Jackal, Jackal — Tobi Ogundiran

Vivid and twisted, ironic and stirring, the varied stories in the collection are told with verve. Ogundiran's prose has a warm, enthusiastic vitality.-The New York TimesFrom Shirley Jackson award-nominated author Tobi Ogundiran, comes a highly anticipated debut collection of stories full of magic and wonder and breathtaking imagination!In The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library -- featured in Levar Burton Reads -- a hapless salesman flees the otherworldly librarian hell-bent on retrieving her lost library book.The Tale of Jaja and Canti sees Ogundiran riffing off of Pinocchio. But this wooden boy doesn't seek to become real. Wanting to be loved, he journeys the world in search of his mother-an ancient and powerful entity who is best not sought out. The Goatkeeper's Harvest contains echoes of Lovecraft, where a young mother living on a farm finds that goats have broken into her barn and are devouring all her tubers. As she chases them off with a rake, a woman appears claiming the goats are her children, and that the young woman has killed one of them and must pay the price: a goat for a goat.These and other tales of the dark and fantastic await.