The Religious and Other Fictions

Keen, tender, at times perverse, The Religious and Other Fictions ventures into the uncanny zones of the imagination and renders them natural. Watch out what you wish for: in these stories, tall tales have a knack of coming true. A mother's whim is granted when she disappears at the kitchen sink. Two boys bounce up and don't come down. A housewife conjures a light bulb salesman who materializes for dinner.

With one foot in the real world, the other in the land of fable, Christina Milletti takes stock of the beliefs we harbor in the face of failed hopes, the power personal myths hold over us all. In this wonderful debut collection, our most private sanctuaries are peeled back, their hearts made bare, by an inventive new writer who Carol Shields calls, "a genuine magician."