The Dark and Other Love Stories — Deborah Willis

The characters in these thirteen masterful and engaging stories exist on the edge of danger, where landscapes melt into dreamscapes and every house is haunted. A drug dealer's girlfriend signs up for the first manned mission to Mars. A girl falls in love with a man who wants to turn her into a bird. A teenaged girl and her best friend test their relationship by breaking into suburban houses. A wife finds a gaping hole in the floor of the home she shares with her husband, a hole that only she can see. Full of longing and strange humor, these subtle, complex stories―about the love between a man and his pet crow, an alcoholic and his AA sponsor, a mute migrant and a newspaper reporter―show how love ties us to each other and to the world. "The Dark and Other Love Stories" announces the emergence of a wonderfully gifted storyteller whose stories enlarge our perceptions about the human capacity to love.