and Claw: and Other Stories — T.C. Boyle / T. Coraghessan Boyle

A “fierce [and] funny” (Entertainment Weekly) collection of fourteen stories exploring humanity's wild side, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain

“Whether Boyle is breaking your heart or making you laugh, you just don't care because he is so darned good at it.” -- San Francisco Chronicle
 
The fourteen stories gathered here display Boyle's imaginative muscle, emotional sensitivity, and astonishing range. There are whimsical tales, including “Swept Away,” which tells of a female ornithologist who falls in love on the blustery island of Unst, and “The Kind Assassin,” about a bored and loveless radio shock jock who sets the world record for most continuous hours without sleep -- and who may never sleep again. In the title story, a young man must contend with a vicious feral cat from Africa that he won in a bar bet. And in “Dogology,” a young woman in suburban New England becomes so obsessed with man's best friend that she begins to lose her own identity to a pack of strays.
 
Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best.