Magic for beginners : stories

In this dazzling collection, prize-winning short story writer Kelly Link takes the ordinary and makes it strange - and the strange and makes it ordinary. Engaging, funny, eerie and magical, these nine stories prove Link to be an original and important talent. Of all the books you read this year, this will be the one that you remember. Taking themes from horror and fantasy, these stories transform them into the stuff of delicate lyrical fantasy, with a distinctive and effervescent blend of humour and pathos. In 'Stone Animals', a middle-class family moves from Manhattan to a beautiful house in the suburbs. Almost immediately, their belongings become haunted, and they are increasingly unnerved by the growing hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. The title story follows a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series which switches channels and times at whim. In 'The Hortlak', an all-night convenience store serves zombies as an experiment in retail; while 'The Faery Handbag' features a village which takes refuge from time to time in a magical handbag. Bold, tender, mischievous and unsettling, Link's stories have the insistent quality of dreams and show a writer at the height of her powers.