SEVEN GLOBE-SPANNING TALES THAT DEFY REALITYViktor Chemayev is a sad-eyed, heavy-drinking romantic who refuses to stay beat. In the title novella of this extraordinary collection, he goes head-to-head with an Irish assassin in the depths of a Moscow nightclub in an attempt to win back his true love, who has been sold to the Beelzebub-like king of the Moscow underworld…. Lucius Shepard is known for his dark, unpredictable vision, and in this assemblage of some of his best writing he takes us from Moscow to Africa; from the mountains of Iraq, where Specialist Charlie N. Wilson encounters a very different sort of enemy, to Central America, where a bloodyhanded colonel meets his doom … via lizards. In these seven tales Shepard’s imagination spans the globe and, like an American Gabriel García Márquez, refuses to be restricted by mere reality.

“Lucius Shepard’s stories a jungles — densely alive, sometimes mysterious, often gorgeous, and always dangerous.” — Katerine Dunn, author of Geek Love

LUCIUS SHEPARD lives in Vancouver, Washington. He has twice won World Fantasy Award. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards for science fiction writing several times in addition to the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He is the author of several books, including A Handbook of American Prayer (starred Publishers Weekly review, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Book of the Year), and The Jaguar Hunter, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.