George Williams returns with a second collection of stories as original and arresting as his first, Gardens of Earthly Delight. From a Texas reservoir a fisherman hauls in a record-breaking bass that transforms his life forever. In Georgia a man is required by federal law to become chattel for a day. A criminal and his ventriloquist's dummy wreak havoc wherever they go. The son of a Syrian soap maker becomes obsessed with a fellow graduate student in Colorado and plans an atrocity he believes will bring him the admiration of the world. In the title story, two physicists traveling across...