Any Deadly Thing

Following the critical success of his debut collection, All Over, and of his debut novel, Pacazo, Roy Kesey now brings us a new gathering of short stories, Any Deadly Thing. These stories first appeared in magazines including McSweeney''s, Subtropics, Ninth Letter and American Short Fiction, and have been widely anthologized; among them are winners of a Pushcart Prize special mention, an Honorable Mention in The Year''s Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Missouri Review''s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors'' Prize in Fiction. With story locales ranging across the Americas to Europe and Asia, Kesey once again makes the full strange world his stage.

"Perfect, masterful portraits of an international cross-section of wise, broken souls--hopeful, brutal, funny as hell, and heart-crushing, every last one." —Elizabeth Crane, author of We Only Know So Much

"Roy Kesey is one of my favorite contemporary writers, and Any Deadly Thing is another triumph. These stories, reminiscent of William Gass in the remarkable way they combine a virtuoso playfulness and wit with an atmosphere of grimness and grief and heartbreak, range the world over for their brilliantly realized locales, but they share a deeper setting in what Gass calls ''the only holiness we have,'' human consciousness. Kesey demonstrates once again that he is a spectacularly deft and empathetic priest of that creed, which is the only one for me." —Michael Griffith, author of Trophy