Thirty-six cities. Thirty-six stories of obsession. From ancient Thebes to present day Berlin, these little portraits of humans superimposed on their suburban environment are corroding treats thrown together in a past-modern beaker, landmark tales of love in the metropolis. A round-the-world tour of craving and decadence.

Ranging on the fringes of imagination and erudition, forming a mosaic of stories, maxims and sketches, at once fragmentary and cumulative, Jottings from a Far Away Place combines the timeless, mannered assurance of the Eastern discursive essay with the experimentation of the Western avant-garde. As the focus shifts between fantastic tales and studies of viciousness, the reader is treated to, among myriad other things, the adventures of a Taoist guitar player, a bloody episode with Countess de Bathory, a recipe for cinnabar sauce, and the story of a man who has been reincarnated as a spoon. A...

Vehicle for warped desire or major contribution to the modern novel, The Cutest Girl in Class steals the prosthetic hand of modern existence, gloves it in the leopard-skin of amazing style and idiom, and then proceeds to slap modern existence in the face with its own stolen hand.

Zak is a man who likes to play with dolls - Real Dolls. Clive is a boy longing for Marybeth, the girl next door. Now their disparate streams of lust and longing are about to cross, thanks to Thad, an aspiring, almost heartbreaking criminal, and Clive's father, whose obsession with "inorganic women"...

New Mexico, 1974. Mitch Mazzola is just trying to make a living. Dealing in Native American artifacts seems like an easy way to do this--but so have lots of other things before: selling typewriter ribbons, Bibles, shoes, and Sweet Dart Cosmetics. It just goes to show--just because a fellow's lucky with the ladies, it doesn't mean he's lucky in lucre. But maybe that's all about to change. Fifty thousand dollars in a brown paper bag says it might--as long as things don't go wrong.