
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link is a collection of short stories that are described as ghost stories without ghosts. The stories are eerie and surreal, blending elements of reality with the supernatural. The book covers a variety of themes and genres, including sci-fi, fantasy, fairy tales, horror, and comedy, creating a unique reading experience that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings for the book include themes of death, loss, emotional trauma, and some instances of surreal or bizarre situations.
Has Romance?
The book features a medium level of romance intertwined with its narratives, often exploring the complexity of relationships.
From The Publisher:
"An alchemical mix of Borges, Raymond Chandler and Buffy the Vampire Slayer."-Salon.com (Best of the Year)
"A delightful collection."-Cleveland Plain Dealer
"My favorite fantasy writer."-Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered
Link's stories defy explanation, or at least, brief summary, instead working on the plane between dream and cognitive dissonance. They are true to themselves: witty, beautiful, funny, and startling.-Rain Taxi
Link uses the nonsensical to illuminate truth, blurring the distinctions between the mundane and the fantastic to tease out the underlying meanings of modern life.-Booklist
The 11 fantasies in this first collection from rising star Link are so quirky and exuberantly imagined that one is easily distracted from their surprisingly serious underpinnings of private pain and emotional estrangement.
-Publishers Weekly
Kelly Link's collection of stories, Stranger Things Happen, really scores.
-Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Magazine
A tremendously appealing book, and lovers of short fiction should fall over themselves getting out the door to find a copy.
-Washington Post Book World
Stylistic pyrotechnics light up a bizarre but emotionally truthful landscape. Link's a writer to watch.
-Kirkus Reviews
A set of stories that are by turns dazzling, funny, scary, and sexy, but only when they're not all of these at once. Kelly Link has strangeness, charm and spin to spare. Writers better than this don't happen.
-Karen Joy Fowler
Kelly Link is probably the best short story writer currently out there, in any genre or none. She puts one word after another and makes real magic with them-funny, moving, tender, brave and dangerous. She is unique, and should be declared a national treasure, and possibly surrounded at all times by a cordon of armed marines.
-Neil Gaiman
Kelly Link is the exact best and strangest and funniest short story writer on earth that you have never heard of at the exact moment you are reading these words and making them slightly inexact. Now pay for the book.
-Jonathan Lethem
The eleven stories in Kelly Link's debut collection are funny, spooky, and smart. They all have happy endings. They were all especially written for you. A Best of the Year pick from Salon.com, Locus, The Village Voice, and San Francisco Chronicle. Includes Nebula, World Fantasy, and Tiptree award-winning stories.
Kelly Link is the author of three collections of short fiction Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebula, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question "Why do you want to go through the world?" ("Because you can't go through it.")
Link lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, co-edit the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they startd the occasional zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.
Ratings (6)
Incredible (1) | |
Loved It (3) | |
It Was OK (2) |
Reader Stats (9):
Read It (6) | |
Want To Read (3) |
About the Author:
Kelly Link is the author of two collections, Magic for Beginners (chosen as a 2005 Best Book by Time Magazine, Salon.com, and Book Sense) and Stranger Things Happen. She is the editor of the anthology Trampoline. She and her husband Gavin J. Grant started Small Beer Press in 2000.
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