Tiny Crimes
Very Short Tales of Mystery and Murder
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Forty very short stories that reimagine the genre of crime writing from some of today’s most imaginative and thrilling writers
“An intriguing take on crime/noir writing, this collection of 40 very short stories by leading and emerging literary voices—Amelia Gray, Brian Evenson, Elizabeth Hand, Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg and more—investigates crimes both real and imagined. Despite their diminutive size, these tales promise to pack a punch.” —Chicago Tribune, 1 of 25 Hot Books for Summer
Tiny Crimes gathers leading and emerging literary voices to tell tales of villainy and intrigue in only a few hundred words. From the most hard–boiled of noirs to the coziest of mysteries, with diminutive double crosses, miniature murders, and crimes both real and imagined, Tiny Crimes rounds up all the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, too. With illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook and flash fiction by Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Amelia Gray, Adam Sternbergh, Yuri Herrera, Julia Elliott, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Evenson, Charles Yu, Laura van den Berg, and more, Tiny Crimes scours the underbelly of modern life to expose the criminal, the illegal, and the depraved.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Michel and Nieto collect 40 tiny macabre tales ranging from two to seven pages in which every word counts, but it's what's not said that truly chills. These snippets of crime, madness, and monsters heighten tension and suspense with the brevity of their set-ups, cleverness of word play, and sucker punches of their climaxes. J. Robert Lennon's humorous "Circuit City" opens the book with employees, all named John, double-crossing their manager as he robs the store. A couple with a death wish in Amelia Gray's "The Odds" takes a number of fatal chances. In a heavily redacted letter, a prisoner explains how his crime was exploited for an "Airport Paperback" in Adam Hirsch's story. A swindler confined to a claustrophobic room gets divine retribution in Fuminori Nakamura's "No Exit." Chiara Barzini's "Minor Witchcraft" follows women destroying the wedding of a childhood tormenter. In Benjamin Percy's "We Are Suicide," a mall cop guards the eerie site of numerous suicides. In Carmen Maria Machado's "Mary When You Follow Her," told in a single melancholy five-page sentence, police in the barrio decide to investigate only when it's a rich white woman who goes missing. This volume provides a smorgasbord of inventive, grisly, sinister, and delightfully amusing tales that are perfect for lovers of crime fiction.
