An unhappy housewife flees with her lover as civilization collapses in a tsunami of trash. A bank teller aids invisible thieves. A welder learns she has the power to kill with a kiss. A hive of women transform tourists with arcane sexual rites. A Korean War sniper stalks his doppleganger: a children’s television host. Amnesiac goddesses-turned-farmers struggle for survival in war-torn, post-apocalyptic Iowa.
By turns emotionally resonant and irreverent, surreal and sexy, these ten stories swirl with unseen currents, blending the fantastic and the mundane to get to the deeper truths of our existence.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2013920934 Published by Metaphysical Circus Press, January, 2014
Praise for The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags and Other Stories
“Melanie Lamaga’s stories are richly imagined, delightfully various, subtle, mysterious, humane, and very welcome additions to the growing canon of the American Fantastic.”
—Tom De Haven, author of It’s Superman!
“Melanie Lamaga’s stories are weird, wry, startling and passionate. The reader stands entranced on a rocky headland, watching sleek marvels crest the surface all around.”
—Andy Duncan, author of The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories
A collection of beautiful, eerie stories that hover on the cusp between nightmare and sunlit dreaming, the everyday and the never-was, Melanie Lamaga’s striking debut will appeal to readers of Karin Tidbeck, Kelly Link, and other writers who explore the literary twilight country of our unspoken fears and desires.
—Elizabeth Hand, author of Available Dark and Errantry
“Melanie Lamaga’s collection, The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags and Other Stories, bends both reality and the conventions of storytelling. In magical vignettes that transport readers back and forth in time and place, Lamaga’s characters confront alter-egos and shadows at every turn. These are thought-provoking, edgy, unconventional narratives that leave a reader both shocked and delighted.”
−Sheri Reynolds, author of The Rapture of Canaan