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The strange, the sublime and the monstrous confront one another with astonishing consequences in this collection of twenty-two stories from an award-winning writer. In the village of Yiwei, a fallen wasp nest unfurls into a beautifully accurate map. In a field in Louisiana, bird watchers forge an indelible connection over a shared glimpse of a Vermilion Flycatcher, and fall. In Nineveh, a judge who prides himself on impartiality finds himself questioned by a mysterious god. On a nameless shore, a small monster searches for refuge and finds unexpected courage. At turns bittersweet and boundary-breaking, poignant and profound, these twenty-two stories sing, as the oldest fables do, of what it means to be alive in this strange, terrible, beautiful world.