Straub mines new territory in this extraordinarily powerful collection of short fiction—territory marked by brutality, heartbreak, savagery, wonder, despair, and an unexpected humor which, although often arising from the narrator's unconscious revelation, ultimately leads to a germ of understanding.

"Bunny is Good Bread" enters the mind of a small boy being raised in grotesque circumstances and portrays the creation of a serial killer in a manner that compels pity, sorrow, comprehension and a sense of grief as well as judgment. "Hunger" narrated by the ghost of a pompous, self-pitying murderer, creates a profoundly beautiful vision of earthly life, one appreciated far more by the dead than the living. "Mr. Club and Mr. Cuff" uses the material and structure of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" to create a revenge tale in which torture is a moral art and the avenger undergoes a transforming education.

Straub's devotees will be swept away by the potency of this collection and the uninitiated are in for a startling—if occasionally harrowing—literary treat.