Selections from Fragile Things, Volume One - 4 Short Fictions and Wonders

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

In Selections from Fragile Things, Volume 2 you will find the following stories and poems, sure to thrill and amaze.

The Hidden Chamber
A poem about a love: locked and hidden away and quite probably dead.

Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire
Written when Gaiman was in his early twenties, an aspiring writer’s apparent parody of a horror story may prove to be more than fanciful hyperbole.

The Flints of Memory Lane
Neil Gaiman bemoans that true ghost stories are most often incomplete and unsatisfactory. And yet, as the only ghost story in the collection that Gaiman claims as entirely true, The Flints of Memory Lane is all the more eerie for the way it floats, unfinished, in the reader’s mind long after it ends.

Closing Time
A pub tale sure to keep your children from playing with strange boys they meet while walking home from school.

Going Wodwo
The poetic musings of a forest man.

Bitter Grounds
At an Anthropology Conference in New Orleans all is not as it appears. The man presenting Jackson Anderton’s speech on Haitian coffee girl zombies is not Jackson Anderton and his new acquaintances on Bourbon Street are not entirely human.

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

In Selections from Fragile Things, Volume 3 you will find the following stories, sure to thrill and amaze.

Other People
Gaiman’s vision of Hell: a room, a demon, and a man’s conscience.

Keepsakes and Treasures
Meet Mr. Alice, a man so rich that no one has ever heard of him, and Smith, the man paid to keep it that way, among other things. The other things include procuring rare items such as the Treasure of the Shahinai, which the unsavory pair will get at any cost.

Good Boys Deserve Favors
Gaiman shares a rare story that he never told his children, that of his skills, or lack thereof, playing the double bass as a boy.

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch
A circus located in the abandoned tunnels near London Bridge proves so arresting, even the unpleasant Miss. Finch can’t help but find herself thoroughly engaged.

Strange Little Girls
Brief encounters with the twelve enigmatic women Tori Amos embodies in her album of the same name.

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

In Selections from Fragile Things, Volume 4 you will find the following stories and poems, sure to thrill and amaze.

Harlequin Valentine
A Harlequin’s heart may be easily given, but how will the object of his affection treat his delicate organ?

Locks
In Gaiman’s poem a man attempts to tell his daughter the tale of Goldilocks despite her interjections.

The Problem of Susan
A student interviews a professor of children’s fiction for a scholarly article, but when the discussion lands on C. S. Lewis’ Narnia the conversation becomes quite personal.

Instructions
Real life advice, in poetry form, on what to do if you find yourself in the middle of a fairy tale.

How Do You Think It Feels
An affair with a younger woman leaves a man so despondent that he goes to extraordinary measures to protect his heart from future pain.

My Life
The monologue of a rather mangled sock monkey telling the story of his life, egged on by a couple of beers chased with whiskey.

Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot
Scenes inspired by a supernatural tarot deck whose cards betray surreal and somewhat blood-thirsty characters.

Feeders and Eaters
At a greasy all-night café a man runs into an old acquaintance, now a shriveled version of his once-handsome self. The man cannot escape the gruesome story of his friend’s deterioration involving a cat and an old woman with unnaturally long hair.

Diseasemaker’s Croup
An imaginary disease in which the afflicted create imaginary diseases, Diseasemaker’s Croup takes hypochondria to a new level.

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

In Selections from Fragile Things, Volume 6 you will find the following story, sure to thrill and amaze.

The Monarch of the Glen An American Gods Novella
Once bodyguard for an old god, Shadow may have gotten into more than he’s bargained for when he assumes a job for the dastardly Mr. Alice and his minion Smith deep in the Scottish Highlands “where the bones of the Earth show through.” Fans of American Gods cannot miss this continuation of Shadow’s encounters with the strange and the supernatural.

The marvelous creations found in Fragile Things showcase the unparalleled invention and storytelling brilliance—as well as the terrifyingly dark and entertaining sense of humor—of the incomparable Neil Gaiman. By turns delightful, disturbing, and diverting, Fragile Things is a gift of literary enchantment from one of the most original writers of our time.

In Selections from Fragile Things, Volume 5 you will find the following stories and poems sure to thrill and amaze.

In the End
“In the end,” starts the ultimate imagined biblical scene, a strange reversal of Genesis.

Goliath
Derived from the script of The Matrix, a giant man attempts to navigate a simple life on an Earth where even the most basic rules of time and travel are routinely broken.

Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Louisville, Kentucky
A rambling American journey in search of the evasive Scarlett, recorded in a journal and left in a shoebox of treasures for us to decipher.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties
Fifteen-year-old Enn has trouble talking to girls. His best friend Vic’s solution? With practice comes comfort. But, this party, with its otherworldly guests, may produce just the opposite effect.

The Day the Saucers Came
You would think the mass-landing of flying saucers would be hard to miss, unless of course you were distracted by the zombies or something equally consuming, as in Gaiman’s apocalyptic love poem.

Sunbird
What’s an Epicurean Club to do when it’s exhausted all the world’s finest delicacies, from flash-frozen mammoth, to unicorn flank tartare, to dung-beetle balls? Hunt down a Sunbird and push the limits of gastronomic indulgence a bit further, of course.

Inventing Aladdin
Gaiman’s poem examines storytellers’ motivation through the most dire case, that of Scheherazade.

Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you.

Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers—but always embrace the unexpected:

• A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party.
• A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it.
• A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living.
• A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil.

These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman's many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.