Starred Review. Ordinary bits of Americana show a dark and eerie aspect in the seven stories in Hirshberg's second collection (after 2003's The Two Sams)... Hirshberg grounds his dark fantasies in minute details of the everyday that give them a discomfitingly believable foothold in reality. His skill at drawing horrors out of commonplace situations peopled with credibly drawn characters distinguishes these subtle tales of the uncanny as some of the most effective and chilling in contemporary weird fiction. -- Publishers Weekly.

 

From the author of the acclaimed novel THE SNOWMAN'S CHILDREN and the award-winning collection THE TWO SAMS comes American Morons, a new collection of dazzling and haunting tales...

Two traveling college students confront their disintegrating relationship and the new American reality in a breakdown lane along the Italian Superstrade. A woman chases the ghost of her neglectful father to a vanished amusement park at the end of the Long Beach pier. Two recently retired teachers learn just how much Los Angeles has taken from them.

In these atmospheric, wide-ranging, surprisingly playful, and deeply mournful stories, grandkids and widows, ice cream-truck drivers and judges, travelers and invalids all discover — and sometimes even survive— the everyday losses from which the most vengeful ghosts so often spring.