First published 2009
Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse wage their eternal war with dynamite and anvils, but this time the violence cuts deeper than cartoon comedy. A lonely woman vanishes completely from her life. A high school boy falls for his best friend's sister and discovers danger he never expected. Teenagers play a game that leads them into forbidden territory they cannot escape. In vast domed cities, a king's miniaturist crafts objects so small they disappear from sight, taking his world with them. A mysterious inventor creates a new form of illusion that changes how people see. Thomas Edison works in his West Orange laboratory, determined to capture the sense of touch itself. His experiments succeed beyond his wildest hopes, but the results bring consequences he never imagined. These stories move through worlds that look like ours but operate by different rules, where obsession drives people past the edges of safety into territories both wonderful and terrible.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, 20th-century, fantasy, magical-realism, 21st-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: West Orange
Period: 19th-century, 20th-century
244 pages · Paperback · Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Content warnings: violence