“Reading Brian Booker’s stories is like lolling on your sofa, or strolling the streets of your town, when you look around and it dawns on you that everything you thought you recognized is suddenly . . . different. The unnerving newspaper headline, those weird jars in the fridge, the off-kilter conversation with that too friendly stranger—the quotidian and the unremarkable are rendered strange and new, and the effect is, to quote the author, ‘a little like nectar and a little like poison.’ These are terrific stories, and Booker is a terrific writer.”