Celestial Inventories

Book excerpt: Among the transforming events in these twenty-two genre-bending stories: an office worker and his wife fade into a literal invisibility; a photographer discovers the unexpected in the faces of dead children; a girl moves onto a strange street when she fails to return from trick-or-treating; an artist devotes his career to contracting diseases; a plague of head explosions becomes a new form of terrorism; a couple's aging dismantles reality; and a seemingly pointless life finds final expression in bits of folded paper. Steve Rasnic Tem's other works include Deadfall Hotel, Onion Songs, Ugly Behavior, and The Man on the Ceiling. Celestial Inventories may be the World Fantasy Award-winning author's finest collection to date. Stories included in this collection: The World Recalled The Disease Artist Halloween Street When We Moved On The Woodcarver’s Son Invisible Head Explosions Chain Reaction The Secret Flesh Origami Bird In These Final Days of Sales Little Poucet The Bereavement Photographer Firestorm The Mouse’s Bedtime Story Last Dragon The Monster in the Field The High Chair Dinosaur Giant Killers The Company You Keep Celestial Inventory