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Stranger Things Happen

Stories

Kelly Link author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Small Beer Press

Published:16th Aug '01

Should be back in stock very soon

Stranger Things Happen cover

"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...

"Pity the poor librarians who have to slap a sticker on Kelly Link's genre-bending, mind-blowing masterpiece of the imagination, Stranger Things Happen.”
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia, for NPR's You Must Read This

"My favorite fantasy writer, Miss Kelly Link"
—Alan Cheuse, NPR, All Things Considered

"Kelly Link's collection of stories, Stranger Things Happen, really scores."
— Daniel Mendelsohn, New York Magazine

"Stranger Things Happen is 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

"I love that book! Her imagination goes beyond any known boundaries. She is like Magritte: the eye, the regard, ‘behind every visible object lies another object, an invisible one.’" 
— Angélica Gorodischer

"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, author of The Jane Austen Book Club

"Link's writing is gorgeous, mischievous, sexy and unsettling. Unexpected images burst on your brain like soap bubbles on a dog's tongue. I've been trying to imitate her since I first read one of her stories. It's impossible. Instead I find myself curling up with a satisfied sigh and enjoying once more."
— Nalo Hopkinson, author of Midnight Robber

"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, author of Motherless Brooklyn

"If Kelly Link is not the "future of horror," a ridiculous phrase, she ought to be. To have a future at all, horror in general, by which I might as well mean fiction in general, requires precisely her freshness, courage, intelligence, and resistance to received forms and values. Kelly Link seems always to speak from a deep, deeply personal, and unexpected standpoint. Story by story, she is creating new worlds, new frameworks for perception, right in front of our eyes. I think she is the most impressive writer of her generation."
— Peter Straub, author of Magic Terror

"I've been impatiently awaiting a collection of Kelly Link's stories. Now that it's here, it will sit in my library on that very short shelf of books I read again and again. For those who think Fantasy tired, Stranger Things Happen is a wake-up call."
— Jeffrey Ford

"Finally, Kelly Link's wonderful stories have been collected. My only complaint is the brevity of her oeuvre to date; as an avid reader of her work , I want her to continue to create more gems for me to read. I predict that "The Specialist's Hat," winner of the World Fantasy Award, will become part of the canon of classic supernatural tales."
— Ellen Datlow

"Kelly Link is a brilliant writer. Her stories seem to come right out of your own dreams, the nice ones and the nightmares both. These stories will burrow right into your subconscious and stay with you forever."
— Tim Powers, author of On Stranger Tides

"Of all the books you'll read this year, this is the one you'll remember. Kelly Link's stories are like gorgeous tattoos; they get under your skin and stay forever and change your life.  Buy this book, read it, read it again, congratulate yourself, and then start buying Stranger Things Happen for your friends."
— Sarah Smith, author of A Citizen of the Country

"Kelly Link makes spells, not stories. She is the carrier of an eerie, tender sorcery; each enchantment takes you like a curse, leaving you dizzy, wounded, and elated at once. Her vision is always compassionate, and frequently very funny—but don't let that fool you. This book, like all real magic, is terribly dangerous. You open it at your peril."
— Sean Stewart, author of Galveston

"It is the tradition of the dust-jacket "blurb" to exaggerate the excellences of a book in hopes of enticing readers between its covers. But I do not follow that custom when I say that Stranger Things Happen is one of the very best books I have ever read. These stories will amaze, provoke, and intrigue. Best of all, they will delight. Kelly Link is terrific! This is not blurbese. It is the living truth."
— Fred Chappell, author of Family Gathering

"Quirky and exuberantly imagined....the best shed a warm, weird light on their worlds, illuminating fresh perspectives and fantastic possibilities."
Publisher's Weekly

"Stylistic pyrotechnics light up a bizarre but emotionally truthful landscape. Link's a writer to watch."
Kirkus Reviews

  • Short-listed for Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Fiction) 2002

ISBN: 9781931520003

Dimensions: 215mm x 139mm x 17mm

Weight: 354g

266 pages