The Ghost Variations One Hundred Stories

The author of the acclaimed novel The Brief History of the Dead now gives us one hundred funny, poignant, scary, and thought-provoking ghost stories that explore all aspects of the afterlife.

A spirit who appears in a law firm reliving the exact moment she lost her chance at love, a man haunted by the trees cut down to build his house, nefarious specters that snatch anyone who steps into the shadows in which they live, and parakeets that serve as mouthpieces for the dead--these are just a few of the characters Kevin Brockmeier presents in this extraordinary compendium of spectral emanations and their wildly various purposes in (after) life.
     These tales are by turns playful, chilling, and philosophical, paying homage to the genre while audaciously subverting expectations. The ghosts in these pages are certain to haunt you well after you've closed the book.

KEVIN BROCKMEIER is the author of the novels The Ghost Variations, A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip, The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer; and the children's novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He has published his stories in such venues as The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, McSweeney's, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Oxford American, The Best American Short Stories, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and New Stories from the South. He has received the Borders Original Voices Award, three O. Henry Awards (one, a first prize), the PEN USA Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an NEA Grant. In 2007, he was named one of Granta magazine's Best Young American Novelists He teaches frequently at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was raised.