In “Harlequin Valentine,” Missy the waitress chows down lovingly on the heart of the motley-clad acrobat of the commedia dell’arte, but even that grisly feast is rendered with swooning lyricism. “A Study in Emerald” offers smart, nifty homage to Conan Doyle. “October in the Chair” whimsically features the months as characters. “Strange Little Girls,” penned to accompany a Tori Amos CD, catalogues the Eternal Feminine from showgirls to Holocaust victims to la belle dame sans merci. “Good Boys Deserve Favours” highlights a lonely lad’s moony passion for his double bass.
Reprising his role from American Gods (2001) as ex-con, taciturn hunk, superhero and reincarnation of the Norse god Baldur, Shadow shakes things up in “The Monarch of the Glen,” battling a primeval beastie and romancing a woodland nymph in the unlikely setting of a tycoon’s get-together on the Scottish heath. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most unique writers of our time.Neo-Goth-Pulp-Noir has pretty much been trademarked by Gaiman ( Anansi Boys, 2005, etc.), and these 31 jagged slices of life and the afterlife dependably deliver the damaged goods: zombies, dream-haunted kiddies, femmes fatale and fiends. Such marvelous creations and more-including a short story set in the world of The Matrix, and others set in the worlds of gothic fiction and children's fiction-can be found in this extraordinary collection, which showcases Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humor. In a Locus Award-winning tale, the members of an excusive epicurean club lament that they've eaten everything that can be eaten, with the exception of a legendary, rare, and exceedingly dangerous Egyptian bird. Two teenage boys crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams-and nightmares. In a Hugo Award-winning short story set in a strangely altered Victorian England, the great detective Sherlock Holmes must solve a most unsettling royal murder. In a novella set two years after the events of American Gods, Shadow pays a visit to an ancient Scottish mansion, and finds himself trapped in a game of murder and monsters. A mysterious circus terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it.
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