Perishables — Michael Williams

Winner of the 2012 Laine Cunningham Novel Award!

What would you do if you had the power to save the people around you but one very good reason to keep it concealed?

Withrow is a sarcastic vampire at a dinner party with his nosy neighbors. Jennifer is a genius in a dead-end job. When the dead rise all around them are they more in danger with those they think they know or out in the streets with a zombie around every corner?

Perishables delivers three tense, humorous, compassionate, acrobatic and horrifying tales about zombies but also about the lives of those persons who live to see the dead walk and some of their favorite foods. These are action tales of those who find responsibility thrust upon them while amongst allies they find questionable at best; about friendships and neighborhoods and the way everyone feels like an outsider, even insiders; about risk versus reward; and about the ways the big tragedies we encounter in life make the small ones of every day seem a little better and a little worse.